Final Fantasy III is an enhanced upgrade of a Famicom RPG that had never previously come to the States before this edition -- it was the one game in the series that had been consistently skipped over throughout the years, both in the NES era and when Square Enix first started remaking its Final Fantasy franchise installments in the PlayStation age.
So it was a big deal when this adventure finally arrived, and it's an even bigger deal now that it's much more affordable. And even beyond recounting the game's many attractive features like its enhanced story, remade graphics and new cinematic scenes, it's just important to point out how great of a value role-playing games are for your money.
If you're spending your hard-earned dollars, you want to get your money's worth -- and with an adventure that's going to take you 50 hours or so to complete, Final Fantasy III more than qualifies in that category.
It doesn't get much cheaper than that. One of the DS hardware's first wave of puzzle designs, Polarium was a first-party effort published by Nintendo that gave gamers something different than the Tetris clones most people had come to expect to see on portable systems.
Polarium's catch was color-changing tiles -- panels that flipped from black to white as you drew a long, continuous line on the screen without lifting your stylus. Lines would be cleared when each tile within them matched, either being all white or all black. But you had to move fast, because the speed of extra tiles piling on top was relentless.
Much more relaxing and making Polarium worthy of inclusion on this countdown was its puzzle mode, a set of static brainteasers that took away the impending sense of doom and just left you scratching your head instead. You'd think that drawing a single line through a set of tiles would be simple enough, but many of the stock puzzles included here are devious -- and once you finally solve them, you can create, save and share your own. Polarium hasn't gone down as the most spectacular puzzler in the DS library, but it's still solid and satisfying after three and a half years.
And at the significantly discounted price it's currently offered at, it's definitely worth looking into. Its winning charm, charming love story and lovable characters still make it a winner worth looking for even here in -- and because its debut was so long ago, now, chances are there's a huge potential audience for the game that completely missed out the first time around, simply because they came into the fold of DS ownership with the introduction of the Lite, or later.
Feel the Magic tells the tale of a young man knocked head over heels for a woman he chances upon meeting, and his continued pursuit of her affections through the power of touch screen mini-games. Everything is a mini-game here, as the design was one of the first to try to demonstrate the versatility of Nintendo's new touch-capable hardware, even as the first-party releases were content to just remake Super Mario And it's a solid demonstration, capitalizing on the same brand of quirkiness that other classic SEGA titles like Seaman, Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo have employed over the years.
For an asking price that's just over 10 bucks, you could have a lot of fun revisiting the roots of what third parties first tried to do with Nintendo's oddball new portable in And Feel the Magic is your best bet to do just that. The hook for our feature here is games you can grab for under 20 bucks, but this one's twice as nice -- True Swing Golf , Nintendo's first-party sports sim, is currently selling for less than a Hamilton.
That's an insane price for a game as good as True Swing, which, while not featuring the likenesses of any famous real world professionals like EA's Tiger Woods series, offers an exceptionally solid rendition of the sport all the same.
True Swing uses the touch screen to allow players to physically trace the arc of each swing, replacing the standard button-pressing swinging mechanic seen in almost ever other golf game ever made.
And it works well -- a good thing, since the game is named after that one aspect of its gameplay. You'll be able to draw slow, deliberate lines in order to achieve perfect accuracy if you like, or you can choose to just stab across the screen as fast as possible to get a much less precise, but much more powerful shot. It's an intriguing and addictive mechanic, and perfectly suited for a portable DS golf title. If you're a fan of the sport and don't yet own a version of it for the DS, consider True Swing.
It's fun, it's functional, and it's incredibly cheap. The original Meteos has become a game that's hard to come by, which is a shame for those players who might have missed out on grabbing a copy while it was still stocked in most stores.
But hope is not lost for those who didn't, as the perfectly fun and acceptable sequel Meteos: Disney Magic is still widely available, and it's an excellent substitute. Meteos is a falling-block puzzler that presents its players with constant cascades of tiles tumbling onto the screen. Using the stylus, you have to drag, shift and match the like-colored individual blocks to set them off, igniting rockets that boost them back up off the top of the screen and out of the playing field.
Disney Magic operates under the same premise, but painted over the whole experience with a palette of colorful characters most often seen lurking around Orlando.
If you're ravenously anti-Disney, then you'll want to bite the bullet and track down the first Meteos, perhaps on an auction site. But if you can accept a bit of Walt's cartoon legacy interspersed with your puzzle play, save the effort and cash and grab this edition instead. We've covered the full range of DS history in today's selection of five titles, featuring games released in , , and It's only right, then, that we conclude this installment of our countdown by taking a glance at game that came out just this year -- Crosswords DS , released in That budget-level initial price tag betrayed the depth of the experience contained within, though, as this virtual rendition of your favorite newspaper pastime is pure, focused, "I'll play just one more" addictive.
The game takes advantage of the handwriting recognition first seen in Nintendo's Brain Age Sudoku games and takes it to its next logical step, and the resulting digital conversion of a traditionally analog game flows beautifully. If Crosswords have ever been your deal, even just casually so, then Crosswords DS is an excellent pick for you. And at under 20 bucks, it's an easy recommendation.
For a more introspective and unique guitar experience, though, Ubisoft and Plato brought out Jam Sessions last year. The game was so different than what you're used to seeing from things like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, though, that it's hard to call it a game at all. Jam Sessions transforms your DS into a virtual guitar, with chord selection appearing on the top screen and a stylus-controlled string on the touch screen below. Using a combination of the D-Pad buttons to choose your current chord and swiping across the screen to strum the instrument, music is made -- however you want to make it.
It's all about freedom and freestyling in Jam Sessions. Players looking for a more traditional music game experience will want to look to those more well known mainstream franchises, but artistic gamers who want to make their own sounds instead of just playing along with the hits of yesteryear should check this one out.
It's a great value. The intentional shift to a simpler type of game world and game design might have seemed like a mistake ahead of time, but the final product proved to be remarkably solid. You'll play a nameless hero with a talking magic wand thrust boldly into adventure, exploring the depths of a mountain maze filled to overflowing with the titular fantasy creatures.
You'll explore, hunt for treasure and fight in a first-person view that makes things feel fast-paced, even though the engine running everything underneath is actually turn-based. But now it's going for half off, and 15 dollars will be enough to start your adventure into the darkened labyrinth. We're just a few days away from the launch of the next new Tony Hawk experience on the DS, Tony Hawk's Motion -- a DS exclusive design that re-envisions the core tenants of the series' control scheme by shipping with a motion-sensing pack that plugs into the GBA slot.
The new sequel will certainly be a breath of fresh air, and we hope will turn out to be a lot of fun in its final form. But there are always going to be those who disagree with change.
So, for traditionalists, there's Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. Proving Ground is last year's update to the Tony Hawk formula, an iterative update to the series that features the same classic skateboarding gameplay you first grew to love in the PlayStation Pro Skater games.
It's got solid control, tons to do, lots of places to skate and a wealth of customization options -- it's pure Tony Hawk. If you're craving some skating and need to save some cash, look to Proving Ground. Motion may prove to be just as fun, but it's a tougher sell for wallet-strained gamers right off the bat. Nintendo's brain-training series of titles took the casual DS audience by storm with their debut in , as the whole country, it seemed, got swept up into the practice of improving its mental health.
We've had a bit of a hiatus it new releases, though, and the upcoming Brain Age sequels are still a ways away -- maybe it's time to go back and revisit a release you missed? Big Brain Academy was the more colorful and creative of the two initial brain-trainers, containing a set of 15 different mind-exercising activities meant to get your neurons firing faster than before.
Success in its array of mental mini-games meant your brain "weighed" more, as opposed to the age measurement seen in Brain Age -- and you also got an estimate of what profession you'd be most proficient in. Are you meant to be a doctor?
A lawyer? A grad school drop-out? Big Brain Academy, and its resident teacher Dr. Lobe, will tell you the straight truth. Finally, our 11 countdown position is awarded to not one game, but three -- The Quest Trio is a compilation cartridge bringing together three different puzzle designs, and represents one of the best recent values on the DS. What makes this a great value is that the last two in that list were previously sold on the DS as standalone cartridges, for 30 and 20 bucks respectively.
That you can get them both now, along with a bonus third game, for under 20 dollars is an undeniable financial improvement. Jewel Quest Solitaire is a mash-up of the well known card game and the well known match-three puzzle game -- you'll handle hands of cards on the touch screen, while above gems will settle into place to make matching sets. Jewel Quest Expeditions is a more traditional take on the design, which you might also know under the name Bejeweled.
And Mah Jong Quest Expeditions is a slightly remixed version of the traditional Chinese tile-matching game that introduces video game exclusive elements like balloons and wall-cracking firecrackers.
Crazy stuff. Taken individually, you might not want to spend 20 bucks. But for all three at that price, it's a package that looks pretty nice. If there's one genre that's in serious need of a boost on Nintendo's DS portable, it's the shoot-'em-up.
There are just very few releases in that category available, which is all the more surprising when Nintendo's current home console, the Wii, is getting a new shooter in its Virtual Console line-up every two and a half days, it seems. But though there aren't many choices to choose from on DS, there is one that's definitely worth selection -- Nanostray 2.
This sequel to one of the earliest DS shooter designs arrived just earlier this year, and brought with it focused, traditional, forced-scrolling shooting gameplay that fans of games like Gradius, R-Type and Star Soldier are sure to enjoy. Though the original Nanostray put a bit too much focus on touch screen elements, Nanostray 2 cuts that business out and just concentrates on sending wave after wave of enemies against your lone starfighter.
For such a simple and traditional design, 30 bucks might have seemed like a lot to ask back in March. But today it can be had for under 15 dollars, a savings of more than half off the MSRP.
If you're looking at your DS library and wondering why there isn't a single shooter there, stop all that and get to clicking through to the order page.
Nanostray 2 is worthy of that vacant spot. The amazing thing about Clubhouse Games was that it took so long to appear on the DS.
A simple, straightforward collection of popular card and parlor games, the title is a perfect fit for the system -- and yet it didn't arrive until the DS had had almost two years on the market already. In the two years since its ultimate release, though, it has proven to be one of the system's longest-legged designs, with a regular place on store shelves to this day.
Nintendo recently sweetened the pot for those who haven't yet picked up Clubhouse, too, with a rebranded package and lower price tag that makes its appeal nearly unavoidable. For less than 20 dollars now, you can outfit your DS with the ability to play such time-consumingly addictive classics like Solitaire, Chess, Battleship and Stratego, as well as more action-focused games of skill like Darts and Bowling.
None of these games is going to wow you with extraordinary graphics or sound, but their timelessness ensures that you'll always be able to come back for more -- especially if you're someone who has a long commute on public transportation, or takes a lot of lengthy airplane flights. Clubhouse is also a great universal gift for DS owners, the perfect thing to pick up as a stocking stuffer for the players on your holiday shopping list. Simple concept, great game. And now a great price.
Pick it up. Just announced this week as the newest addition to the fighting roster of the upcoming Tatsunoko vs. Capcom in Japan, Viewtiful Joe is a GameCube era superhero who made quite a splash with Nintendo fans in the last generation. And though his franchise has faded away over recent years, he did manage to make one portable Nintendo appearance before stepping out of the limelight -- Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble. Double Trouble takes the side-scrolling platforming and brawling of its console predecessors and shrinks it down for the dual-screened system, but then adds in some fresh innovations that take advantage of the DS touch screen.
Joe retains his time-altering superpowers from his earlier games, but also gains the new power to split the screen, shift the DS displays around, and shake up his world with "scratches. If you never got a chance to help Joe get out of Trouble on the DS, it's worth it to go back and do so now -- less than 15 bucks is an excellent price to pay for entry into his viewtiful world.
Forget your swords and sorcery. Put aside your bows, arrows and high-speed machine guns. Lay it all down and embrace the absence of it all, as your take command of a hero who has access to none of those things -- and doesn't need any of them.
Rocket is a slime, and all he needs to save the day is his own, little, bulbous, stretchy slime body. Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is one of the quirkiest and most unique Square Enix titles to come to the DS, and its limbless protagonist is especially hilarious. You'll guide Rocket on a mission to stretch, bounce and slingshot his way toward rescuing the kidnapped denizens of his blob-filled world, and then put each one of your saved compatriots to work in helping the run your massive rolling war machine.
The combination of exploration, adventure and epically comical tank battles makes Rocket Slime an amazing experience, and one that you can grab today for under 15 bucks. Not bad at all. For that cheap of a price, we'd buy this game for its name alone.
And we did. And we loved it. Playing as the titular fairy tale heroine, you engage a seemingly endless onslaught of the undead -- and blast them back to the grave with a massively varied arsenal of destruction.
The action is displayed from a top-down perspective, making things feel perfectly old-school. But, at the same time, the title set itself apart with a unique zoned movement system that locks Red into place in set positions at the bottom of the touch screen. And each of these 25 titles is a quality product, as well -- it would be simple to populate a list like this with budget-priced drivel and trash that isn't worth playing at all, but you won't find any of those games here.
We kicked off our countdown yesterday with our selections for 25 through Click there to see those picks, and then continue below to see today's additions of 20 through We've got our first first-party products to hit the list today, a Disney-themed sequel to a DS classic puzzler, and a launch title from SEGA that's still worth a look even four years after its release.
Take a look. One of the DS hardware's first wave of puzzle designs, Polarium was a first-party effort published by Nintendo that gave gamers something different than the Tetris clones most people had come to expect to see on portable systems. Polarium's catch was color-changing tiles -- panels that flipped from black to white as you drew a long, continuous line on the screen without lifting your stylus. Lines would be cleared when each tile within them matched, either being all white or all black.
But you had to move fast, because the speed of extra tiles piling on top was relentless. Much more relaxing and making Polarium worthy of inclusion on this countdown was its puzzle mode, a set of static brainteasers that took away the impending sense of doom and just left you scratching your head instead. You'd think that drawing a single line through a set of tiles would be simple enough, but many of the stock puzzles included here are devious -- and once you finally solve them, you can create, save and share your own.
Polarium hasn't gone down as the most spectacular puzzler in the DS library, but it's still solid and satisfying after three and a half years. And at the significantly discounted price it's currently offered at, it's definitely worth looking into.
Its winning charm, charming love story and lovable characters still make it a winner worth looking for even here in -- and because its debut was so long ago, now, chances are there's a huge potential audience for the game that completely missed out the first time around, simply because they came into the fold of DS ownership with the introduction of the Lite, or later. Feel the Magic tells the tale of a young man knocked head over heels for a woman he chances upon meeting, and his continued pursuit of her affections through the power of touch screen mini-games.
Everything is a mini-game here, as the design was one of the first to try to demonstrate the versatility of Nintendo's new touch-capable hardware, even as the first-party releases were content to just remake Super Mario And it's a solid demonstration, capitalizing on the same brand of quirkiness that other classic SEGA titles like Seaman, Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo have employed over the years.
For an asking price that's just over 10 bucks, you could have a lot of fun revisiting the roots of what third parties first tried to do with Nintendo's oddball new portable in And Feel the Magic is your best bet to do just that. The hook for our feature here is games you can grab for under 20 bucks, but this one's twice as nice -- True Swing Golf , Nintendo's first-party sports sim, is currently selling for less than a Hamilton. That's an insane price for a game as good as True Swing, which, while not featuring the likenesses of any famous real world professionals like EA's Tiger Woods series, offers an exceptionally solid rendition of the sport all the same.
True Swing uses the touch screen to allow players to physically trace the arc of each swing, replacing the standard button-pressing swinging mechanic seen in almost ever other golf game ever made. And it works well -- a good thing, since the game is named after that one aspect of its gameplay. You'll be able to draw slow, deliberate lines in order to achieve perfect accuracy if you like, or you can choose to just stab across the screen as fast as possible to get a much less precise, but much more powerful shot.
It's an intriguing and addictive mechanic, and perfectly suited for a portable DS golf title. If you're a fan of the sport and don't yet own a version of it for the DS, consider True Swing. It's fun, it's functional, and it's incredibly cheap. The original Meteos has become a game that's hard to come by, which is a shame for those players who might have missed out on grabbing a copy while it was still stocked in most stores.
But hope is not lost for those who didn't, as the perfectly fun and acceptable sequel Meteos: Disney Magic is still widely available, and it's an excellent substitute. Meteos is a falling-block puzzler that presents its players with constant cascades of tiles tumbling onto the screen. Using the stylus, you have to drag, shift and match the like-colored individual blocks to set them off, igniting rockets that boost them back up off the top of the screen and out of the playing field.
Disney Magic operates under the same premise, but painted over the whole experience with a palette of colorful characters most often seen lurking around Orlando. If you're ravenously anti-Disney, then you'll want to bite the bullet and track down the first Meteos, perhaps on an auction site.
But if you can accept a bit of Walt's cartoon legacy interspersed with your puzzle play, save the effort and cash and grab this edition instead.
We've covered the full range of DS history in today's selection of five titles, featuring games released in , , and It's only right, then, that we conclude this installment of our countdown by taking a glance at game that came out just this year -- Crosswords DS , released in That budget-level initial price tag betrayed the depth of the experience contained within, though, as this virtual rendition of your favorite newspaper pastime is pure, focused, "I'll play just one more" addictive.
The game takes advantage of the handwriting recognition first seen in Nintendo's Brain Age Sudoku games and takes it to its next logical step, and the resulting digital conversion of a traditionally analog game flows beautifully.
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