Nintendo DS



"Touching is good."

The Nintendo DS was the successor to the Game Boy family. It had a double screen setup (similar to some models in the Game & Watch line), the bottom one being a touch screen. It was a massive success, and to this day it remains the best-selling handheld ever. It was later succeeded by the Nintendo 3DS.

The original DS and the slimmer DS Lite are backwards-compatible with Game Boy Advance games (but not original Game Boy or Game Boy Color games). The later revisions, DSi and DSi XL, lack that entirely - However, they did include the GBA hardware needed to natively run GBA games, just no cart slot. Thus, if you use homebrew (Twilight Menu++) you can natively run GBA games on DSi systems.

Note: on May 20, 2014, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was shut down, disabling online multiplayer on basically all first-party titles for the DS and Wii. DSiWare was shut down on March 31, 2017. Nintendo DS systems cannot connect to modern WPA2 networks, however there does exist homebrew for the Pokemon games to revive some functionality. Your mileage may vary.

Nintendo DSiWare


DSiware started with the DSi and continued with the 3DS. These are essentially small file-sized games to be played and stored digitally. Some are meant for quick-fire play, but others have more depth. Longevity varies per title, obviously.

If you have a DSi versus a 3DS, there's still plenty of games and options available. It will also be supported for a little while longer, so you might want to keep your eye out for some future releases anyway. Of course, the 3DS gets you charged sales tax, so there might be some perk to using DSi points for a little while longer.

DSiWare is downloadable and transferable with the 3DS. However, you won't be able to keep any of your save data (due to Nintendo's legal bullshit). That said, all you have to do is download a free application off of the DSiWare Shop (the 3DS already has the means to do so without said app). Have both plugged in (or you'll get a fuckton of warning messages), set up a full or custom transfer (the full is much more convenient), and Pikmin will transfer all your data. If you get an error message, whatever was in the middle of being transferred will have to re-transfer, but everything else will already be sent over, and won't start all the way over.