The Nintendo DS wasn’t my first games console, but it might have been my favourite. An upgrade from the battered Game Boy Advance that I’d won in a competition years previous, it had everything a growing boy wanted: a backlight, a clamshell hinge that snapped shut with a satisfying snap, a touchscreen, and a carry case shaped like a toy bone from Nintendogs. At age 10, what more could you need?
I experienced some of my formative gaming memories on that Nintendo DS. I traded Pokemon with my friends. I took my digital dogs for a walk and washed them overnight with the console on charge so they sparkled in the morning. I finished the campaign of Call of Duty: World of War without dying and while hitting 97 percent headshots.
But I traded in my DS for a DSi. I ended up hating the weird chalkboard-esque texture of the console, so I traded that in for a PSP 3000. Then when the next Pokemon game came out and I got severe FOMO, I traded that in for a 3DS, which I still have today. Still, there’s something about that original design that I miss.
All of these trade-ins happened a year or two after the last, not within weeks or something silly.
If only my parents had had better jobs when I was a kid, I’d still have my copies of rare games that go for hundreds of pounds these days. Instead, I sold them to Game or CEX for three quid. I’m joking of course, and I wouldn’t trade my trade-in childhood for a prerelease Switch 2.
Knowing that the Nintendo DS is 20 today takes me back to primary school, sitting in classroom corners playing with friends, trading games on the playground, and getting into fights over stolen cartridges. It was a simpler time. Now I’m beginning to wonder: do I really want a Nintendo DS, or do I want to be a carefree child whose only responsibility is looking after a pixelated pooch?
No, I want a Nintendo DS. Luckily I’ve got my pristine 3DS for actually playing games, so I don’t mind too much about the condition. I can pick one up second-hand for about £50, but they probably go for a lot less on Facebook Marketplace or eBay. After that, I’ll grab a copy of Nintendogs (Labrador, although I had Dachshund as well back in the day) and maybe even try to find that classic bone-shaped carry case.
It was my birthday yesterday, and the DS’ today, so I should treat us both by buying one, right?
I get like this sometimes. There are just certain things that hit my nostalgia glands like nothing else. I very nearly bought a flip phone after rewatching The Departed. I see the original clamshell of the DS and I yearn for it.
There’s a practicality to old tech, as well as that nostalgia, though. I already know that the Switch 2 will only offer incremental upgrades over my Switch OLED, and yet I’ll still shell out 300 quid for it. But the Nintendo DS represented a far greater leap in technology.
This was revolutionary to a ten-year-old boy. I could play in the dark! I could pet my dogs, and they’d respond when I called their names. I didn’t care about graphical fidelity or processing power, I just loved playing games. And I think I can find that joy again by returning to this classic console.
Back then, I didn’t have the language to understand or appreciate mechanics. I just experienced them. I like being able to analyse how and why games do things these days, but 20 years ago, I only had the pure, unbridled joy of discovery. I will never play a game in that same, wonderfully naive, way again, whether it’s on a console from 2024 or 2004. But I can dredge up a host of memories from my childhood and revel in a similar childlike joy by returning to the OG DS. After all, if you’re not playing games for fun, what are you really doing?
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Every Pokemon Game On The Nintendo DS, Ranked
Double the screens, double the Pokemon games to play.