The Nintendo DS: Part Four

When Microsoft released their Xbox 360 at the tail end of 2005 (followed by Sony's Playstation 3 a year later), they ushered in the era of HD videogaming. These new HD systems were leaps and bounds better, at least in terms of graphical prowess, than their ancestors. However, the cost for developing games for these high end systems grew larger than ever before. So while a few publishers and developers reveled in their technical prowess and huge budgets, smaller developers couldn't afford to compete on the same level, and so they needed a way to put their "lower-end" skills to use.

Enter the Nintendo DS. While the system was more powerful than Nintendo's handhelds before it, it was no where near as expensive as developing for the new HD systems. Games developed for handheld units were historically cheaper than their console counterparts, true, but the gulf in development costs was now wider than ever before. Sony's PSP even had high development costs, due to having Playstation 2 quality graphics - which while not as expensive to create as, say, Playstation 3 graphics, were still more expensive than Nintendo 64 graphics, which the DS was roughly on par with. So smaller developers (and big developers who didn't want to spend a fortune on every game they made) flocked to the DS, and tried to eke out a niche there.

Take, for example, the small Japanese developer formerly known as Office Create. They released a low budget game for the DS in 2006 called Cooking Mama. The game was relatively simple: players used the unique functions of the DS to cook dishes, as instructed by the eponymous Mama. Majesco published the game, and it went to retail with little to no fanfare. The game sold fairly well, at first, although it did something unexpected - it never stopped selling. It was a reliable seller for a few years, so Majesco made a few sequels, and as of 2009, the series has sold over 8 million copies.

One publisher that has done very well for itself on the DS is Atlus. They have done very little work on the HD systems, purportedly due to the costs involved. Their first breakout hit was Trauma Center: Under the Knife, released in October of 2005 and spawning a sequel on DS, and a remake and two sequels on Wii. They also did very well with their Etrian Odyssey series, which saw its first release in America in 2007. Two sequels were then published for the DS in following years, and a new Etrian Odyssey has been announced for the upcoming 3DS. They were also able to capitalize on the success of the Playstation 2 game Persona 3 and release two "Shin Megami Tensei"-branded games on the DS - SMT: Devil Survivor and SMT: Strange Journey. These were wholly original games, while the PSP entries in the SMT franchise were remakes of Persona games previously released on the Playstation 1.

Another breakout hit came in the form of 2009's Scribblenauts, developed by 5th Cell, who had previously created moderately selling DS titles Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest. The game was incredibly ambitious. The player was tasked with solving puzzles by summoning items or characters into the game by typing in words. The hook was the player could type nearly anything, so long as it wasn't obscene or copyrighted, and that word would appear as a physical object in the game that could be interacted with. The game even won several "Best of E3" awards, making it the first handheld title to ever do so. The game sold very well, and a sequel was released in late 2010.

The DS had proven itself fertile ground for several developers and publishers, but, of course, the first party titles cannot be ignored. Nintendo followed up the mediocre Super Mario 64 DS with a steady stream of fantastic games for the DS, culminating in 2007 with the newest release of its flagship handheld series - Pokemon.