The Nintendo DS: Part Three

Whenever video game hardware is released that has features not found on prior hardware, there are usually complaints that decry the new features as "gimmicks" that may take away from what many gamers call "hardcore" games. The reasons for this phenomenon vary for each new system, of course - the upcoming 3DS has people wondering what the 3D will bring to the table as far as gameplay enhancements go, for example. But since the original DS was such a wild departure in terms of hardware design, it follows that many people (myself included) were worried about all its seeming "extraneous" features detracting from the good, solid gameplay of the past.

The DS has two screens. This in itself is odd, when you think about it - what other video game was ever designed with two separate screens (arcades don't really count)? People were worried that developers wouldn't know what to put on each screen, or that there would be too much going on for a player to make sense of what was happening on each screen, etc. Some of these worries came to fruition in games like Yoshi's Island DS, in which there was a gap between the screens in which enemies could lurk, which severely hampered the playability of the game.

Then of course there is the touchscreen, which was an extremely new feature for a mainstream handheld videogame system such as the DS. Tiger's Game.com had a touchscreen, but it wasn't implemented very well and was underutilized, like most features on the system. There were of course Palm devices that had touchscreens, but no killer app games were ever developed for those. Nintendo was going into largely uncharted waters with this feature. Super Mario 64 DS had poor touchscreen functionality; Kirby: Canvas Curse, released by Nintendo in mid-2005, proved that the touchscreen really could allow for compelling gameplay. In this game, the player controlled Kirby with the stylus by drawing paths for him. These served as both roads and bridges, but if the player drew a vertical line, could stop Kirby in mid-roll. Canvas Curse was the game that fired the opening salvo for in-depth touchscreen gaming.

The lessons of Kirby: Canvas Curse weren't taken to heart right away, and many developers struggled to find a use for the touchscreen functionality of the DS. There were many titles that shoehorned the function in during the early days of the DS. One game that both shoehorned in some very underwhelming touchscreen functionality and also tried to solve the question of what to do with both screens was Konami's Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, released October 4, 2005.

Konami had done very well for themselves on the Game Boy Advance, with a trio of Castlevania games released for that platform, each of which eclipsed the quality of the last. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow was especially well received, due to a mechanic that was entirely new to the Castlevania series: the ability of the main character, Soma, to acquire the "souls" of his enemies, effectively giving him hundreds of powers. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a direct sequel to Aria, and it carries over many of the features of its predecessor (along with a lot of reused assets, but that is something the Castlevania series is prone to anyway).

One of the things it did add was the "Magic Seal" function, which was how Konami determined the touchscreen would be implemented. When the player reduced the HP of a boss to zero, they had to draw a pattern on the screen to "seal" the boss (which really just meant actually finishing it off). The problem with this was that when many players beat a rather tough boss, they were forced to draw some pattern from memory, and if they failed, the boss would come back to life with a third of its health. In a series known for its brutal bosses, this feature alone was widely hated, and not implemented in any future installments of the series.

Konami did, however, use the dual screens fairly well. The top screen was used to display a map of the castle, which was very useful because the intricate design of Dracula's lair was easy to get lost in, and not having to pause the game to view the map really kept the pace going. The player could also display a detailed stat screen for Soma and the enemy he was currently fighting - displaying not only known info like HP, but what items an enemy could drop (if Soma had collected them before) or whether or not he had already collected that enemy's "Soul".

But other than these new features, the game was an early example of what many would categorize as a "hardcore" game on a system that had a reputation at that time of having pretty tame games. The game was difficult and had an abundance of features, one of which was a very robust postgame quest that had a unique twist - Julius mode, in which the player played as a typical Belmont, armed only with a whip and the usual subweapons of old. The game also had a New Game + feature, which allowed players to carry over all their souls, levels, equipment, and items to a new file if they wanted.

Personally, I fell in love with this game. It is, to this day, the only game I have ever written a FAQ for, and is still my favorite Castlevania game. Despite its odd touchscreen functions and sprite reuse, it is one of the best DS games ever released, and is therefore a must-play.