The Nintendo DS introduced touchscreens to a generation of gamers

Oct 16, 2024, 12:00PM UTC

Decades earlier we got joined and started a family, my spouse and I connected implicit a small Boxer pup named Charlie. We tossed a shot around, scrubbed him down erstwhile helium got dirty, and took him for regular walks. It was a bonding acquisition — mediated wholly done the archetypal Nintendo DS’s touchscreen. The tactile acquisition turned an different elemental crippled similar Nintendogs, wherever the extremity is to instrumentality attraction of virtual pets, into thing that created a heavy affectional connection. And years earlier smartphones were successful everyone’s pockets, it helped amusement a procreation of gamers conscionable what’s imaginable with a touchscreen.

Now, we mostly instrumentality them for granted, but anterior to the accomplishment of the archetypal DS successful 2004, the thought of a touchscreen was, for galore radical (myself included), thing retired of subject fiction. The screens I was utilized to being astir — televisions, machine monitors, MP3 players — decidedly were not for touching. And commercialized devices similar Apple’s Newton, with its handwriting tech, were financially retired of reach. 

But the DS was thing different. As the successor to the Game Boy, it was much of a artifact than a portion of high-end tech. It took the basics of a accepted gaming handheld and doubled the screens, stacking 2 displays connected apical of each different and sticking a hinge successful the mediate truthful that you could fold it unopen similar a book. The astir important portion was the bottommost screen, which could respond to interaction via a fingertip oregon the included stylus.

The oddball plan of the DS made it approachable. Despite the touchscreen, it was just familiar capable acknowledgment to an array of carnal controls, and it had 2 cartridge slots truthful you could inactive bring on your aged Game Boy Advance carts. One look and it was wide this gray, clamshell ceramic was meant for gaming. But it was besides beauteous freakin’ weird. 

In emblematic Nintendo fashion, the institution didn’t conscionable present a caller power method — it besides went up and showed you its possibilities. Some of the bestselling DS games are ones that wouldn’t person been imaginable without that touchscreen. Nintendogs captivated players due to the fact that of however earthy it felt to hitch your small pup’s caput with a digit oregon play drawback by virtually flinging a frisbee arsenic you did your champion to instrumentality attraction of a tiny radical of dogs. Meanwhile, the Brain Age bid — a postulation of puzzles designed to enactment retired your caput — showed however intuitive handwriting designation could beryllium for games similar sudoku. Hell, Brain Age had millions of radical doing math problems for fun. The institution besides snuck interaction elements into its biggest franchises, truthful you could combat successful a caller mode successful The Legend of Zelda oregon pat done adjacent much bizarre minigames successful WarioWare.

Even better, due to the fact that the DS was specified a deed — the Switch whitethorn beryllium a monolithic success, but the archetypal DS remains Nintendo’s bestselling portion of hardware — plentifulness of different developers jumped successful arsenic well. The aboriginal days of the handheld were bursting with creativity. Here’s a sampling:

• Trauma Center, an anime play astir doing country via swiping and slicing connected the touchscreen, arsenic your digit fundamentally becomes a scalpel
• Professor Layton, a detective-themed bid of logic puzzle books, wherever the stylus subs successful for a pencil
• Electroplankton, a philharmonic artifact wherever you manipulate quality — similar bouncing tadpoles disconnected of leaves oregon spinning unusual circular food — to make beauteous sounds
• Scribblenauts, wherever you tin lick puzzles by penning “anything” and the crippled interprets your handwriting
• Etrian Odyssey, a dungeon crawler / cartography sim wherever you gully your ain map, which takes up the full bottommost screen
• Elite Beat Agents (and its Japanese counterpart, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan), wherever the touchscreen becomes a Guitar Hero-style philharmonic instrument, forcing you to pat on to the beat
• Cooking Mama, wherever you chop, slice, and sheet meals wholly via touch

The Nintendo DS eased radical into the conception of touchscreens due to the fact that it was besides fundamentally a Game Boy. All these touch-friendly games sat alongside titles that hardly utilized interaction oregon ignored it altogether, similar Koji Igarashi’s fantabulous Castlevania run, oregon role-playing games similar Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. This allowed Nintendo to dilatory present the thought of interacting with a surface via interaction to millions of people, agelong earlier the thought became an integral portion of modern life. And you tin gully a beauteous consecutive enactment from its motorboat to the aureate days of aboriginal iPhone games similar Rolando, Tiny Wings, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery, and World of Goo, which were likewise afloat of invention and playfulness. In fact, respective deed DS titles, similar Cooking Mama and Scribblenauts, yet made their mode to mobile. The modulation was astir seamless. Even Nintendo yet made a mobile Super Mario crippled you play by tapping.

Two decades later, a touchscreen is an assumed portion of astir immoderate gaming device. It’s go truthful pervasive that it would beryllium weird if modern hardware similar the Switch oregon PlayStation Portal didn’t person touchscreens. What was erstwhile caller to maine has since go the norm; erstwhile I passed down an aged DS to my oldest kid, she wasn’t shocked oregon amazed that she could favored a virtual pup. It’s what she was utilized to. But that besides made her the perfect idiosyncratic to follow Charlie, who has been waiting wrong of that cartridge for the past 20 years.