It's time to admit it. The Nintendo DS is not a graphical powerhouse, and it sometimes has been neglected by publishers around the world while atrocious games for 10-year-old girls hoard the market. However, there are some games out there that deserve a port to the portable console. Some of them use the touch screen to a great extent. Some of them don't - yes, not every SINGLE game for DS has to include half-assed minigames involving the touch screen or even use it at all. Most importantly, on-line multiplayer could be a lot of fun.

5 - Magic the Gathering Online: Even though I'm past my playing years, I believe this could be some fun... as long as players didn't have to pay for the cards. Tapping mana, choosing targets and such could be easily handled with the stylus.

4 - Street Fighter series: I remember playing the Gameboy version (yes, the black and white one) and it run pretty smoothly. I honestly don't see why it couldn't be made.

3 - Fallout 1 and 2: It would be awesome to play this on DS. It would also ride the wave of Fallout 3, which would most likely boost sales.

2 - Diablo 2: Or just any western action RPG for that matter. Nothing fancy, really. Throw in a bunch of items, change the colors and the stats. Make the game in isometric view. The DS would be the perfect system for this.So far I've only found Japanese stuff and below-average dungeon crawlers.

1 - Monkey Island: Or any of the old Lucas Arts games. I can't think of a better format for a revival.

*Bonus: ICO. Heh, if only.

Hello everyone, consider this the first of several blog posts about various aspects of gaming. I hope you will find them interesting.

Picture the eighties. Thousands of kids were going to the place of another thousands of kids who were in possession of a games console. Their tiny hands, shaking with excitement, would get a grip on the controller, an alien device that would allow them to control the character on-screen. After the first few steps in the virtual world, a seemingly impassable pit would appear. And then, in thousands of homes around the world, the same question would arise at the same time.

"So how do I jump?", they would utter nervously.

Flash forward to 2008 and the jump button, an obvious vestige of an ancient gaming era, is still present in many games, although the terrifying pits are long gone and you are supposed to kill your enemies by shooting them rather than falling onto their heads.

The inclusion of a jump button in practically every single game (especially FPS) is a real albeit questionable practice. From a logical point of view, the designers of the game think of reasonable ways in which a character can interact with his or her environment and then map those actions to buttons or keys so the user can provide some input. In other words, the character should have access to actions that he/she is supposed to do. My question is then, why can my trained soldier shoot, reload, change weapons, throw frag grenades... and jump like a bunny? To me, seeing a legion of human grasshoppers bouncing around a battlefield prevents any kind of actual game immersion.

I guess, however, that there is a method to this madness. I bet that the inclusion of a jump button makes a mapper's life easier: if a character gets stuck on an obstacle, it's easy to just jump about it. But why not use alternatives? Many games use vaulting as a way of overpassing obstacles. This course of action is not only more logical, but also provides the player a strategic decision, as his or her character won't be able to shoot or reload at the same time.

RPGs also suffer from this issue. If NPCs react to my dialogue lines, my past actions and even my appearance, why doesn't anyone care about the armored knight dancing the Macarena in the middle of the town square? You would expect the guys to at least poke him with a stick or something.

The jump button is more than a button. It's a metaphor for bland, lazy and stale design. Tradition is not always the solution. Just because it was there 20 years ago doesn't mean it has to stay there.

Thanks for reading and share with everyone your thoughts about the infamous jump button in the comments section!