Shatter

New Super Mario Bros.

Mario Kart DS

Super Laser Racer

Pokemon Pearl Version

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone

Okami

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Super Mario Galaxy

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Canabalt

Star Guard

Ice Climber

Ice Climber is charming and innovative but some terrible execution kept it from being a true classic.

The Good: Captivating characters; great levels design; groundbreaking platform action. The Bad: All above fall short due to terrible controls/physics. For an early NES release Ice Climber was fairly innovative in i... Read Full Review

Don't Look Back (2009)

A superb way to tell a story through gameplay only.

The Good: Artistic care and tight gameplay sum up for crafting an unique experience. Don't Look Back can be easily overlooked as a generic 2D platformer at first sight but it would be a shame to anyone interested in i... Read Full Review

Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou

An interesting take on retro gaming for new players, Retro Game Challenge can even be an emotional ride for old timers.

The Good: A fair share of new (?!) retro games tweaked to appeal to both old and modern audiences; plenty of value in the main campaign, plus a bunch of unlockables. The Bad: Can feel repetitive at times. The premi... Read Full Review

Donkey Kong Jr.

A decent port of the decent sequel to Donkey Kong in the arcades.

The Good: Solid gameplay and levels design. The Bad: Short. It can be tough for any sequel to live up to its predecessor's expectations--especially when you're talking about a classic like the original DK--but in f... Read Full Review

3D Classics: Urban Champion

An interesting aesthetic update makes a good excuse for another try in this inexplicably hooking little game.

The Good: 3D effects look cool; addicting. The Bad: Only local multiplay; wasted touch screen. Urban Champion was the first 1-on-1 fighting game on the NES back in 1986 and ever since it's been somewhat of a myster... Read Full Review

Kami Hikouki

Carelessly put together, Paper Airplane Chase is not worth your money--or, most important in this case, your time.

The Good: Local multiplayer using a single game system can be funny. The Bad: Plain lazy production. Paper Airplane Chase first appeared as a minigame inside WarioWare, Inc. on GBA and it has been updated to become... Read Full Review

Metroid Prime Pinball (w/Rumble Pak)

Samus inside a pinball table sounds weird. But yes, it works pretty fine.

The Good: Great tables design, traditional style (and the gap between the two screens doesn't bother); amazing sound for both a Metroid game and a pinball game, besides the good voice acting; rumble pak included. The ... Read Full Review

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

The usual linearity of the genre is far compensated in Hotel Dusk by the clever puzzles and the meaningful art-style.

The Good: Excellent application of DS features in the puzzles; interesting, beautifully presented characters; sharp, remarkable dialogue; unique, superb art-style; bright, vast, immersive soundtrack; good use of the rumb... Read Full Review

Yie Ar Kung Fu

Yie Are Kung Fu is ugly, short and limited but it plays smooth and can give you a surprisingly good gaming experience.

The Good: Perfectly smooth controls; gameplay is full of pleasant details that were recycled in many fighting games released later. The Bad: Ugly; only two or three different music tracks; short. Never released in ... Read Full Review

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword

NGDS is a little repetitive, but that shouldn't keep you from experiencing this beautiful, technically outstanding game.

The Good: Sharp touch screen controls, putting good use to DS held like a book; huge bosses making great fights; writing Ninpo magic characters on the screen is cool; awesome graphics for both 3D models and environment d... Read Full Review

Little Wheel

Little Wheel is a surprisingly neat precursor of Machinarium and a short but solid experience in itself.

The Good: Superb presentation, both sound and graphics wise; charming, believable world. The Bad: Short. A bit too easy. After some years of oblivion the point-and-click genre has found a small and warm home in Fla... Read Full Review

Batman

One of the most interesting and obscure Batman adventures in videogames. And it's shady as it should ever be.

The Good: Near-perfect controls; superb environment design; great original soundtrack; astounding platform action; Bob Kane wouldn't be ashamed of this one. The Bad: Little variety of regular enemies along the game; m... Read Full Review

Urban Champion

Despite being simplistic as any rock-age NES game Urban Champion holds some quirk features that make it worth a look.

The Good: Big, funny sprites; a couple unique features. The Bad: Over-simplistic; repetitive. The early years of the NES were populated only by simple, quick to jump-in games since the console used to be seen only ... Read Full Review

Lunar Ball

Playing Pool at the Moon sounds like a bad trip but it's a good excuse to give some variety to a low-memory cart.

The Good: Adjusting the friction of the table is great; simple though functional controls; good multiplayer. The Bad: Graphics sometimes drop from "fair" to "poor"; some weird tables have terribly annoying pockets. ... Read Full Review

Red Arremer: Makai-Mura Gaiden

Gargoyle's Quest brings you good platform action well merged with also-good RPG time.

The Good: Great mix of action and RPG; big, well-made sprites; good original music and funny "voice" emulation; well-executed spin-off. The Bad: Controls are a little slugish; the game is a little too short. Gargoy... Read Full Review

Area 88

U.N. Squadron is a hard-as-a-rock shooter, and it's unique in its personality.

The Good: Amazing character design; good variety of airplanes to be used and weapons to be equipped; superb soundtrack and beautiful, colorful graphics; strategy fits well the game system. The Bad: Sometimes is hard t... Read Full Review

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

To enjoy Brain Age you may have to learn to write again, and that almost reduces the entire experience to frustration.

The Good: Nice ideas for an innovative dual screen use; good time comparing graphs and drawings with other users; sketching individual stamps is great; funny interaction with doctor Kawashima! Sudoku. The Bad: Sometim... Read Full Review

Pokemon Torouze

Pokémon Trozei brought some good new mechanics to DS and also a fresh air to pokémon design.

The Good: Stylus mechanics are almost perfect; good espionage system, retaining Agent Cards from rivals and raising ranks as you battle; pokémon rarely seen in other installments appear more frequently; great surprises w... Read Full Review

The Blob

5 minutes playing The Blob and one can see why it turned to be a big mainstream project: it's bursting with innovation.

The Good: Full of fresh ideas; exploration is rewarding even without any palpable achievement. The Bad: Tricky camera; level design issues lead to occasional glitches. Right after finishing a big urban revitalizati... Read Full Review

Zelda no Densetsu: Mugen no Sunadokei

Phantom Hourglass is a Zelda that aims its arrows at innovation--and it deserves a golden ship part for that.

The Good: Full touch screen control work pretty well; beautiful graphics that will become a new standard in the DS; remarkable dual screen boss battles; more 'puzzling' gameplay brings some fresh air. The Bad: A littl... Read Full Review

Every Extend

A perfect-balance gameplay raises Every Extend above most shooters out there. (Even if you don't shoot anything in it)

The Good: Unique; neat gameplay mechanics; sharp presentation. The Bad: Short; won't appeal to everyone. Weird as it sounds, it's true: you can't shoot in Every Extend. Some may say this 'feature' makes it a puzzle... Read Full Review

Meat Boy

Despite the great level design Meat Boy relies on artificial difficulty to be a hardcore platformer.

The Good: Clever, remarkable levels. The Bad: The difficulty bar is high because of cheap controls/physics/graphics issues, not for its clever, remarkable levels... Praised as an indie darling and the tip of the sp... Read Full Review

VVVVVV

VVVVVV is a fast paced hardcore platformer that manages to be compelling exactly because of its high difficulty level.

The Good: Cool retro presentation (both graphics and sound wise); hard without being discouraging; simple (thus easy to get into) gameplay mechanics put to good use in diverse situations. The Bad: Kinda short; uninspi... Read Full Review

Continuity

A cleanly presented puzzle-platformer which is unique and makes for a good play in short bursts.

The Good: Clean, functional graphics; fitting and clever music; unique gameplay. The Bad: Jumpy difficulty ramp. Continuity brings a good mix between 2D platformer and puzzle genres (more on the puzzle side, I must... Read Full Review

Super Laser Racer

Lack of originality--and of polish in executing old ideas--keeps Super Laser Racer from being remarkable.

****************************************** After the Fact: Super Laser Racer got a major update in Dec 8 2010 which includes a bunch of new tracks and music, more weapons and achievements, revamped presentation/menus and... Read Full Review

Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone

Yggdra Union is an awesome strategy game, but it is also unapproachable to casual players.

The Good: Superb graphics and characters design; innovative gameplay system (cards, morale, union/link, offense/defense bar); very-long-lasting adventure. The Bad: Complex strategy is not well explained in the tutoria... Read Full Review