On November 21, 2004, the Nintendo DS was released in the United States. While the GameCube, also manufactured by Nintendo, failed to achieve commercial success, this new portable console was a sort of catch-all for the Japanese company.
A successful bet: the machine exceeded all its manufacturer’s expectations and became the second best-selling console in history (just behind the PlayStation 2), with more than 154 million units sold. All thanks to its particular design and its sometimes strange functionalities, which have marked video game history.
The two screens: a new gaming grammar
Let’s start with its most obvious characteristic: DS, for Dual Screen (“dual screen », in good French). One at the top and one at the bottom. If some developers are content to use this extra screen as a simple vertical extension – in Animal Crossing : Wild World (2005) for example, the upper display shows the sky – others see it as an opportunity to invent a new grammar.
Many titles thus decide to offload all or part of the game information onto the secondary screen, leaving a clearer field for the action on the main screen, such as Mario Kart DS (2005), which delegates the circuit map to the bottom screen. The most adventurous titles display an alternative point of view: in Another Code: Double Memories (2005), the top screen offers fixed scenes, while the lower screen allows the heroine to be moved in real time in real environments using a low-detail, but dynamic, aerial view.
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Some titles even use the foldable aspect of the machine to offer clever puzzles. The player of The Legend of Zelda : Phantom Hourglass (2007) must therefore understand that he must close his console so that the stamp present on the upper screen is applied to the map displayed on the lower screen, making the location of his next destination appear on the paper .
The touch screen: a first, long before the iPhone
In a period before the iPhone (the first model only appeared in 2007), the Nintendo DS and its lower touch screen represented the general public’s first real contact with this new way of playing, and would lay the first milestones. .
Using the stylus housed at the back of the machine, it is now possible to point to elements on the screen without having to use a cursor in Professor Layton and the Curious Village (2007), annotate maps and trace routes in The Legend of Zelda : Phantom Hourglassor shoot cloud bridges to prevent Yoshi from falling into Yoshi Touch & Go (2005).
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