20 years of the Nintendo DS: PictoChat, Pokémon, and more
A lot of things happened in 2004. George W. Bush won his second election to return to the White House, a man named Mark Zuckerberg launched a site called Facebook, and Dreamworks unleashed the cinematic masterpiece that is Shrek 2. If all that wasn’t enough, after the success of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo released its new innovative handheld, resulting in shockwaves across the gaming world and massive profits for the Japanese giant. Yes, we’re talking about the Nintendo DS.
Even with all the hype surrounding the imminent reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2, it’s hard to explain how exciting the dawn of the DS was to someone who wasn’t there. It’s almost as difficult to imagine how a company would navigate releasing a new console with an alien form factor and a launch title that originally came out ten years before. Still, that’s exactly what Nintendo did, introducing a clamshell delight to the world alongside Super Mario 64 DS.
As a concept, the Nintendo DS dared to dream. While the idea of a clamshell gaming device wasn’t exactly brand new, thanks to the introduction of the Game Boy Advance SP years earlier, the DS’s dual screens were a revelation. Developers took a little while to figure out how to make the most of Nintendo’s innovation, but once they did, it changed the game. Oh, and it had a touchscreen. This doesn’t feel like a big deal in the post-iPhone era, but at the time, it was seen as a boundary-pushing design decision.
It was also a gamble, but a gamble that paid off for Nintendo, selling well over two million units in the first year. The final tally after the discontinuation of all DS models in 2014 was north of 150 million, making it the second best-selling console of all time behind the PlayStation 2. There’s a chance the Switch could overtake the DS in the coming months, provided Nintendo can shift another eight million or so units, but that doesn’t take away from how impressive the now retro handheld‘s lifetime sales are to this day.
In terms of exciting titles, the DS had no shortage, with new games from all of Nintendo’s biggest IPs, including Mario, Metroid, and Zelda. It was also a particularly busy time for fans of Pokémon games. Not only did we get main series games such as Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, and White, but we also got things like Pokémon Ranger and Pokémon Dash. I highlight Ranger as it’s a perfect example of a game that just wouldn’t work on any other console due to its reliance on dual-screen mechanics and touch controls but also just because, in my opinion, it’s one of the best DS games there ever was.
We can’t talk about the Nintendo DS without talking PictoChat. This LAN chat feature seems pretty basic now, but back then, it was a joy. How else could you and your friends, siblings, or whoever violently swear at each other in the company of adults? This was before the days of digital censorship, and there was nothing Nintendo could do to stop me from using my DS as a profanity machine.
Still, the real secret behind the DS’ success is that it didn’t just attract the sort of people someone in 2004 might have referred to as a ‘gamer’ or those already preaching at the church of Nintendo. The DS was for everyone and had a diverse selection of games that ranged from an exclusive Rockstar release, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, to the smash hit pet simulator that was Nintendogs. That isn’t to mention things like Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, which famously in my household is the first game my mom ever played that wasn’t inside an arcade, and My Stop Smoking Coach: Allen Carr’s EasyWay. That last one speaks for itself.
Yes, the Nintendo DS was for everyone. Looking back, it feels like Nintendo was aware of how much other figures in the gaming industry, like Sony and Microsoft, aimed their consoles predominantly at teenage boys and noticed that this left a massive part of the population up for grabs. Xbox had Halo, sure, but the DS had Cooking Mama and Professor Layton. Now there’s a gaming crossover I’d like to see.
Nintendo’s catch-all approach is something that helped it continue its 00s hot streak with the release of the Wii and, latterly, the Nintendo Switch. Of course, the Switch had a bit of help from the coincidence of Animal Crossing: New Horizons arriving literally days before much of the world went into COVID-19-enforced lockdown, but this games-for-all-the-family marketing plan is something still going strong today, as evidenced by the cutesy ads for the Switch system you’ve probably seen countless times in recent years.
Still, it’s fair to say that the DS had its shortcomings. The stylus was infamously easy to misplace, even with its own dedicated slot on the side of the device. While I’m not cynical enough to suggest that Nintendo made the stylus easy to lose on purpose, I can only assume how much the brand made from replacements, not to mention the countless knock-off brands who offered their own, often cheaper, styluses.
The backlit screens were pretty dim, even at the highest possible brightness. While the original Game Boy was hard to play in the dark, the DS was a pain to play in the light, especially if you were in the direct glare of the sun. Just ask my parents, who took me with them on holidays to sunnier climates only for me to play Mario Kart DS under a beach towel shelter I’d constructed. Sorry again, mom.
Still, despite these flaws, we didn’t know any better at the time, which made the DS that bit more special. It looked like something from the future, offered a gaming experience unlike anything else on the market, and best of all, it was affordable. In today’s money, the original DS’s asking price of $149.99 is the equivalent of around $250. In time, it got even cheaper, and by the end of 2005, you could pick one up for $130, which is more like $220 today. That’s significantly cheaper than Nintendo’s consistent $299.99 pricing of the Switch.
I think the legacy of the DS is also pretty apparent in how reluctant Nintendo was for the longest time to leave the console behind. Instead, we got the DS Lite, DSi, and DSI XL. That was before Nintendo tried to innovate once again with the 3DS, which would only sell half as many copies as the original handheld. I wonder if, in a twist of fate, had the Switch failed to take off, Nintendo might have continued the DS brand further into the future.
As someone who writes a lot about smartphones, it’s also worth pointing out how Android brands have embraced the stylus all these years later. One of this year’s best Android phones, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, comes with a stylus. Thinking back to before the DS, I can’t remember any truly mainstream bit of hardware that came with a tiny little plastic pen, and while it’s still not commonplace, I think the nostalgia surrounding the DS is certainly a solid reason for brands to occasionally offer them alongside new products.
On the subject of cell phones, plenty of writers and journalists have suggested that the DS effectively prepared the market for the iPhone, and I think that’s a fair point. Candy Crush, one of the most popular iPhone games of all time, looks and feels like a lot of DS match-three puzzlers, with its colorful design, simple mechanics, and touchscreen controls.
Even in terms of design, the DS was a looking glass to a world that didn’t rely entirely on buttons, and it’d be Apple that would take the idea of a touch-screen-oriented device to what now seems like its natural conclusion. Sure, it sucked for brands like Blackberry, but now almost every phone looks the same with a big glass panel on the front, as evidenced by the still new iPhone 16.
So, what is the defining legacy of the Nintendo DS? Honestly, it’s difficult to say. This console dominated the handheld market so vigorously that only Sony would offer a robust challenge, and even still, the sales numbers for both the PSP and PS Vita pale in comparison, with neither handheld breaching the 100 million units sold marker. There’s also the case to make that the DS helped keep Nintendo relevant while the GameCube struggled to compete with the Xbox and PlayStation 2, allowing the brand to take the time needed to perfect the Nintendo Wii, which, as you probably know, was also a massive success, even without the help of an ad starring Beyonce.
More than anything, I think the most important takeaway from the success and aftermath of the DS is that it validated Nintendo’s desire to innovate and to go against the grain. If the DS hadn’t gone on to be one of the best portable gaming consoles of all time or had as lukewarm a lifecycle as the GameCube, Nintendo could have felt the temptation to make like Microsoft and Sony and adapted to become just another console brand. Whether the ever-adamant gaming giant would have given in to that temptation is another question.
Of course, we can’t say how that might have gone, but there could be a universe out there where everything from Pokémon Ranger to Cooking Mama all the way through until Wii Sports Resort and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe doesn’t exist. I look at my DS, half broken, with a fabled history of PictoChat profanity and clock tampering in Animal Crossing: Wild World, and I thank God and the late and legendary Satoru Iwata that I don’t find myself there.
