This Week in Games

Thanks, Nintendo DS. ThanDS.

Welcome back, folks. Hey, so like, who was going to tell me High School DxD, now I have extra reason to go back and check those out.

Hey, it was the Nintendo DS's 20th anniversary last week! I forgot to talk about it because the anniversary fell on our cutoff. It's still worth talking about! This is a big deal!

When the Nintendo DS was revealed, it wasn't the slam dunk with audiences that it later became. Nintendo was in a bad spot at the time; years of tough marketing from competitors like Sony had left Nintendo with the reputation of being "the kiddie company". Nintendo's decision to stick to cartridges on the Nintendo 64 had also damaged Nintendo's relations with other studios and developers that were itching to spread their wings a little on CD formats. This also left Nintendo without much in the way of third-party games. Their first-party content was second-to-none, but without the likes of Final Fantasy or other major second-party titles (all of whom had moved on to Sony's greener pastures), it was easy to just wave off the GameCube as a lot of bad decisions—even if the first-party games were all uniformly must-haves.

It doesn't help that when Nintendo revealed the DS, Sony revealed the PSP. And the PSP had everything going for it: it was sleek, it was stylish, it had CD-based media and the promise of being an all-in-one multimedia center (music, video and games). And, it held the promise of having PlayStation 1-caliber graphics. There was a lot you could do with that. Add to that Sony's massive second-party lineup—the promise of titles along the lines of Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City or Black in a portable format meant that Nintendo would need to bring a lot to the table to really "compete". And it didn't seem like the DS had what it took: it was also capable of 3D graphics, but they were a bit cruder than the PSP's. The console still used cartridge-based media. The grey clamshell design was bulky and frumpy. And worst of all, the DS revolved around a gimmick: the "DS" stood for "Dual Screens", one of which being a touch screen. Nintendo made weird, byzantine controllers that only worked for their first-party games like the Nintendo 64's three-pronged controller or the GameCube's massive A-button surrounded by three smaller buttons. The DS attracted a lot of criticism, with the expectation that it would invite nothing but gimmicky touch-controls and simple games.

Add to that Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" strategy. Way back in the mid-'00s, Nintendo figureheads (including the late Microsoft would want more than to have Nintendo's titles in their eager hands. The thought of "better-capable" studios like Bungie or Lionhead making "mature" versions of The Legend of Zelda or Metroid definitely had folks drooling.

Now, to be fair: the Blue Ocean strategy didn't work the way Nintendo wanted it to; titles like Brain Age (along with the Wii's offerings like Wii Sports) did bring in a new, receptive audience to gaming... but Nintendo didn't really have much of a next step. I recall Jennifer Tsao of Electronic Gaming Monthly pointing out that what was needed was a title with the impact of Halo to really keep the "Touch Generation" audience around. And sadly, this audience moved on to mobile gaming. The advent of smartphones added yet another bit of competition to the DS family; why pay $40 for a DS game when you could buy forty $1 on mobile devices and have just as much fun? : this was when games like Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, and Angry Birds became a major force in the portable gaming sphere.

... But Nintendo is still around, and the Nintendo DS is still considered an unmitigated success. As much as people were convinced that the DS couldn't work, it did. As much as people were convinced that you couldn't design meaningful experiences on the DS's setup, developers of all stripes did. And as time went on and Nintendo continued to flounder in the home console market (particularly with the Wii U), people were convinced that Nintendo couldn't survive off of the handheld consoles they had made that the DS had pioneered... but they did.

So what happened? Well, for one thing, Nintendo's branding helped it push through. Gamers weren't convinced with anything, but the John and Joan Q. Public's of the world still held Nintendo's name as synonymous with gaming. The Nintendo DS also retailed at $150, a full hundred dollars cheaper than the PSP. You could get a Nintendo DS and two games for the price of one PSP. The DS was resilient as heck, too—EGM ran a snippet from some Mt. Everest climbers who had taken one up with them to the summit and had survived the cold that knocked out a lot of their other tech. But at the end of the day... the DS was just a fun console and had plenty of great games that took advantage of its fun hardware.

Let's start with the obvious: the DS was easy to develop for, even if you had to develop software that incorporated two screens (which has made retroactively porting DS software a genuine challenge). Yeah, the DS was lousy with shovelware, but being a cheap console made it a hit with kids—and budget-minded parents. It also meant that studios could experiment with their titles and not have to worry about taking that great a hit to their bottom line if the software bombed. The result was one heck of a library with some of the wildest second-party software on this side of the PS2. FromSoft's Adventures of Cookie & Cream found its true home on the DS, along with other fan favorites like Atlus brought over piles of weird crap that That (young) Bitch™ couldn't get enough of, like Super Robot Wars OG: Endless Frontier, the Etrian Odyssey series—and, of course, the Izuna games.

As it turned out, the dual-screen setup also opened the door for certain hitherto-ignored genres of games to get a second shot at life—and flourish. Etrian Odyssey was practically responsible for single-handedly resurrecting the first-person dungeon crawler genre, purely on the merit of using the touch screen as a means to draw your own in-game map. (The drawing making a very satisfying sound of a quill scratching on parchment helped.) It was also a phenomenal breeding ground for other rogue-like titles; besides Izuna, plenty of kids cut their teeth with the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games or even Shiren the Wanderer. And with the DS's wireless communication capabilities—both WiFi enabled for internet access and local—people could do all kinds of things like send out a call for an online rescue through the Internet. Pokémon fans could trade or battle with friends from across the world—and later games like Pokémon Black/White even allowed players to trade without having to head to a Pokémon Center first. In a move of unprecedented and non-recreated generosity, it was possible for people to engage in multiplayer games wirelessly off of a single cartridge; if you didn't mind playing as a Shy Guy, you and a few friends could play Mario Kart without needing your own copy of the game.

And as it turns out, the "gimmickry" of the DS ended up being fun. Sure, it led to a lot of shallow "tech demo" games, like Sega's Feel The Magic: XX/XY or The Rub Rabbits. And I'm not gonna pretend Pokémon Rush was a classic. But the clamshell design, touchscreen, microphone, and other details ended up getting used for all kinds of fun shenanigans. You could pose and polish your robots in Custom Robo DS. Duck Amuck allowed players to unlock minigames by playing an interactive version of ZX games or borrowing the Solar Sensors from the GBA Boktai games for use in Lunar Knights. And for that matter: you couldn't play GameBoy or GameBoy Color cartridges on a DS, but all of your GameBoy Advance games could still run on a DS, and even looked better for it.

I wanna come back around to the wild library on the Nintendo DS with a particular example. Among the many forgotten cult curios on the DS like Okamiden (the oft-ignored sequel to Clover's beloved Okami) or Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (a phenomenal Zelda spin-off we never got in the U.S. due to how much Americans despise Tingle), we had a lot of really weird and experimental RPGs. For example, we had a completely different version of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure on the Nintendo DS that replaced the PS1 version's turn-based strategy battles with a conventional turn-based RPG system. For another, we had RIZ-ZOAWD, a turn-based RPG based on Pretty Cure-looking art with a generic stock photograph of an ice skater, disguising a fun Japanese game with fun Osu-style touch-screen controls as generic shovelware. And don't get me started on the discrepancy between Shiren the Wanderer's American art and Japanese art...

The DS was an unmitigated success, followed by a few console redesigns (like the DSi and its camera or the larger DSi XL). And, of course, there was the 3DS—though that's its own story. It nevertheless opened the door to Nintendo's current status. It established a lot of things that the rest of the industry really didn't want to pay attention to (cheaper hardware over cutting-edge tech, experimentation with older genres). But damn, it was a great console. When I finally retired from DS Lite in exchange for my 3DS in 2013, I had long since gotten my money's worth out of the thing. The bottom screen had the telltale criss-cross pattern of all the Etrian Odyssey maps I'd etched into it, and the poor thing felt hollow in my hands. I was nowhere near a child when I got my hands on the DS (I had already started college). But I'm nostalgic for the DS the way a lot of people would be nostalgic for the PS1. That was my console! As much as I loved the weird RPGs on the PS2 (I was a fan of Persona before Persona 3 came out, after all), the DS had the advantage of being portable. And it had all of the weird Japanese games I loved. I didn't care about the next-gen! I didn't want gunmetal-grey cover-based shooters! I wanted Rune Factory and Phantasy Star 0. The DS became home to all of the weird maverick titles the PS2 had made me fall in love with, and we had an absolute slew of them during its lifetime. I literally don't have the space to talk about all of the fun, weird games that came out on that blessed console. The Wii might have been codenamed "Revolution", but it was the DS that really changed gaming for me. Happy 20th to a damn fine console.

Everything old is new again and time is a flat circle; while we're giving Nintendo their flowers for the DS, it seems that Sony is choosing this moment to try again in the handheld space. According to Bloomberg, Sony is trying to make a new handheld console to compete with the Nintendo Switch and Valve's Steam Deck.

Now, it's important to underline: this is not an altogether bad idea. You'll note that in my long write-up about the DS, I didn't say anything about the PSP or its successor, the PS Vita, being bad consoles. Because they're not! Heck, I still want a Vita, if only because it's the only legal means to play a number of old PS1 RPGs on the PlayStation Network. The biggest issue with the PSP was that Sony ran out of steam with the console. Back in the '00s, the PSP was confronted with a major issue: it could render far better graphics than a DS, sure, and some PSP games came within a hair of looking like a PS2 game. But that didn't mean the PSP was a PS2, and its form factor didn't allow for PS2-caliber games anyway. A lot of PSP titles tried to downsize PS2 experiences onto the PSP and suffered for it; sure, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a phenomenal game, but man if it wasn't clunky to control. Griping of American fans be damned, the PSP was the home for Monster Hunter, courtesy of hordes of Japanese students meeting up after school to get a few hunts in—and they still had to develop the infamous "PSP Claw" to properly play the game with its control scheme. And forget trying to play first-person shooters on a PSP; even if the genre was at its peak in popularity at the time, the PSP's single analog nub meant that the preferred FPS control scheme was all but impossible on the handheld. Oh sure, some folks tried. They failed, but they tried. Plus, y'know, the handheld screen just wasn't designed for big, epic cinematics the way a home television was. The PSP succeeded with its original titles, like its Ratchet and Clank or Jak & Daxter spin-offs or even titles like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core... but also, those were Japanese RPGs, and the same way first-person shooters were in their prime, Japanese RPGs were the epitome of é—a lot of important Japanese hits were never brought over to the United States.

And that's where the real problem lies. It's not enough to make a console that boasts better graphical capabilities than what Nintendo offers, because folks will need stuff to do on that console. The Steam Deck has the advantage of tying into people's Steam s; I've read a lot of tweets from folks about how the Steam Deck has allowed them a new relationship with their Steam libraries as they can now play a lot of their weirder titles from their backlog without being tied to a PC. And Sony, uh... they might have actual games on the PS5 (few that they may be), but they're not shaking off those "no game" allegations. There will be folks who buy a new Sony handheld sight unseen, purely for the status of it, but what is a John or Joan Q. Public gonna want with a $600 handheld paperweight? And : while the Steam Deck has come into its own, it's still nowhere near the success of the Switch. A price ticket of $400 for the cheapest model bars the Steam Deck almost exclusively to gamers with disposable income. Any family will likely prefer to purchase a pair of Switch Lites for the kiddies. (And believe it or not, those family audiences likely buy more consoles than the "hardcore" crowd.)

There's also the issue of the blanket tariffs on imported goods that the incoming government officials want to impose; seeing as most consoles are produced in China (not Japan), that means any console is going to be even more expensive in the U.S. than the basic retail price. Even low-balling, say, the Switch successor at just $400, a 25% tariff like the one that's being proposed means that that console now costs $500. (What, you didn't think they'd give video games a , did you?) With Sony's consoles already nearing the $1000 price tag, any kind of tariff making them that much more expensive means that all but the most dedicated buyers will want to get one. It's a bad time to be proposing super-expensive tech. God help Sony; their tech is solid, and I really do think they need more credit for it. They're clearly scrounging for that last bit of graphical fidelity, to a fault, but they could coast by on what the PS5 has for another decade and still be solid. It's a weird-as-heck time to propose a souped-up handheld PlayStation...

Tabletop roleplaying has never been more popular! No doubt helped by the fame of Internet shows like Critical Role, more and more people have taken up tabletop games as a hobby. It's been practically unthinkable as far as paradigm shifts go—I'm old enough to an episode of Lizzie Mcguire where Lizzie and Miranda cosplay.

Back to games. While video games based on Dungeons & Dragons are nothing new, from the old Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons PC games from the late '80s and early '90s to the recent bombshell of a success that was Baldur's Gate 3, we haven't seen as many recursive tabletop games based off of virtual RPGs. That's more of a recent phenomenon. Brad, a good buddy of mine who once upon a time encouraged me to consider writing for a website, has put in a ton of effort into translating an old Japanese roleplaying system based off of the Shin Megami Tensei universe into English. There's Steamforged's Dark Souls RPG, as well as a tabletop adaptation of the critically-acclaimed Final Fantasy XIV. We can add a new RPG to that one, and it's a bit of a doozy—it's Sega's Phantasy Star!

An important distinction has to be made—this is classic Phantasy Star, not the Phantasy Star Online games or the Phantasy Star Portable games (which are related to them) or the Phantasy Star 0 game on Nintendo DS or any of those other weird games. This is a d20 table-top game based on the Esper Genesis system—itself a science fiction take based off of Dungeons & Dragons 5e. Hence the reason the cover features Alys, Odin, Myau, and Noah from Phantasy Star.

Since old-school Phantasy Star is a bit of an unknown factor for people, it's worth setting the stage for the series. The original Phantasy Star tetralogy took place in the Algol system, an actual star system—provided, the three planets that our characters live on are (as far as we know) fictional. While the Phantasy Star Online games have more of a fanciful anime tech-based sci-fi aesthetic, the original Phantasy Star has more of a Star Wars-esque science-fantasy blend. The series takes place over the course of a millennium, detailing the many misadventures of champions chosen to step up and save the inhabitants of Algol, usually from some kind of malignant entity known as Dark Falz. The original Phantasy Star was released in the United States on the Sega Master System in 1987, not only beating Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the NES by several months (again: in the U.S.), but also beat them to the punch by featuring a female protagonist long before either series would. The story of Alys Landale taking up the sword in a quest for revenge against the mad ruler Lashiec paved the way for the tale of Rolf and Nei unraveling the Mother Brain computer's dark plot, the Generations of Doom fending off Dark Falz's machinations, and young Chaz finally banishing the Profound Darkness from the Algol System once and for all.

The science-fantasy aesthetic (plus the added 1980s anime floofy-hair) helped Phantasy Star stand out. While Alys and company were youths armed with titanium swords and laser rifles, they were teamed up with Agents, Biologists, bounty hunters, and even androids instead of the typical Paladins, Rogues, and Wizards. You didn't cast "spells"—you used "techniques". Following the trends of the 1980s, you had Espers instead of magicians; a cult of enlightened aesthetics whose minds could tap into the universe's primal forces. (I'd imagine folks would find them much more akin to less-volatile Psychers from 40K). Instead of the typical orcs and elves, you had Motavian beast-folk (akin to humanoid owls), the green-skinned Dezolians, the genetically-modified Newmen, and androids. But you still fight dragons. They might be space dragons, but this is still an RPG.

The Phantasy Star series also stood out courtesy of the involvement of the late Rieko Kodama, alias "Phoenix Rie". One of the earliest examples of a notable woman in game development, Rie's direction granted the Phantasy Star series a wider range of emotions than you'd get in other RPGs. Alys wasn't any mere woman on a quest—she was out for blood to avenge her murdered brother. Rolf and Nei's adventure through Motavia is fraught with the lingering atmosphere of despair and tragedy, a world of empty contentment where there's nothing to do (and because of the recent environmental shenanigans, nothing to eat either). Even Phantasy Star IV wasn't afraid to drop the hammer on players; early players likely thought the imposing Alys Brangwin (no relation to Alys Landale) was the protagonist of the game... until she died from the evil cultist Zio's magics. It's a real gut-punch, too—far from a poetic, melancholic end, Alys dies in pain in a way that a lot of characters really don't, even in today's day and age. To say nothing of setting up a bait-and-switch between Alys and Chaz the way they did.

The Phantasy Star tabletop RPG hopes to tap into all of that, allowing people to not only make their own Hunter or Esper but also potentially play as the beloved cast of the original games. So if folks wanted to make their own tales of Eight-Strokes Alys, you'll finally get your chance! The core rulebook will also come with expansive lore on the setting of Phantasy Star. The tabletop RPG comes officially licensed from Sega, so this isn't only going to be as close to canon as you can get—this'll also be the closest we get to an unofficial Phantasy Star V that we're likely to get. Sure, it would be nice if Sega just made a new Phantasy Star, but that would mean making a new Phantasy Star. Snark aside, I'd also be hesitant of a new Phantasy Star without Rieko Kodama at the helm. A tabletop RPG might not be the thing diehard Phantasy Star fans would've expected, but it'll definitely be a fun treat to play around with.

You can preorder the Phantasy Star tabletop RPG on Skydawn's website for $70. It's estimated to be released in Summer 2025. Who knows, maybe if it does well, we might actually get Phantasy Star V? Weirder things have happened!

As with a lot of things, the Somnium Files visual novels have escaped my attention. Sure, I have them in my backlog (I wasn't gonna miss out), but I haven't played them yet. But the name of their writer, Kōtarō Uchikoshi, is a known factor for me. I've played some of his other games, specifically Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (the first entry in the Zero Escape series I mentioned above). Uchikoshi definitely became more popular through AI: The Somnium Files, especially with his witty writing for the human virus known as Kaname Date (the series protagonist). Also, he was the 3D modeller for the PS1 Pepsiman game. I don't know how to transition from that information, so: his older VNs, Never7 and Ever17 are getting remastered for modern consoles.

The Infinity games, as they're called, feature many of the same running themes as Uchikoshi's later works—contemplation of the nature of people's memories and identities, with a smattering of science fiction discussion and no small amount of navel-gazing about Kurt Vonnegut or Isaac Asimov. Already, Never 7: The End of Infinity has many ideas that would earn knowing nods from fans of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors; in that game, you the player read the story of a college student and his friends visiting an island over the course of a week. When one of the characters dies, you as the player go back to the start of the story in an attempt at preventing the character's death. Never 7: The End of Infinity was released in 2000 and was the second game Uchikoshi had a writing credit on. Its sequel, Ever 17: The Out of Infinity would be released in 2002. In another move akin to 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, the game centers around two young men (one of whom is an amnesiac) being tasked with helping a group of people escape an underwater aquarium as it slowly fills with water.

In addition to featuring updated art, both games will be released on the PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch, and Steam this March 6th, 2025. Best of all, the collection is releasing in both Japan and America; Spike Chunsoft confirmed we'll be getting the games day and date with the Japanese releases! For folks who've needed more of Uchikoshi's writing following The Somnium Files or would like to see stuff from Uchikoshi's younger days, look no further!

Pocket Pair has announced a new expansion for Palworld; while details are scarce on new content, they promise a new island "six times larger" than the previous Sakurajima update. The update is due out in December. Pocket Pair has also announced a collaboration with Terraria, to be released in 2025.

Bandai Namco's Synduality: Echo of Ada will have an open network test from December 12th to December 20th; pre-ordering the game gets you an extra 48 hours of time with the network test.

More news on Edia's announced Earnest Evans collection! Currently, a crowdfunding campaign is being held in Japan hoping to raise 5 million yen to release the collection. This collection will compile Telenet's three Earnest Evans games (Earnest Evans, El Viento and Anett Futatabi), and it is hoped they'll release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch this June 2025. No word on an American release yet...

Aquapazza: Comic Party, Kizuata and Routes.

Metroid Prime 1–3: A Visual Retrospective: The Official Art and Making of Metroid Prime 1–3 (yeah, that's the title) is up for pre-order on Amazon! This book compiles art from the Metroid Prime trilogy, from throughout its production. The book also includes essays from Retro Studios devs, Producer's Notes on all three games, and a foreword from Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe. It's not often that we get this kind of insight into the production of a Nintendo game.

That'll do it for this week, I think. Thankfully, the column comes out after Thanksgiving, so I don't have to write some maudlin thing about a holiday fewer and fewer people enjoy. Regardless: I hope folks were able to spend time with the people they love. Love is not an obligation, and you have the right to surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you. We're at a month before the year is out, hopefully we can send it off well. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing JRPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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