DS You’ve got The Touch

Manufacturer: Nintendo | Year: 2004

it may have started off a “third pillar” for Nintendo, but the DS’S innovative design, strong marketing and quirky-looking games meant the handheld outsold the combined totals of both the gamecube and game Boy advance. It effortlessly captured the casual market that had eluded nintendo since the release of the nes and arguably paved the way for the widespread obsession with mobile gaming today.

Bill Harbison, Former 8-bit graphic artist, artist on Sonic & Sega All-stars Racing How were you introduced to the DS?

It was when a bunch of guys I worked with decided to go out at lunchtime to buy the new DS with Mario Kart so we could play multiplayer games in the studio. It was a great game to play in a group and it took over our lunch breaks for many weeks.

Why do you think the DS become so incredibly popular?

not only did the DS have many great games but also it was easy to hack. One could simply go on ebay and buy an r4 card which you could fill up with emulators of other systems from the Snes right back to the ZX Spectrum and c64. While this must have taken its toll on nintendo, it didn’t seem to worry them too much.

What was it like creating games for the DS?

I guess developing games on the DS was similar to the n64 with its low polycount for models and its tiny texture size. I remember trying to use as few textures as possible and mainly use single colours on models. We couldn’t see our graphics directly on the screen and had to upload them so that the programmer could create a build maybe once a day.

Do you think the DS contributed to the rise in casual gaming?

the DS made a huge contribution to casual gaming as it had titles that non-gamers could enjoy, like Brain Training. I was surprised to find out that an older member of my family had bought a DS and was a fan of the Professor Layton games. It was the first time she had bought a gaming system and she bought it just for these mystery games. even my mother used to play Solitaire and Dominoes on my DS and it was because there was no button pressing, everything could be done my touching the screen with the stylus.