The Nintendo DS sold over 154 million units by being cheap, durable, and strange: two screens, a microphone, and a stylus that developers had to figure out from scratch. The best DS games used that weirdness rather than working around it. These are the 12 best Nintendo DS games of all time.
12. Nintendogs
The 2005 pet simulator sold nearly 24 million copies by letting you call a puppy’s name into the microphone and have it come running. It has no goals and no ending, which made it baffling to traditional players and irresistible to everyone else.
11. Elite Beat Agents
iNiS’s 2006 rhythm game has you tapping along to licensed pop while three dancing secret agents solve the personal crises of strangers via comic panels on the top screen. Its most famous level has made a generation of players cry over a pop ballad.
10. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
The 2010 puzzle adventure from Ace Attorney creator Shu Takumi casts you as a ghost with four minutes to prevent each death by possessing objects. Its animation is extraordinary, its plot is a perfectly constructed clockwork, and it flopped so badly on release that its 2023 remaster felt like a rescue mission.
9. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
The 2009 RPG splits play between the brothers inside Bowser’s body and Bowser himself on the top screen, which is both a great structural joke and a genuinely clever use of two screens. It is the funniest entry in a consistently funny series.
8. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Level-5’s 2007 puzzle adventure wraps 135 brain teasers in a beautifully animated mystery about a village where everyone speaks in riddles. It created an entire genre of “puzzle game with a story” that publishers chased for a decade.
7. The World Ends with You
Square Enix’s 2007 action RPG asks you to fight on both screens simultaneously, one with the stylus and one with the d-pad, which should be impossible and somehow works. Its Shibuya setting, fashion systems, and soundtrack made it one of the most stylish games of its era.
6. Chrono Trigger
The 2008 DS port of the SNES classic is the definitive version: touch controls for the menus, a new dungeon, and the arena. For a huge number of players, this handheld release is how they first played one of the greatest RPGs ever made; it also sits in our best SNES games.
5. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver
The 2009 remakes of Gold and Silver are widely considered the best Pokemon games ever made: two full regions, sixteen gyms, and a Pokemon that follows you everywhere. The Pokewalker pedometer in the box was a genuinely charming idea nobody has replicated.
4. Mario Kart DS
The 2005 entry was Nintendo’s first serious online console game, and its Mission Mode remains the most inventive thing the series has ever done. Its snaking-heavy competitive scene is still active, and its retro track selection set the template every Mario Kart follows.
3. Pokemon Black and White
The 2010 pair took the boldest swing in the series’ history: an entirely new regional Pokedex with 156 new species and not a single old Pokemon before the credits, plus a story about whether capturing creatures is ethical at all. Divisive then, widely considered the best-written Pokemon games now.
2. New Super Mario Bros.
The 2006 game that revived 2D Mario after fourteen years away and sold over 30 million copies doing it. Its physics are crisp, its secret exits reward exploration, and its four-player minigames kept the cartridge in circulation long after the main game was done.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
The 2007 sequel to The Wind Waker is the most complete argument for what the DS could do that no other console could. You control Link entirely with the stylus, chart your own sea routes by drawing on the map, and solve puzzles that require closing the console, shouting into the microphone, or writing notes directly onto the screen.
It takes number one because it is the rare game that is genuinely inseparable from its hardware. The famous map-stamping puzzle, where the answer must be transferred between screens, simply cannot exist anywhere else. Its Temple of the Ocean King repetition divides players, but no other DS game uses the machine this completely.
Honorable Mentions
Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Kirby: Canvas Curse, Pokemon Platinum, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Radiant Historia, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and Picross DS all have devoted followings, and Brain Age sold 19 million copies to people who did not consider themselves gamers. Dawn of Sorrow is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow, which ranks on our best GBA games list.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best DS game of all time? Phantom Hourglass for using the hardware best, though Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver and Pokemon Black and White are the most beloved by players.
How can I play DS games today? There is no official DS library on Switch. Several titles have been remade or remastered, including Ghost Trick, Chrono Trigger, and the Ace Attorney collections.
What was the best-selling DS game? New Super Mario Bros., at over 30 million copies.
What came next? The Nintendo 3DS, whose library we rank in our best 3DS games of all time.