The Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents games are some of the best and most original rhythm action games ever on any system. They use the DS perfectly. Most people will like all three, but if you have strong aversions to Japanese or American music, you know which ones to avoid. I think the first game has the best music and scenarios, although the latter two are slightly more user-friendly.

All six Castlevania games on the DS and GBA continue in the spirit of Symphony of the Night, but none of them surpass it. Dawn of Sorrow is the best on the DS despite the maddening amount of grinding required to unlock everything, Order of Ecclesia is about as good, and Portrait of Ruin is the weakest of the three due to flat and repetitious environments, but it's still definitely worth playing.

It's interesting that Nintendo was able to make a solid Zelda game controlled entirely with the stylus. It's surprising that most of the fun comes from drawing on the in-game map to solve puzzles and find items. This may have been the best game on the DS if the hidden treasures had been more rewarding instead of near-universally worthless. A sequel is on the way.

The incremental changes to the Famicom Wars series are very minor and are convoluted missteps as often improvements, so it's hard to say when the series peaked. That said, unless you really want online play, Dual Strike is probably the best choice. In addition to a massive amount of traditional content, the Combat Mode uses the touch screen to make one of the best mini-games I've ever played.

Alphadream's third Mario & Luigi RPG is the best yet, with a quirky story and some of the best animation on the DS!

A compelling mix of old and new, with a good amount of unlockable content.

There is no ideal control scheme available for this portable port, and to accommodate that the difficulty has been reduced, but the greatness of the original still shines through. Plus, new content will keep old players on their toes.

A hardcore RPG that requires you to manage your own map in the game. Yuzo Koshiro composed the music for PC88 and then tried to recreate it on the DS. Now that's a labor of love! And if this isn't hardcore enough for you, try The Dark Spire.

This game is very popular and is executed very well. I hate it. It's like somebody took the walking around towns, talking to people, and collecting items that are added to games to artificially make them longer, and then left out the actual game.

This is a Smash Bros-style party fighting game featuring a ton of anime characters. It has gotten very positive reviews, so if it sounds like something you might like, you probably will.

A port of Tetris with NES-inspired graphics, a variety of play modes, and solid online competition. There are also competent DS ports of Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Bobble, although neither of those offer anything new.

Education and wellness games sure have taken off, and I really like the format of tracking daily progress over time. Unfortunately, none of the ones I've played have been especially effective or fun, unless you include Dance Dance Revolution, which came out long before this.

The Sonic Rush games aren't nearly as balanced as the original games on Sega Genesis due to a lot of blind jumps and bosses that float around in the background wasting a minute of your time before swooping down for an insta-kill attack, but Dimps has done a better job with Sonic than Artoon, Flagship, Tose, and Suzak did with Yoshi's Island DS, Kirby Squeak Squad, Super Princess Peach, and Wario.

This remake's main selling points of new 3D graphics, music, voice acting, and a customizable summon monster actually make it inferior to previous renditions, but the subtler changes to the battle system and the script make it worth playing through one of the best games of all time once more.

Despite its low-resolution sprites, this game captures the feel of the other Metal Slug games. The combat school challenges add value.

Action so intense it practically becomes a puzzle game! It's up to you whether that sounds like fun.

The Trauma Center games are fast-paced surgical simulations controlled with the touch screen. The action is much more fluid than in the disappointing Cooking Mama games. The games feel too much like work for me, but the games are a well-crafted experience that couldn't be done without a touch screen.

This dungeon-crawling action RPG from Kojima Studios may not get as much attention as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Izuna, Children of Mana, or Shiren the Wanderer, but it got better review scores than all of them, so pay attention!

Most people prefer the second Chibi-Robo game on the DS over this, but that one has not been released outside of Japan.

I wanted to like this, but the touch screen controls made it less fun than it would have been if you used buttons like a normal game.