I got the DSi on launch, but I never had any previous DS before. Which means I have...no games!

Well, that's a slight lie. I picked up Phantom Hourglass and New Super Mario Bros. But I want advice from people with DS experience:

Here's what I intend to get, at some point. Should I make any of these a priority? Should I avoid any of them? Any other suggestions?

THE LIST:

• Mario Kart DS
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• Electroplankton
• Henry Hatsworth
• Peggle

What else?

Sonic, DS is the only place releasing top Sonic titles with 2D gameplay as it should be, also Final Fantasy Revanant Wings, point & click battles which kind of reminds me of Command & Conquer in how you move units around, but with RPG elements, some sort of brain training game I would say is a must, a lot more fun than they sound even DS Brain Academy is much more fun than the wii version.

Final Fantasy III and IV are both great if you're an rpg fan, as well as Pokemon Platinum.
GTA: Chinatown Wars is an awesome throwback to the old-style GTA games, before they became just plain sadistic.
Big Bang Mini is a neat take on 2D shooters (ignore the review it got here )
Retro Game Challenge just kicked ass. If you like old-school games, this is a must have. Look up GameCenter CX on youtube to understand it a little better. Almost all the games included could stand alone (or, at least 20 years ago they could have).

so many more great games too.. what genres are you interested in?

Chrono Trigger man. CHRONO TRIGGER. (:

Anyways, i'm the same as you my first DS is the DSi so i'll be following this thread.

Advance Wars:Days of Ruin, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows, and Clubhouse Games are great. Advance Wars for the tactition inside. Castlevania for a fun collect em' all platformer, and clubhouse games because its great for parties and for road trips.

Oh yeah, Retro Game Challenge! I forgot about that, but I was interested in playing it.

As far as genres I'm pretty flexible, but I'm an old-school gamer at heart, so I tend to gravitate toward franchises I grew up with. (As you can probably tell from my original list!) Otherwise I'll play any game that makes you think, and preferably has a sense of humor too.

Someone mentioned Crono Trigger...is that a direct port of the old SNES game, or is it something else entirely?

It is a port of the SNES game which includes more endings and other bonus stuff. Mario & Luigi, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and all the Square-Enix RPGs are also great games.

re: Chrono Trigger DS -- If you ever played CT from FFChronicles for the PlayStation, it's got all that bonus material, same FMVs and all, as well as a couple new things (two new dungeons and an arena to battle monsters against each other). They moved the menus and stuff down to the bottom screen (so all you see on the top screen during battles is the sprites on their background, makes for a nice uncluttered look), and as you're going through a place, there's a map that unfolds on the bottom screen (like in FFIV DS). they also retranslated it, so it's supposed to be more accurate to the original Japanese script now.

as for franchises you may have grown up with, the ports/remakes of FFIII and IV are both good. Star Fox Command, i would recommend borrowing from a friend before buying, as it seems to be a hit-or-miss kind of game. Mario Kart DS, Mario 64 DS (if you liked the original; if not, skip it), and New Super Mario Bros. are all solidly fun games, and if you liked Kirby Super Star for the SNES, Kirby Super Star Ultra is more of the same (it's got a couple updated subgames, but note that to really enjoy the multiplayer stuff you need two cartridges; single-cartridge download play only lets you play through Spring Breeze).

for things you may not have grown up with, The World Ends with You is a great game (definitely an example of 'don't judge a game by its cover'). If you like visual novel type games, the Phoenix Wright series is good (and chances are you can find all four games used so you won't have to bother paying full retail price :3).

Metroid Prime Hunters:

• Decent one-player, but not must-have
• The best FPS multi-player experience you'll find on DS (personally, one of my favorites of the genre on any platform)
• Probably not a lot of online opponents by now, unfortunately, and last I played, they would all do what's called "alt-spamming" where they stay in morph ball or similar forms the whole match, mastering that form so they can kill you while being too hard to hit. With the prevalence of this pseudo-strategy, it became an entirely different and more obnoxious game. I would only recommend buying if you have friends with the game to play against.

Mario Kart DS:

• The best Mario Kart in recent years
• Last I checked though, this too was lacking in a lot of online players, so get only if you have friends to play with
• Even if you do find people online, they are likely to "snake," a game-breaking strategy that is almost as obnoxious as alt-spamming in Hunters

Electroplankton: This is brilliant, but the experience wears thin quickly.

If you enjoy playing games to improve your score, Yoshi's Touch & Go is a great game. It got panned by most because it only has two basic levels (though each is quite different in each mode, of which there are five or six), but it's an unfair criticism when the game isn't based on completion at all. Few games make use of the DS's unique features so well.

I'm not sure of any other big name, old franchises on there that turned out well, at least that I played. If you're a fan of Earthbound, you can't go wrong with Contact. Game play is quite different, but the humor is very similar. A lot of in-jokes about other games and gaming culture, too.

Henry Hatsworth is awesome, I would move that up the list, and Mario Kart DS is very fun game as well. I would look into getting Chrono Trigger if you into the RPG as that is a fun game (but if you played it on the SNES and still want it keep it at the bottom of the list). I would also add Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars if you like GTA games, it's a fun game I love it. I also enjoy Puzzle Quest and I am planning on getting the newest Bleach game.

Maybe it's because I'm in my mid-20s now, but my favorite DS game is actually Brain Age 2. Sure, I play other stuff, but not nearly as often.

It makes you feel like less of a large child when the game can be rationalized as "good for you."

Very true (I'm in the same age bracket), but a while ago I realized that I basically AM a large child, so I might as well live like one.

Just picked up Hatsworth today, btw. If I have time I'll give it some play this weekend!

This is why I stick to home consoles. I can conceal my manchildness at home, but playing games on the go is too risky!

trauma center under the knife 1 and 2 are awesome. The first one is pretty challenging but it's still my favourite DS game. There is an easy mode in the 2 if you don't want to restart the operations too much. It's a shame these games did not sell very well...

You mentioned Elektroplankton, which is indeed a fantastic game and a truly unique piece of music software, but you'll have a very hard time getting a hold of it. I just saw a copy in the local Gamestop (used) selling for $50. On Amazon, I believe it's about the same, and likewise in most cases when it shows up on Ebay. I never technically owned it; this is one of the few cases where I used a flashcart, something I normally only would use to play homebrew and old emulators, but in a rare instance like this, where I would only be able to get a game used at an exorbitant price and Nintendo wouldn't see that money anyway, I felt it was justified.

Also, I don't know if you're into classic puzzle games, but Tetris DS is the best tetris package you'll find on any system, with a very polished retro-Nintendo presentation throughout and some ingenious alternate modes like Push Mode. Planet Puzzle League is also one of the most polished puzzle games with a visual and musical presentation that puts nearly every other puzzle title to shame.

If you're a fan of the old Mario Party games, Mario Party DS is surprisingly good, and you only need one cart to play a full game with up to four people. It feels much more like the classic MP games to me than any of the recent iterations.

Electroplankton was indeed quite cool. I actually used the voice modulator on it in a song I recorded at home, though at the time I didn't have a headphone jack to record it directly, so it didn't come out that well. Elektroplankton even led to its creator, the talented, experimental artist Toshio Iwai, making his first electronic instrument, the super cool and super expensive Tenori-on! Ah, I want one sooo bad.