Topic: I Think There Are 9 Metroidvania Games on the DS...

...at least in the traditional way of understanding the genre. Metroid Prime Hunter's is sort of a Metroidvania by way of it's title alone, but I suppose this is where we are constantly let down by genre naming (or at least lazy genre classification.)

Of these 9 titles I have found, three are of the Castlevania series, three are Spider-Man titles, a game in the Alien franchise, one is based on a YA series, and Monster Tale is the lone original IP of the bunch. I genuinely enjoy all eight of these for what they bring to the table! The three Castlevania games have their own storied history, so I won't say much for them. I think that Portrait of Ruin is probably my favorite Castlevania title of all, it's just really smooth, and has a few of my favorite bosses. Order of Ecclesia was my first Castlevania game, and it's kinda weird? I like the enemy powers, and it's pretty fun that the castle isn't unlocked until the second half of the game. Dawn of Sorrow rips, but also I hate the touch screen controls for sealing bosses (this complaint is a cliche. I guess don't talk DS games if you can't handle touch screen controls!)

Monster Tale is rad! It is perfectly modern in it's aesthetic sensibilities, playing as a young gal was an inspired choice, and these Metroidvania titles wouldn't become the genre du jour for another 6-8 years after it released. The playable cartoon-meets-pixel perfection will likely never go out of style and once again feels right at home with any number of contemporary indie darlings. These appreciations are married to a title that is extremely DS era design, in all of the best ways. A crucial component of navigating the combat and exploration is the virtual pet sim of loving and caring for your little monster pal. You find items to feed them, you play with them, and your bonding helps increase their stats so that you can continue your adventure. I love it!!!

The other half of the diminutive library of dual-screen, search-action are all licensed titles. The DS was the last pre-smart phone game console, where development was inexpensive, an publishers could craft whole teams of talented designers to pump out various titles based on whatever IP they thought could make money. Much like Monster Tale, this bygone era of quickly produced licensed games was a fusion of a now mostly defunct practice (making a mostly unrelated product that publishers expect to move units mostly by way of the connection to the intellectual property on which it is based) and genuine talent from studios who had played games since their infancy and had the wherewithal to create excellent experiences. Now days the concept of a "hidden gem" is a quick way to make a buck on youtube - while breaking the retro games market - but if you want inexpensive titles with interesting ideas, the license games of the DS are the place to be.

Alien: Infestation is a game. I own it, but I lent a friend my 3DS and she disappeared. I do not have anything to say about it at this time. I am sorry

Their are 10 Spider-Man games for the Nintendo DS, two of these games are excellent, while the other seven vary in quality. Relevant to this post the best of the lot are Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions! I cannot say enough good things about either! They are wicked fast for the console, honest to god technical marvels. WoS came first, and is a story about the Symbiote attacking New York. Spider-Man has to track down Venom, and along the way he teams up with a few different heroes and villains alike. There is actually a few opportunities to meaningfully make decisions that effect the outcome of the story that I don't particularly want to spoil. The exploration is brilliantly handled, as it doesn't always make sense that Spider-Man would start a video game not having full access to his arsenal, but the world has been changed by the Symbiote's creep and this creates limitations on your ability to traverse the land. The combat is fluid and challenging, but also some of these fights can go on a little longer than necessary, in some cases these prolonged exchanges can feel like they exist to elongate the runtime. Their is a skill tree/ability shop that feels sort of tacked on too, and the humor is that kinda jokey "we are in a video game" shtick that I don't always enjoy.

The sequel to Web of Shadows is Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and it owns so hard y'all. How dare this game go so hard! I like WoS despite my complaints, but Shattered Dimensions fixes all of them and more. The story is a lot like the recent Spider-Verse films actually, although their is no Miles Morales sadly. Mysterio has opened a portal and linked three different universes together, that of Peter Parker, Spider-Noir, and Spider-Man 2099. The game is genuinely funny, the progression system is perfectly smoothed out, and the combat is so quick! With all three Spider-Men performing acrobatic tricks. I just love it! This is probably one of the best games on the DS and the dev house Griptonite deserves all of the praise I could give.

The sequel to Shattered Dimensions was not handled by Griptonite. Spider-Man: Edge of Time is such a disappointment. There are some interesting ideas (and it is worlds better than it's console brother) but Griptonite moved on to work on the 3DS Shinobi title, which would be their final bow. Edge of Time is fine. It is a game you can play. Spider-Man is there. I have zero enthusiasm for that title.

Griptonite did actually produce the final Metroidvania on the console however, and it is based on the Young Adult novel Daniel X of all things. I don't really know much about the book series, and YA isn't always my thing. But wowee, wowee-zowee even! I will write up a separate thing about this game in the future, but I will end it saying that all of those stories about how Metroid: Dread was supposed to come to the DS, but with the hardware they felt limited in what they could create, feel silly after playing Daniel X: The Ultimate Power I cannot believe this game exists and is as good as it is.

If you read this far, thank you! I have a lot of thoughts about video games and I never know where to put them/am not cute enough for youtube

That seems like a surprisingly low number given how many Metroidvanias come out these days, but I can't think of any other examples. This was interesting to read though, there's a lot of great DS games that nobody ever talks about so it's nice to see a few of them getting some attention!

@ScalenePowers Wow, what an awesome first thread opener. Love it. I've not (knowingly) come across your posts before, but a quick glance at your account history suggests you are well worth keeping track of.

I have Monster Tale (love it), Alien: Infestation, and the three Castlevania games.

I also have Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, but I think only the Wii version, and am not sure of the differences at this point.

Have to admit to never having heard (that I remember) of Daniel X before. I would happily insta-import it (no PAL release by the look of it), but the only 2 reviews on Metacritic aren't especially glowing, so I'll do a bit more research on that one.

But thanks for posting and getting my DS juices flowing. You should definitely post more!

@gcunit thank you for your kind words
This is my first post here. I wrote a silly joke comment on an article about Palworld that if NL needed help with articles that were about anything else, that I would volunteer. Lol and I guess ever since I’ve been thinking about things I would say.

I appreciate you reading, and am looking forward to diving deeper into this community!!

I'd maybe suggest Shantae: Risky's Revenge as a solid Metroidvania on the DS and I'm sure Thor: God of Thunder was a Metroidvania too (also developed by Wayforward)

I saw Alien Infestation years ago pretty cheap but had no idea if its value / rarity. It's a game I'd love to try someday.

Metroid Prime Hunters is a Metroidvania, just not a 2D side-scroller one, but you definitely still go back and forth finding upgrades to open up further portions of the map.

Looks like no one's mentioned Mega Man ZX yet, so I might as well. It's made by the same devs who worked on the Mega Man Zero series (Inti Creates), and MMZX also has this big, interconnected world with multiple areas. You can find stuff like life-ups to increase your maximum health as well. (Like the energy tanks from the Metroid series.) It's also known for having this biometal mechanic, which lets you change forms, each with their own abilities - you can get more biometals from defeating certain bosses, too.

It's a solid game, but I will say that the in-game map screen doesn't do a very good job at guiding the player where they should go. Rather than use something like Super Metroid's map screen which is much more straightforward, MMZX goes for this weird box setup that shows small boxes that represent areas A-1, A-2, etc., and most of them are only connected diagonally. The last time I played the game, I was having trouble finding a certain area because of that. It sucks because it's a very good game otherwise... the biometals are generally fun to use, especially Model HX with its air-dashing and hovering abilities.

I was trying to figure out how many metroidvanias are on Switch recently and found a list of 231 of them...I have 36 in my own library. 😅 The genre has certainly gotten popular.

I keep waiting for Monster Tale to come to Switch - we were promised it 3 years ago: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/nintendo_ds_platfor...

I didn't know anything about Griptonite Games until recently, but they have a lot of unexpectedly great licensed games for handhelds under their belt. They did the Game Boy versions of EA's Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, and Medal of Honor games. Would be up there with Wayforward and Inti Creates if they had managed to transistion over to the indie scene.