I've been noodling with my old DS in the last week. Whether it was to celebrate its 20th anniversary, reaffirm it as my favourite system of all time, or simply help me forget that it has been two decades since I first played Nintendogs, I can't be sure. But what I do know, is that I've been having a blast.
Naturally, I went back to a handful of the classics first — there's nothing like a bit of Brain Training to get the blood pumping — but after proving that I had the mind of at least a 50-year-old (win!) and that I could no longer speed round a lap of Yoshi Falls with my eyes closed (lose!), I thought I'd make the most of the DS Lite's GBA cartridge slot and blast through some real nostalgia picks.
To be clear, I'm not talking about booting up The Minish Cap or Pokémon Ruby - who has the time for that nonsense? No, I used that cart port the way God intended: sticking a bulky piece of plastic in there, strapping it to my wrist, and shredding the guitar riff from Vampire Weekend's A-Punk in the least comfortable way imaginable.
This is 2009's Band Hero (or the previous year's Guitar Hero: On Tour, if you squint a little bit), and while it left me with some of the worst hand cramps in years, it's still brilliant. Why? Because it reminded me of just how much fun Nintendo and its third parties used to have with the DS and DS Lite's peculiar peripherals.
To those who didn't play this one 15 years ago and have subsequently avoided a life of carpal tunnel, let me fill you in on Band Hero's beautiful add-on. This is the same guitar grip that you would find on the neck of any Guitar Hero / Rock Band set-up in the arcade (or buried in the back of your wardrobe), only a little bit smaller. And rounded at the end. And attached by a velcro strap which forces you to hold your DS like a discus.
Okay, perhaps it's not exactly the same as the standard setup, but the principle is. Holding the DS on the side — the way reserved for grown-up games like The New York Times Crosswords, Hotel Dusk and... Style Savvy — the 'Left' (upper) screen displays the usual falling notes while the 'Right' (bottom) screen acts as the guitar's body, strummed by the included plectrum-shaped stylus. It's obscenely uncomfortable, but it does do a good job of mimicking the full-guitar experience. Good job, Vicarious Visions.
And I could say the same about the game's additional drum skin. Yep, the late noughties were a crazy time where games could come with two peripherals, all in the name of fun.
This one was slightly less high-tech — a rubber sleeve that fits snugly around the DS Lite's bottom screen — but, again, it transformed what could have been dull button mashing into something which vaguely resembled a tiny drum kit. And it makes your DS look like it's wearing a tiny wetsuit, which made me giggle.
Admittedly, my swift setlist didn't get me quite as pumped about the game as those rockin' teens from the 2009 trailer ("We. Love. Band. Hero."), but it sent me down a rabbit hole of reminiscing about the console's other wacky peripherals, ones that feel like a fever dream when compared to the theme-less hybrid we're faced with today.
On today's edition of 'Things Jim Wishes He Hadn't Thrown Out 10 Years Ago', we have a boatload of DS accessories! Ones which are, on the surface, completely stupid, but ones that stand up for Nintendo at its silliest.
I'm talking about Easy Piano and its 13-key keyboard. Yeah, it was a full octave of piano plugged right into the GBA port in an attempt to take you from rookie to Rachmaninoff over a series of lessons. I distinctly remember learning absolutely nothing from this game, or its peripheral (it turns out that you need a little more than 13 keys to master chord progressions), but there was a Guitar Hero-esque falling notes game mode. Also, who cares that I never became the next Keith Jarrett? I looked awesome with that bulky piece of white plastic hanging off my handheld.
Speaking of which, does anyone else here still suffer from THMT (Tony Hawk's Motion Trauma)? A packed-in, oversized GBA cartridge turned the DS into a motion-controlled handheld, which was awesome... until you had to turn a corner and you couldn't see the screen anymore. Oh, or if you tried to play it in the car. Or in a room with any lights on. Who am I kidding? That one sucked.
You know what didn't suck, though? Learn With Pokémon: Typing Adventure and its wireless keyboard. What kind of game comes bundled with an entire wireless keyboard, you might ask? One that's trying so very hard to help you convince Grandma that the new copy of Pokémon Black and White 2 is, in fact, "educational" and therefore essential for your studies.
I can't claim that my entire typing ability is a product of this peripheral alone, but I'm certainly more comfortable than most when it comes to putting the double letters in Terakkion Terrakkion Terrakion.
And these are just the ones that I had. Japan was treated to a Digital TV Tuner add-on, a 'Slide Controller' that turned the entire DS into a mouse for Slide Adventure MAGKID, a Face Training peripheral camera, and more. Basically, any object that could be shrunk down to the size of the GBA cart and relieve a minor inconvenience, the DS probably had it.
Where has this wackiness gone? Of course, the Switch hasn't been without its fair share of silly peripherals over the last eight years — a whole host of sports equipment plastic replicas exist for the Joy-Con, you can play Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! with a tiny Poké Ball, and Colors Live came with its wired pen — but is anything anywhere near as goofy as an extremely uncomfortable guitar grip? I don't think so. (Okay, the Japanese controller grip for cooking game Tabe-O-Ja is definitely goofy enough, but you get my point).
I'm not saying that I want a whole bunch of weird accessories to make a comeback — god, the Wii gave me enough for a lifetime — but it's nice to remember a time when our handhelds had multiple ports, and Nintendo would license any old wacky item to stick in 'em.