17 Games in 60 Minutes

17 Games in 60 Minutes

Speed-gaming on a newly acquired DS…

What happens when you give Lewis Denby a DS Lite, a heap of games, and a spare hour? This happens…

A few days ago, a dear friend of mine went on holiday, taking with her a set of train tickets, a suitcase of clothes, and a promise from me that I’d look after her beloved Nintendo DS Lite in her absence. Why she didn’t take it with her for the journey, I’ll never know.

Still, I’m not complaining. I’ve never owned a DS. Remarkably, I’ve – gasp! – never owned a handheld console of any kind. Which sounds like a rather serious gaming omission for the editor of a multi-format publication, but I can explain, I think. Growing up, all my friends had Gameboys. Later, I lived in a shared house where every console under the sun was basically accessible. The last couple of years, however, have been distinctly handheld-free. It’s about time I put that right with a mammoth play session.

“Which games do you want?” asked my friend, handing me the console and uncovering a pile of various DS titles. “All of them,” I said. “No, really,” she said. “I’m serious,” I said. “You won’t be able to play them all while I’m gone,” she said.

I took that less as a statement of fact, more as a personal challenge.

And thus concludes the story of how I came to be in short-term possession of one Nintendo DS Lite (black, shiny), and a whopping 17 games to play on it. Much to my distain, I quickly realised my friend was right: there was no way I’d be able to plough through all of them in just ten days. So I hatched a plan. I’d sit down for an hour, and play a snippet of each one. Perhaps I’d find something I liked. And in the meantime, I thought, I might as well scrawl some brief first impressions…

These are those impressions. To ensure I stayed within my hour-long limit, I decided to play it safe and limit myself to three minutes with each game. Because, you know, if a game can’t hook you within three minutes, will it ever achieve greatness? The entire world knows the answer is “no”, which is why the entire world hates Final Fantasy games. Anyway, without further ado, I perched on my bed, immediately dropped the stylus, searched around on the floor for the stylus, found the stylus, turned on the DS, and began…

Wario Ware: Touched

Okay, so I have a load of little characters on-screen. What do I do? Oh, I can click them and move them around a bit. Oh, I can start games through them! Awesome. I select the guy with the big ginger hair whom, when enlarged, it turns out has an utterly terrifying face. I play a few games which allow me about three seconds each before telling me I’ve failed. I particularly enjoy squirting ketchup onto a hot dog.

Whack-A-Mole

Oh, awesome, it’s Whack-A-Mole! I haven’t played this since I was about eight years old, on holiday with my parents in the Canary Islands. It doesn’t feel right not having a big oversized mallet in my hand. I play for a few minutes trying to wrestle with the undersensitive Stylus recognition before I realise there are so many moles on the small screen that I can basically get away with just maniacally tapping all over the bloody shop, and still stack up a fairly impressive score.

Trauma Center: Under The Knife

Ooh, this looks vaguely story-based. Better not get stuck into that. I’ll go for a Challenge. Awesome: a friendly lady is talking me through the procedure, and then, woah! Who’s that with an enormous hand? Giant Hand Man! “Okay… let’s begin the operation!” he exclaims. Yes, let’s! The patient has glass embedded in his Upper Something. NURSE! Scalpel! Forceps! Magical Gel Which Has Come A Long Way Since Magical Gels Of The Past! Suture! Bandage! Phew. How exhilirating! So much so, I went a whole minute over my self-imposed time limit. Blast.

Continues…

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