a5200DS is an Atari 5200 emulator. The emulator is very nice, using an image of the 5200 to control the emulator. But sadly the DS just isn't fast enough to emulate the 5200.

Bomberman has stayed pretty much the same game since it first showed up, but it is a great game for multiplayer. The DS version is especially cool, in that you can play with up to 8 players using a single cartridge, and everyone gets the full game. Other than that, it's the same great game that we all know and love.

This game has you making words by linking letters that are randomly jumbled on the screen. As you use letters, new ones come down from the top. Occasionally a letter with a bomb on it will show up. You need to use it quickly, because each time you don't, it moves down the screen one level. If it makes it to the bottom, you lose. It's pretty fun, but kind of too easy, and not as good as WordJong.

I expected more out of this game. It's certainly been hyped enough. But I found it pretty boring. It doesn't help that you mostly have boring games unlocked at first, and you have to play it for a long time before the more interesting things show up. Also, I found the handwriting recognition to be wonky, and the voice recognition to be terrible. When you are trying to go through a bunch of math problems as fast as you can to prove your "brain age", it's kind of unfair that you have to keep writing 3 over and over again because the game thinks you are writing an 8. And you have to be in a totally silent environment for the voice recognition to work, and even then it is maybe 80% accurate. You end up with terrible brain age scores because of the game, not because of your ability or lack thereof. I found that frustrating. Also, it does support a 16-player single-cart game, but it is only one mode where you see who can answer 30 math problems the fastest. Not exactly the most riveting game. "Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima" on the PC is way better.

Bust-a-Move hasn't changed much since the original version, but it is a great puzzle game. This version lets you play the full game using single-cart multiplayer, which is nice. Up to 5 people compete. However, unlike earlier versions of the game, the multiplayer is far less competitive. As before, the last one playing wins, but when you drop large collections of bubbles with a single hit, instead of going to your oppenents' side like in earlier games, they are used to create chains in your own board. That makes the competition less intense, but removes some of the challenge and fun at the same time. I also struggled with the fact that the gameplay is spread across both screens. The bubbles are on the top screen, but you fire your bubbles from the bottom screen, so it is nearly impossible to aim correctly. It provides an aiming tool, but it was still awkward to use. But I much prefer the action to stay on a single screen in any game.

ColecoDS is a Colecovision emulator. It worked well enough, and I liked the idea of using the touch screen as the keypad. However, most of the games ran at half-speed, making them unplayable, or the sound was at half frequency, which sounds terrible. Use S8DS instead.

I played this game with my wife and daughter. We played on my game, and I controlled a second player in our party of four. The graphics are very similar to Dragon Quest VIII, and the music is very good. There are many FMV sequences throughout the game. The gameplay is also reminiscent of DQ8. But the multiplayer was definitely tacked-on. The main quest can be played with up to 4 players cooperatively, but often times the story line is missed by the other players. Some dialogue scenes are shared with all 4 players, but some are not. You can't share equipment between the four players, only certain items. And the side quests are not shared by the 4 players at all. The beginning and one middle part of the main quest is entirely single-player, excluding the other players entirely. There is only one place in the world to invite other players to join you, and late in the game it becomes complicated to travel there, making it an irritating experience. Once you complete the main quest, you are encouraged to complete the side quests, but since those are really a single-player experience, I'm not likely to do it. You can download more side quests over the Internet, but again, I'm not likely to bother. Hopefully the next game will have a more fleshed-out multiplayer experience.

DSTT is a DS cart that has a slot for a Mini-SD card. It lets you store DS programs on the Mini-SD card and then play them. It has a nice GUI that has icons for each game, and provides cheat codes. I got it primarily for the homebrew, but it also lets you play commercial DS ROMs. The firmware is completely upgradeable to handle new games. You just copy the files to your Mini-SD when there is an update. Very slick. I got mine along with a 2GB Mini-SD card for $15.

This is the sequel to the Game Boy Advance game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. As with the prequel, the game takes place in the world of Ivalice, but does not have the deep, intense, and often confusion story line of the original PlayStation game. There have been some improvements over the GBA game, but the item management is still quite awkward, and not nearly as easy to work with as the PS original, which had a "Best Fit" button that would equip your character with the best items that the store has available. It can be tedious to go through each of the characters in your clan and determine, one item at a time, if there is a better item available. They at least added an "Optimize" button for outside of stores, which is definitely an improvement. But the gameplay for battles is intact, and quite fun.

FrodoDS is a Commodore 64 emulator. I wasn't able to get it to run any of the games I tried. I found the same problem with the Wii, Linux and Windows versions as well, so it looks like the emulator itself needs some work.

jEnesisDS is a Sega Genesis/Megadrive emulator. It plays everything I have tried so far. The sound is great, but there are some graphic glitches. Also, many Genesis games use screen modes that are too wide or too tall to display on the DS, so you have to scroll around, which makes them too hard to play. If they could scale the screen, this would be a good emulator.

Lameboy DS is a Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator. This is cool since the DS doesn't support Game Boy or Game Boy Color cartridges. However, there are some graphic and sound glitches, the battery saves get lost at times, state saves are sometimes broken, and it is too slow for some GBC games (like Shantae). It supports Super Game Boy colorization. It's the best GB/GBC emulator for DS. I have played and beaten several games with it successfully (like Super Mario Land 1-2, Wario Land 1-2).

This is a direct sequel to Wind Waker on the GameCube. The graphics and gameplay are similar, although simplified in some ways. The dungeons can take a while to finish, which makes them a bit incompatible with casual handheld gameplay on batteries. Other than that, this is an outstanding Zelda game, and in many ways it is superior to the GameCube prequel.

This game plays much like the other Mario RPG games. This one has you moving through time to defeat the enemy and rescue the princess. Mario and Luigi team up with their baby selves from the past. The babies can be thrown up to higher areas, and can get into smaller spaces. The controls are unique, in that each of the four face buttons (A, B, X and Y) controls each of the 4 characters separately. This makes for some interesting button-pushing puzzles.

Marca DS is a multiple Arcade emulator. When I tried it, I found that many of the games I wanted to play, like Pengo, didn't work. Also, the gameplay is divided across both screens in a truly awkward way. It centers the graphics right between the two. I found it too hard to play the games that way.

This is a very good NES and Famicom emulator. It's full speed, it scales the screen, and the sound is great. It has state saves, and it supports battery-backed saves as well. You can configure it to play light gun games by tapping on the screen. It is being actively developed, so the remaining minor quirks are being fixed all the time. Highly recommended.

Nester DS is a NES/Famicom emulator. It runs very well, but it doesn't have support for the PCM channel, so you don't get digitized sound. Without full support for sound, I'm not interested in playing. Pretty much every NES game I like uses the PCM channel (Blaster Master, Super Mario Bros. 3). It also doesn't have save support. Also, the NES has a screen resolution of 256x224, where the DS is 256x192, so you have to cut off 32 lines. That's almost 15% of the screen! There is no option to scale the screen, although it lets you scroll the screen up and down. That's not very reasonable in the middle of an action game, though. nesDS is a much better NES emulator.

This game starts off like the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES, but it uses 3D graphics instead of 2D graphics, although the game is played as a 2D side-scroller. It is very challenging, but it is playable. I enjoyed it, although I haven't completed it 100%. It includes some single-cart multiplayer modes, including some mini games for up to 4 players and a 2-player game called Mario vs. Luigi, where you run around a level trying to collect 5 coins first. If you stomp on the other player, or if they get hurt or die, they drop a coin. Fun!

NitroGrafx is a TurboGrafx-16 emulator, and it is outstanding. The screen is properly scaled to fit the DS screen. Everything is full speed with full sound and no skipping. Very impressive! This is made by the same guy who wrote the excellent S8DS emulator.

I discovered Mario's Picross on the original Game Boy and loved it. I beat it, and then I beat it's Japanese-only sequel on the Game Boy, as well as the Japanese-only Mario's Super Picross on the SNES. I was very happy to find another Picross game in English. The stylus controls are awkward, but you can thankfully switch to the button controls like the previous Picross games. It has a single-cart multiplayer that lets you play with up to 5 people. One mode lets you see who can play through three puzzles first. The other modes are pretty lame, though. I'm not very thrilled with the action challenges, either. One mode has you clicking on squares that move around the screen, and another has you clicking on squares as they briefly appear. The last mode has you duplicating a drawing that appears on the top screen. Each of these are timed, and they are either way too easy or way too hard.

I thought that this game would translate well to the DS, and I was right. It is every bit as fun as the PC version. It looks, sounds and feels pretty much the same, which is a huge achievement. There are times when the graphics can get a bit choppy, especially with a lot of things happening on the screen, but the DS usually keeps up quite well. I found the game to be slightly easier to play with the stylus instead of a mouse. There are a few additions to the DS version that the PC version didn't have, such as a DS Download Play 2-player game, where one person plays as the zombies.

This is a very fun game. It combines a point-and-click style adventure game with MENSA-style puzzles. The storyline is compelling, and the puzzles are challenging, but fair. It is funny to see how the people in the village will involve a puzzle with your conversation. It makes very good use of both screens and the stylus. Highly recommended.

While I enjoyed the first game, the sequel is not so good. The puzzles are usually trick questions, or else completely unfair. For example, one question asks which of three things is the right answer. Clearly none of them are. You are supposed to click in a different, unmarked area of the screen to provide a fourth answer! Who thought that was a good idea? This is just bad game design! The story wasn't nearly as compelling, either. I didn't even bother to complete it.

I'm a fan of retro games, so I expected a lot out of this. However, the games included compare to the B titles of the day, not the A titles. It has a little of everything: a Galaga clone (more like Gaplus on steroids), platformers (kind of like the original Mario Bros., but with a robot ninja), an overhead racer, a vertical-scrolling shoot-em-up, and an old-school Dragon Warrior-like RPG. None of them are really outstanding in any way. And although they are supposed to be NES-era games, they look and play a lot more like SNES-era. But it is fun to try to complete the challenges. The challenges include beating a certain score, beating a certain level without using a particular power up or without ever dying, and even beating the game completely. The game isn't very retro in style and setting, though. The kids are in a modern Japanese bedroom, with modern clothing and hair styles, and speak with modern lingo. Also, one kid is voiced by a man using his adult voice, which is just creepy. The quality of the games varies a lot as well. The racing game is just irritating, and they make you play it twice with almost no changes! The shooters are great, and the RPG is good. Overall, I wasn't interested enough to complete it.

I usually avoid rhythm games because of the raunchy music they include, but this one is different. Most of the music has no lyrics, and the songs that have lyrics are not offensive, and they were written for this game. The game has you tapping and flicking to the beat of music. There are four types of music games per section, and then a challenge that includes all four games together. The graphics are simple and colorful. And it's all very Japanese-cute. This game makes me smile. It's just a joy to play.

S8DS is a Sega 8-bit emulator. It emulates Sega Master System, Game Gear and SG-1000, and it can emulate Colecovision. It doesn't emulate the YM2413 FM sound chip, but that is apparently only used in a small number of Japanese games. Otherwise, the emulation is near-perfect. The screen is scaled correctly (when needed), and everything runs full-speed. A few games have glitches, but most work just fine. When you play Colecovision games, you get a working replica of the number keypad on the bottom screen, which is a nice touch. This is made by the same author who wrote the outstanding NitroGrafx emulator.

Scumm VM is a virtual machine that lets you play old point-and-click adventure games. I only tried Beneath a Steel Sky, but it was too slow to be playable. I probably haven't given it enough of a chance, though.

StellaDS is an Atari 2600 VCS emulator. It is a DS port of Stella. This was recently updated by a different author than the one who ported it originally. It is much improved. The GUI is very nice, using a graphic of the 2600 to control the emulator. Very nice touch! It can handle long file names, which is nice if you use Good2600 to rename your ROM collection. But, sadly, it is still too slow to play. The DS just doesn't have the CPU horsepower for Stella. I ported Stella to the Amiga a long time ago, and I ran into the same issue. Stella is just too CPU-hungry. At best, your game will run at 50% speed.

This is a port of the awesome PC game. It faired pretty well. The physics aren't quite the same as the PC version (it's a bit more bouncy), but it is still quite fun. It has a single-card multiplayer mode that works very well for up to 4 players.

This game plays a bit like Scrabble, but the letters are pulled off a Mahjong pile, such that you can strategically choose which letters to use, because it will reveal other letters underneath it. It has an awesome single-cart multiplayer mode that lets you play the game against another person. You take turns making words out of the available letters, and the scoring is much like Scrabble. The person who scores the highest wins.