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.

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.

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. 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, the Genesis screen modes are too wide to display on the DS, so you have to scroll around, which makes most games hard to play. Some kind of scaling ability would be nice.

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, and the battery saves get lost at times.

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.

Nester DS is a Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom emulator. It runs very well, but it doesn't have support for the PWM 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 PWM channel (Blaster Master, Super Mario Bros. 3). It also doesn't have save support.

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.

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.

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.

Scumm VM is a virtual machine that lets you play old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games. I only tried Beneath a Steel Sky, but it was too slow to be playable.

StellaDS is an Atari 2600 VCS emulator. It is a DS port of Stella. I ported Stella to the Amiga years ago, so I had great expectations. But I was disappointed. For one thing, the emulator can't handle long file names very well. When you get a game running, it tends to be unstable. Hopefully it will be updated to fix the issues. But the last update was on 6/5/07, so I have my doubts.

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.