Topic: Nintendo DS Game Ideas

[HereticPB]

I was sleeping last night and a whole slew of Nintendo DS game ideas came flooding in. Specifically classic games came to mind. Arknoid, Duck Hunt, Wild Gun man, Gotcha, Punchout to name a few.

Arknoid you control the paddle with either the stylus or your finger. You move left or right to move the paddle. The top screen shows the blocks in a row like standard and bottom shows the paddle and the rest of the screen. The ball goes between the two screens. The laser accessory in the game is used by just tapping the screen.

Duck Hunt an interesting idea where the top screen shows all the action of the ducks or clays flying around even the crazy dog. The bottom screen however shows the exact same screen though minus the birds. It is your job to use the bottom screen via tapping to shoot the clays or the birds.

Gotcha the fun game of paintball tag and capture the flag. Similar to Duck Hunt above where the bottom of the screen shows the level minus the characters where you tap to shoot. The top shows the majority of the action.

Wild Gun Man the same idea of the first two shooters above. Top shows the characters the bottom allows you to shoot them via tapping on a background screen.

Punchout probably the most interesting I think. The top screen shows the in ring fight between mac and the other fighters. On the bottom however shows the face and torso from waist up of your opponent. How do you fight well you tap either left or right on the face to punch the face of your opponent or left or right of the body for a body shot. Also for those nice powerful uppercuts you tap the outside portion of the bottom screen away from the opponent pictures and drag to the area you want to use the power shot. So tap and drag to the stomach or the face and whack mac uses the punch. Also if you get knocked down a get up meter appears on the bottom where you have to rub a certain direction to get up. You still use the plus pad to block and dodge as normal.

Outrun or Rad Racer. In this idea you use the top left and right buttons to control acceleration and brake but you use the touch screen as your direction controller. So either tap left or right or press and hold left or right this keeps you from sliding off the road or avoiding cars.

Frogger which I think is being created where you use your finger to move frogger around in the classic environment.

Space invaders move left and right using your finger and tap to fire. Near the same for Galaxian as well.

Altered beast in this recreation you move left or right to move forward or back if you drag up the character jumps up if you drag down character jumps down. You tap once to punch and you tap twice to kick.

Street Fighter this would be complicated but I thought of it anyhow. You control your character via the plus pad but instead of the punch kick buttons you use the bottom screen to select which move you want such as punch or kick. You do the special move movements on the control plus pad but instead of pressing say R for a hard move you rub the bottom screen to power up the move. So say Guile flash kick you press kick then press down on the plus pad then at the same time you rub to the power level meter to the highest while moving up on the control pad making Guile do a flash kick.

That is all I have right now but you can see some games could use the DS very easily.

[Gamefreak]

Street Fighter wouldn't be complicated at all.

You use the D-pad and the six buttons

Not everything has to use the stylus. Especially things that have had a perfect control scheme in place for over a decade.

[Jdub03]

What I want to know is how does the DS compare to the PSP graphics wise.  The demo of MGA had pretty nice polygon models.  What type of graphical power will we be getting from the DS.

[Bill Aurion]

It's actually quite powerful...Metroid DS looked just as impressive as anything shown on the PSP...

[Michael8983]

This isn't really a game idea, but it's an idea many games could use.
You know how in some arcade-style games you ge to enter your name or initials along with your highscore. With the stylus you could actually sign your name instead. It would make it a lot more personal and would be damn cool

[Gamefreak]

Not really....it wasn't anywhere near as sharp... And the samus model used in-game was way simpler than the one in the cut-scene right at the beginning of a match...but the game isn't polished yet.

Quite simply, the PSP has more power, but it's overpowered. PS2 level specs mean nothing because on such a small screen you can achieve PS2 level graphics with much less power than required on a TV. The DS is more powerful than an N64, which is way more than enough because it only has to render two small screen's worth of stuff. Hunters is already looking as good as perfect dark, except at a way better frame rate. Remember the graphics in 96 on N64 and the graphics in 2000? Remember when GBA first came out? People have done amazing things with GBA hardware and with the DS's muscle you won't need to worry about graphics: they will be great. Period. This is a huge jump....The DS/PSP release is basically the equivalent of the jump from SNES/Genesis to PSX/N64....

[Ian Sane]

I remember when we first created an ideas thread all of our ideas used the two screens.  It's interesting that Nintendo itself hasn't come up with anything even remotely worth using the two screens for yet and instead is focusing all of their attention of the stylus.  I HATE the stylus concept myself.  Any experience I've had with a stylus was been really negative as I tend to have really messy writing, which screws up any attempts to write anything, and my hands are too shakey to be precise.  I really hope they make a lot of their games able to use both the buttons or the stylus.  Metroid Prime sounds ridiculously difficult to control.  I just know I would have a lot of frustration with it.

With the stylus the question should be "will this work better with the stylus?" instead of "can I make this work with the stylus?"  HereticPB I don't mean to bash your ideas or anything but I think a lot of those games would be more of a hassle using the touchscreen instead of the buttons.  Outrun for example would work much better using the d-pad.  Ideally of course the best option is to allow both methods.

Anyway here's my two best ideas from the original thread:

The game is a puzzle game where balls fall down an obstacle course from the top screen to the bottom one. At the very bottom are containers. Some of them are filled with lava some are "safe". The goal is to get as many balls as possible to land in a safe container. The amount of balls released and the amount of safe containers varies depending on the level as well as the required amount of balls that have to survive to qualify for the next round.

The top screen's obstacle course is static. You can't change it, only see it. The bottom screen is where you can move things around to make sure the balls land in a safe container (naturally they won't by default). You have a timer before the first ball falls to set things up. You can also set things up on the fly. Why would you want to do this? Because the balls are different colours and thus respond differently to different parts of the obstacle course depending on colour. Yellow balls bounce twice as high off of trampolines, grey balls are affected by magnets, etc. So each ball falling may take a different path down the top screen so you have to make sure that the bottom screen you control adapts to these different paths. Sometimes you can set it up ahead of time for multiple paths. Other times you have to change on the fly.  This actually probably would work really well with the touchscreen as my original idea used a cursor to simulate a mouse.  The stylus would move the cursor though I would want the buttons to change the paths because tapping with the stylus is too imprecise.  Naturally I would provide a d-pad control scheme as well.

One idea that would be really cool is a survivor horror game where you get two views: your eye view and the eye view of the creature stalking you. The creature is invisible so the only way to tell where he is is by looking at what he sees. So if you see yourself in his vision get the f*ck out of there.

[Perfect Cell]

Game ideas? Well RTS type games would be much better on the DS than a Cube or PS2 thanks to the Stylus...  Maybe they can Port Starcraft 64 on to the DS?

I also wouldnt mind GTA DS with one screen the 2D GTA and one screen the 3D GTA

[joeamis]

Same deal as Ian here, heres what I posted on May 6th:
Great to see so many developers. Let's hope they don't make the games too technical with touch screens and all for the young players, who rule the handheld market. It would be nice to see something like what Gannon is upto on the top screen after he kidnaps the princess, where he heads off to and such. While you are playing on the bottom. Or perhaps the top screen shows how your crops are growing in Harvest Moon while you are busy courting a lady, and then an animal comes along and starts eating your harvest, so you gotta leave the girl. Then you get to the farm, but you still see what's going on with the lady you just left.  

Gamecubivore had this to say: "I do believe that Harvest Moon example was the best I've heard yet. . .

Touche'."

I'll try to come up with a better idea which utilizes the stylus later

[HereticPB]

I have to point out it is either your finger, a plastic stick (stylus), or the buttons for the games.

That is the point of the DS to sell the touch screen as a new way of playing besides the standard old buttons. That is Nintendo's point you do not have to use the buttons of the controller. You do not have to use the same controller for games. You can use alternate controllers such for example Donkey Kong Jungle Beat a 3d action game that uses the the drums exclusively.

A new way to play but of course it is up to the developers to use this new idea or not.

[Shecky]

The falling spheres/balls idea reminds me about a game called gumball (I think that's what it was called).... Atari or Amiga, I can't remember.  Basically a giant 'ball machine' in which different color balls fell and your job was to sort them correctly in bins so that you didn't mix colors.  If you did, then your supervisor would be pissed, come over, and dump the entire contents of that bin (think quality control ).... There were even multi color balls which you *had* to let fall through - damaged goods.  You won each level by meeting quota.

"One idea that would be really cool is a survivor horror game where you get two views: your eye view and the eye view of the creature stalking you. The creature is invisible so the only way to tell where he is is by looking at what he sees. So if you see yourself in his vision get the f*ck out of there."

Except that only one screen can do 3D.

I like the idea about signing/placing your insignia next to your High Score though, that is pretty cool.

I think one of the major benefits from the DS that I see is the fact that you can remove a lot of the info clutter found in many games to another screen.  That pretty much makes the screen your playing on "bigger" - a big plus for a portable.  Thus you still have a small unit (which protects itself with a clamshell design).  A lot of games do this currently with one screen by hiding info until it is needed.

Plus not only can you move the info over, but things you may check regularly (a map).  It may be hard for any Metroid Prime veterans, but imagine playing Prime with the upper right map removed - such that you had to hit 'Z' whenever you wanted to check it.

Finally who says that it always has to show a map?  I never played animal crossing, but the idea above in this tread sounds cool.  However, why not take it a step further?  Assuming animal crossing uses a map, show the map on the 2nd screen.  In a pause menu, let me choose from either that map, other useful things to see, or a list of ongoing events - such as "my garden".  Heh, maybe you'd have to buy virtual webcams to keep and eye on them .  Personally I think the idea is a little taxing on the DS in the technical standpoint, but the bottom line is there could be more than one option for what is displayed in the 2nd screen.

[Ian Sane]

"Except that only one screen can do 3D."

Is that a suggestion for the game or a fact?  I'm pretty sure both DS screens can do 3D.  Metroid Prime for example has 3D in the bottom screen while Super Mario 64x4 has 3D in the top screen.  Unless you mean that both screens can't be 3D at the same time.  If that's true then that's a REALLY dumb design and basically renders the concept of a second screen useless.

[mouse_clicker]

Both screens can display 3D but the system can only display 3D graphics on one screen at a time. It's not stupid, though- think of the enormous tax on the system there would be if it had to display 3D graphics on two screens at the same time? The quality of the graphics would drop tremendously if that were so. Besides, why the hell would you NEED both screens to show 3D at the same time?

[Perfect Cell]

All the images ive seen has one screen on 3D one on 2D... or sometimes just one screen 2D

I havent seen both screens 3D or 2D... Though if its possible theres some cool ideas as well... like a Plataformer, that would have both screens at the same time, you could jump up from one screen to the other

[Ian Sane]

"Besides, why the hell would you NEED both screens to show 3D at the same time?"

Um, for my game idea?  This is very disappointing news.  This means ALL we're likely going to get are lame maps and status screens.  Obviously 2D games are unaffected but this is a huge limitation that really limits the potential of the system.  If hardware limitations prevent dual 3D screens then maybe this isn't the right time to release this system.  My interest in the DS has just dropped a ton.

[WuTangTurtle]

I'm pretty sure both can be in 3-d,  I saw video with Samus in 3-d standing having half her body on the top screen and the other on the 2nd screen.  I do realize though that video really didn't look like it was running on DS hardware but it surely implies that the system can.  Nintendo did say during the video that the screen can be used so a character can stand up and be displayed into both screens.

In other words im 99.9% sure u can run 3-d on both screens at the same time especially since they both run off of their own processors and such.  

[WuTangTurtle]

As much as i would want new game ideas never possibly created until the DS arrival, I would love to see RTS(real time strategy) games.  Imagine Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C alert, etc all playing on DS with some new twists along with them of course such as an ability to have one screen always at your base or one screen always on your opponents base, or have one screen split in four and show where your team is ie team1, team2, team3, team4.

And of course I would like to see how MMORPG would work on the DS, ahem pokemon ahem, hack cough, pokemon.  That would be a giant DS seller especially since that Wireless online thing would sure get a kick from it.

But from a original type game how about a sword fight game.  Basically the stlus pen would be wielded like metroid primes game so u basically stab by holding a poking motion and swinging with slashes and hacks would just be the draging motions.  Just a thought ive had, I've always wanted a sword fighting game with the ability to command your own blocks and attacks.

Another idea i have for the DS is for the Tony Hawk Series.  Basically the top screen is where u see the action and the bottom is where u use ur fingers or stylus to make ur own tricks via movements across the touch screen something on the lines of that Top Skater game in the arcades made by sega.  It would probably be very hard to do but if done well i think it would be very cool.

[KDR_11k]

Even if you can use the ARM9 only for one screen, there are 3d engines (yes, polygonal ones) for the GBA, which runs at half the clock speed of the ARM7. That means you could make one screen full DS graphics and one double GBA graphics. At least if my assumption of one CPU per screen is correct.

[ezaphlix]

I really don't see why both screens can't do 3D.  Remember that the 2D processor in the DS is the same thing found in the GBA.  And last I checked the GBA is quite capable of 3D.

How to use the touch screen...  How about in an RPG you can use the stylus to navigate all the menus?  Tapping the option you want sure beats pressing down a dozen or so times.

[Darc Requiem]

Hmm. I too a certain that the DS can do to 3D on both screens at once. I could be mistaken but I could have sworn that this was one of the features the developers kept harping on in Nintendo's DS hype video at E3. If it can't do 3D on both screen then it seriously limits a lot of cool ideas I had for DS titles. It would make the second screen a useless feature.

Darc Requiem

[joeamis]

I've read numerous articles from E3 all saying the DS cannot do 3d on both screens.  Maybe as KDR suggests it can do double GBA level 3d on one screen with DS quality 3d on the other.  Even with only 3d on one screen they can still do numerous ideas with only 2d on the other.

[Shecky]

Quote
Originally posted by: joeamis
I've read numerous articles from E3 all saying the DS cannot do 3d on both screens.  Maybe as KDR suggests it can do double GBA level 3d on one screen with DS quality 3d on the other.  Even with only 3d on one screen they can still do numerous ideas with only 2d on the other.

Yeah, I think they mean "DS quality 3d" can be placed on only one of the screens.  That is what I meant in my first post.

The DS seems to be set up pretty slick... as it's got two processors, and either one can be tied to either LCD.  So the obvious conclusion is that the ARM 9, which is the chip producing the "DS quality 3d", is tied to one of the screens.  The double tall 2D games they mention are proably running off of the ARM 9, as it probably can handle it quite easily - that's my guess anyways for the double tall.

By double tall I mean one 'picture' on both screens, not 2 seperate entities.  (ex: Worms 2D/Worms Map = 2 seperate; pinball game spanning both screens = double tall)

Getting the ARM 7 to produce 3D is definately a possibility.

Really, I think there's enough horsepower to do a lot of different ideas.  Doom wasn't 3D.  If you have clever enough programmers, you can do quite a bit.

However, I'll reserve my thoughts of the current state of the CS world though

[joeamis]

They also said that the 3d can switch from one screen to the other apparently on the fly, so Ian Sane's survival horror idea could be feasible but it would probably have to be more like a cutscene where your view pauses or something and the 2nd screen shows the view through the 'zombies' eyes.

[Ian Sane]

I understand the logic of having full 3D on two screens at once being too taxing on the hardware but why force that limitation?  If a developer wants to TRY to do it, even if they have to dumb down the graphic detail a bunch, they should be able to.  Having crappy PSX quality 3D visuals on two screens at least allows the gameplay to remain intact and there's a consistency across the two screens.  Though I don't really understand how this is any different than a split screen game.  Most mulitplayer games have less detail in splitscreen multiplayer mode.  Would this not be possible with the DS hardware?  Why does having two screens make such a difference?

[HereticPB]

I'm gonna say that we all should wait tell the system comes out before saying 3d can't be done on both or not. It was briefely mentioned either or but I highly doubt that is going to stop developers to create 3d engines for 2D systems like many games for GBA.

I am more interested in what Sega/Sammy can do on the DS as well as some other game companies. Those complaining about DS games now does Nintendo always do major quality control on their games before launching them? YES.

There is about 6 months left were these Companies can whip out games for the DS just imagine all the possiblities.