Touch Screen Gaming With the DS
These days, almost everyone has a game or two on their phone that they play on the bus or out in public, tapping away at their screen. But years before mobile gaming took off, the Vita released, or any kind of touch screen gaming, Nintendo released a big change on the Game Boy called the DS.
The Nintendo DS was a radical shift for handheld system, sporting a clam shell design and two different screens. The top screen displayed the bulk of the game’s animations and graphics, while the bottom functioned as either an extension of the first or as some kind of touch integration. Over the years we’d see a huge library of acclaimed and innovative games like Phoenix Wright, Cooking Mama, Elite Beat Agents, Nintendogs, Super Mario 64 3D, Metroid Prime Hunters and more. Many of the game design concepts we saw on the Nintendo DS, would end up transitioning over to mobile gaming when smartphones and touch screens hit. Not to mention the touch screen integration the PlayStation Vita integrated when it launched, or the Wii U Gamepad.
