The Best of DSiWare - Introduction

I have a tendency to climb aboard my horse on the subject of piracy. I've yet to hear a believable reason for denying a developer reward for their time and effort that isn't 'I wanted it but didn't want to pay for it' it not so many words. 

I’m less inclined, however, to moralise on the subject of emulation.

To me, when a system is no longer ‘current’ and it’s catalogue of games are no longer available to buy new, then emulation is not only a convenient option, but often a necessary one for game preservation. As highlight by Sony's recent u-turn on PSN, this is particularly true of games only available on digital platforms.

Conversely, and sadly, emulation often leads to games not connecting with the player as they would under the original circumstances. There are many reasons for this; playing on PC is a different experience to that of a console or handheld, for one, certain systems have controls or visual styles that can never be properly captured through emulation, for another. But to me the most important difference is that the player is potentially not ‘invested' in the game.

And by 'invested' I’m not talking about the cash outlay (although that can be a factor) I’m talking about all kinds of other investment; emotional, intellectual, or just good old fashioned time and effort. These are all completely missing from the gaming experience when you download a rom-pack and pick games that have fun sounding names, or that you saw someone on YouTube play.

Another factor is that the vast majority of people firing up an emulator will be doing so to play a game they have nostalgia for. This is certainly what I did all those years ago when I first discovered emulation, and it’s absolutely a great place to start - but given the vast resource available - I believe it’s a bit of a waste.

The DSi and particularly it’s DSiWare catalogue are as prone to this as any system, with (the unquestionably excellent) Shantae: Risky’s Revenge being responsible for a huge number of people interested in emulation for the system and this library.

Having recently acquired a DSi for the first time, and finding meagre online resource for recommendations, I decided to get set about discovering the best of the DSiWare in the same way I did for MAME some sixteen years ago: 

I would download everything I could, play them all, and decide for myself.

Through this method 'investment' is built into the process through my time and effort, but additionally the thrill of discovery is a fantastic motivator.

Interestingly, Wikipedia states that the entire DSiWare catalogue is just 366 games and, after playing through every single one for a few minutes, I only deleted about half of them. This is a lot less shovelware than I expected, and a good sign of some quality games to come.

Weeding out the 50% mountain of complete rubbish was step one. Step two is to revisit what's left, play them properly and write about them. As part of the writing bit I will also be assigning them one of four categories:

Hidden Gems: Games you've probably never heard of that are utterly brilliant

Well known & worthwhile: I'm not in love with this name, so it may change if I think of something better. But these are games that are still gems, still potentially brilliant, but perhaps not quite so 'hidden'

Honourable Mentions: Those games that are good, but lack the real spark required to fit into one of the top two categories

Also Rans: Not bad enough to be completely ignored, but not quite good enough to warrant higher status

I'll be playing through the games in alphabetical order and writing an entry for each letter (where applicable) with the aim of posting once a week, probably on a Thursday.

I'll be as thorough as I can but just to be clear: I fundamentally don't believe objectivity, so every word will be my own beautiful opinion - and for this reason there are also two notable caveats: 

Firstly, I don't enjoy RPGs. Like, at all. So you won't see any of those at any point. And secondly, it's very hard to define 'Hidden Gem' on DSiWare, as the service itself was never hugely popular, so please excuse a potential few miss-categorisations along the way!

And that's where I'll leave it for now. I'll be posting the first entry very soon, I hope to see you there and would love your comments and feedback.