Was DSiWare really that bad?

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7 mins read

DSiWare is virtually dead. Though we still see a trickle of new releases (and indeed, the entire catalogue will be available through the 3DS eShop when it launches), for all intents and purposes, we’ve moved on from the DSi’s little download portal.

DSiWare also didn’t exactly have a great reputation. It was effectively competing against the PlayStation Network Minis portal and the Apple App Store, and most would believe it failed to beat either, both in terms of quality and quantity of releases, and for capturing a section of the market – the number of developers that could rely on DSiWare to be profitable was minuscule.

But was it that bad? Well yes and no. Of all the download services, DSiWare was by far the worst – it was slow and unintuitive, is poor at showing off the developer’s games, which quickly get lost amongst the shovelware. But of the games themselves? Well, there were some genuine gems in there, and DSiWare did especially well with certain genres. For that reason those that never owned a DSi might want to check the old shop out when it goes live on 3DS.


The Puzzle Factor

The single greatest genre represented on DSiWare is the puzzle genre, and some of the games you can get on this genre are amongst the best you’ll find anywhere. The Art Style games here (special call out to Kubos) are better, as a whole, than their WiiWare counterparts. Then there’s a wide an entertaining variety elsewhere, such as Spin Six, Bookworm, Tetris, Glow Artisan, Mighty Flip Champs, Reflect Missile, Save the Turtles, Wakugumi Go Go Island Rescue (and that’s not even all of them).

This all makes sense, of course – puzzle games are relatively easy and inexpensive to make, so they’re perfect for the DSiWare platform, but if you are a fan of puzzle games, then there were a lot available here.

Casual games

Puzzlers aside, DSiWare was actually pretty reliable for casual gamers. There were decent hidden object games (Jack the Ripper), a bevvy of farming and gardening games (Hello Flowers, My Exotic Farm), some social party games (Mixed Messages), Pinball (Pinball Pulse), and some surprisingly good board and parlor games (Picturebook Games: The Royal Bluff, Sudoku, Solitaire, Sujin Taisen, Where’s Wally).

There was also a handful of really good tower defence games (Viking Invasion, SteamWorld Tower Defence, Starship Patrol, Fieldrunners) that were easy to get into and that often contained plenty of gameplay within them.

So all up, there were a bunch of good casual games on DSiWare that will remain very playable on the 3DS.

Hardcore games

Ok, so for more intense experiences, DSiWare struggled mightily (and this is probably where it got its poor reputation from). For platformers, you’re looking really at Shantae, and daylight afterwards. For shooters and action games, there were a couple (Dark Void Zero, 3D Space Tank), but nothing that was going to pull you away from bigger and better experiences on the competition handheld devices. An RPG worth playing only came along late in the DSiWare’s life with Zenonia.

The one bright spot for “gamers” was the support of Gameloft. If you could stomach the largely soulless and greatly watered down copies of popular franchises, you could play copies of Castlevania (Soul of Darkness), FIFA Soccer (Real Soccer), Nintendogs (Me and My Dogs), The Sims (Pop Superstar), Guitar Hero (Guitar Rock Hero), Pokemon (Crystal Monsters) and God of War (Hero of Sparta).

Part of the reason was, no doubt, Nintendo’s insanely-low download restrictions, and the simple fact that it was easier and more commercially-assured fact that retail outsold digital downloads with the DSi. So there was little point to bring ‘core’ games out via the download platform.

We hope the story is different on the 3DS.

Non-gaming applications

The DSi was never going to be able to compete with the iPhone here, but nonetheless there were a few non-gaming applications that, surprisingly enough, were worth investing in.

The obvious first up here is Flipnote Studio, which in addition to being free, is still well-supported and fun to use even now – the ability to upload your flipnotes for a few seconds of fame should not be underestimated.

Beyond that though, there’s Sleep Clock – which helps keep track of how much you sleep from night to night. As the data piles up over the weeks and months you’ll be able to gauge what is your optimal sleep patterns – and so it is surprisingly effective as a health application.

If you find yourself in Europe, the City Maps are surprisingly useful when using the train systems of some of the major cities around the continent. It’s no guidebook, but it’s handy to have to hand.

The Art Academy software, by being able to save your drawings to SD card, are actually better downloaded than the retail package.

And then there’s Nnooo’s suite of software – MyNotebook, MyPostcards and MyDiary might be simple applications, but they do help the DSi (and later, the 3DS) be that little bit more useful, and they’re fun to mess around with regardless.

So, as you can see, the DSiWare was rarely filled with must-have applications, and unfortunately, the good ones were often buried under shovelware and chopped up bits of retail games. Do enough digging, though, and there are some games worth checking out the shop when the 3DS eShop goes live.

This is the bio under which all legacy DigitallyDownloaded.net articles are published (as in the 12,000-odd, before we moved to the new Website and platform). This is not a member of the DDNet Team. Please see the article's text for byline attribution.

  • Not having a DS of any kind myself – tough for me to say personally. I had gotten all of my kids DS Lites a few years ago now, and this last Christmas my son traded his for a DSi and loves the online shop. Every time he gets enough allowance together now, he gives it back to me for points. It does seem like it has struggled to take hold as a whole, which is a shame because it does appear there are plenty of perfectly good games.

  • Not having a DS of any kind myself – tough for me to say personally. I had gotten all of my kids DS Lites a few years ago now, and this last Christmas my son traded his for a DSi and loves the online shop. Every time he gets enough allowance together now, he gives it back to me for points. It does seem like it has struggled to take hold as a whole, which is a shame because it does appear there are plenty of perfectly good games.

  • I also have no experience of the DSi Ware shop although I do own a Wii and will be ble to experience 3DS' e shop when it goes live later in the year. However, if the DSi shop was anything like the Wii Shop Channel then I can only imagine the dross that was put on there.

    However, with many of Nintendo's other online features, its fairly simple to see how they can be improved. I mean scraping friend codes, voice chat as standard on all online titles, easier approach to DLC and greater capacity to carry DLC would all be great things to see on NIntendo platforms but with the Shopping side of things I feel things are different.

    I mean I really feeel its not until all the other stuff is done will we really start to see people respect Nintendo's online strategies and take their download services seriously as a consequence.

  • I also have no experience of the DSi Ware shop although I do own a Wii and will be ble to experience 3DS' e shop when it goes live later in the year. However, if the DSi shop was anything like the Wii Shop Channel then I can only imagine the dross that was put on there.

    However, with many of Nintendo's other online features, its fairly simple to see how they can be improved. I mean scraping friend codes, voice chat as standard on all online titles, easier approach to DLC and greater capacity to carry DLC would all be great things to see on NIntendo platforms but with the Shopping side of things I feel things are different.

    I mean I really feeel its not until all the other stuff is done will we really start to see people respect Nintendo's online strategies and take their download services seriously as a consequence.

  • Hi Madbeanman,

    I can promise you that DSiWare was far worse than WiiWare is. It takes a lot of digging to uncover the gems, and even those gems are limited by the 20MB download size limit.

    I agree that fixing the problems will be relatively easy for Nintendo – it depends on whether it wants to (early indications of 3DS is it doesn't really).

    But fingers crossed! I'd love a quality 3DS eShop.

  • Hi Madbeanman,

    I can promise you that DSiWare was far worse than WiiWare is. It takes a lot of digging to uncover the gems, and even those gems are limited by the 20MB download size limit.

    I agree that fixing the problems will be relatively easy for Nintendo – it depends on whether it wants to (early indications of 3DS is it doesn't really).

    But fingers crossed! I'd love a quality 3DS eShop.

  • @Madbeanman:
    "I mean scraping friend codes, voice chat as standard on all online titles, easier approach to DLC and greater capacity to carry DLC would all be great things to see on NIntendo platforms but with the Shopping side of things I feel things are different."

    See, that's Nintendo's problem…STANDARDS. They either have NO STANDARDS(which can be stupid), or they seem to have STUPID standards. Friend codes = STUPID.
    No voice-chat support/standard 5 years into the Wii's life…STUPID.
    No 3D standard for the 3DS = STUPID.

    At least IMO.

    Simple things, that have been standard and are being implemented by the other console manufactures, get ignored by Nintendo…so, when I hear these claims that the next console will go after the "core", I take it lightly.

    @GamesAndBiz:
    "I agree that fixing the problems will be relatively easy for Nintendo – it depends on whether it wants to (early indications of 3DS is it doesn't really)."

    Yup, here's hoping that May update is a fresh wind for the 3DS' sails…
    Nintendo can talk a good talk, but they really do seem to fail at delivering what they're talking about sometimes. WiiConnect24…a feature that's basically USELESS, and did more damage than good to Wiis because of how HOT the system got when in standby initially.

    3DS; no eShop, no browser, no communicating with friends…AND Nintendo is expecting me to believe their marketing hype for the next system? We will see…

    Anywho, WiiWare has some pretty good games. I would actually recommend Rage of the Gladiator to Punch-Out!! fans, LostWinds for platforming fans…and even Pearl Harbor Trilogy: 1941 Red Sun Rising for somebody looking for a fun arcade-ish flight sim game.

  • @Madbeanman:
    "I mean scraping friend codes, voice chat as standard on all online titles, easier approach to DLC and greater capacity to carry DLC would all be great things to see on NIntendo platforms but with the Shopping side of things I feel things are different."

    See, that's Nintendo's problem…STANDARDS. They either have NO STANDARDS(which can be stupid), or they seem to have STUPID standards. Friend codes = STUPID.
    No voice-chat support/standard 5 years into the Wii's life…STUPID.
    No 3D standard for the 3DS = STUPID.

    At least IMO.

    Simple things, that have been standard and are being implemented by the other console manufactures, get ignored by Nintendo…so, when I hear these claims that the next console will go after the "core", I take it lightly.

    @GamesAndBiz:
    "I agree that fixing the problems will be relatively easy for Nintendo – it depends on whether it wants to (early indications of 3DS is it doesn't really)."

    Yup, here's hoping that May update is a fresh wind for the 3DS' sails…
    Nintendo can talk a good talk, but they really do seem to fail at delivering what they're talking about sometimes. WiiConnect24…a feature that's basically USELESS, and did more damage than good to Wiis because of how HOT the system got when in standby initially.

    3DS; no eShop, no browser, no communicating with friends…AND Nintendo is expecting me to believe their marketing hype for the next system? We will see…

    Anywho, WiiWare has some pretty good games. I would actually recommend Rage of the Gladiator to Punch-Out!! fans, LostWinds for platforming fans…and even Pearl Harbor Trilogy: 1941 Red Sun Rising for somebody looking for a fun arcade-ish flight sim game.

  • Hi Coffee,

    "3DS; no eShop, no browser, no communicating with friends…AND Nintendo is expecting me to believe their marketing hype for the next system? We will see…"

    That's my concern with the 3DS' eShop. Nintendo seems to be approaching it from a "well, we just need to make the interface cleaner, and faster to navigate." Which the eShop seems to be a remarkable improvement over DSiWare, from what we've seen.

    The real problems with DSiWare though was in terms of encouraging content from 3rd parties, and creating a shopping experience that was competitive. There were no sales on DSiWare, which hurts it as a shop front. The Download limit was insane at 20MB max.

    And as cool as Virtual handheld Console sounds… consider this: I can get a $0.99 cent app on the iPhone/ iPad that is likely 10x as big as the typical Game Boy Game. Nintendo will be charging more than $0.99 for its back catalogue.

    As cool as it will be to play Final Fantasy Legends and Super Mario Land on the 3DS… I don't see myself buying more than a handful of those games.

  • Hi Coffee,

    "3DS; no eShop, no browser, no communicating with friends…AND Nintendo is expecting me to believe their marketing hype for the next system? We will see…"

    That's my concern with the 3DS' eShop. Nintendo seems to be approaching it from a "well, we just need to make the interface cleaner, and faster to navigate." Which the eShop seems to be a remarkable improvement over DSiWare, from what we've seen.

    The real problems with DSiWare though was in terms of encouraging content from 3rd parties, and creating a shopping experience that was competitive. There were no sales on DSiWare, which hurts it as a shop front. The Download limit was insane at 20MB max.

    And as cool as Virtual handheld Console sounds… consider this: I can get a $0.99 cent app on the iPhone/ iPad that is likely 10x as big as the typical Game Boy Game. Nintendo will be charging more than $0.99 for its back catalogue.

    As cool as it will be to play Final Fantasy Legends and Super Mario Land on the 3DS… I don't see myself buying more than a handful of those games.

  • "There were no sales on DSiWare, which hurts it as a shop front."
    Exactly the same with WiiWare…makes no sense to me.
    Yea, if they don't really get some GREAT eShop system setup, like allowing price changes and stuff, it's another "limit" that may not seem very friendly to developers, and keep more away than bring in.

  • "There were no sales on DSiWare, which hurts it as a shop front."
    Exactly the same with WiiWare…makes no sense to me.
    Yea, if they don't really get some GREAT eShop system setup, like allowing price changes and stuff, it's another "limit" that may not seem very friendly to developers, and keep more away than bring in.

  • hi there no nintedo dsi and wii are way beter then xbox live or psn network i have alll 3 consoles and not a fanboy

  • hi there no nintedo dsi and wii are way beter then xbox live or psn network i have alll 3 consoles and not a fanboy

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