SimCity DS

SimCity DS adapted the classic city-building strategy game to the Nintendo DS's two screens and touch pen. The bottom screen serves as a control panel with tools for zoning, building roads, and public buildings, while the top screen displays the growing city itself - the player manages budget, housing demand, jobs, and citizen satisfaction directly by tapping and dragging the pen across the touchscreen instead of clicking a mouse, which the series had been accustomed to from its computer entries.

Due to the handheld's limitations, the simulation is noticeably simplified compared to the series' peak at the time, SimCity 4 - fewer data layers, a simpler traffic model, and smaller maps suited to short play sessions on the go, on a train, or during a break. At the same time, the game adds small extra features typical of handheld adaptations, such as side quests and unlocking special buildings for completing them, an attempt to compensate for the loss of depth with its own clearer progression structure suited to shorter play sessions.

Touch pen controls also allow for faster and more intuitive drawing of roads and zones by dragging across the map than clicking a mouse tile by tile, which in practice turned out to be a more enjoyable way of building for many players despite the handheld version's lower graphical and data fidelity.

Working with two screens at once also lets you keep both the tools and an overall view of the city constantly in sight, without the player having to keep switching between windows as on a computer - a small but noticeable difference in practice, one that makes SimCity DS play differently from any computer entry in the series before or after it. It's precisely this combination of portability and touch controls that makes it a standalone version worthy of its own place alongside the classic computer entries.

Why play it: Suited to players who want the classic SimCity experience in a condensed form on the go - touch control across two screens offers a different, and in many ways faster, way of managing a city than a mouse and keyboard on a computer.