A Port of Mario 64

Every Nintendo game needs a Mario game at launch. The N64 had Super Mario 64, which really showed off the consoles potential. After a slight delay, the GC got Mario Sunshine. The GBA wasn't quite as lucky, but did get ports from older games so at least Mario was on there somewhere.

So, when it comes to the DS's turn for a Mario game to sit on it at launch, what do we get? Well, not a new Mario game unfortunately, Nintendo have again decided to just give us another port. Or have they?

Turn on Super Mario DS, and you will be presented with what looks like new material. Mario and co. have been captured, and it is up to Yoshi to save them!
After the shock of seeing an N64 game running almost perfectly in the palm of your hand, much like the N64 original you then find yourself in the castle garden, only with Yoshi in hand and not Mario.
In the N64 game, the point of the garden was to give the player a chance to get used to the new controls (Mario 64 was practically the game that invented playing with the analogue stick) before heading into the levels themselves. While we are all used to 3D games now, having the garden to practice in is still scarily appropriate here, just because the user will need to get used to the controls on the DS.

Players have two options, depending on how they want to play. They can play using the d-pad, basically playing the game using digital controls. This works quite well most of the time, but makes for lots of tapping different directions whenever the player tries to navigate in a tight space where they really need analogue control. You must also constantly hold down the run button, which is a pain. Why couldn't there be an "always run, and use the run button to walk" option?
The alternative offered is to use the touch pad for "true" analogue control. Well, almost. To make a move, you place your thumb on the touch-screen and draw a line. The direction of the line controls the direction the character moves in, and the speed at which you draw it controls the speed at which they move. Compared to using the d-pad, this is great for manoeuvring in tight spaces. The problem is, the constant need to keep repositioning your thumb every time you run out of space on the touch screen means that it's pretty much useless for everything else in the game. The N64 game had been designed to play with an analogue stick with an instant response time, and no allowances are made in this port for the fact that you have to keep stopping when using the touch screen.
If I was in charge of developing this, I might have been tempted to turn the touch screen into some kind of version of the analogue stick, with a circle drawn on the screen, where touching near the edges moved the character just as if you were moving an analogue stick to the edge of its range. It would have been the more natural alternative to me, and I'm surprised the option wasn't thrown in to play like that.
As it is, the only real way to play the game is just get used to using the d-pad, and changing the camera angles to help make up for the fact that the player can only move in 8 directions. When all is said and done, mucking about tapping the d-pad in tight spaces is quicker than putting on the pad on your thumb for a minute and using the touch screen.
Another gripe is that the buttons cannot be customised. You get a choice of 3 layouts, but that's it. To make it worse, there aren't enough buttons to map onto everything on the N64 pad, so any left over get placed on the touch screen - completely out of reach when playing using the d-pad.

Sorry to go on about the controls for so long, but then it did take me a long time before I was truly used to them. But, anyway, when he learns to stop walking into walls and falling off cliffs, Yoshi eventually has to go and rescue Mario. Heading into the castle, everything seems almost the same as the N64 version. And to be honest, most of the game is. The only difference is the abilities. Mario, when he is eventually rescued, no longer has the ability to turn invisible or turn metal. These are instead handed to Luigi and Wario. Mario does keep his ability to fly, though, which becomes his key move. Yoshi does not have access to any of these, but to make any progress they are needed, so there is a new power-up: Mario's hat. This gives Yoshi access to Mario's special moves, so he can progress when he needs to. There are also hats for Luigi and Wario, which are sometimes about when their abilities are needed. Not always though, in some places the player will actually need to have rescued them first to progress.
For the most part, Stars can be earnt regardless of which character the player picks, making the choice of player for the most part just personal choice. Or in other words, people are always going to pick Mario. ^_^

All that aside, the rest of the game is a faithful port of Mario 64. So why is it worth handing over "25 to play Mario 64 again" There are some new stages (although no new full levels), but probably the other main draw is the minigames. Throughout the castle are rabbits, each of which when caught unlocks a minigame.
These are played by the touch screen, and really show off what it's for. And not to mention, some are really clever. Wanted, the Mario version of Where's Wally, is my personal favourite (not because I'm any good at it, but because it's funny). Then there are a whole collection of games where you must launch things, guide things, pick things, press things, and set things using the touch pad. Seeing as I'm already up to a page and a half worth of text here, and the members of the forums have already provided a lengthy discussion about it, I'm not going to go any further, but the minigames are probably one of the highlights here. If you're the sort of person who likes to sit down and really eat your way through games then they're not going to last you very long before you get bored. But then you've got the main game to provide you with some substance, and it's unreasonable to expect too much length from a launch game anyway.

Last thing that I want to mention is just the general humour of the game. Yes, we've seen most of the content before on the N64. But the game pulls off the new additions with so much humour that you are tempted to put up with this, just because the rest of the game puts a smile on your face. For instance, Mario saying "Hello" and "Bye bye" every time you put the DS into sleep-mode cracked me up.

Personally, how much you like this game will depend on how much you like the minigames, and how prepared you are to put up with playing Mario 64 again. Numbers are pretty meaningless to be honest, but for what meaning it has, I'm going to give this game 8 out of 10. Where the controls handled better (and they could have been, all it would take is some usability testing), and were the main game something new (maybe a Mario game using the same engine as Mario 64?) it probably would have been worth a perfect 10.