8 Best DS Rhythm Games

Decades is the middle child of the Guitar Hero games built for the DS. Three of them came out from June 2008, with Decades between On Tour and Modern Hits. It plays like the first one: you match colored notes that scroll toward you, while the Guitar Grip's four fret buttons stand in for a guitar neck.

The big change is the music. The first game used a number of cover versions of the songs, and Decades has a complete soundtrack based on master recordings, so the songs sound like the records you know. Players who loved On Tour tend to name this one right after it. One warning before you buy: it needs the Guitar Grip in the Game Boy Advance slot, so a DSi or a 3DS, which have no such slot, cannot play it.

Band Hero came out on November 3, 2009, on five systems at once, and the DS was one of them. It is one of the spin-offs of Guitar Hero, aimed at pop fans, with Taylor Swift and the band No Doubt among the avatars in the game. A day after the release, No Doubt sued Activision over how their avatars were used, which is not the kind of press a party game hopes for.

On the DS it does something the other band games could not. Only players on the DS Lite get the full band, but the DSi and the 3DS still get the vocal parts, which you sing into the DS microphone. That makes it the one to pick if your DS has no Game Boy Advance slot. It sits one spot above Decades here.

Jam with the Band is the sequel to Daigasso! Band Brothers, a Japan-only game from the DS launch, and in Japan it went by Daigasso! Band Brothers DX. It came out in Japan in June 2008 and in Europe in May 2010, and that European release is the only English one it got. Japan loved it: it sold more than 120,000 copies in its first four days and became the 24th best-selling game of 2008 there.

The Japanese list of songs ran to more than 4,000 downloads, and the cartridge has the largest save chip used in any DS game. Edge called it the finest Nintendo DS game in recent memory. The catch was the cap, since players could only download 100 songs and could not delete them. It ranks sixth, a strong finish for a game American shops never stocked.

Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is a mouthful, so everyone calls it Ouendan 2. It is the third of three rhythm games developed by iNiS for the DS, and the sequel to the first Ouendan, released in Japan on May 17, 2007. The improvements iNiS made in Elite Beat Agents went into this one, and it added 4-player wireless play.

The story is set roughly six years after the original game, and old faces come back, like the pottery maker from the first game, who turns up as a guest at a hot spring. It is played almost entirely on the touch screen; the only button you use is Start, for pausing. Players nearly always recommend it as a pair with the first Ouendan. If Elite Beat Agents left you wanting more songs to tap, this is where they are.

Guitar Hero: On Tour was developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision, and it came with a strange idea: a Guitar Grip designed for the DS Lite, with a small adapter for the original DS. Four fret buttons sit on its side near the cartridge slot. That is one fewer than the home games, since On Tour has only four fret buttons.

Star Power is activated by yelling or blowing into the microphone, and each game in the series has more than 25 songs. Of the guitar games on the DS, this is the one players recommend most, more than twice as much as Decades. The same warning applies here: you need the grip, and you need a DS with a Game Boy Advance slot to plug it into. Players will tell you to check for the grip before you pay for the game.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan came out on July 28, 2005, for release only in Japan. It was developed by iNiS and published by Nintendo, with Keiichi Yano directing. You tap numbered circles in sequence in time with the music, mostly Japanese pop songs, and depending on how precise you are you get 50, 100, or 300 points for each one.

The heroes are the Ouendan, a cheer squad in black school uniforms with red armbands, who help people work through their problems by cheering them through music. It was a popular import to the West, and that led to Elite Beat Agents. The free computer game osu! was inspired by it too. Players who finish Elite Beat Agents get told to import the Japanese games next. It ranks third, and its lead over the guitar games below is huge.

Rhythm Heaven was first released in Japan in July 2008, and in North America, Europe, Oceania, and South Korea throughout 2009. It is the second game in the series, after the Japan-only Rhythm Tengoku on the Game Boy Advance, so it is the first one localized outside of Japan. It is a collection of rhythm minigames where you follow the rhythm mainly through audio cues. Playing with the sound off is a terrible idea.

The music was composed by Tsunku and Masami Yone, and the vocals were re-recorded in English for the Western version. Perfect runs make you clear a game without a single mistake, with only three attempts per cycle. Players still remember it as the game they lost hours to. It finished a whisker behind the top spot, close enough to argue about over dinner.

Elite Beat Agents was the second of three rhythm games iNiS made for the DS, and the international counterpart to Ouendan. You tap and drag on the touch screen in time to the music, while the upper screen shows comic-style scenes of the agents dancing people through bad days. The first jobs are small, like helping a babysitter control a trio of rowdy children, and then the stories become more fantastic, with higher stakes. The songs are performed by cover artists and cut to about three minutes.

Then there is A Christmas Gift, where the agents help a young girl reunite with the spirit of her late father, and the usual percussion is replaced with subtle chimes. Good luck getting through it dry-eyed. Sales were not as high as expected, but critics loved it and it won several 2006 gaming awards. Players recommend it more than any other DS rhythm game.