13 Best DS Multiplayer Games

Phantasy Star 0 came out in Japan on December 25, 2008, and reached North America on November 10, 2009. You play a Hunter clearing monsters out of the wilderness on an alternate Earth. First you pick a race: versatile Humans, powerful androids called CASTs or fragile Newmans. With classes and gender on top, there are 14 customizable character types, and over 350 unique weapons to find. Offline, a Story Mode gives you AI allies. With other people, players can write freely to each other during a session instead of picking pre-composed messages.

Sega put the series on the DS to reach younger players. The players who found it describe a pocket version of Phantasy Star Online, with loot to chase and plenty to collect. It is the deepest co-op game on this list.

The DS got its own version of Black Ops, built by n-Space, and it came out in November 2010 alongside the console games. It has a Perks system for six-player online multiplayer, which is a lot of people for a DS. You tap an icon to swap weapons, or drag a new gun into an empty slot to keep both. On the two easier difficulties, Recruit and Regular, an auto lock-on helps with the aiming.

Call of Duty online on a DS sounds like a dare, and somebody took it. The big Black Ops was praised for its story and its multiplayer modes, and the DS version kept the multiplayer. It is the closest the system got to a modern online shooter.

Planet Puzzle League is the Panel de Pon series on the DS, the same game the West knew as Tetris Attack and Pokémon Puzzle League. You use the stylus to grab panels and slide them left and right. Match three or more panels of the same color and they vanish, and chains and combos set off cascading waterfalls of panels. It is also the first Panel de Pon in Japan without the series' fairy characters.

Garbage Battle is the classic versus mode: you try to outlast the opponent and send garbage blocks over to hinder them. Online matches had voice chat for players who both switched it on. One review called it "an excellent retooling of a very addictive puzzle game." Players who like puzzle games keep naming it.

Bomberman was the first entry in the series on the DS. Hudson Soft released it in Japan on May 19, 2005, and Ubisoft published it everywhere else. It has the chibi art style first seen in the Bomberman Land series, 100 stages and support for the DS microphone. The selling point was on the box: the first eight-player wireless LAN action on the DS.

Eight people in one room, all trying to trap each other with bombs, is about as loud as handheld gaming gets. Players still name it as one of the games to buy a DS for, often in the same breath as Mario Kart. A sequel, Bomberman 2, followed in 2008, but the first one is the game people remember.

Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is the only dedicated basketball game in the Mario series, and it was made by Square Enix. That makes it the second Mario game from that company after Super Mario RPG. It is also the first game where Mario and Final Fantasy characters appear together as playable characters. It came out in Japan on July 27, 2006, and in North America on September 11, 2006.

The touch screen does almost everything except movement. You dribble, pass and shoot with strokes and taps of the stylus while the d-pad steers. Power-ups like Red Shells and Bob-ombs turn the tide, and coins add to the score. Players still slip it into their lists of DS favorites. Its follow-up, Mario Sports Mix, went to the Wii.

Custom Robo Arena is the fifth game in the Custom Robo series. It came out in Japan on October 19, 2006, and in the United States on March 19, 2007, and it was the first Custom Robo released in Europe. You enter Custom Robo tournaments, earn money and spend it on parts to improve your robo. Then you take that robo into fights against everyone else's.

It is the first game in the series with a two-player mode over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, voice chat included. It also has Multi-Card play and DS Download Play, and a "Rivals" list for the people you fight most. Players keep it on their lists of DS favorites. Building a robo in the garage and then losing it to a friend's robo right away is very good for humility.

Clubhouse Games is a box of more than 20 classic board, card and party games, from checkers and darts to poker and billiards. It was developed by Agenda and part of the Touch Generations line, and it came out across 2005 and 2006, with some games varying by region. You can play alone or challenge up to seven friends with one game card through Multi-Card Play or DS Download Play. A built-in chat works like PictoChat, so trash talk is included.

The original Japanese version had no Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support, but the North American version did. It got a Switch follow-up in June 2020, Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics. Players still recommend the DS original as an easy pick for game night.

An evil planet called Meteo is throwing meteors at the galaxy, and you stop them with puzzle skills. Blocks drop onto the lower screen, you use the stylus to match blocks of the same color, and once enough are connected they launch back into the sky. Q Entertainment developed it, with Tetsuya Mizuguchi producing, the same man behind Space Channel 5 and Rez. It was inspired by Missile Command, The Matrix and the TV series 24.

Meteos received critical acclaim and reached number one in DS sales in the UK in its first week. A sequel, Meteos: Disney Magic, came in 2007. It is at its best against other people, when everyone is scratching at their screens at once. Players still bring it up as one of the system's great puzzle games.

Contra 4 came out in North America on November 13, 2007, for the series' 20th anniversary. It is a direct sequel to Contra III: The Alien Wars on the SNES, and the first original Contra on a portable since Operation C on the Game Boy in 1991. It goes back to the old way of picking up power-up icons for new weapons, and it takes advantage of both screens. Bill Rizer and Lance Bean are back, and Jake Kaufman of Shantae fame did the music.

The two-player mode is what puts it here. When Metal Slug 7 shipped on the DS without one, Contra 4 was the game held up to show it could be done. Critics hailed it as a return to form for the franchise. With a friend it is still one of the best ways to play Contra.

Mario Party DS is the second handheld game in the series and the only one on the DS. It came out in Japan on November 8, 2007, and in North America on November 19, 2007. It was also the last Mario Party developed by Hudson Soft. Bowser shrinks Mario and his friends to miniature size, so the boards are giant environments full of enormous creatures, and you still collect coins and stars along the way.

Reviews were mixed. Critics liked the minigame variety and criticized the absence of an online multiplayer mode. It sold more than nine million units worldwide anyway, which makes it the 11th-best-selling game on the DS. Players still put it on their lists of DS must-plays, right next to Mario Kart.

Metroid Prime Hunters came out in North America in March 2006, and a demo called First Hunt shipped with the DS at its launch. Nintendo Software Technology made it, because Retro Studios was busy with another game. It leans further into first-person shooting than the other Prime games, and it puts the focus on multiplayer modes with Wi-Fi and voice chat. You face rival bounty hunters, each with distinct abilities and weapons.

Over 410,000 copies sold in North America in its first month. Reviews praised the gameplay and graphics and criticized the control scheme. Nintendo Power still gave it "Best Wi-Fi Functionality". Players who stuck with the stylus say it plays far better than it sounds, and the multiplayer is the part they remember.

Tetris DS has six game modes, all built around the touch screen, and each one is themed on another Nintendo series such as The Legend of Zelda or Metroid. You can challenge up to nine other players using one cartridge, or three other players around the world over Wi-Fi. Every local multiplayer mode works with only one copy of the game through Download Play.

Critics gave it positive reviews and pointed to the extra modes and the multiplayer. Long after its release, it continued to be upheld as the best portable Tetris title, and one of the best in the series. Players agree. They name it for the hours they put in, call it easy to learn and hard to master, and keep coming back to it.

Mario Kart DS came out in November 2005 in North America and Europe and in December in Japan. It is the fifth main Mario Kart, the second on a handheld and the first you could play over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It has 16 new tracks and 16 from the earlier games, split into the Nitro and Retro Grand Prix. New items include the Blooper, which squirts ink onto other players' screens, and the Bullet Bill. It runs at a consistent 60 frames per second in full 3D.

Some reviewers were frustrated by the rubberband AI, which matters less when the other racers are your friends. It sold 23.6 million copies, which makes it the third-bestselling DS game, behind New Super Mario Bros. and Nintendogs. Players recommend it more than any other DS multiplayer game.