PLAY – Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS [Nintendo – $129.99 at Amazon]

If you need a gift for your gamer that’s going to keep permanent butt-prints from forming in your favorite living room furniture, a portable gaming system is doubtless the way to go. It’s hard to deny the momentum that the Nintendo DS is carrying with it at this point, but there’s a good reason for that: Nintendo knows how to adapt. Nintendo has not tried to force their consumers to embrace new technologies (Come on, Sony, UMD? You can do better than that.) or pay out the ear for their portable gaming. Instead, they took the Game Boy Advance, added an extra screen, incorporated a stylus, and came up with the perfect little system for the Palm generation. Innovative game designers are just now starting to figure out how to take advantage of that second screen and the stylus, with inventive entries in the portable gaming canon like Elite Beat Agents, Gunpey, and the ever-entertaining Trauma Center giving the system a unique feel that’s utterly appealing. Plus, is there a better way to kill five minutes than WarioWare: Touched? [Amazon]

Elite Beat Agents Trailer