I recently picked up two new games for my Nintendo DS: Tetris DS and Bust A Move DS.

Bust A Move is, well, like every other BaM game out there. It’s a pretty fun puzzle game, but this time you use the touch screen to “throw” the little ball onto the playing field. It’s a decent game, and has multi player modes (no WiFi), but it’s not that great. If you really love BaM, get it, otherwise I’d hold off for something else. I say this not because the game isn’t good, but because it doesn’t give you ANY alternate game play…which brings us to….

Tetris DS. This is really a great game that I’ll be playing for hours on end. You get your regular dose of Tetris, which is still a great game. But, the real fun is in the alternate games they have. There are “TOUCH” games where you use the pointer to move pieces around to remove stacks of pieces (hard to explain, but really fun). There’s a “PUSH” games where you battle head-to-head on a single playing field, trying to “push” the other player across a boundry line.  There are ”PUZZLE” modes where you try to do certain things with the pieces they give you.

These alternate games are MUCH MUCH better than those found on the GameBoy Advance version of Tetris (Tetris Worlds, I believe). Those seemed simple and tagged on. These seem like independent games. Loads of fun.

Plus, the best part of all this is that you can play multi player–either locally or on WiFi. That means Ev and I can play most of the games head-to-head with one cartridge. Or, I could play against anyone in the world using WiFi (I’m working on getting this to work with my Verizon EVDO wireless card–I’ll probably need to buy Nintendo’s WiFi USB gizmo).

So, in summary, Tetris DS is a must-buy if you like puzzle games. Bust A Move is okay, but really doesn’t give you anything special (though it is pretty “cheap”–I picked it up for $22 down here). I’ll probably be playing BaM more in two-player wireless mode, but I’ll be playing Tetris DS all the time.