Best Homebrew Games for the Nintendo DS

Real-Time Strategy (RTS): A Touch of War

The Nintendo DS has plenty of turn-based strategy games — Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a good example — but it's a little lacking for heart-stopping real-time strategy (RTS) games.

Luckily, you can treat the Nintendo DS's RTS deficiency with A Touch of War. It offers good times with big, colorful sprite graphics and medieval soldiers who are out for blood. Keep a store of air in your lungs; you won't have time to breathe.

Strategy: DiceWars DS

DiceWars DS is an addictive strategy game that plays a lot like Risk. It's you versus seven computer-controlled opponents, and everybody is hungry for land. If you're a fan of Risk, don't let this one slip you by.

Roguelike Role-Playing Game (RPG): POWDER

What's a roguelike RPG? It's dungeon-crawling in its purest, most merciless form. You explore endless labyrinths teeming with unimaginable evils and magnificent treasure. No two visits to the underworld are ever the same; the dungeon layouts change every time you plumb the depths.

POWDER brings the torment and satisfaction of the roguelike experience to the Nintendo DS. True to roguelike tradition, the game's graphics are simple, but you're not playing the game to gawk at the scenery. You're playing to better yourself as an adventurer.

Two-Dimensional Action: MegaETK

Fans of the Mega Man series will find a lot to like about MegaETK, a homebrew game that combines 2D platforming action with minor RPG elements. Jump around, blast enemies, take on colorful bosses, save money, and burden your little Mega Man clone with a shopping addiction.

Real-Time Strategy (RTS)/Tower Defense: Warcraft: Tower Defense

If you're looking for a particularly intense experience, Warcraft: Tower Defense combines real-time strategy with tower defense — a genre that, as its name suggests, involves protecting a home base against an endless onslaught of enemies. In Warcraft: Tower Defense, you defend against invading forces by building and upgrading projectile-flinging towers.

Two-Dimensional Action: Xrick DS

Xrick DS is a Nintendo DS port of Xrick for the PC, which in turn is a side-scrolling game heavily inspired by Rick Dangerous, a 2D adventure game developed for the PC in the late '80s.

Confused yet? The original Rick Dangerous was put together by Core, a company that went on to give life to one of ​gaming's most recognizable explorers: Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series. Like its source material, Xrick DS is heavily inspired by the Indiana Jones movies. Expect lots of thrills, spills, and rolling rocks.

First-Person Shooter (FPS): Quake DS

Bring the definitive '90s first-person shooter to the Nintendo DS with QuakeDS. This was the game that you quietly installed and pecked at while your computer lab teacher droned on about some programming issue. Download the homebrew adaptation and relive the magic.

Physics/Puzzle: Pocket Physics

If you enjoy making a mockery out of the laws of gravity in Crayon Physics or Crayon Physics Deluxe for the PC and iPhone, you'll want to download Pocket Physics for the Nintendo DS.

The basic premise should be familiar to fans of Crayon Physics: You draw objects on the touch screen, and they become real and interact with their environment through accurate physics. Balls roll down ramps and knock over dominoes, and golf clubs swing on hinges to knock projectiles across the screen. Let your inner physicist burst forth.