1. Mario Kart DS

The Mario Kart formula hasn't changed since the beginning of the series: Mario universe characters race in adorably tiny little cars, and throw stuff at each other. And they haven't needed to change. Mario Kart games are always well-received, always popular, and always staples of the multiplayer Nintendo experience. The DS version controls just like its predecessors: with the D-pad and buttons, to great effect. The bottom screen shows a map of the track – map screens, of course, are the second-screen display for games that don't need the second screen. The DS version brought the welcome addition of online play, but internet connectivity is hardly unique to the DS.

2. Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Like the other games on the list, Advance Wars comes from a line of games that dates back to the NES (or, more accurately, the Famicom: the series is called Famicom Wars in Japan). Predictably, for the series to have made it into the 21st century, previous incarnations must have been okay without touch screens. And they were! When the strategy series finally made it outside Japan in its Game Boy Advance form (hence the "Advance Wars" title) it became a hit in Western territories. Advance Wars: Dual Strike's optional stylus controls are just that – otional, and dispreferred to the traditional button/D-pad interface. The character portraits on the second screen might add to the experience for some players, and the unit information is somewhat useful, but these features aren't essential to gameplay.

3. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow benefits more than most of the other games from the DS's dual screens, but even so, the second screen is almost completely unnecessary. Map screens have been included in Castlevania since the very beginning; constantly-updated automaps have been a part of the game since the series went free-roaming in Symphony of the Night. The DS version allows you to have a constant view of the map screen, which is nice. It doesn't change the nature of the game at all, and it hardly means that the game is better on DS than it would have been on any other system. The touch screen implementation in this game is somewhere between "token" and "annoying", breaking the flow of boss battles and forcing you to draw shapes on the screen correctly to kill bosses. We're glad Konami didn't try to make Dawn of Sorrow more "innovative."

4. New Super Mario Bros.

New Super Mario Bros. is about as traditional as a game can get. It draws directly from the original Super Mario Bros., the game from which many design traditions originated. There's nothing more complicated here than there was in the Super NES Super Mario World. Mario runs, jumps, breaks blocks, collects powerups, and shoots fireballs just like he has for the last twenty years. And as such, NSMB would have been equally brilliant on any system of the last twenty years. All of the brilliance of NSMB is in the level design anyway! The bottom screen is kind of a joke – do we really need a progress bar for Mario levels? The touch screen is only used to select reserve items, which was controlled by the Select button in Super Mario World, and works about as well in either case.

5. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time is a confluence of classic game influences: it's a platforming RPG set in the venerated Mario universe. RPG's as a genre are generally not innovative in terms of control schemes: any method of input will allow for choosing from menus. Mario & Luigi: PiT uses some good old-fashioned platforming in its interface, which makes it somewhat more control-intensive than your average Dragon Quest, but still something that has been proven to work on the NES pad many times. Furthermore, this specific series has been proven to be great on the Game Boy Advance, which was both screen–and touch!–deficient.