What Onyxmeth said.

No. the DS is a in completely different league. also, how could it surpass the N64's potential? this is the DS. it has surpassed the DS's potential.

I concur with everything this gentleman says.

The DS was the beginning of changing the input/interaction process.

It made the Wii possible. Had it not fared well, Nintendo would have taken another direction.

As for it spiritually being the N64 in miniature form, I find that hard to believe because the titles that have propelled the handheld are not the types of titles that "gamers" like to think of as games. They have been "brain games" and, even worse, "girl games."

Mike from Morgantown

I think what really propelled the system was the combination of "gamers games" and "brain/girl games. xP

Hmm it has smilier graphics though they are not the same. I think that its the N64 done right on handhelds.Since its the third handheld. Though I think that the first 3-D mario games 64,GC and wii is like the first three 2-D games on the nes. Is history repeating itself? Galaxy 2 mario world?

Just to nitpick, (and these are nits that I'm picking, because your overall gist in this paragraph is right on), the GB and GBC weren't really based on NES arcitecture, only had similar capabilities. The most obvious being that the NES was running an 6502 processor, while the GB series was running a custom z80 based CPU. Secondly, the whole "bit" thing is more of a marketing thing. The Intellivision was 16-bit, the original Xbox was 32-bit. (Sorry, but I always feel compelled to point crap like that out.)

As for the overall question, while the DS and N64 have similar capabilities, they are both very unique creations. The N64 went right along with the general 3D-mania of the time, which was to take 2D out behind a shed and shoot it. Which is a shame, because so much could still have been done with 2D gameplay. But the people wanted 3D.

In many ways, I see the DS as everything the SNES wanted to be, and then some. Looking at games like Yoshi's Island, you can see Nintendo knew that much more could be done with 2D gameplay. That potential wasn't really realised until the DS and games like NSMB. Furthermore, the touch screen allows it to do stuff no other console, except, perhaps, the Wii can even think of.

In my mind, the DS is the ultimate 2D system, while still packing a very good 3D punch.

DS is the best nintendo system since the SNES.

The SNES, N64, Gamecube and Gameboy Advance are consoles which can said to be related because they were essentially Nintendo following conventional wisdom in what people said gamers wanted. The NES, Gameboy, Nintendo DS and Wii are consoles which can said to be related because Nintendo decided to break with convention and produce something drastically different than people expected.

Edit: While you could claim that the similar processing power would make the Nintendo DS the spiritual successor to the N64 I personally think that it is much more the spritual successor to the NES; and I believe it has done as well for building the company and the market as the NES did back in the day.

What both these people said.