The DS was only inventive in contrast to the Gamecube before it, where Nintendo inexplicably stopped being innovative for a generation, and then flopped hard.
It’s hard to really say that the NES wasn’t inventive in creating many of their original IPs, or the Gameboy, making them work in monochrome design. The SNES’s mode 7 and layered game design (and graphics), move into the 3D realm, and then the N64 moving into a full scale 3D realm with new ideas in audio design, and flashy visual design. Speaking of visual design, despite SNES and N64 not being the most powerful hardware on the market, does anyone remember how blown away everyone was by the almost so-real-you-could-touch 24-but visuals in DKC? (I reasiouslt wanted to eat the backgrounds)? the shining and amazingly dynamic waters of Wave Race 64? Or even the fast paced ID4-like action in the Battle of Katina in Lylat Wars?
Nintendo was really inventive - but they saw a commercial failing in the N64 and didn’t want to blame the fact they used big bulky expensive cartridges that held very little data; and instead made a console to mimick their competition instead of going their own route. People still defend the Gamecube to this day, even though it failed, and they don’t seem to recognize it as being what it was: an imitation Playstation that was purple and had weird misshapen buttons on its purple rounded-out controller made for smaller more delicate hands.
So yes, the DS does seem really inventive after that godawful generation; but for longtime Nintendo fans, it’s a return to business as usual and the Nintendo we grew up loving.
That said, not all univentiveneas is terrible, the GBA gave us a great little mini-SNES for a while. It was a nice little nostalgia machine. But once the PSP became a thing, we knew it wasn’t going to last.
But the DS saved Nintendo from what would have been a loss of their main market at the time. The DS brought with it a nice fresh addition to the gaming industry - with it came Brain Age and casual gaming + touch screen controls - which moved to mobile phones and today is one of the most widespread-popular models (playing a short period 1-X times per day, every day, over months or even years), along with a lot of other neat little inventive things in design.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
