Back in the days when word was first leaking out that Nintendo was going to release the Ultra 64, many people thought that it was going to revolutionize gaming with its Hollywood caliber CGI technology and continue Nintendo's domination of the games market in the wake of the incredible Super Nintendo.  After a few crucial events:  Nintendo's sticking with cartridges when most people and developers wanted to work with CD Rom, Square's deciding to develop exclusively for PS1 in the 32 bit era, only a few launch titles for N64 (even though everybody wanted Super Mario 64), and the Virtua Boy that seemed to cast a dent in Nintendo's public image at the time, the N64 didn't seem to live up to its potential and Nintendo except for handhelds entered a dark age for their company.

    After over a decade of maintaining the Gameboy and later the Gameboy Color (based off of NES architecture) as the dominant handheld console, Nintendo released the Gameboy Advance in 2001.  And this handheld seemed to capture all the excitement and spirit that Nintendo had in the 16 bit era with SNES (it may have been a little more powerful than SNES -- it is supposed to be a 32 bit machine while SNES was a 16 bit machine) and many key franchises from Nintendo's illustrious past including new games from Square came back to this Nintendo handheld.  Truely it was as if The Super Nintendo was reborn in the portable.

    In the holidays 2004, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS and it released with the same game that the N64 did Super Mario 64 DS version.  Since then, there has been no going back for the DS.  It has continued and further strengthened Nintendo's domination of handheld gaming.  It has amassed some of the highest sales of any console possibly even rivalling the sales of Original Gameboy and has one of the strongest and most varied libraries of any console in history frequently rated right up there with the lineups of Nintendo's Super Nintendo Gameboy Advance and Playstation One and Two.

    However, when I think of the history of the DS, I think it must be the N64 reborn and finally living up to or surpassing all of the potential we all knew the Ultra  /  Nintendo 64 way back in the mid nineties.

    Do you think that the DS is the reincarnation of the N64 except this time it has been living up to and possibly even surpassing its potential?

I think so. The 64 is my favorite console of all time. The DS is my favorite handheld of all time. Both look the same, for the most part, in game. This is how the N64 should have rolled.

Well N64 is my favorite console of all time. So that's trying to say a lot but DS has one of the best selection of games on the market today possibly ever. So its arguable. But I doubt it is the spiritual successor.

I think the fact that the 64 was a console and the DS is a handheld makes this whole discussion dubious.

I was going to say 64 is my favorite console, but that has changed this gen.

Also.. the DS isnt comparable to the 64, not because of quality, but because they are very different..

I don't think so. While the GBA had a lot of remakes from the SNES (RPG's, Platformers etc) and also a lot of sequels to popular franchises from back then that played almost like the original (F-Zero for example, or Zelda), the DS has very little such games. Actually, only Mario 64 comes to mind as a N64 remake. On the other hand, there are a lot of 2D games, which the N64 lacked completely, or sequels to franchises started on the GBA (Mario & Luigi or Mario vs. Donkey Kong for example. And of course, there are all of those typical DS casual/bridge games. Also, very typical for the N64 were the free-roaming 3D platformers/action-adventures, and these games are almost inexistable on the DS, I think primarily due to the lack of a Joystick.

So for me, it definitely isn't the sucessor to the N64, one of the greatest consoles ever made, but it is something unique, and maybe the best handheld ever made.

I'd say the DS is the spirit of the N64 reincarnated in haldheld form to show how even more awesome the N64 could have been if everything would have went right with it.

The DS is a champion of 2D gaming, something the N64 never was or ever tried to be. It has a more robust offering of titles across far more genres than the N64 could ever hope to have. I don't really see much of a connection, since the philosophy of the N64 seemed to be "Kill 2D off!" while the DS seems to be "What amazing things can we do with two screens, an SNES controller setup and a touch screen?".

Overall I don't see how the N64 can really compete with the DS. N64 was better at sports, racing and 3D platforming titles. The DS is better at basically everything else, and contains many genres that could never even have worked on the N64.If we broke it down by genre, and showed side by side how each performs with quality software, it would show a huge lean in the DS's direction.

To me it's not even a contest. DS by a country mile.

You can't really compare the DS and 64. They're totally different.