The folks at GamePro have put together a pretty interesting feature listing their picks for the top 52 most important games ever. These aren't necessarily the best games, or the best-selling games, but their choices for those titles that have been the most influential on gaming as a whole. And while we're sure many of their picks will be questioned and debated to the point of exhaustion, we're really only interested in one small part of the list -- that is, the only DS title to make the cut. Nintendogs weighs in at #44. Does this mean it's the most influential of all DS games? Since it's the only one on the list, it would seem so, and while we agree that Nintendogs certainly advanced gaming, we might argue that since the franchise draws heavily on both Animal Crossing and the digital pet phenomenon, it's hard to see Nintendogs as a "focusing lens" that forever changed gaming. Does that mean Nintendogs did nothing new? Of course it did. But the idea of a needy digipet existed long before Nintendo popularized the portable pooches with their array of titles. GamePro says "first" doesn't matter -- it's being the folks that do it right that matters -- Nintendogs certainly did a lot of things right, but is it the most important game on the DS? It's an interesting question.And we have a question of our own -- where's Brain Age? The game that started the training phenomenon is easily equally influential, or perhaps even more so. But we won't argue; rather, we admire the effort that goes into such a list, and after skimming the comments on the article, we don't envy the flood of angry e-mails that are surely flowing into the mailboxes of the writers.
And she might! Thanks to the alluring and radical power of the DS. How many of you guys have been searching for your DS high and low for a rousing game of Metroid Prime: Hunters, only to find your mother or sister locked away in their rooms caring for their virtual canines? How about Animal Crossing, Electroplankton, or even more traditional fare?
It's becoming more and more common for games to require or expect you to play every day; quite a few of the big sellers on the DS encourage daily gameplay, in fact. Frankly, we're hesitant to say that we really like that. Expected every day is one thing, but Animal Crossing and Nintendogs seem to take it pretty far. In the former, you often find yourself gently scolded by the other inhabitants, and in the latter ... by not playing, you are starving puppies and are therefore a bad person. That's just harsh.
We don't have to tell you about the resounding success of Nintendogs -- it's likely that you've played it, or at least known someone caught up in the doings of their electronic pups. Dozens of knock-offs and other pet franchises are crowding in as well, hoping to cash in on the demand for portable pets. The DS does seem uniquely suited as a system to virtual pet games of all types; the touch screen, after all, offers a level of versatility most control schemes can't match. Convenience is another likely factor in the popularity of such games, and the DS is nothing if not convenient. The 
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