Two decades of Nintendo's top-selling DS console

The hand-held DS console, which introduced a new wave of casual gamers to Nintendo, turned 20 on Thursday.

The Nintendo DS remains the Japanese company's most significant commercial success. It has sold 154 million units worldwide, making it the second most-sold video game console behind Sony's PlayStation 2.

Pre-empting smartphone games with its touch screen and controlled with a stylus, the DS shook up the gaming world when it launched on November 21, 2004.

"Even people who had never touched a games console before easily understood how to use it, thanks to the touch screen and because it could be held horizontally or vertically," game history expert Hiroyuki Maeda told AFP.

With its double screen and flip-open design, the console was designed to appeal to video game newcomers.

(FILES) This file photo taken on October 7, 2004 shows Japanese video game giant Nintendo game creator Shigeru Miyamoto displaying the company's new portable video game which features a double LCD display and touch sensor "DS", at a press preview in Tokyo. It conquered a new audience of non-gamers and prefigured smartphone gaming with its touch screen: the Nintendo DS handheld console, the Japanese video game giant's biggest commercial success, will celebrate its 20th anniversary on November 21, 2024.Photo by YOSHIKAZU TSUNO / AFP

At the time, the Kyoto-based game giant was rethinking its strategy after disappointing sales of its Nintendo 64 and GameCube consoles. Nintendo's president at the time, Satoru Iwata, wanted "to expand the gaming population."

"Whether a person was good at gaming or not was no longer important," Maeda said, explaining that Nintendo had "made something into a game that was not before".

An updated version of the DS, the Nintendo DSi, was launched in 2008. It added two cameras and the ability to download apps to the original design.

According to Maeda, the DS "served as a link between the Game Boy," Nintendo's classic hand-held console first released in 1989, and modern-day smartphones.