The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

When Nintendo's new Legend of Zelda game for the DS was announced some months back, everyone marveled at the game's use of the graphical style found in the GameCube Zelda title, The Wind Waker. However, nobody paid much mind to how the game played. Looking similar to the types of top-down-viewpoint Zelda games found on previous Nintendo handhelds, everyone likely expected the game to just use the button controls and D pad, with some ancillary touch-screen functionality. Imagine everyone's shock after playing the E3 2006 demo of the game, when they learned that nearly every function in the game is handled exclusively via the touch screen. Perhaps even more shocking than that, it's handled really, really well.

Movie

Nintendo reps give an in-depth look at Phantom Hourglass during our live E3 2006 broadcast.

Watch It »

Lots of games have tried to rely on touch-screen control as the primary source of action, but few have managed to do it well. Phantom Hourglass seems like it could be the game to finally bring it all together. Simply using the stylus to move Link around and execute his various attacks is incredibly easy and intuitive, from what we've seen. Every aspect of combat, item collection, and character movement simply relies on taps of the stylus, and every action seemed fully responsive. Combine the cool new controls with a full-on new Zelda quest that's chock-full of puzzles and cool enemies to dispatch, plus a really excellent graphical style, and Phantom Hourglass just about blew us away with its showing at E3 2006. There just isn't any other DS game on the horizon as exciting as this, and we can't wait to play more of it.

Finalists

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2
New Super Mario Bros.
Starfox DS