On August 10th 2008, I received a birthday present from my parents which was a Nintendo DS Lite with New Super Mario Bros DS. I was excited for this game as I used to watch NSMB-related YouTube videos of it and even play a flash game based on NSMB called Mario's Adventure 2! That's how excited I was for that game!!! On the day that I got the game, I was very excited to see what was in store for me in my first ever Mario game!!! The story starts when Mario and Peach were coming back from a walk when they witness Peach's Castle get struck by lightning. Little do they know that it was a distraction so she can be stolen by none other than Bowser Jr!!! Mario chases him only to get hurt and reverted to Small Mario.
The stages were awesome, the gameplay was fun, the platforming is up to par with the classics, the power-ups were fun to use (especially Mega Mushroom), the bosses were also unique as well especially with the introduction of Dry Bowser and the game was just all-around great!!! I also love the Mario vs Luigi multi-player option that was in the game too!!!
The negatives would have to be the lack of challenge and the questionable mini-game section which has less mini-games than Super Mario 64 DS.
Overall, this is a great starter to the DS collection and also a game you DEFINITELY need to buy, unless you aren't into quality platforming that is!
Link to the flash game: http://www.y8.com/games/marios_adventure_2