My daughter’s going to be surprised this Xmas with her own GameBoy DS, and while my 18-year-old son can wax on for hours about his favorite games, he only came up with Super Princess Peach as a possible for the DS, and that one’s not available on Amazon.
So I’m turning to the collective wisdom of the Dopers for help. Any good games for a 12-year-old girl on the DS?
I was all set to say “For D/s, bad girl games are more fun :D”, but as you’re talking about a 12yo, best not.
slinks out
Cooking Mama I hear is very good.
Also I played the original Lost in Blue, and there’s a sequel out that looks interesting. It’s a game where you’re stuck on an island and have to survive by finding food, making fire, that sort of thing. Pretty good.
New Super Mario Bros is a classic. So Mario Kart DS
Um, if she likes tetris-like games than I highly recommend Meteos.
um, dunno, never been a 12 year old girl 
and I mostly use my DS as a denshi jishou so… yea, can’t help TOO much
ETA: err, sorry, denshi jishou is an electronic japanese dictionary
Just so you know, it’s a Nintendo DS. The GameBoy is Nintendo’s older line of handheld systems.
For games that would specifically appeal to girls, I haven’t played these but they are well reviewed. Animal Crossing: Wild World might be a good pick. Nonviolent, on the cutesy side, you basically go around interacting with people in a town. Super Princess Peach is supposed to be a pretty good platformer (albeit a wee bit on the sexist side, what with Peach’s powers being based on her exaggerated emotions), so your son was probably on target with that. The Nintendogs were supposed to be fun virtual pet games and popular with women.
Are you specifically looking for girly games for her (horses and fashion and all that whatnot) or just games with a cross-gender appeal? There are plenty of good games out there, but it’s hard to make suggestions without knowing more about what she would enjoy. Do you have any examples of games she likes, or does she not play many games in general?
As for games that I would personally recommend, Yoshi’s Island is a very good platform game, should appeal to anyone. Everyone loves Zelda games regardless of of age or gender, and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is supposed to be a darn good one. Elite Beat Agents is a darn fun rhythm game, though I admit I don’t know how well it would be received by a younger audience.
Rocket Slime has tons of cross-gender appeal and is super-fun.
I don’t know your daughter’s tastes but going on the vast negative stereotype that girls don’t like the “serious” games boys do I have a few suggestions:
I’ve been playing Clubhouse Games lately which is a collection of over forty traditional games. What makes this package special is the breadth of games included, the fact that they are all very well implemented, and the fact that one person with the cartridge can wirelessly spread the client to other DS’s so that one cartridge means anyone with a DS nearby can play with them. So far my only complaint is that there’s no Go as part of it despite the fact that one of the game uses the board and stones.
Puzzle Quest is a fun game along the lines of Bejeweled except it has an RPG wrapper around it.
And you can’t hear Elite Beat Agents enough. When I found a bunch of copies for $7 each I gave them to everyone I knew with a DS because I loved it so much.
Princess Debut looks so good that I (adult man) want a copy.
I’m a girl, and I was, at one point, 12.
I would get her:
Nintendogs
Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time
Another Code: Two memories (a great little adventure game, with a 13-year-old girl as the main protagonist. If she likes it, get her Hotel Dusk: Room 215 as well, it’s a similar game by the same people.)
Trauma Center: Under the Knife is good fun, but there is (unrealistic) blood, so you may wish to play it yourself first before you decide if it is appropriate. I would have loved it at her age. All the illnesses are fictional and quite loopy (at one point, you have to opperate a sort of aggressive goldfish out of someone’s lungs, I kid you not.)
My 12-year old daughter loves Nintendogs and Pokemon. She also recently got New Super Mario Bros. with her birthday money. With her friends, she likes to play Worms: Open Warfare and Mario Kart DS.
Wow! Great replies. She’s super at Mario Kart and loves Dance Dance Revolution (even though she just wore out the $50 mat :()
She also plays Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and the Mario Haunted House game (drawing a blank here).
But you’ve given me a dozen games to look up (I’m already checking out Princess Debut, thanks Freejooky!) and I’ll be looking up the others as well.
Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions! She’s gonna be squealing on Christmas!
What is a girl game? One that isn’t fun?
I second Lost In Blue, Animal Crossing, Elite Beat Agents, and any game from the Mario universe. They’re all tried and true by my own daughter.
Also: Any of the games in the Ace Attorney series (Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice.) They’re also my daughter’s faves.
As a girl, my favourite game on my DS is Resident Evil DS.
There is a Harvest Moon game for the DS, but I’ve never played it. We do, however, have one called “Rune Factory” which is like Harvest Moon but you also fight monsters like an RPG. Don’t know if that one’s still in print, though.
I’m not a girl nor do I have kids but I loved the Gameboy version of Picross when I was a wee lad. They have an updated version for the DS that’s pretty darned fun with lots more puzzles. You can even download the original version’s puzzles to your cartridge for free if you have WiFi.
I used to do this for a living at Gamestop—recommending games all day long. I’d like to know more about her, if that’s possible. What kind of personality does she have? What are her favorite movies, books, or TV shows? There’s no set rule for what kind of games girls like.
I am a DS fanatic, and I play games of all types, so I’ll give some suggestions anyway.
Trace Memory, which was suggested above, is a great adventure game, but your daughter would have to be interested in a sort sad, bleak storyline and old-school Myst-style gameplay.
Animal Crossing: Wild World is almost a necessary purchase for any DS owner. Anyone, girl or boy, can get drawn into the very strange, cute world that your little avatar lives in. Collecting items, celebrating funny holidays (ACORN FESTIVAL!), and meeting strange animal neighbors.
Phoenix Wright is a story-driven game series in a fictional future where solving murders is done by lawyers, and anything goes in a courtroom. There are three Phoenix Wright games (Ace Attorney, Justice for All, and Trials and Tribulations), and one Apollo Justice game (same game, new protagonist), and more on the way. I love these games with all my heart. They’re funny, cute, engaging, and I never get tired of playing them. But she has to be into really dialogue-heavy adventure games.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a really complex game with beautiful animated cutscenes that revolves around solving brainteasers to advance the story. It also has the option of downloading new brainteasers and bonus puzzles. Highly recommended, since it’s both educational (lots of math and logic puzzles), and really fun.
Wario Ware Touch! and any Wario Ware, Inc. Gameboy games. These are amazing mini-game challenges that will keep her busy for hours. These games are an automatic purchase for me and I haven’t been disappointed yet. They have silly things like a booger-picking mini-game and a bunch of mini-games based around blowing into the microphone.
Cooking Mama games might also be fun. Similar to Wario Ware, these are all mini-games that create a larger recipe. Without the presence of Educated Mama or Executive Mama, the games are a little sexist, but they’re so damn cute that I just don’t care.
There are plenty more games, but like I said, I’d like to know more about your daughter first. The games I suggested are universally appealing, so they’re a good place to start.
Sorry for the double post, but I forgot one: Mario Kart DS is also a good game for just about anyone. Just a really fun racing game with no horrible learning curve like realistic racing games.
From my own collection:
Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time: A fun RPG, makes good use of the dual-screens, but is a bit short. I’d actually recommend the GBA Superstar Saga instead. It can be played on the DS and I found it much more satisfying.
Elite Beat Agents: Let me put it this way–I got a DS SOLELY for this game. It’s insanely fun, has a good selection of songs, at least a few of which she’s sure to already know, has amusing stories, and is very addictive. It’s also the best example of a game made specifically FOR the DS that I’ve ever seen.
Puzzle Quest: Good game, one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played (moreso than even EBA or WoW). Makes good use of the double screens and the stylus, it takes a long time just to get through the story once, and is an interesting mix of genres. It does have a couple glitch issues, but they happen rarely enough not to be major issues. Not sure if it’s good for your daughter (it’s a little complicated to fully understand) but otherwise a good game, and the DS is possibly the best platform for it.
Final Fantasy III: Eh…no. Good for those who want to play old-school FF, but I doubt your daughter is in that category.
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: Good game with one fatal flaw–incidentally, the part of the game that actually uses the hourglass. There’s a temple that you have to return to at certain points to advance the plot, and the best description I’ve heard of it is ‘hurry up and wait’ which makes it rather annoying. That’s not the killer part though–the killer is that you have to start again from the beginning every. single. time. You do get a warp point at the 6th level–just before all the really annoying sections. Once I got to having to repeat the first section after it, I said screw it. Other than that, it’s a good Zelda game that uses the stylus well, and I’d recommend it without reservations if it weren’t for that damn temple ><
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: It’s a sequel to the GBA version, but playable without it. It fixes the Law system, making it much more friendly to deal with, and uses the upper screen to make info easier to access than in its predecessor. A good tactical RPG, if a bit slow, good for your daughter’s age, and doesn’t suffer from the shortness that many DS games suffer from.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Another good tactical RPG of reasonable length. Not the best for a 12yo though, assuming she’s new to the genre–it relies purely on strategy (no levelling up to make things easier) and there isn’t really any ‘best’ unit to use–I’d probably start her off with FFA2 if you want to get her an SPRG. Good storyline though, and you can create your own maps and play through the 'net.
I’ll also point out that there’s a few of us who cringe when people mention ‘girl’ games. It really depends on a person’s interests what they enjoy, and gender really doesn’t come into it (unless you’re talking Barbie or something like that).
Put me in that camp, too. (Also, we own, like, all the same games. :D)
I ran into this at Gamestop a lot. Two scenarios, different responses:
Parent comes in and says, “I’m looking for a game for my son.”
“What kind of games does he play? What other things does he like?”
“Oh, he loves those racing games, and he likes fighting games.”
Parent comes in and says, “I’m looking for a game for my daughter.”
“What kind of games does she play? What other things does she like?”
“I don’t know. What are some good girl games?”
Honestly, pesch, I think your daughter will enjoy a lot of the suggestions in this thread. I noticed most of them are gender-neutral. I would stay away from titles that are stereotypically girly—you can spot them a mile away—because they’re usually badly designed games that use gender to up sales in what’s now considered a “niche market.” You want quality, not gender-appropriateness.