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Best-selling DS games reported to have sold at least one million

The Nintendo-published ones are sourced from: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...hardware-sales-data-from-1983-to-present.170/. All other reports are taken from various other sources, as compiled on https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_DS

They are:
  1. New Super Mario Bros. - 30,800,000
  2. Nintendogs (all versions) - 23,960,000
  3. Mario Kart DS - 23,600,000
  4. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! - 19,010,000
  5. Pokémon Diamond / Pearl - 17,670,000
  6. Pokémon Black / White - 15,640,000
  7. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! - 14,880,000
  8. Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 12,720,000
  9. Animal Crossing: Wild World - 11,750,000
  10. Super Mario 64 DS - 11,060,000
  11. Mario Party DS - 9,310,000
  12. Pokémon Black 2 / White 2 - 8,520,000
  13. Pokémon Platinum - 7,600,000
  14. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies - 7,218,223
  15. Big Brain Academy - 6,150,000
  16. Cooking Mama - 5,490,000
  17. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness - 4,880,000
  18. The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - 4,760,000
  19. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga - 4,760,000
  20. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - 4,560,000
  21. Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 4,462,561
  22. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - 4,220,000
  23. English Training: Have Fun Improving Your Skills! - 3,910,000
  24. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - 3,835,630
  25. Tomodachi Collection - 3,760,000
  26. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team - 3,490,000
  27. Yoshi's Island DS - 3,360,000
  28. Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day - 3,230,000
  29. Personal Trainer: Cooking - 3,180,000
  30. Rhythm Heaven - 3,040,000
  31. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - 3,002,170
  32. Kirby Super Star Ultra - 2,990,000
  33. Style Savvy - 2,980,000
  34. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! - 2,980,000
  35. The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - 2,960,000
  36. Pokémon Ranger - 2,930,000
  37. Tetris DS - 2,740,000
  38. Imagine: Babyz - 2,670,000
  39. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - 2,586,973
  40. Clubhouse Games - 2,570,000
  41. WarioWare: Touched! - 2,470,000
  42. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride - 2,370,582
  43. Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia - 2,350,000
  44. Art Academy - 2,330,000
  45. Kirby: Squeak Squad - 2,270,000
  46. Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation - 2,257,473
  47. Final Fantasy III - 2,100,000
  48. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 - 2,067,166
  49. Mario Hoops 3-on-3 - 2,030,000
  50. Professor Layton and the Last Specter - 2,016,069
  51. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time - 1,730,000
  52. Super Princess Peach - 1,700,000
  53. General Knowledge Training - 1,680,000
  54. Sonic Rush - 1,620,000
  55. Diddy Kong Racing DS - 1,590,000
  56. Practise English! - 1,550,000
  57. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker - 1,542,472
  58. Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs - 1,530,000
  59. Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis - 1,520,000
  60. Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force - 1,500,000
  61. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky - 1,490,000
  62. Personal Trainer: Math - 1,370,000
  63. Hannah Montana - 1,300,000
  64. Kirby Mass Attack - 1,220,000
  65. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - 1,220,000
  66. High School Musical: Makin' the Cut! - 1,200,000
  67. Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir - 1,180,000
  68. Inazuma Eleven 2: Firestorm / Blizzard - 1,157,346
  69. Final Fantasy IV - 1,138,741
  70. Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop - 1,110,046
  71. Guitar Hero: On Tour - 1,100,000
  72. Chrono Trigger - 1,100,000
  73. Metroid Prime Hunters - 1,080,000
  74. Oshare Majo Love and Berry: DS Collection - 1,055,821
  75. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings - 1,044,039
  76. Inazuma Eleven 3: Lightning Bolt / Bomb Blast - 1,018,381
  77. MySims - 1,000,000
  78. Imagine: Fashion Designer - 1,000,000
  79. Scribblenauts - 1,000,000
  80. Drawn to Life - 1,000,000
  81. Spectrobes - 1,000,000
  82. Pony Friends - 1,000,000
  83. Carnival Games - 1,000,000
Notable games I can't find reports of having sold at least one million:

The World Ends with You
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Radiant Historia
Disgaea DS
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Elite Beat Agents
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Okamiden
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Mega Man ZX
Contra 4
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
Pokemon Conquest
Resident Evil: Deadly Silence
WarioWare D.I.Y.
Phantasy Star Zero
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Sonic Rush Adventure
Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Etrian Odyssey
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume
Kirby: Canvas Curse
Kingdom Hearts Re:coded
Trace Memory
 
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Whoa Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies sold 7,218,223 in just the US? Is that the best selling DQ in the US?
 
FF12 RW selling that much is kinda surprising.

It sold quite a bit in the US and Europe, yeah:

"During the fiscal year under review, the Company released a number of titles for Nintendo DS, including "DRAGON QUEST IV" (1.15 million units in Japan as of March 31, 2008; hereafter references to units sold are as of that date), "FINAL FANTASY IV" (590 thousand units in Japan), "FINAL FANTASY XII: REVENANT WINGS" (540 thousand units in Japan, 220 thousand units in North America and 280 thousand units in Europe), "Itadaki Street DS" (430 thousand units in Japan), "FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Ring of Fates" (380 thousand units in Japan, 160 thousand units in North America and 150 thousand units in Europe) and "FINAL FANTASY III" (480 thousand units in Europe)." - https://web.archive.org/web/20081206115259/www.square-enix.com/eng/pdf/ar/20080808_01.pdf
 
Imagine, lol. Cooking Mama was a monster, though. Really happy about Layton games, there used to be a stock browser game based on sales, I remember buying Layton long and it made me quite a lot of virtual currency. Happy for Inazuma too. Not surprised about Trace Memory, Elite Beat Agents, Hotel Dusk, Etrian or Trauma Center, I own all those games, they were probably too quirky. Pleasantly surprised (and grateful) that Atlus gave Etrian so many opportunities even though it was never a million seller.
 
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Imagine, lol.
Ubisoft put out dozens of them on DS, so there are likely more of them that are million sellers, since they had sold 13 million by 2009: https://staticctf.ubisoft.com/8aefm...7e/2009_-_Download_the_Reference_Document.pdf

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worldwide list, not US only like the rest OP made
Yeah, it's harder to find US sales the newer the games are. That said, there was a UK organization which graded DS games based on sales. It gives more insight as to what DS games were popular at the time, so I might as well list the best-selling ones here: https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/ELSPA_Sales_Awards

Diamond (1,000,000+):

Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training
New Super Mario Bros.
More Brain Training From Dr. Kawashima
Mario Kart DS

Double Platinum (600,000+):

Cooking Mama
Big Brain Academy
Nintendogs: Lab & Friends
Animal Crossing: Wild World
42 All-Time Classics
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Platinum (300,000+):

Sonic Rush
Nintendogs: Dalmation & Friends
Zoo Tycoon DS
The Sims 2: Pets
Bratz: Forever Diamondz
Super Mario 64 DS
The Sims 2
Pokémon Diamond
Sight Training
Cars
The Simpsons Game
Cooking Mama 2
Touchmaster
MySims
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Puzzler Collection
Carnival: Funfair Games
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Gold (200,000+):

Madagascar
Pokémon Pearl
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
Ratatouille
Imagine: Babyz
High School Musical: Makin' the Cut!
Guitar Hero: On Tour
Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?
Professor Kageyama's Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method
WALL-E
Scrabble 2007 Edition
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Imagine: Teacher
Ben 10: Protector of Earth
 
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I imagine, it helped bring Dragon Quest to Nintendo home consoles after it skipped the N64 and GameCube.
This had nothing to do with the games coming to the DS consoles, they were already there in Japan. This is about Nintendo publishing them in the west and they were never big sellers.
 
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Just makes me sad to remember all the crazy sub genres and spinoffs Nintendo first party used to make on handheld, back before it was a unified platform with switch and we lost out on all the small games and side franchises.
 
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My favorite ds games
Hotel Dusk
Another Code
Phoenix Wright
Ghost Trick
Starfy
Crayon Shin Chan series
Feel the Magic/Project Rub

Still need to play:
Chibi Robo
Love Plus
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown
 
The Pokemon games sold around 70 million combined, but the fact that no single Pokemon game is in the top 3 and that Nintendogs and Brain Age rank higher is very interesting. Plus, holy shit at NSMB. It's by far the worst in the series, and quite a boring game altogether. I didn't know that the reboot of SMB made such a splash.

The numbers are even more surprising when we consider how easy and widespread piracy was for the DS.
 
EBA sold 175,000 copies from 2006 to 2009. A lot of those copies were exported to Japan, which is ironic given that EBA was made to capitalize on Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan's success as an import game.

It's a miracle we got another Ouendan game after EBA flopped sales-wise.
 
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DS still one of my biggest libaries the golden era where anything & everything no matter how niche or weird could be released. Not surprising to see just how many games made it to the million seller bracket. Also own games in there that were on the opposite end of the list one of them item getter sold only 150 copies which is insane as it's not terrible in the slightest but sadly never found it's audience.

Responsible for a lot of those sales, have pretty much everything i could ever want that was released for it.
IMG-2039.jpg
 
have pretty much everything i could ever want that was released for it.
IMG-2039.jpg
BRUH :messenger_dizzy:

I have that Pokemon typing game too. At one point it was on sale for €4.99 in a superstore. €4.99 for a fully functioning Bluetooth keyboard was the deal of the century. The game is nice, too.
 
BRUH :messenger_dizzy:

I have that Pokemon typing game too. At one point it was on sale for €4.99 in a superstore. €4.99 for a fully functioning Bluetooth keyboard was the deal of the century. The game is nice, too.
Damn that's an insane bargain to get it for that price. I loved how nintendo back in the day didn't give a single shit about doing stuff like that just releasing a whole peripheral for literally 1 game. They made an optical mouse to plug in the bottom of the DS just for slide adventure mag kid, they made a camera cart just for face training. Nintendo wasn't just the only ones doing it, i have hoshizora navi a star gazing piece of software can't really call it a game as no game stuff in it where the damn cart has a compass positioning chip in it so when you point your DS to a region of the sky it will match the star charts in the game thanks to the compass in the cart. Konami made a card scanner for juushinden that kind of behaves like amiibo do now where you just tapped the trading cards onto it to scan them but the cards dont have nfc chips in them i still don't know how the technology worked.

Loved all the weird bits of software that weren't games like the cooking navi stuff or the DS TV cart or the many app style stuff like iguides, along with the huge game library it rounded it out to be way more than just a games handheld.
 
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