Bored of Brain Training and Animal Crossing? Don’t have much money to spend on your loveable little Nintendo DS? Well fear not my good friends; here are three games that you may want to add to your collection (you can check prices by clicking on each of the games titles).

Puzzle League DS

Puzzle League has been around since the days of the SNES, and it remains just as addictive as it was back then. However, Puzzle League DS takes advantage of the DS by using the stylus to horizontally drag the blocks that rise up from the bottom of the screen. You then have to place similar coloured blocks into columns of three, upon which they promptly vanish. As with Tetris the game ends if a block touches the top of the screen.

It’s incredibly addictive, but with addiction comes frustration. Thankfully you can share this with someone in head-to-head modes, where clearing blocks dumps them on your opponents screen.

Theme Park

I grew up constantly playing Theme Park on my Mega Drive, so it’s a game I hold close to my heart. If you fondly remember the game like me, or even if it’s new to you, it’s an excellent addition to your Nintendo DS library.

The aim, of course, is to build a theme park across a variety of different locations with an assortment of rides, shops and other attractions. The game itself is not as complex as some tycoon games today (such as Rollercoaster Tycoon) but it’s fun enough to hold your attention for a good month or so. Unfortunately like Sim City DS (read my review here) it only as one save slot, but you’ll forgive that when you see how full of charm Theme Park is.

42 All-Time Classics

I can’t really fault 42 All-Time Classics. I’ve had it since its release in 2006 and I’m still playing it today. There’s just so much longevity in it that it’s hard to ever grow bored of it, and if you do you can just move onto one of the other 41 games! It’s even further increased when you have friends who have DS, as you can play most of the 42 games with up to eight friends (plus online) and I’ve always found it great fun at parties.

Along with the pictured Bowling there’s card games such as the ever popular Blackjack, Old Maid, Hearts, Texas hold’em and more. Board games include Connect Five, Checkers, Chess, Ludo etc. A few others are Darts, Billiards and Balance. That’s just a few of the 42 games available to play. For £14.91 you can’t really go wrong!

Despite not having massive sales Bloom Blox was a pretty fun game and ended up making my essential Christmas buys list.  Not put off by these low sales Steven Spielberg and crew are hard at work on its sequel; Bloom Blox Bash Party.

Hoping to increase awareness (and hopefully the fun factor) EA are vastly increasing the amount of features compared to its predecessor. Firstly there’s a whopping 400 new levels, including settings such as water and zero gravity. To go with that are new characters, new tools, blox types - such as virus and conveyor blox - and blox shapes.  Not happy with that? Well, there’s always the ‘extreme’ factor;

“In BOOM BLOX Bash Party we are taking the game elements to the extreme,” said Amir Rahimi, Senior Producer. “In the original BOOM BLOX, we really focused on perfecting the game’s physics so now we can push the boundaries of physics, offering exciting new challenges and completely new ways to play.” - Kotaku

Unfortunately there’s not a challenge of how many times you can fit ‘physics’ and ‘new’ into a sentence.

Obviously Steven himself is excited;

“Boom Blox Bash Party is a wild social gaming experience. We know families and friends really enjoyed playing the original Boom Blox together, so we designed more explosive multiplayer experiences with Boom Blox Bash Party.” - Reuters

Finally the game is jumping on the bandwagon by offering user generated DLC. This allows players to create and share their own levels over the internet, and also download and rate levels from EA and other players.

You can pick up the original Bloom Blox  for as low as £14.99. It’s one of the few decent Wii games out there anyway.

The sales are already in full swing, so I’ve lined up a few games that you can pick up for cheap right now. Some are new games that have slashed prices, while others are older games that are so good and so cheap that you really have no excuse not to own them.

First up is de Blog, an extremely original Wii game that I included in my Wii Christmas Buying Guide. It is often said that the Wii doesn’t have enough original games that would interest the ‘core’ gamer, as shovelware seems to be the aim of the game with most Wii developers. Blue Tongue’s game, however, will interest both crowds. It’s easy enough for anyone to pick up and play, plus you’ll have a tonne of fun while playing it.

Admittedly there’s not a lot of variety to the game, as it mostly consists of moving de Blob around the level and painting everything in sight. However, there are missions to complete (such as painting a building a certain colour) and hazards to deal with. The main draw I found playing it is the addictive quality of the painting, as you tend to try and paint everything you can see (you only need a certain score to proceed to the next level, but it’s hard to leave things unpainted). So, in that sense, it’s a completists dream.

de Blob is the kind of game that you know will achieve cult status, and it certainly deserves it due to the incredible passion and attention to detail that the developers have poured into it. It’s literally a gem in the rough, as there’s so many poor games out there for the Wii that anything as original as de Blob is literally a god send for bored Wii gamers.

According to PriceGrabber you can pick it up for as low as £17.91 - and I heartily recommend you do so!

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!