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Here's the first of our two Holiday Gift Games lists for 2007. The goal of these lists is to put together a collection of the ten bestest games to give as a gift for someone who owns a particular system... in this case, the almighty Nintendo DS. This list assumes a situation where you want to buy a game for a special someone who hasn't told you exactly which titles they want. That means the focus here is on titles with simple gameplay and universal appeal that anyone could easily play, and that most people are sure to like.

Of course, universal appeal affects some potential players more than others. (In fact, there are games on this list I personally dislike.) To help make using this list a little easier, we've tagged each entry according to what kind of player is most likely to enjoy that game.

We divide players into three simple groups with slightly different needs and interests: Serious, Casual, and Kids. Serious games are tests of skill or strategy that require a significant investment of effort to play and enjoy. Casual games are easy for anyone to pick up and begin playing immediately. Kids games tend to be very imaginative and open-ended, usually emphasizing the ability to live out a fun fantasy life. If you want more details, please check out this post.

All set? Then onto the list of games.

Mario Kart DS

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: Racing
• Type: Serious
• Why: You won't be able to unlock even half the game's goodies or beat many opponents unless you master some pretty tricky techniques, like power-drifting and snaking.

Most portable racing games aspire to mediocrity and fall short of even that depressing mark. Mario Kart DS is everything excellent about the Nintendo DS system presented in one shot: convenient use of the dual screens, gorgeous 3D graphics, and challenging gameplay with rich multiplayer and online options. The difficulty in this game can be a little stiff, especially for gamers who can't master some of the more advanced cornering techniques. It's nothing that seasoned gamers or Kids with lots of time to play can't handle, though.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: Adventure
• Type: Serious
• Why: Like most Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass is full of sprawling dungeons and tricky puzzles that can easily stump or frustrate novice players.

Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker title for the GameCube, but don't let that worry you. Phantom Hourglass is an entirely self-contained adventure, and everything you need to know to play it is explained in the game. Phantom Hourglass uses the top-down style of the classic Zelda adventures, but everything you need Link to do you can manage by use of the DS stylus alone (and, occasionally, the microphone). The series of dungeons, bosses, and puzzles you encounter in this game may overwhelm more Casual gamers, but fans of mapping out sprawling dungeons and battling wandering monsters are going to have a ball with Phantom Hourglass. Kids are likely to enjoy the brightly cel-shaded graphics and sense of adventure, especially the parts of the game where you sail to new islands and fight pirates.

New Super Mario Bros.

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: Platforming
• Type: Serious
• Why: Roughly half of the levels in the game need to be unlocked by using power-ups to find secret exits from the levels you can reach more easily.

While this game is incredibly popular, you'd be surprised how many people bought it and then found themselves unable to beat it or unlock all of the levels. It's not that the actual gameplay is complex, since it mimics the super-simple gameplay style of the old sidescrolling 2D Mario Games (although the graphics are rendered in 3D). Still, like those old games, you need to be good at timing your jumps and evading (or hopping on) enemies as you traverse the beautiful side-scrolling levels. For Serious gamers with serious platforming skills or Kids with plenty of time to practice, this game is an incredible treat. The new Mega and Mini power-ups are a blast, and unlocking levels helps draw out the experience. The game also comes with a variety of multiplayer mini-games that are perfect for Casual gaming.

Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day

• MSRP: $19.99
• Genre: Training
• Type: Casual
• Why: The entire game is explicitly designed to be played for about twenty minutes or so each day. The in-game activities are simple time-wasters and your only goal is improving your score.

You wouldn't think Brain Age would be fun at all, but it's a weirdly addictive title that doesn't feel quite like anything else on the DS. To play it, you tilt the DS on its side like a book, and... well, you just follow Dr. Kawashima's on-screen instructiions. You can take a series of simple tests that involve speaking aloud or doing different sorts of math problems once a day to try and lower your Brain Age to the desired score of 20. There are additional activities to mess around with, like Sudoku puzzles, multiplayer, and a great Dr. Mario clone called Virus Buster (which is why we recommend Brain Age 2 over the original).

Planet Puzzle League

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: Puzzle
• Type: Casual
• Why: Gameplay doesn't come more abstract than this-- your in-game goal is just to slide around colored tiles into groups of four. A variety of play modes and multiplayer wi-fi competition add some variety, but at heart it's just tile-shufflin'.

Planet Puzzle League is technically a rebranded Panel de Pon DS, but who cares? All that matters for our purposes is that it's tons of fun and easy to get into. This is a good choice for someone who likes puzzle games but finds Tetris a little bland. Although Planet Puzzle League's gameplay can get amazingly complex once you're playing on high difficulty, the game does an excellent job of helping a player build them up through a series of simple puzzles and some low-difficulty options available in the single-player mode. More competitive players will enjoy the online multiplayer, although it can be hard to find opponents if you don't have a good collection of friend codes.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: Simulation
• Type: Kids
• Why: Animal Crossing involves a pretty hefty investment of time to get going, but once you've got a thriving town built there are all sorts of neat things you can do with it. It's pretty easy to sink an hour or two into this game every day for months without running out of things to do, and it's even better if you can go online and visit friends' towns.

The goal of Animal Crossing, insofar as it has one, is to build a happy, thriving city full of furry little animal creatures. Ostensibly you're paying off the mortgage on a house, but this is really just to encourage you to play more mini-games. The more people you know with copies of Animal Crossing, the more fun it becomes-- just swap your friend codes to travel to each other's towns, swap gifts, and do whatever else you like. Animal Crossing's interface is fairly complex, perhaps enough so to chase off Casual players, but the gameplay is extremely simple and fun once you get over the initial learning curve. Kids will especially love building their virtual fantasy city and playing the assorted item-collecting mini-games, while Serious gamers may find themselves investing frightening amounts of time in getting their towns just so... and realizing just how insidious Tom Nook is.

Nintendogs

• MSRP: $29.99
• Genre: Simulation
• Type: Kids
• Why: Every kid wants a puppy, but many kids lack the maturity or resources required to take care of one. Nintendogs is the perfect way for a kid who longs to have a dog to sate that urge, without saddling parents with expensive vet bills and tedious paper-training duties.

If you're buying a game for a little girl, Nintendogs may be the single best thing to buy. This said, just about anyone who's ever liked dogs or puppies can get a real kick out of this game. Nintendogs is an open-ended game that lets you simulate owning the dog of your choice. There are five variant Nintendogs titles, each with a slightly different assortment of breeds available. Once you have your puppy, you can play with it, care for it, enter it in assorted mini-games, and find a variety of accessories and toys to customize his living space with. You can even go multiplayer to let your puppy play with a friend's, or swap gifts. Nintendogs most appealing to obsessive-compulsive types (like me) that are going to want to spend a little time with their puppy every day and get hooked on trying to buy up all the best accessories and unlock all the breeds. A goal-oriented gamer isn't going to like it much, and teenage boys in particular may be put off by the sheer sugary cuteness involved.

Tetris DS

• MSRP: $19.99
• Genre: Puzzle
• Type: Casual
• Why: The ultimate open-ended, impulse-play game.

Tetris is the game everybody knows how to play, the same way everybody knows how to play stuff like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. I'm not sure disliking Tetris is really possible-- you may get bored and want to play something else, of course, but that happens with just about any game. Anyway, a portable system without Tetris or an acceptable Tetris clone just feels sort of naked and wrong. The DS iteration offers some inspired graphical touches and a lot of different game modes, especially in multiplayer, but it's the single-player mode that you'll probably spend the most time with. This is really the best gift idea on the list, since it's the sort of game a lot of gamers end up forgetting to buy themselves-- but not many games are going to be actively angry or sad about the idea of owning a copy of Tetris DS.

Pokemon Diamond & Pearl

• MSRP: $34.99
• Genre: RPG
• Type: Kids
• Why: The only thing a kid would like better than a puppy is a magic flying fire-breathing puppy. It's entirely possible to create something like this, among hundreds of other fanciful creatures, in the immersive fantasy setting of a Pokemon game.

"Pokemon" is still a Japanese pseudo-word that can strike fear into the hearts of parents. Unless you're a child (or a child at heart) there's a lot about this game and its appeal that's inherently incomprehensible. Taken on its own terms, though, the DS Pokemon games are tiny marvels of RPG design, packed with enough goals to achieve and activities to do that single-player alone can eat up hundreds of hours of playtime. Getting obsessed with doing well in the online multiplayer can feel like trying to maintain a second job. The two Pokemon titles have two slightly different assortment of monsters available, and some kids may be finicky about which one they get (generally, Diamond is a little more popular than Pearl). Once you start playing either version, you may never stop for months and months. It's an excellent choice as a game to accompany a brand-new DS.

Cooking Mama

• MSRP: $19.99
• Genre: Simulation
• Type: Kids
• Why: For years and years, cooking is an activity that children really lack the maturity or stature to try on their own. Cooking Mama is a perfect video game version of the long-standing kid tradition of pretending to make your own food.

One of the things that makes the DS so popular is the sheer bevy of "quirky" games available for it, usually at extremely reasonable price points. Cooking Mama is the poster child for this type of game: it's a cooking simulation where you use the DS to mimic various tools in the kitchen. Use it to chop vegetables, sizzle meat in a frying pan, arrange items on a plate, and a whole lot more. The recipes are simple, everyday things (with some simple Japanese recipes thrown in, too). When you finish cooking something up, Mama rates you on how well you did. The gameplay may strike a lot of older gamers as too repetitive or outright frustrating, since the game gets very finicky about how well you're using the stylus. Kids who just want to fantasize about cooking, especially little girls, are going to be too delighted with what they can make to care. Even Serious gamers may develop a soft spot for this one, since the gameplay style is really unusual.

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