Nanostray is a game that is a 3D top down shooter that takes inspiration from old school shooters that I'm sure everybody played at least twice in their lifetime. There really isn't a story, but there is a short description that I found on nanostray.com.

Release Date: July 19, 2005
“Slowly awakening from a blast to the side of your ship, your memory is jumbled and you can't remember what just happened or what you're doing in this sector. Instinctively, you check your console; a destination is still plugged in. You must take action; the enemy is starting to swarm”

As you can see, it is pretty much mediocre, but story doesn't always mean everything. As I mentioned earlier, Nanostray is a 3D top down shooter, so you can pretty much guess how gameplay is, but there is a little catch, and that is the touch screen extras. In this game, you are equipped with 4 weapons, and each weapon has sub weapon, oh and lets not forget about  your Smart Bombs, which your ship can only have a maximum of 3 bombs. The weapons that you have, are as followed:

Pulse: A high speed straight firing weapon with a sub weapon that fires a strong continous beam.

Side-shot: A side firing weapon that shoots out of the left and right sides of the ship with a sub weapon that fires a stronger and faster beam.

Seeker: A front weapon that targets the enemy but fires slower than the first weapon. It has a sub weapon that launchs a ball of energy

Lightning: A bolt of lightning that once locked on targets the enemy until a new target is found. The sub weapon shoots short range beams around the ship.

Each of these weapons can be selected via the touch screen. All of the weapons will be selected from the right side of the touch screen, where the buttons are at. It may be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you will get used to it.

In terms of control, the game uses the D Pad *duh* A, for primary weapon, B for sub weapon, X for smart bomb, and the Y button isn't used. Like I mentioned earlier the touch screen is used to switch between weapons, and its acts as your hub to show your health, lives, sub weapon energy, score, and a radar. I find that the radar as useless, because  I didn't even pay attention to it, so it is just there for presentation, and speaking of presentation, this game has alot of it. In terms of graphics, this is one of the most beautiful games ever to be released on the DS, and most of the time it runs at a smooth 60 FPS, but the occasional slow down rears its ugly face, but I found that it didn't hurt the game one bit.

The game consists of 4 modes, Adventure, Arcade, Challenge, and Multiplayer. I'm sure that you will be spending your first few hours on Adventure, then move on to Arcade and Challenge. All the modes, minus the multiplayer, consist of 8 stages. When playing the Arcade mode, the goal is to pretty much do what you do at Arcades: get the highest score, and as for Challenge, well lets just say it IS a challenge. The Challenge mode consists of 22 missions that force you to complete a mission in a certain way. For example, some missions require you to have only one life, and there’s others that where you are not allowed to use Smart Bombs. Upon completing these challenged, you will unlock an extra that include music, concept art, etc. In terms of multiplayer, the good news is that you only need one game pack to play; the bad news is that there is no multipack play, so the multiplayer is mediocre. Basically all you do is you go through missions that consist of timed missions, the first one to reach 25,000 points, and Bonus Race. When enemies drop coins, you must collect the most coins in the 120 second time period to win.

So what exactly does this shooter differ from other shooters besides the DS capabiliies? Well in short, nothing. The game itself is still a real simple top down shooter at heart, that delivers hours of fun, but it is safe to say that the fun is short lived, and it is because of the same reason as other shooters, which is that the game is short. I didn't play much of the game when I first bought it, but I still managed to beat the game in about 3 days in normal mode, but that doesn't mean I don't go back to it. As there is the Arcade mode, as well as the Challanges

Of course we all know, that top down shooters are indeed hard, especially in the hard mode. I for one enjoyed the difficulty.

In terms of graphics, gameplay, and difficulty, I find that this game had everything. I do have my complaints, such as the occasional slow down, and the shortness of the game.. If Majesco can some how make a sequel, I am hoping for the game to be longer, have an extra difficulty level, and no slow down. All in all, a pretty decent game, but good luck finding it though, I was lucky to have found this game used, if you get the chance, pick it up

Bottem Line: 8.5