The Nintendo DS is first and foremost a family system. And family means "for kids". I don't say that to disparage it. There are some great games on the DS, for kids of all ages, from six to 60. But almost all of them have that family aesthetic. Hallmarks of a DS game are gratuitous bright colors, cloyingly sweet atmosphere, cutesy minigames, cartoony cutscenes, and casual arcade gameplay. There aren't many games that buck these trends. But there are a few.

After the jump are six Nintendo DS games that treat you like an adult.

This is as earnest a horror game as you'll find on the DS. The tech doesn't do it justice, but not for lack of trying. Explore an insane asylum and beat zombies to death with blunt objects. As an adult, I'm really looking forward to next year's Dementium II.

These are the crossword puzzles from the New York Times, a publication that never even ran comics. The Old Grey Lady isn't going to give you those lame lowest common denominator crosswords you get in the official Nintendo DS crossword puzzle game, or the slightly less wretched USA Today crossworld puzzle game. Instead, you get cleverly crafted and super-professional puzzles. Except on Monday, which is crossword puzzle retard day.

Gang war and drug trafficking are not kid friendly activities. I suppose even kids might enjoy the occasional videogame drive-by shooting. But carting a trunk full of coke from one end of Liberty City to the other, where you can sell it and spend to profits to bring the Jamaicans a load of weed, is definitely the sort of thing that might get you an M-rating. This is also one of the most ambitious Nintendo DS games. It's true to the earliest Grand Theft Auto games, which where top down affair for many years before GTA3 went 3D.

A no-frills tower defense games that doesn't even bother with a campaign mode. You just pick the challenge you want to try to beat and go to town. It doesn't even really have graphics, because graphics are for babies. All a true tower defense aficionado needs is functional symbols and objects.

Speaking of no graphics, this throwback to the days of Bard's Tale and Wizardry, which only adults will remember. This latter day retro RPG lets you turn off the graphics and just adventure through wireframe dungeons. Dark Spire is a bare-bones but brutally challenging RPG that doesn't bother with the flashy trappings of story, graphics, or world building. You're just here to spelunk and level up. Well, you're technically exploring a tower, so there's no real spelunking except for the basement.

Kids get cartoons. Adults get theatre of the absurd like Flower, Sun, and Rain. It has even less gameplay than Killer 7, the last great game by Goichi Suda. But it's got just as much weird drama and social commentary. If David Lynch were making videogames, they would be like Flower, Sun, and Rain.