This was originally posted by me on March 4th, 2008 for a short-lived and soon-returning series of posts entitled DS on DS, for the site I write for, www.DigitalSomething.com. I will be posting the rest of the articles throughout the week leading up to the return of DS on DS on Friday.

What do you get when you take a widely known song and mix it with squeaky, high pitched singers? No, it's not the American Idol tryouts. You get Alvin & The Chipmunks for the Nintendo DS.

It took me a while to figure out what I was going to say about this one because I have very mixed feelings about this game. On one hand, it has a high nostalgia factor because it is Alvin & The Chipmunks. And on the other hand, it is Alvin & The Chipmunks. I mean, that is the deciding factor on whether or not you will want to purchase this game. Well, that and the fact that it is a music-rhythm game.

The game plays like a mutant offspring of Guitar Hero and Elite Beat Agents. The controls are fairly solid. Yes, there are a few things that are kind of wonky, but overall they work good. The only thing I don't like doing is yelling "Alvin!" in the middle of a song. Not only is it out of place, but yelling at your DS always gets you strange looks.

There is something that somewhat resembles a story mode, but there isn’t much to it and the only reason to play it is to unlock songs (14 in all). It's something about trying to get to a big concert venue or something. I wasn't really paying attention.

The most important song by Alvin & The Chipmunks, the Christmas Song, is in the game. I have to be honest though, I was surprised at the rest of the song selections for this game. Chipmunked versions of songs like "Love Shack", "Video Killed the Radio Star", and "Shiny Happy People" turn up, but the one that surprised me the most was "Walking on the Sun". They actually didn't change the lyrics and the "What the hell happened" is intact, yet they changed half the words in "Tubthumping". Odd.

If you can stand the songs and like this style of game, this one may actually be worth buying. I never thought I would say that about a game based on Alvin & The Chipmunks, but there you have it.

I leave you with a short clip of "It's Tricky" on Hard. Making this video taught me something though. It is hard as hell to play with a camera on a tripod between you and a DS.