We play through the first of four worlds in this upcoming DSiWare game.

The two iconic and most recognizable video game characters have teamed up once again in Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! With the game available on  DSiWare, you’ll be able guide the adorable, tiny wind-up Marios to safety. The game was announced during the Nintendo press conference, and we had an opportunity to check it out on the show floor of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

It looks like there will be more than 30 levels in the game, with additional puzzle packs that will be available weekly after launch. It’s unknown at this time how long the service will go on for, but we were told by a Nintendo rep that it will last at least six months. There are four worlds, and each will have eight levels, a bonus stage to unlock, as well as a boss level.

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Critical thinking is the key to success!

Developer Level-5′s trilogy of charming puzzle adventures is finally making its way to North America. The first Professor Layton game was a delightful adventure starring the professor and his sidekick, Luke, who traveled to the mysterious village of St. Mystere to find the Golden Apple. The second game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, seems to follow the same successful formula, with a blend of logic puzzles and a fascinating story.

The story begins with Professor Layton and Luke boarding the luxurious Molentary Express. Professor Layton had received a letter earlier from his mentor, which talked about a mysterious box that kills all those who open it. From what we played of the demo, it’s very much like the previous game in which you explore the locations that you’re in and find puzzles to solve. You’ll interact with other characters and learn more about this diabolical box, referred to as the Elysian box. Since the professor is all about solving mysteries, their journey will no doubt include a variety of clever puzzles to tackle.

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Creativity is your primary weapon in this charming platformer from the team behind Drawn to Life.

The Nintendo DS is rife with platforming games, but not a single one is like Scribblenauts. In this game, you guide a cute kid named Maxwell throughout a world, which consists of 220 increasingly difficult levels. The one common theme that draws all of these levels together is the way that you conquer the obstacles that lie before you: think of a solution, type it out on the touch screen, and that object will appear before you, ready to be used. With tens of thousands of objects in the game, it’s awfully hard to think of something that the game doesn’t have in it (provided you’re not thinking of such an abstract concept as communism).

Who’s Making This Game: Scribblenauts is being developed by 5th Cell, a studio with a history of charming and creativity-driven DS games. The company most recently brought us Lock’s Quest, but before that it made Drawn to Life, a platformer in which you actually drew your main character. So it’s a team with a good track record for taking interesting ideas for how to use the DS touch screen and putting them into action.

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With a stylus in hand, we doodle our way through the colorful world of Drawn to Life the Next Chapter.

Artistic ability may not be a requirement, but it certainly would help in 5TH Cell’s follow-up to the original Drawn to Life. Like its predecessor, Drawn to Life the Next Chapter is a 2D platformer in which you come up with your own unique hero–as long as you can draw it with the stylus. At a THQ press event in Los Angeles, we used a premade lobster character, armed with a deadly-looking katana sword and a marshmallow pop gun. If it were up to us, we would have been playing as a stickman swinging a giant club.

Use your painting skills to solve environmental puzzles.

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We get a quick tour of this creature-infested arena fighter on the Nintendo DS.

Spore Creatures did extremely well for Electronic Arts last year, so it’s no surprise that the company would want to continue the trend by bringing Spore once again to Nintendo’s handheld. At an Electronic Arts press event in Los Angeles, we got our first glance at Spore Hero Arena and tinkered a bit with the creature creator. We weren’t given too many details except that this is going to be very much focused on action, but we did get to see how the controls work and what is potentially in store for Spore Hero Arena.

This is Spore, gladiator style.

The premise of the game is to become a galactic champion by competing in arena-based battles. The story is set in the same universe as the Wii game, except instead of riding on the tail of a meteor and crash-landing on a mysterious planet, your ship gets hit by this meteor and you wind up stranded on an unknown planet anyway. You meet the Forgotten Master, who tells you about the evil creatures that spawned from the red meteors and have corrupted all of the arena champions by creating championship medals. You are immune to this corruption, so your job is to win back the medals and become the new champion.

The game is built from the ground up with an easy-to-use creature-creator system in which you can check out your creation in 3D and give it new parts and abilities. There’s some light exploration involved in the game, but we weren’t given any details beyond that. We did get to jump in and watch a battle in the arena against three other creatures. We watched as the EA rep, using the stylus to move, attacked with bites and punches that were mapped to the D pad. The goal is to knock your opponents off of the platform, which is easier if you’ve already taken out a chunk of their health. Special abilities can be executed by holding the shoulder button and drawing with the stylus. A circle around your creature will execute an area attack, and tapping on an enemy individually or drawing a line between them are other ways of getting aggressive.

There is going to be a strong multiplayer component, which will be available locally and through Nintendo’s Wi-Fi connection. You’ll have preset arenas to pick from, and you can pull any one of your custom creations from your sporepedia to battle head-on. We didn’t get to see too much of the game beyond a fight and the creation tool, but a good portable multiplayer brawler is always welcome. Developer Maxis has had many opportunities to fine-tune the creature creator, so by now it’s extremely easy to create your ultimate galactic gladiator.

Customize your arena fighter to be the best it can be.

We’ll update with further information when we get a more in-depth look during the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Spore Hero Arena is expected to ship this fall.