Freshly laid Yoshi's Touch and Go screens

Take a dash of Wario Ware, a shot of the mini-games from Super Mario 64 DS and a slug of Yoshi's Island and, while the resulting cocktail might be as light as champagne, at least it will make you giggle like hyena on nitrous oxide.

Which is precisely what Yoshi's Touch and Go should do too with its specifically designed DS levels. Blending horizontal and vertical scrolling action with two-player WiFi fun, this adventure demands that you protect a young plumber and his gormless green mate. So as a young Yoshi wanders across the screen with Lemming-like stupidity, and parachute-less baby Mario plummets earthwards, it's your job to keep them alive using the stylus to clear a route to safety.

To help the dumb duo reach the end of the level you can draw circles around enemies, trapping them in bubbles, or create slopes and slides to make sure that Mario marches safely onwards. Along the way, coins also need to be collected and this can be managed by tapping Yoshi himself to make him flutter and fly up to reach the treasure or to swoop over an obstacle.

In other DS news, Atari have announced that the futuristic Nintendo handheld will take a step into the past with Retro Atari Classics, a compilation that features 10 old school classics. Each one will be playable via WiFi and they will also makes use of DS's touch-screen technology. All of the usual suspects are present - Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Tempest, Warlords, Gravitar, Lunar Lander and Sprint - although, for some reason known only to Atari, each game will feature graffiti-style backdrops.

Yoshi's Touch and Go will be released for DS in early 2005, while Retro Atari Classics is scheduled for release in March