Sims 2 DS: The Strangetown Hotel Game, Reviews and Today

What is The Sims 2 on Nintendo DS?

The Sims 2 on Nintendo DS is a handheld game from October 2005. Your Sim runs the only hotel in Strangetown, a desert town. It is a story game with quests, not a copy of the PC game.

Electronic Arts published it. Wikipedia names Griptonite Games as the developer. A Worthplaying review from 2006 names Amaze Entertainment. The game came out in North America on October 24, 2005, and in Europe on November 4, 2005.

Three handheld games of 2005 have the name The Sims 2: one for the DS, one for the Game Boy Advance, and one for the PSP. They are three different games. This guide covers the DS game first, then the other two, so you know which one you want.

This is the LifeSim blog. We opened Wikipedia, Metacritic, Nintendo, and five reviews on November 11, 2026. The facts below come from these pages. We did not play the games for this post.

How is The Sims 2 DS different from The Sims 2 on PC?

The DS game has a fixed story, one town, and one main Sim. The PC game is an open sandbox with families, houses, and Sims that grow old.

Feature	The Sims 2 (DS)	The Sims 2 (PC)
Release	October 24, 2005 (North America)	September 14, 2004
Place	A hotel in Strangetown	Family homes
Structure	A linear story with quests	Open play with no end
Needs	One sanity meter	Separate needs, such as hunger and hygiene
Time	Follows the real clock of the DS	Game time
Metacritic	70	90

Wikipedia calls the DS game a “reimagined” game with a linear story, and graphics made for a small screen. The PC game is on sale again today. Read our guide to The Sims 2 Legacy Collection, and our list of cheats for the PC game.

How do you play The Sims 2 on DS?

You make a Sim, then you run the hotel and do quests for the people of the town. Happy guests pay more, and a better hotel brings more guests.

The hotel and the guests

Guests make wishes. When you fill the wishes, the rating of the hotel goes up. Icons above the guests show their mood. To answer a guest, you play a short touch screen game. A wrong or slow answer makes the guest leave.

You add rooms to the hotel with money. Pocket Gamer says the first guest room costs $1,000 in game money. The builder, Tristan Legend, then needs eight real hours to build it.

The sanity meter

The DS game has one sanity meter, not separate needs. Your Sim eats, showers, naps, and uses the bathroom to keep it up. When the meter is empty, your Sim has a breakdown. Your Sim then goes back to the room and cannot act for a while.

Money

Pay from the hotel guests.
Metal bars and spaceship parts that you find with a metal detector in the desert.
Paintings that you make and sell in the art gallery of the hotel.
Slot machines, a card game called Keelhaulin’ Cards, and scratch lottery tickets.

Touch screen games

The game has many touch screen mini-games. Reviews name a water gun fight, an alien autopsy, and arcade games. In the nightclub, you write your own music. In the museum, you paint up to five pictures for guests to buy.

The real clock and the aliens

The life of your Sim follows the internal clock of the DS. New rooms take real hours to build. If you change the clock of the DS, the game calls you a time-traveling cheat. Then aliens attack the town, Worthplaying says.

Aliens also attack as part of the story. They want the hot town, and water hurts them. You fight them with the water gun.

Why do people say The Sims 2 DS is creepy?

The town is empty, and the story is very strange for a Sims game. In 2021, Kotaku wrote about a Reddit thread on r/creepygaming where players called the game “haunted”.

Players in the thread named these parts of the story:

Tristan, your helper, says that scorpions took away his girlfriend.
A mob boss, Frankie Fusilli, asks you to blow up the mayor.
A cult of cows forms. You call up a mummy, Horus Menhoset IX, to stop it.
An alien emperor tries to take the hotel.
A killer robot moves into your penthouse.

One player said Strangetown “looked deserted”. Others said the music of the alien attack made them start new saves.

The strange story was a choice. Wikipedia says the writer, Darby McDevitt, had the idea of the hotel from the TV show Fawlty Towers. A producer said the plot took ideas from H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.

Is The Sims 2 DS a good game?

Reviews were mixed. The game has a Metacritic score of 70 from 13 critics. Critics liked the quests and the touch screen games. They did not like the flat graphics or the loss of open Sims play.

Review	Score	Main point
IGN (Craig Harris)	8.2 / 10	Easy controls, but the plot is too linear (Wikipedia)
Nintendo World Report	8 / 10	Many missions, but it does not feel like a true Sims game
Worthplaying	7.4 / 10	Fun as a story game, weak as a life simulation
Game Informer	6.8 / 10	Score from the table on Wikipedia
Nintendo Power	5.5 / 10	Score from the table on Wikipedia
Pocket Gamer	3.5 / 5	Good use of the touch screen, but the real-time waits annoy

Nintendo World Report said the small tasks were “satisfying without becoming overwhelming.” Worthplaying said the needs felt “more mechanical” and stopped the story. Pocket Gamer did not like the wait of a full day for a new room.

Play it if you want a short, odd story with Sims humor. Skip it if you want to build a family and a house. For that, play the PC game.

What about The Sims 2 on Game Boy Advance, PSP, and Sims 2 Pets on DS?

All three are different games from the DS game. The GBA game is a reality TV story. The PSP game is a story game with a car breakdown in the desert. Sims 2 Pets on DS is a vet game.

Game	Release (North America)	Developer	Metacritic
The Sims 2 (DS)	October 24, 2005	Griptonite Games	70
The Sims 2 (GBA)	October 25, 2005	Amaze Entertainment	58
The Sims 2 (PSP)	December 7, 2005	Amaze Entertainment	65
The Sims 2: Pets (DS)	October 31, 2006	Full Fat	49
The Sims 2: Pets (PSP)	December 14, 2006	Maxis, Wikipedia says	57

The Sims 2 on Game Boy Advance

Your Sim is on a reality TV show in Strangetown. You do tasks to raise the ratings of the show. The controls are like those of Bustin’ Out and The Urbz, Wikipedia says. Characters from earlier handheld Sims games come back.

Cubed3 gave it 6 out of 10. The review said relationships “make absolutely no difference to the game at all.” It ended: “Frankly the Urbz is a better buy.”

The Sims 2 on PSP

The PSP game also starts in the desert near Strangetown. A flying Plumbob hits the car of your Sim. You play in third person, with a sanity meter and hidden Secrets to find. The homes are already built, but you choose the furniture.

Your Sim cannot age, marry, or have children. Your Sim can have a partner. IGN said the PSP game “plays differently than the PC original and the console versions.”

The Sims 2: Pets on DS

You play a vet who runs an animal hospital. You treat cats and dogs for five diseases. You train pets with a rhythm game. Cats and dogs act the same, Wikipedia says.

A follow-up came on August 26, 2008: The Sims 2: Apartment Pets, also from Full Fat. You run a pet spa and treat the pets of other owners. It has a Metacritic score of 50.

The Pets game on GBA is different again. It came on November 7, 2006, from Artificial Mind and Movement. You train a pet and compete against other characters.

The Sims 2: Castaway also came to the DS. Read our guide to The Sims 2: Castaway, the island game.

Can you still play The Sims 2 DS today?

Yes, with the original cartridge on a DS or a 3DS. We found no digital version and no re-release of the DS game.

On a Nintendo 3DS or 2DS

Nintendo says “almost all existing Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi games” play on a 3DS. The only games that do not play are some that use accessories in the GBA slot. Wikipedia says Nintendo stopped making the 3DS on September 16, 2020.

The Game Boy Advance cartridge

The original DS and the DS Lite have a second slot for GBA cartridges. The DSi and the DSi XL have no GBA slot, Wikipedia says. Nintendo says DS games that use the GBA slot do not work on a 3DS. For the GBA game, use a Game Boy Advance, a DS, or a DS Lite.

The PSP game

We found no re-release of the PSP game or the GBA game. Play them on the original devices.

Not in the Legacy Collection

The Sims 2 Legacy Collection is the PC game only. The EA page lists PC stores: the EA app, Steam, and Epic Games. It does not name a DS, GBA, or PSP game.

Buy a used cartridge from a game shop that you trust, and check the condition. Check the store page for the price. We do not link to ROM downloads.

For newer games on the same hardware, read our list of the best 3DS life simulation games.

Is there a life sim like The Sims 2 DS to play now?

LifeSim is our game. It is free, with no ads, no subscription, and nothing to buy. It plays in a web browser at play.lifesim.com and in an iPhone app. You live one life, day by day, in a real city on a 3D map of Earth.

LifeSim fits the part of The Sims 2 DS that is about people. The people talk back in their own words, and they remember you.

LifeSim does not fit in other ways. It has no hotel, no aliens, and no touch screen mini-games. It does not run on a DS. To bring your old Sim, use screenshots: bring a Sim from a Sims spin-off. For other choices, read games like The Sims.

The Sims 2 on Nintendo DS

What is The Sims 2 on Nintendo DS?

How is The Sims 2 DS different from The Sims 2 on PC?

How do you play The Sims 2 on DS?

The hotel and the guests

The sanity meter

Money

Touch screen games

The real clock and the aliens

Why do people say The Sims 2 DS is creepy?

Is The Sims 2 DS a good game?

What about The Sims 2 on Game Boy Advance, PSP, and Sims 2 Pets on DS?

The Sims 2 on Game Boy Advance

The Sims 2 on PSP

The Sims 2: Pets on DS

Can you still play The Sims 2 DS today?

On a Nintendo 3DS or 2DS

The Game Boy Advance cartridge

The PSP game

Not in the Legacy Collection

Is there a life sim like The Sims 2 DS to play now?

More Sims guides

Sources

Sims 4 database

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