[The following is a joint preview for both Ultimate Brain Games and Ultimate Card Games. Us, lazy? Never.]

Two games full of old fashion board and card games. 'Wow Telegames, thanks for this pleasant surprise' could be a common sarcastic cynicism. Indeed, these games are nothing to get too excited about...on first glance. Now I'm getting yet very enthusiastic about these, boring looking two titles. Let me give you one word that explains my good feeling about them: online.

Let's first take a closer look at Ultimate Brain Games DS. This package contains nine timeless board games: Chess, Checkers, Mahjong, Backgammon, Dominoes, Sink the ships, Four-in-a-row, Go and Reversi. Two years ago a similar version with the same title was released on the GBA (without the board game Go), and was fairly well-received. Thanks to the PC-like interface it was easily to adjust a lot of settings. Now a tweaked version comes to your DS. It seems like a perfect match: touch screen and a PC-interface. This should work fluently.

Ultimate Card Games is a package with, here comes the shocker, card games! Hearts, Spades, Euchre, Cribbage, Canasta, Bridge, Go Fish!, Crazy 8's, Blackjack, Video Poker, 5-Card Draw Poker, 7-Card Stud Poker, Texas Hold 'em Poker, Pinochle, Solitaire, Whist, and Gin Rummy. Most of them also appeared on the GBA version released last year. These are all solid card games that proved over the past decades that they're worth playing. The games are presented with basic graphics, but that doesn't change the fundamental experience. It's hardly about the looks in card games, is it?

On with the aspect that's making these two games into a potential sleeping-hit. The multiplayer games on the cartridge will be playable against the rest of the world, meaning both Ultimate DS games will feature online support. Just think of playing a quick game of poker with a workmate in your lunch break. There's also a face-creator option that allows players to give themselves a face for the opponents to look at. Next to this your personal scores get saved. Yihaa!

I'm certain that Telegames has a big change for some big bucks with these titles. Games like chess, four-in-a-row, poker and hearts are still popular. Hell, MSN is full of them and people amuse themselves with them. Now DS-owners get a change to play these games everywhere they want, with every DS-owner they want. Even offline players can do a multiplayer play, thanks to the one card multiplayer mode.

The US release of the Ultimate Card Games DS is planned in November of this year. Ultimate Brain Games DS comes to stores on the other side of the ocean in December. When the Ultimate games get released in Europe is yet to be confirmed, but expect them the time DS Online starts in Europe. It should be at the end of this year.

So concluding, Telegames could have a sleeping hit under his sleeves, especially when these two games get released for a friendly price. It would be fair, since they practically only have to port the GBA versions to the DS and add some extra, yet very important, functions like online mode. The worry for Telegames is that people might look at these two titles as simple old-fashioned game packages. At least now we know better.