New Mario games, Starfox DS and Diddy Kong Racing all coming to DS

Nintendo is Wii-ing everywhere at E3 this week (fear not, we'll get bored of the joke soon enough). But the company hasn't quite forgotten last year's super-innovative DS handheld console in its rush to launch the Gamecube's successor.

The best news first: Nintendo revealed that some 100 new games are coming to DS by the end of 2006.

New DS titles on the way include reworkings of many of Nintendo's classic franchises: Yoshi's Island 2, Starfox DS, Mario Hoops 3 on 3, Diddy Kong Racing and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: March of the Minis were all named at today's press event in Los Angeles, along with previously announced games like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and New Super Mario Bros..

The company also revealed a new Tony Hawk game called Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, and hinted at games to come involving favourite Nintendo characters like Wario and Kirby.

We'll presumably be able to play most of these on the Nintendo showfloor tomorrow, if we can wade through the Wii. (Honestly, give us time and we'll stop laughing).

Nintendo also announced a new DS game label called the 'Touch Generations', which aims cover mass-market games like Sudoku and the company's already hugely successful brain training titles. The aim is to reach people who've never played games before, and it's a strategy that's already working – Nintendo says more than a third of the five million Japanese Brain Age players are over 35.

Finally for the stat-heads amongst us, we were given the latest DS sales numbers. In the 18 months since launching the console, Nintendo has sold 16 million of the handheld (less than Sony yesterday claimed PSP has shifted, although Nintendo disputes its rival's numbers). As for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, it has welcome 1.3 million users since it launched, and hosted over 40 million multiplayer game sessions.

Sign up for our DS RSS feed to get our hands-on impressions from the show floor later this week.