YMMV / Nintendogs

• Awesome Music:
  • The Main Theme itself from the DS games. Nothing warms the heart more than hearing this when starting up the game.
  • Bath Time, before it got the remix in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The best part was the Variable Mix present in which most of the instruments faded out the cleaner your puppy got.
  • The Giant Socks record, sounds like something out of WarioWare Inc. and something Jimmy T. would be dancing to.
  • Thank You from Nintendogs + Cats, a nice little credits sequence even plays on the screen.
  • Club Dog in + Cats, a fun techno song.
  • The Championship Cup Theme of the first game with its western-style tune wouldn't be out of place in a more action-oriented game. Really gets you in the mood.
• Contested Sequel: Nintendogs + Cats isn't seen as a bad game and it sold very well, but there's a split amongst fans whether it's an upgrade, a downgrade, or whether it's on par with the DS titles. It adds many features while also removing much of what people liked about the original.
• Fridge Horror: Many of those who played Nintendogs years ago, but have since moved on to different games, have felt the horror of realizing that their puppies and/or kittens are still waiting for them after all this time, wondering where their owner went... The fate of every pet anyone has ever adopted in this game will be an eternity of loneliness and abandonment, and the only way to spare them from this is to delete your save file.
• Fridge Logic:
  • How does your puppy howl with a tennis ball in its mouth?
  • How do they get so dirty by staying inside for three days? There's no sign of them causing a ruckus or leaving. Though, if they didn't leave (even for walks), then we'd be seeing stains everywhere. Granted, this is hand waved by them already being house trained, but still.
• Gateway Series: Its very accessible nature makes Nintendogs one towards newbie gamers, especially the original DS title. The fact that it came bundled with a fair amount of DS consoles sure helps.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • If you haven't racked up enough owner points, then competition NPCs with better items can be this. The Amateur Cup is especially guilty of this, as you're likely to be still stuck on the beginning lure/frisbee while your opponents have the Banana Lure/Lollipop.
  • Birds on walks, since your dog will bolt towards them before anything else. They can be especially infuriating if a boutique or present was nearby, but your dog passed it in favor of feebly chasing birds.
  • Puddles on walks, if your puppy isn't disciplined enough. They are harder to remove your puppy from than the garbage, and they can turn a Beautiful puppy into downright Filthy.
• Nightmare Fuel: Sometimes when playing a record in the + Cats sequel, the needle might not advance and instead there's these low booming and droning noises not unlike that of a Slender game.
• Periphery Demographic: Nintendogs has a small but noticeable group of Fan Vid makers on YouTube who like making videos with it.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In neither the original games or their sequels are the microphones perfectly reliable. This can make the Obedience trials impossible to complete. To make it worse, the games won't understand you anymore if your voice matures.
  • You can only own six pets at one time. This means if you want a new dog or cat, you must give away one of your current pets.
  • Leather in + cats is annoyingly rare. For starters, it's only found in the starting suburban area, which you're not likely to be crossing through because of its lack of facilities. Even if you do bother skipping the other areas in favor of the suburbs, you're still not likely to find it, unless you get super lucky and find the secret path. Worse yet, it's required to craft many valuable items, such as the keyboard and the Robopup Voucher.
  • Combing/Brushing your pet usually takes much longer than simply washing it. However, it often gives you more Trainer Points, and in + Cats, can be done even on walks (in the parks and cafe), which is very useful if your puppy ends up rolling in puddles.
• Spiritual Successor: Could be considered this to the Petz series of games.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The only objective in the game is "care for and play with a Precious Puppy or two". Even if you're bad at this, the worst that can happen is they get a little dirty and/or hungry. The 3DS games take this even further with improved graphics, such as realistic fluffy fur, and the inclusion of kittens.
• Tear Jerker:
  • If you ever choose to donate one of your dogs, the game asks a couple of times if you're sure you want to. Upon choosing yes, you have to sit and wait for a while, looking at your soon-to-be-gone puppy on the screen, before the process completes and they're gone forever... It just gives you the saddest look ever like it's gonna cry, you can practically hear it asking "why don't you love me?"
  • It’s hard not to feel a little guilty coming back to the game after a long period of inactivity to see your pets filthy, hungry, and lying around all depressed.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Replacing Agility Trials with Lure Coursing wasn't initially well-received in the sequel.
  • Having your dog not run to the bottom of the screen to be petted in the sequel for the sake of showcasing the 3D effects.
  • Adding extra fur burrs on the dogs to make them look fuzzy, but instead making their fur look odd.
  • Forcing players to use AR cards for new obedience trials was seen as an unnecessary step. It's especially annoying if you don't have the cards whatsoever, which is likely considering how easy it is to lose them or not get them with a secondhand 3DS - then you're locked out of obedience trials entirely.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The dogs in the first game as they managed to avert this by looking just digitized enough, but this is not the case in + Cats. The vast majority of the dogs, and a few of the cats fall into this category. The worst example is the Huskies who have bright blue eyes that look far too human, and rarely blink.
• Unintentional Period Piece: As mentioned, internationally Shiba Inu and New Friends was renamed outside of Japan due to the obscurity of the breed at the time. Sometime later the breed boosted in popularity in other countries thanks to memes and cute dog videos. While Golden Retrievers are still more popular, Shiba Inu are not an obscure breed anymore.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While some of the dogs do go into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley territory, for one of the first 3DS games the graphics look surprisingly pretty good.

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