The revolutionary Nintendo DS doesn’t have a whole lot of life left in it, but a handful of games at E3 are taking it out with a bang.

With all of its focus on the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and a few Wii games, Nintendo virtually ignored its last-generation handheld at E3. It showed no DS games during its press conference, the first time since 2004 that the system had gone totally ignored during its presentation. There were a few DS games on the show floor, but you really had to go hunting for them.

With a few minutes to kill before a demo, I wandered over to a lonely, unmanned DS kiosk and found Kirby: Mass Attack, which turned out to be one of the most entertaining demos of the show.

The Kirby team at HAL Laboratories continues to create surprising new game designs around this unassuming pink ball of fluff, from the acclaimed line-drawing action of Kirby: Canvas Curse to the world of twine and cloth in Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Mass Attack changes it up again, in a game aptly described by Nintendo as “side-scrolling real-time strategy.”

Mass Attack combines basic elements of those two disparate genres: the run-to-the-right-and-hit-things action of the platforming game and the resource management of games like StarCraft. You begin with one Kirby, who you control via the touchscreen — tap, swipe or hold to move, swipe up to jump.

“Strategy” might be overstating the case a bit, but the core idea of saving and spending resources is there. As you defeat enemies and explore the levels, you’ll find fruits. As Kirby eats these, a counter on the top screen ticks upwards; eat 100 fruits and you’ll get another Kirby to control. You can have up to 10 Kirbies in a level, and you’ll have to make sure none of them get lost or die. This isn’t too difficult (in the early demo level, I mean) since the touchscreen controls everyone all at once. More Kirbies means you can take down enemies faster and also means you can do more things, like pull tree stumps out of the ceiling by piling Kirbies on them to add more weight.

Controlling this eventual screenful of characters is a refreshing new style of gameplay, one that DS owners will want to check out for themselves when Nintendo releases Mass Attack on September 19.

Other regular DS games that Nintendo will publish in short order include the role-playing games Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 (August 21) and Super Fossil Fighters (holiday season), plus the final DS game in the mystery series Professor Layton and the Last Specter. I wouldn’t expect too much else: As Nintendo mercilessly killed off the Game Boy Advance when it shipped DS in 2004, so we must expect the DS to go now that 3DS is on the market.

Images courtesy Nintendo