If you were a young person during the George W. Bush administration, you probably had a Nintendo DS (or at least lusted in your heart for one). Nintendo's ubiquitous dual-screen handheld took off in a way that eclipsed even the Game Boy. As such, a bunch of really goofy accessories were made in the hopes that someone would be confused enough to spend a little cash at Walmart.

I've poked around at a bunch of the accessories from the DS's heyday, and found five favorites that seem particularly quirky to modern eyes. If you have some beloved gear from 2004 that didn't make the cut, give it some love in the comments below.

'Guitar Hero' Controller

The DS existed during the rise of plastic instrument games like "Guitar Hero," so it shouldn't surprise anyone that they tried their best to replicate the experience on the handheld device. It kind of worked, but the way you had to hold the device wasn't comfortable, and the strange stylus pick certainly wasn't optimal. Honestly, they would have been better off making controller-based gameplay like the later "Rock Band Blitz." That would've been a lot more fun, but less novel for sure.

Nintendo DS Browser

The DS itself didn't come with a browser, but you could buy a retail cartridge from Nintendo that featured a very limited Opera-based app. If you wanted to browse a low-res and Flash-free version of the web in the mid-aughts, you'd need both the DS cart inserted and a memory expansion unit slapped in the Game Boy Advance port. It was expensive, a pain in the butt and barely usable. All in all, a very Nintendo-like online experience.

Game Selector

There's something strangely appealing about third-party accessories that set out to solve a problem that most people don't really have. At most, using this three-game changer would have saved you all of 15 seconds to eject one cartridge, and slap in another. And the added bulk? It doesn't seem like it'd be worth it even in the DS's prime. But from the perspective of us sitting here in 2023, these goofy schemes to convince parents to buy accessories for their kids seem rather quaint.

Face Training Camera

While a later revision of the DS would eventually ship with a camera, the original model and the DS Lite did not. So when a developer wanted to make an app designed around tracking your facial expressions, they had to use an odd limited-use camera accessory that fit into the Game Boy Advance slot.

The expense of designing and producing this Japanese-only accessory for such a small market couldn't have possibly made financial sense, right? Maybe they had a bunch of tiny cameras lying around from some failed experiment.

Rumble Pak

Nintendo's N64 rumble pak is a fairly well-known accessory, but you might be surprised to know that they put out a DS version as well. Slap it in the bottom of your handheld, and a tiny fraction of the game library will start buzzing away — a measly 1.5 percent support it.

The ridiculousness doesn't stop here, check out the wildest Wii accessories too.

[Image: The Retro Future, Gameboy Custom]