Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, was released in Japan in 2003 and finished in 2006 at twelve volumes in length, with a thirty-seven episode anime following later in the year.
This is the story of Light Yagami, a high school student who finds a dropped death note, left behind by a God of Death named Ryuk.

With its special powers of killing any person who’s name appears on the pages, Light decides to take justice into his own hands and begins to rid the world of criminals at his own accord. The Japanese police and a mysterious detective named, L, begin searching for the unknown killer that the public knows only as, Kira.

The popularity of this series has spread from Japan to the rest of the world, including such major countries as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. Death Note’s renowned manga and hit anime have sparked three live-action films with academy award nominated actors as well as five video games.

Published by Konami for the Nintendo DS was Death Note: Kira Game, which was released on February 15, 2007 in Japan. It’s a strategy game where the player takes on either the role of Kira or L and it is their job to uncover the identity of Kira, or vice versa with L.

The first phase of the game is investigating characters, the second is casting votes based on details learned and the final phase is focusing the investigation on a member of the team that the player believes to either be Kira or L.

A sequel was made and released by Konami on July 12, 2007 in Japan called, Death Note: Successors of L. This game, also for the Nintendo DS, focuses on the second half of the manga and features such characters as Mello and Near. The game has teams, Kira or L’s, and the player must either find all of Kira’s teams members and arrest them within the time limit or kill all of L’s team, respectively.

The third game for Nintendo DS by Konami, L the Prologue to Death Note: Spiraling Trap, was released in Japan on February 7, 2008. In this game, the player takes on the role of a rookie FBI agent who awakens in a strange hotel and has to escape with the help of L. The game takes place before the Kira investigations begin.

The fourth and fifth games are not solely Death Note games, but are Jump Super Stars, released on August 8, 2005 in Japan and Jump Ultimate Stars, released November 23, 2006 in Japan, which are anime based fighting games featuring characters from the Shonen Jump titles. Jump Super Stars offers the player to fight with Light, Ryuk and L. Jump Ultimate Stars brings in Misa, Mello and Near.

None of these games have been offered US or UK release dates and with some of the games going on five years old, assumptions that they may not come out of Japan isn’t far off. However, because the DS doesn’t have a region issue, like games for the Playstation, they can be bought and played on the American DS. If a player either has patience and is willing to put aside the language barrier or in fact, is familiar or fluent in Japanese, they are all highly recommended and have received high gaming scores.