@robinhoodie Yeah true. I tried playing Monster Hunter on there, and was like who thought this was a good idea???
@whatsarobot Oh yeah, I have to track down Aero Porter. Crimson Shroud is cool too!
Always meant to get Kokuga, but then it just vanished off the eshop :(
I don’t know that larger games were a mismatch for the hardware as such but I do think the 3DS was sufficiently powerful to make developers think they had to deliver high-production games and/or scare off those who didn’t or couldn’t want to spend the money doing so.
You can also link the software to the proliferation of middleware and the general reluctance of developers to continue optimising for low-spec hardware–one of the reasons the New 3DS existed was as an attempt to shore up support from Unity & Unity-made games.
I felt the exact opposite–I thought the tower defense parts took up way too much of what was already a fairly short game, and I wish they’d fully committed to everything and anything else.
I am very fond of the 3DS I have the original model (black) which I got at the end of 2013. The first time I saw one was when my friend was playing the Fire Emblem Awakening Demo on an XL and I was amazed by the 3D effect on the sprites in the map.
The 3DS had 3 main pokemon games and while they were all very successful, none of them were really hitting the highs of the DS games. My friends and I can still have extensive converstions on our opinons of them and the desicions which are still negatively effecting the current games. (I hate sky battles not for what they were, but for how they tanked 5 generations of art direction of flying pokemon).
Probably to the dismay of someone in this thread, Monster Hunter 4U was my most played game, there was a very long time where I would come home from school and play it until dinner. I went through the whole story mode first and then finally went online and got up to the highest rank. As it was my first time playing an action game like this I wasnt very good at first and it took me a long time to get through the story. It was probably one of the top two of games I‘ve played online ever.
From what I’ve played Mario Kart 7 is my least favourtie mario kart game; it feels off, kinda floaty and slightly slow.
I feel like its never said enough how good 2D games looked on in 3D, I really like seeing the layers seperated like that. It also kept the pixels nice and sharp. The game XeoDrifter actually plays with this to make a really neat mechanic. I think it makes the 3DS the best place to play shovel knight, purely because of the visuals with 3D ON.
I could go on and on about the 3DS but I should probably pace myself.
One of the bigger letdowns of the 3DS library, aside from the odd dearth of 3D platformers, is that there weren’t more pixel-art sidescrollers: like you said, they looked fantastic in 3D, and both the hardware and the audience accommodated that style of game far more naturally than the alternatives.
I‘ll always remember the 3DS as the system that I hated until I loved it. When it first launched, the 3D seemed like an extremely dumb gimmick to me, so I passed on buying it. At the time, I was still playing through a sizeable stack on DS games, so buying the 3DS didn’t seem worth it.
Not all that long afterward, I found one on sale and bought it along with Super Mario 3D Land on the recommendation of a colleague, and from there I ended up buying 3 more 3DSs over the years.
For a while there, it was just a constant flow of great RPGs and weird experimental feeling stuff like Pocket Card Jockey and Harmoknight. Honestly, it felt as though that stuff kept coming right up to the end! And it's also the system that got me into Etrian Odyssey, which I'm not sure is a positive or negative, haha.
Anyway, here's to the 3DS! It was a really great handheld!
The StreetPass function was whimsical and lovely and I am still disappointed that the Switch has no equivalent features of any kind. My favorite 3DS experience will always be the excitement and curiosity of opening up my system after being out in the city for a day and seeing those little innocently digitized apparitions of other people’s lives and identities that had shared the same spaces as me without even knowing it. It was the thrill of people-watching with the tantalizing hint of possibility: do I share space with this person often? We like the same game! Will I notice them next time? What would happen if I talked to that person?
It brought a touch of shared human experience and discovery into video game hardware that the internet just can’t replicate. Nintendo’s approach to UI and software hasn’t been the same since Iwata - it’s mainly reverted to its original core identity as another consumer electronics behemoth - and I genuinely miss it.
@whatsarobot The concept of creating an all-star short film anthology but for video games is the absolute best idea Level-5 ever had, and I’m still bitter that they dropped it after just two entries. I really, really hope another developer/publisher revisits this model someday.
You should have jumped on that deal because the 3DS came out in February 2011 in Japan (one month before the rest of the world). Based on some temporal cues in your testimony, I think your entire recollection is off by around 6 to 12 months.
One easy way to make sure of this is to synchronize your memories of the 3DS with your memories of the 3/11 tsunami. The tsunami, and the social and economic shellshock which impacted Japan for about six months, were an entire part of that whole disastrous start for the console – although a new games console is having a bad time was obviously a very inconsequential issue in the grand scheme of this catastrophe. The 3DS really found its groove during the 2011 Christmas season with the price cut, Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter 3G.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the console is uncannily perfect for dungeon crawlers, considering the 3D window and the map-dedicated lower screen. Also, I have always felt dungeon crawlers benefit from the intimate and “comfortably claustrophobic” experience of playing on a small handheld machine. Between all the Atlus games and the two Lost Heroes games for Bandai, Lancarse was having a blast on this hardware!
The other series that was weirdly perfect for its assymetrical dual display was Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney. Somehow 3DS remains the best platform to play Gyakuten Saiban 123 even though the collection released on every modern platform afterwards.
On a personal note, I will always be thankful that the console revived Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem when things looked dire for both series. I agree with the whole “Streetpass and its games were in fact the best thing about this console” (at least in countries with dense population, sorry Albuquerque) but otherwise my three favorite 3DS titles are Shin Megami Tensei IV, Fire Emblem: Awakening and, unarguably the best Final Fantasy game ever made, Thrhreathtryhthm Curtain Call (spelling uncertain).
The DS is tied with the PS2 and GBA for being one of my favorite consoles of all time. I didn‘t buy a 3DS until they released the original XL. I got it my senior year of high school and whenever I went to conferences with a High School club, I got to streetpass with all the other teens and it really made me fall in love with the console. I had it in my backpack when I was walking around college all the time and I always loved popping it open when I would hang out at the lobby of the radio station. I associate StreetPassing with that feeling you get the first semester of college where you’re so desperate for friendship that you latch onto anyone that seems mildly interesting and you act more social because everyone seems so cool. Around this time I played Fire Emblem Awakening and Links Awakening obsessively. I still played my 3DS after that semester, and would collect a few different models, but I always associate the 3DS with that time in my life.
ALSO: Has anyone else noticed that the prices of physical 3DS games have been skyrocketing this year? SMT IV Apocalypse was a $20 game on Amazon last year and now it's all the way up to like $140. I collect DS games because it's a nostalgia console for me, but I'm pretty close to just buying a damn R4 and calling it a day. I'm not sure if I wanna start collecting physical 3ds stuff, especially because all that stuff goes on sale in the eShop regularly, and most physical editions didn't even come with manuals. I'm still regretting trading in my copy of Dragon Quest 8 into GameStop for like 13 dollars because it's going for like 60 bucks now, which is wild. I played it for like 10 hours and the pop in and text size annoyed the hell out of me, and just made me wanna play the PS2 version.
@LuccaPucca I also feel a real strong association between the 3DS and my first year of university.
I was a Bad Kid who had managed to graduate from high school a year early, but instead of going directly into university like I had told my parents I would, I instead wasted an entire year doing nothing and burned bridges with all my former friends. By the time I did start university I was a big miserable jerk without any friends.
During that period I bought a 3DS, which at first I just used to play the original DS game Bangai-O Spirits, since I’d sold my DS long before this. Right before university started I bought Animal Crossing New Leaf. I started talking with someone on the internet who played it, and after visiting each other’s villages a few times we talked on the phone and I found out she went to a university extremely close my university, so we started hanging out in person. This was how I got my Very First Girlfriend. It turned out to be a super volatile relationship, since we both hated school and didn’t have any other friends. I’d go to see her every evening after classes were over, then once a month we’d break up and promise to never talk to each other again, only to apologize and start talking again two days later.
This was also my first time having a video game friend! As a kid I’d been surrounded by people who either thought video games that weren’t hyper-competitive action games were dumb, or who had parents that didn’t allow them to play video games. The whole experience of her lying on her bed and me sitting two feet away on the floor, both of us staring at our 3DSes, wordlessly interacting with each other Animal Crossing avatars was completely new to me.
She also had a PS3, which I didn’t have, so I got to watch her play a whole lot of JRPGs. This was a real eye opening experience for me, since, despite both being big JRPG people, we liked them for completely different reasons. Listening to her gush about all the characters really awakened in me an appreciation for Sexy Anime Boys that continues to this day.
Anyway, our relationship kept oscillating back and forth between intense intimacy and massive anger until everything exploded toward the end of my freshman year, and we stopped talking for about two years. Without having her to play with I really lost any motivation to touch my 3DS. For a few years after that I’d pick it up every now and then, but never with any consistency. I think in the more than half decade since we’ve dated we both transformed into more or less normal people. Though I still feel some nostalgia for that shared loneliness that we had whenever I think about the 3DS. That was probably the only time in my life that I was friends with someone who was, emotionally at least, Just Like Me.
The 3DS is an odd one for me - a common thread here has been portables we were able to carry around while commuting or similar, and by the time the 3DS was out I really wasn't commuting that much. I did toward the start of its life cycle, and I really enjoyed that julian gollop tactics game… ghost recon shadow war I guess!
But in general I resented the 3D, I felt like I was paying extra for something I not only wasn't going to use, but actively disliked. So I was pretty happy when they started selling all the 2D ones. When I look at my physical collection, I've got roughly 10x as many DS games as 3DS. It felt like the game industry was rather cool on the idea as a whole too.
I really liked the form factor and input style of the DS family though, and so many games were designed with it in mind that now can't really happen the same way. The original "good" vision of Gunhouse would've been perfect on 3DS but the market for indie stuff was already too cold in 2015-16 to even consider it. Not a single publisher would discuss it. Unfortunately there is still not a platform even equal to this idea, let alone better for it.
I think the loading on the 3DS was also a contributing factor in my realizing maybe I don't need physical media for newer platforms that have digital releases. There's not a lot of advantage to having a cartridge or a disc on the modern era.
That said, I love pokemon picross, and lament the death of stylus-based picross games. I also thought pokemon shuffle was pretty good! If they had just let me pay for non-f2p versions of these games, I certainly would have.
Also SMT IV is a fantastic game that should have a remaster somewhere at some point I'd imagine, maybe after V comes out. Otherwise I don't have a lot of huge memories with this platform. It was sort of an extension of the DS, but always felt like it was on the way out, for me.
I'm curious about this dillon game but it's 40 god darned dollars! I think everybody should be doing sales on there right now - Sega sure is!
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OH ALSO - has anyone figured out an actual good way to browse the 3ds eshop in the last 10 years!?
[edit 2]
I wonder if we should start a separate thread for 3DS-exclusive game recommendations before the eshop sunsets, or if we should do it here??
I don’t remember if this is true of these two games in particular (especially because Pokemon stuff tends to sit somewhat outside Nintendo’s typical practices) but Nintendo’s “free-to-start” games tend to have an unspoken cap for microtransactions where crossing a certain threshold of real-money purchases (typically around $40) will unlock items that essentially negate the f2p-ness of the games.
Either way, Shuffle’s more or less another Trozei, IIRC, and I’m pretty sure there’s one of those you can just buy for <$10.
I will admit that I sort of need the pokemon avatars in order to be excited by pokemon shuffle, oops.
and with pokemon picross, what they really should've done is let me buy more puzzles god darn it! that I would've paid for. I beat the whole game without paying a dime, except at the end I bought something just so they'd maybe think the game was popular.
shuffle has so many characters and so many upgrade paths I'm not sure there's a sensible way to cap the spending... but I'd love to be wrong!
@exodus Dillon’s Dead Heat Breakers UK physical is $15 plus shipping on Play-Asia right now. I have that copy and with the base level 3DS hack being pretty doable and turning of the region lock, you might want to spring for that.
Yeah, I don‘t think Shuffle has any kind of cap. I play that game every day and I hate it. Puzzle games with grinding can go fuck themselves. Apart from Trozei it’s like those Puzzle and Dragon games.
@robinhoodie someone else suggested softmodding and getting a eu copy since they’re super cheap. I guess i never thought to softmod anything since I’m too worried about bricking things.
I do wish they put more eshop titles on sale. I have a loose few dollars left on the account to get like a gameboy color game or something. kinda useless!
i had an og 3ds and a new 3ds xl. the little nub made a big difference for monster hunter imho
edit: the cart slot on my n3dsxl is busted tho :[
@exodus The 3DS was my favorite SMT console since the PS2! SMTIV and IVA for originals plus really good re-releases(Soul Hackers, Devil Survivor 1/2, Strange Journey).
I have a bunch of 3DS games but I think Animal Crossing New Leaf defined that entire console for me. I’ve never spent more time with any game and doubt I ever will again.
@hellojed There are step by step guides (https://3ds.hacks.guide/) that if you take your time and follow to the letter will get you through. I don’t exactly condone piracy on modern-ish systems. But region locking on a portable is kind of unforgivable to me. Also they are done updating the firmware I would assume, so less likely you will be locked out of functionality.