Dude, you mentioned hardware, but where's the mention for streetpass??? Genuinely, Streetpass was amazing and the thing I miss most about my 3DS. Passing by other 3DS owners like ships in the night, only finding out it happened because their mii arrived to help me out in Find Mii. The fact that Nintendo is STILL not bringing it back for the Switch 2 is honestly kinda lame, because it's part of what made the 3DS feel personal in ways the Switch sorta doesn't.
If you were to ask me what games I think of, though, I would immediately say Fire Emblem Awakening, the game that got me into the series. Die hard FE fans will insist that Nintendo sold the soul of the franchise, and that the Tellius games are objectively better, but that's 124% cope. FE:A was such a good game, and I'm so glad I had the chance to play it. (Can't wait to see what FE games come out for the Switch 2).
Also also, you simply can not tie a console's performance to how well the zeitgeist treats its Pokemon generation. Pokemon fans are FICKLE and you can tell how old the dominating demographic is by which gen is currently in vogue and which one is the worst. I've seen this cycle play out again and again, and I bet you that it's only a matter of time before X and Y are the new popular underrated gems. I give it five years, just wait and see.
I totally forgot! I wouldn't have given it much weight though because my experience of Street Pass was taking my 3DS out every time I went out then getting a single Mii show up after several months, I kind of gave up after that.
Definitely some influential JRPG's there but it's just not a genre I'm that into, I try to be objective with these posts (apart from the Sentiment section, which is very much where I become the most transparent) but it is all, at the end of the day, my opinion.
This part made me laugh XD They are definitely very fickle but I'm not; I still think X and Y are shittiest games in the series, at least out of the ones I played. I decided to tie the Software score to Pokémon quite tightly because I think for a lot of owners, Nintendo handhelds are just the device they play Pokémon on.
Man, genuinely the biggest thing about gaming experiences that's hard to quantify is just the where you were, who you knew, and what you were doing at the time. For me StreetPass was a big deal because I worked in a really busy fast food restaurant, and there was a solid enough mix of co-workers, regulars, and fresh visitors who owned 3DS's that every day always yielded a couple hits at least. Going out shopping yielded even more.
On the other hand, I have basically never played Pokemon socially. I can count the number of times on one hand. So the experience of playing them was a lot closer to any other jrpg for me
The 3DS' killer app was StreetPass. It may sound lame when you read about it these days, and it is extremely hard to explain just how rad it was if you didn't live it, but it was super cool and made having a 3DS feel like you were part of a community.
It was always a small buzz to see the indicator light change colour to let you know a new Mii had arrived on your device and a fellow 3DS gamer was in the vicinity. Then seeing their character show up in games was just such a neat touch.
Sadly there's no real way to truly experience it today.
I did actually get to use Street Pass a few times and found it pretty cool, maybe I just got unlucky though because I would take my console out and about with me quite a few times and never 'passed.' Anyone, then I made a big, cross-country move in 2012 and none of my friends had a 3DS so it became a console I rarely used during its life apart from Miiverse, unfortunately; I've had a lot of fun rediscovering its library since though.
Firstly, congrats for all the growth your Substack has seen recently! You might need to hold on to that 50 subs post for 100 subs instead. Very well deserved :)
I'm always going to have rose-coloured glasses towards the 3DS as it was my first Nintendo handheld and felt like such a steady hand throughout those turbulent Wii U years. I also feel like, although some series like Pokemon took a back step during this era, other series like Fire Emblem emerged as genuine heavy hitters. The system also had great entries for the Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Kirby series.
But I do take your points that in the grand scheme of Nintendo hardware, the 3DS does play it quite safe and middle of the road. Keen to read your Wii U retrospective.
Thank you very much! It's truly been a pleasure writing on here since January. The first 3 months with only a tiny audience and little feedback were rough but since late-ish March it's honestly only gotten better and better. Glad to be here and interacting with readers like you.
'A steady hand through those turbulent Wii-U years' was a point I tried to make but you phrased much better here, I couldn't agree more. It certainly had some amazing games and I too noticed around the 3DS's time that Fire Emblem really started to take off in the Western Hemisphere.
It's one I definitely don't feel strongly about: I definitely like the 3DS but I don't love it but it was what Nintendo needed at the time.
Should be up on the 1st of June :) thanks for reading
I was about to complain about the 3 stars for software, but your reasoning makes complete sense.
One thing I did enjoy about the software library was that Nintendo did a lot of experimental weird little games that wouldn't really work on a home console.
I will forever be a Tomodachi Life / Miitopia fan.
The thing that hurts the most for me is the eShop shutting down, because most of what I wound up playing on the 3DS was downloaded rather than 'full' physical copies of games. On top of being able to have a gigantic library of games for traveling without needing a big rattling sack of carts, it was also a pretty special niche for indie games that didn't appear on any other platform. The Switch and Steam Deck have stepped up to fill that gap admirably, but it's one thing where the 3DS felt significantly ahead of the curve for portable devices.
Too bad about the control situation - I remember seeing detailed guides for how to hold your 3DS to properly play Kid Icarus without succumbing to wrist cramps, and third party augments specific to that game, and wondering how they could develop a launch title that made the console it was designed for seem like an ergonomic nightmare.
I second Margot's comment - no way is the original Game Boy the worst. It's big boned, but it's got heart - give that award to the first GBA model instead!
It's a consistently annoying aspect of Nintendo: they'll clamp down on you harder than anyone for distributing ROMs and emulation while simultaneously providing no legal way to own a lot of these games; not rent on a service, own. I want to own my games. I'm one of the people who would prefer the Virtual Console to return as an alternative/supplement to Switch Online. I can imagine we'll see some of those indies return but who knows?
Even the later models didn't fare great, I play on the New 3DS XL and it just is not comfortable to use. Nintendo have gone backwards in ergonomics, the Wii-U gamepad was excellent for comfort and the GBA was nice too.
I was tempted to put the DS-I in worst too simply because there's so little point to owning one today since it was, more or less, a less feature-complete DS Lite with an added camera and DSI Ware to purchase.
While I agree with your best handheld, I’m not sure I can call the gameboy the worst. It nostalgically means too much to me but I guess objectively you may well be right even if it hurts. Haha.
Nice write up. I had this console and played a lot of Mario kart 7 on it . 😅
Dude, you mentioned hardware, but where's the mention for streetpass??? Genuinely, Streetpass was amazing and the thing I miss most about my 3DS. Passing by other 3DS owners like ships in the night, only finding out it happened because their mii arrived to help me out in Find Mii. The fact that Nintendo is STILL not bringing it back for the Switch 2 is honestly kinda lame, because it's part of what made the 3DS feel personal in ways the Switch sorta doesn't.
If you were to ask me what games I think of, though, I would immediately say Fire Emblem Awakening, the game that got me into the series. Die hard FE fans will insist that Nintendo sold the soul of the franchise, and that the Tellius games are objectively better, but that's 124% cope. FE:A was such a good game, and I'm so glad I had the chance to play it. (Can't wait to see what FE games come out for the Switch 2).
Also also, you simply can not tie a console's performance to how well the zeitgeist treats its Pokemon generation. Pokemon fans are FICKLE and you can tell how old the dominating demographic is by which gen is currently in vogue and which one is the worst. I've seen this cycle play out again and again, and I bet you that it's only a matter of time before X and Y are the new popular underrated gems. I give it five years, just wait and see.
I totally forgot! I wouldn't have given it much weight though because my experience of Street Pass was taking my 3DS out every time I went out then getting a single Mii show up after several months, I kind of gave up after that.
Definitely some influential JRPG's there but it's just not a genre I'm that into, I try to be objective with these posts (apart from the Sentiment section, which is very much where I become the most transparent) but it is all, at the end of the day, my opinion.
This part made me laugh XD They are definitely very fickle but I'm not; I still think X and Y are shittiest games in the series, at least out of the ones I played. I decided to tie the Software score to Pokémon quite tightly because I think for a lot of owners, Nintendo handhelds are just the device they play Pokémon on.
Hope to see you again in the Wii-U comments :)
Man, genuinely the biggest thing about gaming experiences that's hard to quantify is just the where you were, who you knew, and what you were doing at the time. For me StreetPass was a big deal because I worked in a really busy fast food restaurant, and there was a solid enough mix of co-workers, regulars, and fresh visitors who owned 3DS's that every day always yielded a couple hits at least. Going out shopping yielded even more.
On the other hand, I have basically never played Pokemon socially. I can count the number of times on one hand. So the experience of playing them was a lot closer to any other jrpg for me
The 3DS' killer app was StreetPass. It may sound lame when you read about it these days, and it is extremely hard to explain just how rad it was if you didn't live it, but it was super cool and made having a 3DS feel like you were part of a community.
It was always a small buzz to see the indicator light change colour to let you know a new Mii had arrived on your device and a fellow 3DS gamer was in the vicinity. Then seeing their character show up in games was just such a neat touch.
Sadly there's no real way to truly experience it today.
I did actually get to use Street Pass a few times and found it pretty cool, maybe I just got unlucky though because I would take my console out and about with me quite a few times and never 'passed.' Anyone, then I made a big, cross-country move in 2012 and none of my friends had a 3DS so it became a console I rarely used during its life apart from Miiverse, unfortunately; I've had a lot of fun rediscovering its library since though.
Firstly, congrats for all the growth your Substack has seen recently! You might need to hold on to that 50 subs post for 100 subs instead. Very well deserved :)
I'm always going to have rose-coloured glasses towards the 3DS as it was my first Nintendo handheld and felt like such a steady hand throughout those turbulent Wii U years. I also feel like, although some series like Pokemon took a back step during this era, other series like Fire Emblem emerged as genuine heavy hitters. The system also had great entries for the Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Kirby series.
But I do take your points that in the grand scheme of Nintendo hardware, the 3DS does play it quite safe and middle of the road. Keen to read your Wii U retrospective.
Thank you very much! It's truly been a pleasure writing on here since January. The first 3 months with only a tiny audience and little feedback were rough but since late-ish March it's honestly only gotten better and better. Glad to be here and interacting with readers like you.
'A steady hand through those turbulent Wii-U years' was a point I tried to make but you phrased much better here, I couldn't agree more. It certainly had some amazing games and I too noticed around the 3DS's time that Fire Emblem really started to take off in the Western Hemisphere.
It's one I definitely don't feel strongly about: I definitely like the 3DS but I don't love it but it was what Nintendo needed at the time.
Should be up on the 1st of June :) thanks for reading
I was about to complain about the 3 stars for software, but your reasoning makes complete sense.
One thing I did enjoy about the software library was that Nintendo did a lot of experimental weird little games that wouldn't really work on a home console.
I will forever be a Tomodachi Life / Miitopia fan.
The thing that hurts the most for me is the eShop shutting down, because most of what I wound up playing on the 3DS was downloaded rather than 'full' physical copies of games. On top of being able to have a gigantic library of games for traveling without needing a big rattling sack of carts, it was also a pretty special niche for indie games that didn't appear on any other platform. The Switch and Steam Deck have stepped up to fill that gap admirably, but it's one thing where the 3DS felt significantly ahead of the curve for portable devices.
Too bad about the control situation - I remember seeing detailed guides for how to hold your 3DS to properly play Kid Icarus without succumbing to wrist cramps, and third party augments specific to that game, and wondering how they could develop a launch title that made the console it was designed for seem like an ergonomic nightmare.
I second Margot's comment - no way is the original Game Boy the worst. It's big boned, but it's got heart - give that award to the first GBA model instead!
It's a consistently annoying aspect of Nintendo: they'll clamp down on you harder than anyone for distributing ROMs and emulation while simultaneously providing no legal way to own a lot of these games; not rent on a service, own. I want to own my games. I'm one of the people who would prefer the Virtual Console to return as an alternative/supplement to Switch Online. I can imagine we'll see some of those indies return but who knows?
Even the later models didn't fare great, I play on the New 3DS XL and it just is not comfortable to use. Nintendo have gone backwards in ergonomics, the Wii-U gamepad was excellent for comfort and the GBA was nice too.
I was tempted to put the DS-I in worst too simply because there's so little point to owning one today since it was, more or less, a less feature-complete DS Lite with an added camera and DSI Ware to purchase.
While I agree with your best handheld, I’m not sure I can call the gameboy the worst. It nostalgically means too much to me but I guess objectively you may well be right even if it hurts. Haha.
Nice write up. I had this console and played a lot of Mario kart 7 on it . 😅
I think it was brilliant for when it came out, just very flawed as a piece of hardware, some iconic games though.
Thank you! The 3DS was definitely good, probably kept Nintendo alive at the time.