As of this week, the 3DS has been out for over six years in all of Nintendo’s release territories. When the system arrived in North America, it cost a steep $250, had no online store, and was accompanied by a largely uninspired assortment of games headlined by bafflingly underwhelming first-party efforts including Nintendogs + Cats, Pilotwings Resort, and Steel Diver. Six years later, the 3DS is one of my favorite systems of all time and has given me some of my most cherished game experiences.
I’ve been a Nintendo fan since the NES days, and 3DS became the platform on which I finally connected with some of their most storied franchises. I played my first Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and Kid Icarus games on the system and fell in love with those series, and I gained a deeper appreciation for Kirby and Pokemon. I returned to the setting of my favorite Zelda game in Link Between Worlds, and it felt like home. I got to see some of my favorite third-party characters meet unexpectedly and brilliantly in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright and Persona Q. I could go on for paragraphs about all the great times to be had on this platform.
How did it climb to this lofty peak from the dire days of spring/summer 2011, when the fledgling eShop was highlighted by Game Boy games, the standout retail releases were N64 ports, and I couldn’t get a StreetPass to save my life? Well, many will point to Nintendo’s aggressive price cut (and free conciliatory games for early adopters), but the real turning point for me was the arrival of some truly worthy software in the final two months of the year.
Super Mario 3D Land was masterful, Mario Kart 7 was great evergreen fun, and Pushmo was a neat new puzzle experience. All were proofs of concept in some way: 3D Land was the best use of 3D on the system at that time, Mario Kart was a strong indicator of how well online could work on the hardware, and Pushmo was our first taste of the sort of bite-size original content Nintendo would begin to offer at lower price points on their digital shop. These releases were the first great games tailor-made for the system, and they really seemed to herald the beginning of a more golden age for the platform.
With Nintendo’s new Switch encroaching on the 3DS’s portable territory, it seems inevitable that the sun will soon fully set on the six-year-old system. For now, it continues to get support from Nintendo and some stalwart Japanese third parties like Atlus, Level-5, and Capcom. I love the Switch so far, and though I’m a bit sad that the 3DS is already fading away from my gaming routine, I’ll never forget the good times we had together or the journey from the dark days of Steel Diver to the glory of the system’s eventual library.
Thanks, 3DS.
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