SB Recommends Nintendo 3DS Games
It's sort of a portable Wii equivalent, without the motion controls, a no-glasses-required 3-D screen, and some new hardware gimmicks. Of course there is a later, larger version: The 3DSXL, and there is soon to be a cheaper, non-hinged 2DS.
After the system wasn't as much of an instant blockbuster as Nintendo had anticipated, they gave it a sizable price drop. As a way of apologizing to early adopters, Nintendo created the “Ambassador Program”, allowing people who had purchased the system before a certain date to download 20 free pre-selected Virtual Console games: 10 NES games, and 10 GBA games, the latter of which Nintendo claims are Ambassador-exclusive.
The 3DS has an eShop from which users can download a variety of games and apps, including most DSiWare games. The system's Virtual Console thus far includes Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Game Gear and NES games (the latter of which, infuriatingly, must be re-purchased even if you've already bought them on Wii). As noted above, the system is capable of emulating GBA games, but for some reason Nintendo seems to have no interest in releasing any to the general public. This is also the first system for which Nintendo has decided to make retail games simultaneously available as digital downloads, so most games on this page are also available via the eShop.
In the tradition of the Game Boy Color and DSi before it, the 3DS will be receiving a substantial mid-life upgrade in the form of the imaginatively titled “New 3DS”. This version will feature a stronger CPU, a revised design including a much-requested second analog stick, redesigned home menu software, and exclusive games.
Recommended 3DS Games
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The Blueberry Hill: Ditches
some of the nice touch-screen controls from
Wild World, but adds in a bunch more stuff and picks up the pace a little.
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Ni Go Zero Ichi: It ain't the Second Coming of
Vagrant Story, but as a modestly-budgeted experimental mini-RPG from
Matsuno it's about as imaginative, intriguing and bafflingly complex as you might imagine. A couple extremely crappy design decisions hold it back from true two-thumbs-up status, but if the words “Matsuno” and/or “experimental mini-RPG” sound at all appealing to you it's well worth checking out — certainly at the price point and time commitment required (i.e. small).
Felix: Pretty claustrophobic. I get that Matsuno wanted to make a “small” game but this one feels too much like it's at odds with itself. Rather just play FFT another hundred times.
Ni Go Zero Ichi: It's a game about exploring a ruined palace in search of a forbidden artifact, like a medieval-fantasy Indiana Jones, while also trying to emulate the feel of playing a tabletop RPG dungeon-crawling campaign. The claustrophobia is the point.
The_Blueberry_Hill: Yeah, I also dig the cramped dungeon feel, as well as the really nice texture work. The characters and story aren't so interesting. But I enjoyed jumping back in on late nights.
Ever Oasis
2501: Just a really chill, pleasant ARPG with light Secret of Mana and Zelda vibes (because it is a Koichi Ishii game) and a fantasy village sim metagame. It’s pretty and straightforward and it always mellows me out when I need it, which is exactly the kind of thing I miss in JRPGs nowadays. Hell of a lot more enjoyable and evocative of vintage Square than Bravely Default.
Fantasy Life
VirtualCLint: Fantasy Life is the most mellow relaxing good shit with great music and a charming storyline and cute-as-hell characters. It's also not something I would recommend to emulate, as it thrives on being a game you pick up for 10 minutes between other stuff […]
It's one of my favorite 3DS games okay?
spacetown: there are some obvious issues with a game that literally calls your profession a “life” but otherwise [^]
Tulpa:
Fantasy Life is a strange game, kind of at the intersection of trad jrpg and
harvest moon but in a very different way from the
Rune Factory games. I do like it, mostly because it is one of those games that tacitly allows for multiple styles of pacifist playthrough and distances itself from traditional jrpg plotting.
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Ni Go Zero Ichi: Yup, it's Fire Emblem! More specifically, it's a new, sleeker, sexier Fire Emblem, aimed at drawing in today's anime-watching, Persona-loving, non-hardcore-strategy-RPG-playing kids, while reassuring veterans that the steadfast mechanism beneath that slick new makeover is running just as strong as ever. And hey, it works pretty well! The age-old formula is comfortably streamlined, and the new additions all add new layers of strategy rather than distracting gimmickry. In fact, the support and team-up mechanics literally change how you play the game. In a good way! Although, if you take advantage of the ridiculously overabundant grinding opportunities presented to you this can become far and away the easiest Fire Emblem game, even on Hard Mode.
Isfet: i'll put it this way: i have put in over 26 hours into FE so far and i have no intention of stopping. it just continues to be fun. i haven't had an experience like this with a game in YEARS. it's just so, so good.
remote: Intelligent Systems' Advance Wars: Dual Strike was the first game to make me really like my DS, and it seems they've done the same thing here for my new 3DS. I'm around 20 hours in and (though I am new to Fire Emblem) would say this is among the best tactical strategy games I've played. The pairing up and support mechanics really make it stand out, as do the class system and character marriage (which produces class hybrid children). The 3D stuff looks great, too, with particle effects and rays of sunlight that pop out. Along with Super Mario 3D Land this is one of the no-brainer games to get when you buy a 3DS.
ste: Agree that FE:A is one of the no-brainer games to buy for 3DS. It's accessible, beautifully presented & one of the best introductions to the genre. It's not without issues: the story is particularly bad JRPG nonsense & on normal/hard any illusion of challenge totally evaporates after the first half dozen maps even without any grinding; yet man I still got 40 good hours out of it.
Ni Go Zero Ichi: The story is inoffensively stupid fluff, just like any other game in the series (okay, maybe a little stupider thanks to all that time-traveling nonsense) but the script, at least, is consistently amusing enough to make it all palatable, with plenty of personality and even a few laugh-out-loud moments. Meanwhile, the difficulty does pick up again at a certain point, after which it seems to spend the rest of the game fluctuating wildly between one mission and the next. For better or worse.
Ni Go Zero Ichi: Also: Like past Fire Emblems, the prominence and fickle power of the random number generator can be absolutely maddening, to the point that your tolerance for the possibility of getting completely fucked by, say, a 1-in-50 critical hit, or two consecutive misses at 85% accuracy, may totally make or break the game for you. It's worth putting serious consideration into taking advantage of the Casual Mode option, which saves you a whole hell of a lot of restarts, wasted time, system abuse and damaged vocal cords by getting rid of permadeath regardless of the game's difficulty level.
Kokuga
alansmithee: Kokuga is brilliant elegance.
Ni Go Zero Ichi: This is the Treasurest game that is decidedly (literally) not a Treasure game. And I like it like that.
Vikram Ray: Kokuga is fucking brutal. struggling mightily in stage E. hurt so good though.
Bacon&Onions: When I first played Kokuga I was confused by their choice of art style, why was everything so crudely blocky with simple plain textures? It looked like the game was put under serious size constraints for reasons I couldn't understand until last week, when I tried playing the game with my girlfriend's 9 year old brother. The entire game(27mbs?) downloaded wirelessly to his cart in a few seconds and we tackled every stage together. It was amazing. I now think Kokuga has the best multiplayer co-op of any smup. The sharing of cards and the deliberate slow shots means we were communicating and working together constantly splitting up enemies. Using your sole revival card to bring your teammate back to life so you can fight the boss together is awesome. I'm convinced the game was designed around co-op and much of the design choices were made to make a better co-op smup.
Isfet: […] This game is pretty much the very definition of slow burn. it feels like it's always teetering on the edge of becoming “boring” but it never reaches that point and so it's consistently brilliant.
hard as hell, though! it requires a part of my brain/game-playing abilities that most developers don't really aim for any more.
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RobotRocker: Nearly everything awful about
Mario Kart Wii has been consigned to the bin and the game just feels amazing to play. The glider mechanic is a heck of a lot of fun and while the underwater sections don't really hit the spot, they are still better implemented than most games. The track design is actually rather fun and takes advantage of the mechanics instead of dumb “Stunt here” parts of
MK Wii.
All the items seem better balanced and it only seems to give out lightning and
blue shells when the pack really separates out.
Retro Studios also did a really good job of messing with the retro cup tracks to play better with the game mechanics instead of
Nintendo just plonking them in and expect them to work with whatever mechanics they had in
DS/Wii.
On top of that, Nintendo had the sheer gall to put in an amazing online mode. You don't even need friend codes, you just set up a community, post it on your forum of choice and then just join the community like a PC server when people are online.
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Ni Go Zero Ichi: How do I describe this? If you're looking for a sequel to the first two Paper Mario games, Sticker Star is a disappointment. If you take it on its own merits, though, devoid of any expectations, it's a pretty neat and surprisingly fun genre-hybrid (RPG + adventure game + Mario World-style level progression) with an unconventional but fairly inspired game economy driven by the constant acquisition and expenditure of stickers - your currency for interacting with the game world. It's also one of the nicest looking and sounding games on the system. There are a couple of unfairly hard puzzles that involve finding invisible blocks (that the game doesn't tell you you need to find).
Pokémon Picross
The Blueberry Hill: Free Picross! The Pokémony part is a bit gimicky (you can equip pokémon and use their abilities to do things like freeze the timer and reveal squares, but the free-yo-play stuff doesn't get in the way, just limits how much you can play in a day :)
Pushmo / Pullblox (PAL)
Swimmy: So, for those of you who have a
3DS and are sad about the lack of games, IF YOU HAVEN'T BOUGHT
PUSHMO DO IT RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
You will have to get through some handholding at the beginning, but it is amazingly worth it. I haven't been stuck so badly, so often in a puzzle game for a long time. This game regularly makes me feel like an idiot. I love it.
SEGA 3D Classics
A stellar selection of upgraded ports. There are some good articles about their transformation to 3D too.
3D Super Hang-On
Persona: Guys, don't sleep on
Super Hang-on. The game's sense of speed is so amazing and it's so unrelentingly hard on its default settings, but once you master it you feel like a god. It's similar to
Outrun except instead of being a cool relaxing driving game, you're on a rocket that can go at light speed, blazing past the landscapes, but the slightest tap against anything will screw you up and ruin all your dreams.
I honestly love it more than
Space Harrier now when every time before I never even took a second glance at it.
Hell, I'm going to go play it again right now.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Ni Go Zero Ichi: My favorite game on the 3DS. Gets off to a slow and kind of lukewarm start, but after a dozen hours or so the game opens up in an immensely satisfying way that merits comparisons to Final Fantasy VII's “leaving Midgar” moment, and in doing so elevates itself to one of the most fun and engrossing JRPGs in recent memory.
SteamWorld Dig
Swimmy: I recommend it if the idea of digging your own levels out of a preexisting dirt configuration appeals to you. It has a lame last boss and no serious reason to replay, but it has enough gimmicks that it's a good run to the end, and it thankfully never gives you the ability to dig while jumping, so you always have to be careful not to isolate a section completely by digging carelessly.
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108: It is easily — in my opinion — the best game
Nintendo has made in ten years.
Spiffyness: This is the first game in years that is good enough to get my family around the TV, passing the controller, over Thanksgiving holiday, and it's a damn shame that that can't happen. The 3D is… actually really necessary to play well, and if this was a console game I would seriously consider buying a 3D TV.
Vikram Ray: I knew this would be a Real Mario Game when in the very first level, I climbed up a tree just to do it and then jumped and stumbled onto some music-note-blocks which led to a 'secret' area, and I got that little twinge of electric happiness and discovery that I haven't felt in a
Mario game since
World.
Felix: I was skeptical when I bought a 3DS knowing I'd only have this one game to play unless and until something else came out that I was interested in, I was skeptical after hearing
Mario and
Peach's audio samples, and I kept right on being skeptical until six hours later when I'd cleared the whole thing, solidly-challenging “second quest” and all. My patience, interest, and respect for Nintendo had dwindled to almost nothing, and this game, by virtue of being consistently varied and inventive (n.b.: it's clearly riffing on
SMB3 most of all), earned its welcome. It's still a platformer, and an overly gentle one at that — not as satisfying as
Meat Boy and not as inventive as
Mario 64 — but it absolutely is the linear 3D platformer that everyone's wanted Nintendo to make for a decade, and it did not fail to impress me.
analogos:
Super Mario 3D Land—especially by the (real) end—is pretty easily the (best,) tightest, leanest, most player-respecting
Mario in ages, but you have to like getting star coins (to get to the best endgame stages) and accept that every
Mario is going to be pretty nonconfrontational for the first hour or so.
Ni Go Zero Ichi: The standard campaign plays like Baby's First 3D Mario, with insultingly easy levels and even a failsafe auto-invincibility mechanic introduced if you die more than a couple times in a row. Only after clearing the game do you gain access to the Real Super Mario 3D Land, where the levels are (moderately) challenging, the handholding is rescinded, and switching off between Mario and Luigi becomes an available and tactical decision. At that point, it becomes pretty much the best 3D action game on the handheld.
Unchained Blades
Booter: Everyone should play Unchained Blades. I greatly prefer it to
Etrian Odyssey.
WarioWare Gold
2501: Quick rant on WarioWare - back in the day, I recall certain high-profile SBers trashed the WW series as being conceptually akin to “glorified ‘Simon Says’”. This critique isn’t totally off-base but it always bothered me and I think I’ve figured out why: “SS” wants players to rapidly mimic a series of simple actions. WW wants players to rapidly intuit the rules of a constantly-changing series of games, which are performed with simple actions. That seems like a subtle distinction but it represents a huge step up in terms of design complexity and skill ceiling. Like many Nintendo games, the real satisfying play modes (the high-speed remixes, played for score) are withheld until you’ve already beaten everything on “For Toddlers” difficulty. Anyway. If you haven’t played most or all of the previous games on the GBA, DS and Wii/Wii U, Gold is a great intro! If you have, well, it’s a Greatest Hits album (with a few new notes, remixes and gimmicks).
See also
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3DS - 2013–15 forum thread.
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