Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 449: 3DS and Wii U Deathbed Recommendations

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Jeremy Parish, Chris Kohler, and Tiny Cartridge's Eric Caoili circle like vultures over the warm corpses of Nintendo's last-generation systems, Wii U and 3D, sharing their recommendations for the games everyone should snag before their eShops die as well. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week at Retronauts, we take out a little Nintendo Life Insurance. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And this week, it's an emergency episode. Things have happened. News has come to the public eye. Events have transpired. Nintendo is doing its thing. It's telling us that now we no longer need to clear out the fridge because the fridge is out of business. business. Yes, they're going to be closing off the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U e-shops in about a year from now, but I think they're going to stop allowing you to put money into your 3DS and Wii U piggy bank much sooner than that. So there's a lot of good stuff, especially on 3DS that is unique to that system and is probably never going to show up on another platform or if it does,

it's going to show up in a very different sort of arrangement because the 3DS was, you know, DS and 3DS were pretty unique little systems and it's difficult to port games over precisely without making pretty big changes to them. And so, yeah, it's, Chris, you, you were laughing there. Do you have thoughts about porting, porting? Oh, no, who the hell is here? The only, you know, hi, it's me, Chris Kohler from Digital Eclipse. The only, the reason why I was chuckling a little bit is Because the second that you said it was an emergency podcast, what bursts in my head was, you know, WiiU, WiiU, WeeU, Emergency. Exactly.

It's been an emergency since launch, really. That's the whole thing. Nintendo, they're like, they realize that this year is the 10th anniversary of the WiiU launch. And they're like, oh, my God, that thing existed? Whoa, we're still paying to run the servers for this thing. We got to cut this off. But at least they learned a lesson from Sony last year when Sony announced, yeah, we're, we're cutting off support for a bunch of our legacy. platforms and everyone had an, you know, like just, you know, freak out, basically. They said,

okay, we're going to give you a year and change to put your affairs in order on these platforms before we pulled the plot. That's what Nintendo said, because Sony was like, we're doing it like, I think it was like tomorrow, you know, it was something where it was like, we're doing it real fat. And then you had developers that were like, we're making a Vita game right now. Yeah. We are literally currently making a Vita game. What do you do? That was, that was Sony's usual graceful public messaging. But Nintendo, you know, like I said, they took a few lessons from Sony who took a few lumps. Yeah, this is Nintendo telling us they're about to throw out the fridge so quickly get whatever you can out of there.

Right, exactly. Get your condiments in order, et cetera. Who was that, by the way? A newcomer to retronauts, unbelievably. We've never had you on the show before. And I honestly can't believe it. Like, it kind of baffles me that this has never worked out. Yeah, first time, long-time listener here, first-time caller. This is Eric Haoli, co-editor from Tiny Cartridge, a huge Retronauts fan, and I, too, I'm surprised. I've never gotten the call up from the minor leagues.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm a huge Tiny Cartridge fan, and, you know, especially during the DS days, that was, like, the number one go-to for information on Nintendo DS. It's just a great resource. I know you guys have branched out a bit more because Tiny. Tiny. cartridges aren't so much of a thing in the actual, you know, video game space outside of Switch, which isn't really like, it straddles a line between console and portable. So it's, it seems like it's a tricky space for you guys to occupy these days. I'm just glad that physical media still exists, and especially for what we're seeing right now. Me too, since that's a, like, that's what pays my day job at limited run games. So thank goodness for physical media. But, but not all the games we're going to be talking about this episode are physical games. In fact, I would say the digital-only games for 3DS and Wii are the ones that really are in the greatest danger

of pretty much becoming inaccessible, lost to history unless you commit acts of piracy, which is a really stupid way for the medium to, you know, the industry to curate its history. But that's how they do it. They're like, well, we don't care anymore, but please don't steal anything. You're just not allowed to play it unless you bought it, you know, a few years ago. So here we're doing our due diligence. We're performing a public service this episode and saying here are the things you really need to look out for on 3DS before it goes away. And Wii U too also, we're sure, we're just positive. There's something, we're going to be able to come up with something on Wii U that has not been ported to another system that is not a port from another system that

is unique to Wii U and will never happen again anywhere else. We'll see. That'll be a surprise, that segment of the show. So, I don't know, do we want to talk a little bit about just the 3DS in general and the Wii? Or do we just want to jump into talking about the games? I have quite a list here of things that are some very obvious things, I think. I guess I didn't dig as deeply into the 3DS library as I thought. Although, now that I think about it, I did play a lot of, you know, downloadable games, but most of them ended up on other systems. And that's not, you know, really what we're talking about here. It's more about the unique exclusive stuff that hasn't been ported yet. So, yeah, there's

actually quite a bit of it. What do you guys think? Well, I wrote some things down. And the other thing, okay, so here's the thing. I think to start off with here, there are certainly going to be games on the 3DS and the Wii U, you know, e-shops that are exclusive to e-shops did not have a physical version. But the thing is, so many of these games, even the physical version itself is becoming extremely inaccessible. And so if you are a, you know, if you want to continue to, you know, if you want to stock up on 3DS and we use stuff before this goes away, you might want to consider the fact that if you want to get some of these games, even if they do have a physical version, a physical version might be very expensive. And so you might want to take the

comparative bargain of getting the e-shop version, even if that exists. So I mean, so for example, one of the ones that I wrote on was a rhythm thief, rhythm thief in the emperor's treasure, this, you know, beautiful rhythm game by Sega. That was tons of fun to play. And that now, I believe, the cost of buying the physical copy is into the hundreds, whereas you can get it for $30 on the e-shop maybe. So, you know, even though it's not digital exclusive, it's still, you know, there's your public service, you know, and I'll spend, like, probably get that if you like, character and story-driven rhythm games, which I do. Yeah, I actually went through my 3DS collection. last year and said, well, here are some games that I own in sealed boxes that I have not opened up yet.

I don't need these because they are worth hundreds of dollars and I can buy them on e-shop for, you know, 30 or sometimes they'll go on sale for half that. So I got rid of Persona Q, Persona Q2. I made some pretty decent money off of those games. And, you know, for like a tenth of what I made from those games, I can re-buy them digitally. And I'm okay with that. Like, I will own these games. That's good. I like that. I don't necessarily need to own, you know, like a big cumbersome box set of things. Don't want my boss. Hear me say that.

Yeah, my eyes just went wide when I heard that you sold some of those because I'm imagining just how much the return was on that and how many more e-shop games you could buy with how much you sold a physical cartridge for or box. Yes, and at least the 3DS fridge is very capacious. So I have a lot of games on my 3DS. a lot of digital games. I actually switched to mostly buying digital. And, you know, I was doing a lot of reviews for 3DS, so I would get digital code for a lot of these games. So, you know, I just kept buying bigger and bigger SD cards. And, you know, as they release new models of hardware, I ended up, ultimately, I've got like the Cadillac of 3Ds, which is a new 2DS that has been modded for HTML video output. There's like custom firmware on it, but I never use that. I just, you know, launch into the actual menu and play the games that I bought or, you know, cartridge-based games,

which there's hundreds of them on my system. It's okay. I don't need to steal anything. I'm fine, but I would like to own, you know, there's like eight or nine games that I still haven't picked up that I do need to pick up before they go off sale. But, you know, I stayed on top of the 3DS pretty vigorously. But yeah, like owning these games and playing them on this system makes me very happy and it's got a very large SD card inside so I can have many, many video games on my

souped up 2DS. I've got to say the gating factor that's going to stop people from being able to play and experience a lot of like 3DS content into the future is not necessarily. It's like, yeah, you know, you can get the system, you can put custom firmware on it, you can probably find the game somewhere

you can play it, but it's like the but the first, the hardest part is going to be, I think, getting the hardware. Because even now, the 3DS, you know, to get a good 3DS, it's quite expensive. Yeah, 3DS is really kind of strange. Like, it's, I think they stopped manufacturing and stopped, you know, distributing it right around the time that pandemic hit and everyone, you know, got their stimulus money and went out and bought video games with it.

And all of a sudden, just like in a matter of months, the 3DS supply out there just dried up. And for the past year or two, it's just like there haven't been any. And there's not going to be any because they're not going to be any because they're not going to make any more. It's a dead system. They stop manufacturing it. So yeah, it's, that is, that is a challenge of frustration. And I think there are some pretty good 3DS emulators, but, you know, it's, it's not the same. Like, you want to, you want to have this little, this cute little system with the flip-up screen that you can play in bed or take on a plane

with you, stuck it in your pocket when you're done. You know, if you're one of those people who didn't move to the 2DS, you probably still want to see 3DS visuals, you know, 3D, the popin thing, the Sinran Kagura boobs Yeah Like what are weird to It's also a bit annoying Because I would recommend that You would proxy or ship something from Japan

Where you could potentially get Hardware for a little bit cheaper But the 3DS is the rare Nintendo handheld Where it's actually region locked Unlike the DS and the GBA Where you could still play cartridges And games from other regions So that is another

obstacle that you'll have to overcome. Yep. Yeah, that is a big frustration starting with DSI and all the way through the end of the new 2DS XL or whatever. They region-locked their systems, their handholds. And then, you know, when Switch came around, they were like, whatever, just give us money. We don't care how you do it. Which channel it comes through. We just want your money.

Which is the, you know, that's the right way to do it. Right. But yeah, 3DS is frustrating. You can crack the system to break away the region barriers, but you can't get on the e-shop and buy stuff that way. Like, the e-shop is still going to be region-locked. And so, you know, that only works for cartridge games. So again, yeah, it is, it is frustrating. And, you know, I think they're, you know, talking a little bit about Wii U.

I don't know if Wii U is especially expensive right now, but I feel like 10 years from now getting a working Wii U that has a functioning game pad still like takes a charge and isn't scratched to hell, that's going to be really expensive. I feel like that, you know, at some point down the road, that's going to be in virtual boy territory where it's just like no one really cared about it at the time. But now, you know, the collectors want it. And it's not as common. It's beaten all to hell. It's, you know, really hard to find a system that works as intended with all its original components. And you can't and repaired, you know, if the game pad gets broken.

I mean, those things are going to, you know, when I go to flea markets, I very often see Wii use with no game pad because, like, that's the part that immediately, whether it gets lost or broken or whatever, and it's just like, well, this thing is not actually usable without the game pad. Yeah, I keep meaning to buy a backup game pad, because I just know at some point something bad is going to happen to my Wii U. Although, you know, it, like, I did the Nintendo usage time thing that they, the, the, the, the, you know, like, see, see your stats thing.

Their 3DS stats were wildly wrong for me. It was like, so, like the numbers were so tiny. And I don't understand because I have, you know, my actual system that tells me how many hundreds and thousands of hours I played the system. But the Wii U was spot on. And it turns out the thing that was most played on Wii U was, uh, me letting my nephews play Disney Infinity and Minecraft whenever they would come over to visit. So the numbers on those are like way, way.

up. And, you know, my Wii U survived two, three, very rambunctious six, seven, eight-year-olds playing Disney Infinity and arguing about who gets to be Luke Skywalker and who gets to be Olaf. And, you know, it's survived just fine. So maybe that won't be the case. Maybe it won't be the case that the Wii U game pad is going to be, you know, super destroyed down the line. But I still want to get a backup just in case. Yeah, I presume a lot will be in somewhat decent condition from lack of use other than the dust gathered on our Wii U tablets. But if the past few years of retro collecting have taught us anything, it's not a bad idea to hedge your bets while they're cheap.

All right. So actually, why don't we start by talking about the WiiU? Because it's going to be a short discussion. We can go to an ad break, you know, in like five minutes. So the Wii U actually had something like six or 700 games for it. I can't remember the exact number, you know, split between retail and digital. And there are very, very few that really took a advantage of the system's unique features, mainly, you know, the game pad. And very few that haven't actually been ported to Switch or to some other system, generally Switch. But, you know, like some of the best games on Wii U, things like Pikmin 3 or Super Mario 3D World, like those are on Switch now. So what is there left? There's barely anything left. So I would love to ask you, gentlemen, what do you have on your essentials list for Wii? Is there anything on your essentials list? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are some things that have not been ported that were very good. Again, there's physical versions to some of these, but I mean, maybe it's, you know,

easier just buy the e-shop version at this point. But there was Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, which, I mean, again, like, it's a stylus-based touchscreen game. It's probably not going to get, I mean, actually, well, I mean, I guess maybe they could port it to the switch, like, if they wanted to, but, like, you know, it's, uh, it, they haven't done it yet, so I'm not really sure if they're, they're planning on doing that. Um, and, uh, then I really had a great time with the NES remix games, you know, of which there's, there's a 3DS version, too. And I, I kind of doubt they're going to port that to, to switch. I mean, never say never, but, um, the NES remix stuff was really fun using the original NES, uh, ROMs and creating almost a

warrior-aware type game out of them where it's like, oh, you know, It's like I would never want to play golf for any, like I would never want to sit down and play Nintendo NES golf and like play 18 holes of that. But it's like, oh, hit a hole in one. It's like, oh, okay, all right. I'll sit down and like, I'll mess with this until I hit a hole in one. That's fun, you know, and then move on to the next thing. That was a really good use of those, I think. And especially, especially once they got off the black box games and did NES remix 2 and it was, you know, punch out and stuff like that, then it got good.

This is making me want to go play it again. Yeah, I was a big fan of both of those games, although I thought, I don't know, I thought the Black Box games worked better for the concept just because they're so simple, but, you know, a good time, a good time all around, no matter what. Yeah, as Jeremy mentioned, it's really hard to think of games that weren't ported, because the ones that came to my mind immediately were Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, which ended up on the switch, Yoshi's Woolly World, which I thought was really interesting with just how they added that texture.

But then that was also ported to the 3DS featuring Pucci. And the one title that stuck out on my mind, I'm not sure if it received a port yet, is The Wonderful 101. Yeah, yeah, that was on Switch. Oh, it was eventually brought. Okay, then, never mind. Yeah.

So many of the titles that, to me, stuck out as like, this is a Wii U game, it was hard to think of them as that anymore with Nintendo just bringing all these games that everyone overlooked to its other systems where we actually could give them the attention they deserved. Yeah, I mean, I think the big one that really stands out at this point is Zinoblade Chronicles X. Oh, yeah, of course. Because they keep, apparently that is a franchise now.

They just announced Zinoblid Chronicles 3. So, you know, they brought over Zinoblade, the original, to both new 3DS and Switch. So that one's had some life. But they haven't announced a port of ZenoBlade Chronicle's X. I feel like that'll happen at some point. I think so, you know what? I think it's going to happen. I think it's going to happen on Switch Pro because I think that they have talked about,

they really maxed out the Wii U with that to the point that it's one of those rare games that they actually wouldn't, it would be very difficult to bring it to the switch because of the actual like the drop in power. So I would not be shocked if just like Xenoblade Chronicles 3D ushered in the new 3DS that X would be a port that they would do on the on the on a on a on a on a upgraded version of the switch on the new switch on the new switch which I bet would have already been out by now were it not for all the supply chain COVID kind of stuff that had happened um so we'll see what ends up happening with that but yeah I mean I would think that they would eventually do that yes because as you said the franchise has gotten so big now with that in mind I didn't play a lot of X but what people say is um and I might get a little bit of this wrong but look into this um you can, you can't install the game to your Wii U from the disc, right? That's not a thing, but like you can download asset packs from the e-shop that make the game run faster because you put it all on a big hard drive.

And so it's just calling from the hard drive instead of the disc. And so when the e-shop goes down, I don't know. You can still re-download stuff, but I'm not exactly sure if you're still going to be able to pull those down or not. So you may want to look into that. I think you will be able to. Yeah, because, again, if they're still enabling redownloads for a while, then, yeah, probably. But then again, you know, one of the other games that I still, like, actually, the game that I feel best exemplifies Nintendo's dream for the Wii U, what they really wanted to do, what they aspired to squeeze from that system was Mario Maker, the original Mario Maker, Super Mario Maker. And, you know, Super Mario Maker made it to 3DS in a compromise form that was more about like, hey, play these levels we made for you, as opposed.

to making your own. And then there's Mario Maker 2 on Switch, but it just, like, Mario Maker 2 is very good. It has tons of stuff you can do. But to me, it's not as enjoyable to create, to make Mario Levels with Mario Maker 2 because it doesn't have that switch interface where you had the two separate screens, one of which was stylus-based. That was just such an intuitive, appealing way to play. But here's the thing. They cut off Mario Maker at the knees you years ago by getting rid of the level sharing by you know like the whole thing about mario maker was not just hey i made some nintendo levels okay neat but you know any any guy with a rom hacking setup can do that you know there's programs that'll let you make your own mario levels the thing that made

mario maker so appealing was that there was this communal aspect where you could share your levels you could upload them you could challenge them you know guys like patrick clepick made a thing out of just downloading Mario Maker levels and seeing each day and streaming their attempts to beat these horrible Kaiser levels made by people who somehow managed to actually complete

the horrible hellscapes they created and get them uploaded to the servers. But they took away that feature ages ago. So even like the game that I think best shows off the Wii U at this point is really only kind of halfway there because, you know, you can play.

at solo, you can hand the game pad to your friends. Okay, neat. That's like, you know, playing load runner on NES, like making stages saying, okay, now you play the stage I just made. Okay, now we turn off the system and it's gone. No one else can see it. Who cares? It's just so frustrating. One of my favorite levels that I made with Mario Maker 1 that you can't do on Mario Maker 2 because with Mario Maker 1, you could use Amibo to change the character. There was a mushroom that would let you change into whatever character you wanted as the player. And I had done that with, I did that with Peach, and I made 8-4 backwards, and the conceit was that Mario died on the final Hammer Brother before Bowser, and now you have to get

out of 8-4 yourself, and so I just did 8-4 backwards, but you're a peach. And that was a lot of fun, so it's kind of sad that that's, I mean, I can't distribute that anymore, you can't do anything with it anymore, yeah. Yeah, that loss of user-made content feature is a very common theme in some of Nintendo's best online products like you'll see it in the Mario Maker you saw it in swap note you saw it on flip note all wonderful amazing platforms for user generated content that were eventually unusable now because you can't really share or send anything yeah oh well that's kind of the overall theme of this episode so you know so so there are a few things on Wii you if you look around

not a lot there's also Nintendo Land the past in that I think a lot of people kind of overlooked because it was the pack in and they were like, oh, yeah, that's fine. I want something more exciting, more traditional video gameish. This isn't, you know, we are, sorry, Nintendo Land kind of fell into a weird place where it wasn't a like a full-fledged, you know, here's a campaign style video game. But it also wasn't quite as like infinitely replayable as we sports. So it just sort of fell into a void of non-discussion almost as immediately upon launch. Yeah, I thought Nintendoland was going to be great, you know. I mean, we bought my, you know, got the Wii U and then brought it home in my suitcase to the family in Connecticut, you know, that Christmas. They're like, oh, we're all going to play, you know, because they all had Wii and Wii sports. Like, okay, we're going to play Wii, we're going to play Nintendo Land. And just everything that we played was like, instead of just like, hey, here's a controller, it's your tennis racket, and you're like, boop, boop, and everybody just picks it up immediately. It was kind of like, okay, now there's ghosts in here, and then you have to call out, you know, what character you are.

and if you feel any vibrations, that means it's so he had 20 minutes of explanation for how to play Luigi's Mansion thing to the point that it was like, it's like, you know, trying to play an overly complicated board game with people who don't really want to do it, you know, and spend all the time explaining the instructions.

And the ultimately, you know, Nintendo just, they always wanted to do this, this asymmetric gameplay thing, you know, from, you know, they had prototypes where a Game Boy Color would hook up to a Nintendo 64, right? And they loved this idea of one of the players having secret information on their screen, but to do it in that way,

it just didn't, it just didn't make sense. Like, people just didn't want, people didn't want to do it. It was too confusing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's kind of the, the Wii U experience in a nutshell is,

like, Nintendo really believed in it, and no one really cared. Yeah. So here we are. And they believed, like, well, the games are so good. If you just play the games, you're really going to get it.

And it's like, it's just, yeah. There were, I mean, obviously, I'm going to buy a $60 game for a $250 system on, you know, just your, you're, you know, blind faith that what you say in your marketing is correct and be honest. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just that us users or players did not get it. Developers did not, which is why you have this Darth of third-party titles that we can even bring up hardly any as exclusives. Yeah.

Yep. And it was also this very, I mean, you know, not to get into, like, why did the Wii you fail? But, like, for me, it was like, one, they were still pursuing the casual audience, right, as hard as they could. But they had, we fit you and everything like that. And they really, they really wanted to move that, that big casual audience over to the new system. Then they were also like, oh, we're going to go after, like, traditional gamers.

And we're going to put Mass Effect, you know, three on this. Yeah, because, like, if you played one and two on your Xbox, you're going to get a Wii U and you're going to play three. and like Ninja Gaiden 3 and like all this kind of stuff. Assassin's Creed 3. And it was like nobody is going to, these people are already quite satisfied with their Xboxes and their PlayStation's. They're not going to play this game in Wii.

Meanwhile, if you were like a Nintendo fan, if you were a fan of like Mario Galaxy, if you were a fan of like, I mean, you know, Breath of the Wild eventually came out on Wii at the end. But if you wanted those sort of rich, if you were a Metroid fan, like if you wanted like traditional Nintendo experiences, you were not actually getting the because everything was going hard. Even, even, you know, when Mario 3D world came out, which was an excellent game, it was like, oh, this also is a four-player-centric, you know, party game, you know,

styled Mario game. Like there was, and it would switch, they clearly have the balance back because you have those deep single-player adventures again that we wanted. But with Wii U, it's like, that was almost like an afterthought, which I think was kind of strange. Now, if, had they put Metroid Prime 4 and Wii U would have saved it? No, of course not. Of course not. No, but at least we'd have another exclusive to talk about. Yeah, right.

Now they would have ported it to switch. They had done that. Okay, so, well, we spent like 15 minutes bagging on Wii U. And that's to be expected. I will say this, though. This is not a, I mean, this is not considered a classic, the beloved classic. But, again, I do not believe that Devil's Third, the Itagaki game. Like, there's a, there's a Steam version, but I think it's like,

Devil's Third Online. I don't think it's the same thing as the Wii U game. And I mean, that has a physical version, but that is like three to four to five hundred dollars now to get that because they did it in such a low run and all the collectors are going out to get it and keep it. So you might, that is actually something you might want to snag on the e-shop if you are at all interested in seeing what that game's about. Hello, Every week, I'm joined by my two best gaming buddies, Chris and Minty, and we talk about the games we're playing, the games we love, and how they rank alongside our sacrosanct top

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On the HyperX podcast network and no morewoppers.com. New this April from HyperX. It's the HyperX clutch controller. Get better control of your mobile gaming with its comfortable grip, directional. pad, analog sticks, and shoulder buttons. This versatile controller can fit a variety of phone widths and can also connect wirelessly for use on tablets and PCs. Learn more and pick one up online at HyperX&HP.com, Amazon, MicroCenter, Target, Best Buy, and other fine retailers. I'm going to be I'm going to be.

I'm going to I'm I'm I'm But anyway, that's enough about Wii. Let's talk about 3DS because there's so much to talk about with 3DS. Great little system. It took a while to find its sea legs.

But Nintendo, clearly this is where their bread is buttered, the portable side of things, the low-powered hardware side of things. Because both 3DS and Wii U had really pretty soft launches. And they basically said, eh, Wii U, well, let's do some amoebo instead. You know, here, buy some little figures that you can do stuff with. We don't know. Just buy some figures. But with 3DS, they really went to the maths. And, you know, within six months, kind of, I'm going to use a lot of metaphors here, fell on their sword, apologized, said, hey, here's a price cut. Hey, if you bought it already, bless you. And here I have a bunch of free video games. So, you know, they really, they really pulled it out with 3DS. And it, you know, the final numbers on units sold and software sold look pretty good. It's definitely not. up there with DS, but, you know, what is besides PlayStation 4, or PlayStation 1, 2? PlayStation 2, PlayStation 2, that's it.

That's the one everyone had. Yes. So, yeah, there's a lot of great stuff on 3DS. I think first, why do we just talk about the really obvious things, the really big first-party games? I mean, you had some really great Mario games on 3DS that have not been ported. I recently went back and replayed. I had not played 3D land since it came out. And that was like, oh, you know what?

That game was great. I'm going to go back and play 3D land. Holy fucking shit. That game is so good. It's wonderful. And, you know what's really good? When you beat it, you can play it again. Also that, but you can play it now that the new 3DS XL or the two, I think I played

it on my 2DS XL. It's like, no, no, no, no, I played it on the 3D graphics. But now that that's out, you don't have to play it on the tiny little 3DS screen anymore. Because I think that's how I played it the first time was on the original 3DS. And now to play it on a huge screen, oh, it's so good. And yeah, it hasn't been, that could really get, I would love to see 3D land. Because ultimately, it's like the 3D, the stereoscopic 3D graphics were fun, but ultimately not necessary. I think that would be a really lovely thing to put on the switch in HD.

I think that would be really cool. I remember at the time, I think it came out within the first year or two of the system's life and just being blown away that they came out with that so quick. Because that is the sort of title, like the sort of complete full Mario experience. It's not like a very rushed or like compartmentalized experience. It's like a full game and that they could come out with that so soon and establish the system being really impressed by it. And it's got like some of the most fun puzzles and stages that I've ever played in any Mario. Yeah, unfortunately, I think that one is largely forgotten, despite its excellence. We talked about this on an episode we just recorded yesterday, but Nintendo just

really overdid the Mario thing into like this one year period where you basically had like one or two years where you had that game, Mario Land, 3D land. You had new Super Mario Brothers 2, also on 3DS, also worth getting. New Super Mario Brothers, you, then you had Super Mario 3D World. You had Super Mario Maker. Like, it was just way too much Mario platforming in a really condensed space. And now they've, you know, they've spread it out more and we're kind of at the point

where it's like, could we get some new Mario platformers, please? That would be nice. It's been five years since the last original one. Come on, guys. So, yeah, it was, it was kind of unfortunate.

And I would love to see them, you know, it wouldn't be a new Mario platformer, but it would be, you know, a new experience for a lot of people or even just a fresh experience, a reminder of, holy crap, this game is great. I'm sure, you know,

if they put Mario 3D land on Switch, as Chris's suggestion, suggesting they would add all kinds of new stuff to it, you know, new modes, you know, like Bowser's Fury or something along those lines. That would be great. I would be extremely into that. But for now, that is a 3DS classic or exclusive that is absolutely worth owning, physically, digitally, whatever, just own it.

Yeah, so another series and game that you ended up seeing an explosion of, and a huge title for the 3DS that we have to mention, Fire Emblem Awakening. which really was like a return to form for the series. And then now it's everywhere. You just had a Warriors game coming out for the Switch. And I think we saw like three or four releases on the 3DS. And Fire Emblem Awakening seemed to be the start of that. And huge release.

My understanding is that at that point with that release, that was going to be it for Fire Emblem. And then it was like, this just hasn't caught on. You know, it's doing okay. but they doubled down on the wifus and basically turned it into like, you know, a fighten strategy game, but also a kissing game. And people really, really liked it. And because it was so popular, especially in the West, for the first time,

that series was popular in the West, that basically saved Fire Emblem from Obsolescence. I've read that a few places. So I'm inclined to believe that it's true. But yeah, you got Fire Emblem Awakening and then Fire Emblem, Awakening, and then Fire Emblem Heroes, or no, Echo. No, okay, there was Echoes. That was the last one.

But before that, in between Fates, that's it. All these one-word titles, so confused. Birthright, and, yeah, they started splitting them up. What do you think? I don't play Fire Emblem games, but I mean, as far as the way that they were designed on 3DS, do you think those could be potentially games that could be ported to Switch or there could be Switch versions of them? Yeah, easily.

I mean, there's nothing about, I didn't really play Fates, but I played Awakening. But I played Awakening and I played Echoes, and neither of those really, there's nothing about them that is specifically tied to 3DS. They're strategy games, and there's not even really that much in the way of 3D happening in them. Yeah, I think Awakening, when it just came out, they switched up the art style. Like Jeremy mentioned, they added a romance element to it, a lot of time traveling stuff in it. And it just really took off. And, yeah, it finally, like, we, Fire Emblem before was always like a cult series, a cult game that we enjoyed on the, on the GBA, but with this, it became huge, it walked so

three houses could run on the switch. Yeah, I do want to go back to New Super Mario Brothers 2, which I think is a very good game that was largely kind of pooh-poohed, again, because of the glut of Mario games. And also because its concept is so unusual for a Mario game, it's, it's, it's, really a game about just getting as many coins as you can, about collecting as much gold as you can, which doesn't seem very Mario-ish. But there's a lot of creativity in the level design. And again, we were just talking about this in an episode we recorded yesterday that I think we'll be up before this episode goes live. But it's a game that just like everywhere

you go, you can tell that the developers have playtested it and said, oh, players are going to try to do this thing that they shouldn't, and we should acknowledge that. And that's always fun when you go someplace that you think, oh, I couldn't possibly go there. And then you can. And then there's like a little bonus for you. Like, you know, even if it's just a coin and a game where coins mean nothing, just the fact that that's there. It says like, the developers are, you know, they're in my head. We're on the, we're on the same page. And, you know, we're kind of approaching this from the same direction. And that's always, that's always enjoyable experience in a game. Yeah, like you said, it's just a very odd experience coming in from any other Mario into that.

And you saw that because you had really different gameplay elements in it that you didn't really see before and you turning into a giant gold Mario. And it was very different. And I could understand why it didn't review very well for some people just because you want a more traditional experience. And I think if this had been released later, it would have been an add-on to another Mario game, kind of like we saw the Luigi themes or expansions released to Mario games. And I think maybe if this wasn't a cartridge-based system, that would have been the case. Or maybe five years later, that would have been the case.

But very, very unique, very following in the tradition of Mario sequels with a two in them being so different from the other ones. Yes. Also, there's Mario Kart 7, which I guess is kind of obsolete now that Mario Kart 8 deluxe is on. That's another Wii U game that made it to switch Mario Kart 8. But if you do want a Mario Kart experience, it's more like Mario Kart as opposed to Mario and Friends. You know, if you don't want to have Annabelle or is, sorry, Isabel hit you with a blue shell, then Mario Kart 7 is the one to play. There's a ton of Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario games on on 3DS. Intelligent Systems doesn't really go back. That's, that's I.S., right? Mario are the Paper Mario games? The Paper Mario Sticker Sars Intelligent Systems, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

They don't really go back and remake the Paper Mario games. There haven't been any remakes of Paper Mario games. No, no. And people really want that, too. Whereas a bunch of the Mario and Luigi games that are on 3DS, two of them are remakes of the older DS games. The yes, that's true. So Mario and Luigi is not going to happen again since the developer folded after their second remake, Bowser's Inside Story and minions or something like that, just absolutely tanked and the company went out of business.

Very unfortunate. So those are probably games, if you want to play them, you're going to need to play them on 3DS. Um, let's see. I think that's it for the Mario stuff worth talking about. But there's Wario Ware. Wario is kind of like Mario, but uglier. Wario is kind of like Mario, but uglier and more garlicy. Warrior Wear Gold is kind of a collection of all the different Wario-Ware minigames. You know, there is Game and Wario on Wii, but it's really bad, so don't buy that. Buy Wario Wear Gold on 3D.S. It's the good one. Yeah, you know, we've mentioned DSI a couple of times here, and that's, it's important to realize that the DSIware shop of the downloadable DSI games, that's also closing off its last avenue, you know, to be able to purchase those games as well. I didn't even realize those games were still available

They're still available. Yeah, they've been available on the 3Dsware shop all this time. So now they're finally going away. So you have stuff like XScape, which is the sequel to X, which is the Game Boy Wireframe 3D game that the eventual Star Fox team did on the game. That's how they got hooked up with Nintendo's.

They did True 3D on Game Boy. The Nintendo was really impressed with that. And then later on, a lot of those people are now at Q Games. And so Q Games did a sequel to that that came out for 3DS. We're called X-Scape. So that's a big one. Other DSI...

Oh, there's Kappa's Trail, which is by Brownie Brown, the developers of Mother 3. They eventually became One-Up Studio, and now they're a support studio for Nintendo working on Mario games. But this is an action-adventure type game that actually has a lot of

as a little hidden Mother 3 references in it. So that's a DSI thing. Dark Void Zero. Dark Voids here, made by my company is, before my time, is the Capcom had their big AAA game, Dark Void, and then this was a retro demake of it, which reviewed better than the full Dark Void game. Yeah, didn't it have a soundtrack by Bear McCreary, like a chip tune soundtrack? Oh, gosh, I don't want to say, I don't want to say, I'm not sure, yeah. I remember the soundtrack getting a lot of praise. It probably didn't sound authentic to NES if it was by Bear McCrary, but I don't.

I bet it totally ripped. Right, right, right. I think if we're talking DSI, where we also have to mention the art style games, particularly Pictobits or box life, and both with wonderful, like, there's several more, but those two stick out to me,

especially Pictobits with its YMCK soundtrack, wonderful music on both games. Highly recommend them, getting them. Yeah. So going back to, I don't have any more DSI recommendations. Oh, actually, I do. Mr. Driller, Drill Till You Drop.

Oh, yeah? Which is a fine little Mr. Driller game. I think it's one of the few released in the U.S. that have the, you know, like a translated version of the quest mode. Although now that, you know, drill land is on switch translated, maybe it's a little unnecessary. But, but, you know, it's, I always got to give a shout out to Mr. Driller. But, yeah, back on the, go ahead.

Oh, yes, if you're a Wario completionist, there's Wario Ware snapped on DSIware, which takes a picture of your face and hands and puts those into mini-games. So, again, I mean, that's going to be gone. Like, that's something you're going to have to end your, you might have trouble emulating that as well. Yeah. Yeah.

So kind of adjacent to Wario Ware gold is, uh, on 3DS, Rhythm Heaven Megamix. Yes. Which was, you know, this, this really great Game Boy Advance game that, that shipped at the very butt end of Game Boy Advance's life. Like, after the point Nintendo really cared up. about it in the U.S., and was just full of charm, music, like great original songs, really awesome artwork by, oh, man, I totally blinked on the guy's name. Oh, yes, that guy.

Follow him on Twitter even. How embarrassing. But, yeah, like the character designer for a bunch of Warrior Wear games. It's just super cute, super charming, never localized. But then, you know, they did release, I think Rhythm Heaven Gold on D.S? They brought it to D.A. Yeah, they did the D.S. one worldwide. And that wasn't very good. You didn't think so? I remember that. No, there was something to do with like, I can't remember exactly, but it was like touch-based as opposed to button-based. And it just, it didn't have the same snappiness. Gotcha, gotcha. Whereas Megamix is much more like in line with the Game Boy. And it's really good. And it brings in, Megamix brings in the ones from the Wii, from the DS and from the Game Boy. And so Megamix is the first time where some of the ones from the original Game Boy actually have, have been localized.

worldwide, although not sadly not all of them. So there's some that are still just stuck on that Game Boy game. But yeah, Megamix is fantastic. And yeah, that did not have a physical release in the U.S. and the 3DS is region locked, so you better get that from the e-shop or else

you cannot play it on a U.S. 3DS. Without selling your soul. Also, kind of speaking in terms of the big, obvious picks, so many Pokemon games. Now, it's a given that at some point, Pokemon X, Pokemon Y versions, those are going to be remade like eight years down the line

for whatever Nintendo's next system is. Okay. But then there's all kinds of other stuff. I especially have to give a mention to Pokemon's Super Mystery Dungeon, the first good Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game. It's actually, it actually has some teeth that, you know, you don't have to beat the entire quest mode to get to it. You can kind of jump in fairly early in the experience and actually do something other than wandering through the dungeon, just destroying everything in your path and being like, why am I doing this? It's still way too chatty, but it's a really, really solid mystery dungeon game, and I highly recommend it. no one's jumping in on Pokemon stuff.

So, well, no, nope, not going to do it. I'm not going to jump in on Pokemon, but I, while we're on Game Freak, I do have to mention Harmonite and Pocket Card Jockey, both wonderful 3DS, e-shop games that you should definitely run out and get. Yeah, Harmonite, a rhythmic or musical, musical rhythm game platformer. Oh, so good.

That was really wonderful. You know, same. If you're going out and buying rhythm thief, you should get Harmonite, too. If you're a, uh, you're, uh, and rhythm heaven mega mix. So many rhythm games. Yeah. Pocket card jockey is a wonderful and strange mix of a sort of solitaire and horse racing. And it's just so fun to play. And it's like, it's like a champion derby or derby champion or whatever meets, uh, S&K cardfighters clash. Or maybe not. I don't know. No, that's actually a good comparison.

Like, if I were to rate my top 10 games, pocket card jockey from the e-shop, is definitely one of them for the platform. So I have to mention, we cannot not mention, Rusty's Real Deal baseball. A, Nintendo, I would just love to be a fly on the wall to find out how this got put together, but Nintendo was like, okay, all right,

so this whole free-to-play game thing is big, huh? All right, well, let's try. I assume it was sort of like, look, this is becoming big, so let's try making a free-to-play game and try to reimagine that in a Nintendo way. And what they come up with is, so you download this thing for free, which, I mean, is like very, very few free-to-play games on the 3DS.

And it is a down-on-his-luck dog who runs a sporting goods store. His wife has left him, and they're 10 children, and you can buy baseball-themed mini-games from him to play. But the twist is that you can haggle with him and try to knock him down on the price of these games, and when you haggle with him,

you are actually negotiating down the real dollar price that you will then pay for these games. And then because he is this sad, depressed character, the game, like, makes you feel as bad as possible for beating up this guy who is already not doing so good and is, quite frankly, at risk of harming himself by, you know, haggling over, you know, knocking a couple of bucks off the price of this stuff that he's selling

in his store. And it's just like it's dark, it's shocking. Like I can't even believe this thing exists. And then on top of all of that, the mini games are like fantastic. It's super fun. I don't really like playing sports games, but like these are like Wario style baseball themed

mini games that can be anything from home run derby to cleaning a baseball glove. Like it kind of goes all over the place. And it's just, it's fantastic. And it's the whole thing is just so, it's It's almost like we made a free-to-play game under duress, and we don't like free-to-play games, and we're going to make one, and we're going to make one that makes you feel bad

for playing a free-to-play game. One of the huge surprises is that it came out here, because it's such an odd concept that, like, Nintendo's no stranger to odd concepts, but those games sometimes don't come out here. Like, you think of Captain Rainbow, Tingles, Rosie, Rupee Land, where it's very, like, all of them breaking the fourth wall and very non-traditional concepts. And it's, I'm so grateful that we did get it over here. And I mean, there's a lot to be grateful for with the 3DS library. I agree. Yeah. I have to admit, I heard about this one and the concept sounded intriguing to me, but it's still ultimately baseball. And I have to play so many of those for NES works and

Game Boy Works. And I was just like, I just can't do it. I can't do it. I can't spend my honest. Did you play it? I didn't. I'll go ahead and buy it. You have to. You don't have to buy it. It's free. But you...

I'll go ahead and buy the mini games for less than you're actually worth. Nobody has ever done this before or since what they did with this game. Like this is my... You must do this. And also, it would be... I don't know if like... I mean, I'm sure somebody can set up an emulation situation for this, but because it requires an online connection, like, you actually really do need to get this on the 3DS, probably through the...

e-shop in order to like use the free-to-play hooks to see what they did here like you you actually have to and really the baseball it's not I mean like I don't really remember it as being like a baseball game it's really a series of like mini games yeah you're you're you're hitting baseballs at UFOs like it's not very very realistic just like in baseball for an ES is that true no oh um okay so much less uh I would say creative uh you know at least metatex actually creative are two other e-shop exclusives that I do want to mention both as part of a level five project. They created a bunch of games, small games that were like five, eight dollars. I can't remember exactly how much, but they were very inexpensive. And they were all directed by, you know,

like kind of famous people. You know, Kiji Inafune put together, I think, like an air traffic game or air traffic control game or something like that. Airporter. Yes. The two that stand out are attack of the Friday monsters, which has a very, you know, like Boku no Natsu Yasumi, Goichi Suda, kind of hybrid feel to it, very nostalgic for a period of Japan's history that none of us lived through and let alone remember. But, you know, would definitely resonate, I think, kind of with the collective consciousness, you know, even for younger players over there, like the period of of Japan's history, late 20th century, where I was really rebuilding and really kind of

accelerating quickly into becoming this economic superpower. But, you know, still very, like even Tokyo is still kind of rural and, you know, kind of small. And it's about a kid who lives in a town where giant monsters like Godzilla attack every Friday. But it's not like horrible like that would sound. It's much more of like, you know, kind of those, those, mid-Showa era Godzilla movies where Manila, the son of Godzilla, was kind of the main character, and he palled up with a little kid who was like trying to outsmart villains by like, I don't know, having fantasies about Manila. Anyway, it's very, you know, just a, a collection of a lot of different ideas, just kind of percolating through Japanese pop culture history, semi-recent

history. And it's just really good. It's a very warm, uh, kind of low stress. heartwarming tale, very short. You can play through it in like four or five hours, but just one of those games that you really need to experience. On the flip side of that, oh, sorry, go ahead, Eric. Yeah, it's just like, it's interesting as a nostalgic game that for a time that most of us do not have actual memories of. And you mentioned the My Summer Vacation series. It was directed by the same person, Kazayabe. I also handled that. And I think if... Thank you for mentioning that because they would never forgive me if we did like, yeah, it's

got like all these, these like vignettes, these moments that it, um, to compare it to like a game that you might have experience with, um, if you remember in a Link's Awakening when you're on the beach with Marin and you go into that little like almost like a cut scene on the

Game Boy, it's like a lot of that going on in this game. Yeah, like Jeremy highly recommend it. And it's hard to bring up interesting e-shop games without mentioning it. So, Bugs versus Tanks was the game.

I looked this up. That's the Kijina Funa game. Aeroporter, the game about being a luggage handler in an airport was by Ute Saito. Okay, I was... Okay, yes. That's you're right. Yep. Then you had Crimson Shroud, the RPG by Yasimimmy Mazzano.

Crimson Shroud is the inverse of Attack of the Friday Monsters. It is a game about Yasumi Matsuno's tabletop gaming experience. and it really plays out that way where the in-game elements, you know, there's a lot of narrative that kind of plays out as text scrolls. And the characters are all depicted kind of as these figurines and you have like actual dice rolls. It's very, you know, like vagrant story

as a tabletop RPG campaign. And, you know, it's also very compact. There's a little bit of randomness to it that can be kind of frustrating in a few spots. But, God, it's so good. It's got that, you know, Matsuno, Hiroshima Nagawa, Akihiko Yoshida kind of style, Hitoshi Sakamoto's soundtrack, like all the people who made Final Fantasy tactics and vagrant stories so memorable, you know, the aesthetics of it. Like, they're all here, all working together on this little, like, virtual tabletop campaign, you know, where the GM is very kind of focused on making sure you have his story experience that he planned out. But that's okay.

because the GM is Yasumi Matsuno, and you are really interested in seeing what tabletop experience he planned out for you. And I think it's like a five-buck game. It's just, it's so good. And that's never going to come to any other platform. So absolutely get it from the e-shop. Did not come out physically in the U.S. I think there was a collection of the level five stuff in Japan, but not here. Yep, that's right.

I recommend you play that with the game FAQ open. It does have some frustrating points. that it's good to have some handholding so that you don't leave it, because it is a worthwhile experience, despite how difficult it can be. Let's see. A few other things that are e-shop-specific. Oh, I have to mention one other from that Guild series, Weapons Shop de Mase, which is like you play a shopkeeper selling weapons to adventurers,

which is always a concept near and dear to my heart, especially when you look at Tornico from the Mystery Dungeon series. But it's got that interesting element to it, but also you follow up on how those adventures are doing with the weapons you give them

through a sort of social media feed in a fantasy setting and very, like almost like you see their Twitter updates as they're going out with the weapons that you've sold to them. Not the most, like the concept is better than the actual

gameplay, but it's still so interesting, so different from anything available, and only on the 3DSE shop, so go out and get it. the Guild Zero series, I do want to mention the fact that there are like a dozen Pickross games for 3DS. And yes, you can play Pickross on Switch, but it just works differently and better on 3DS. The screen's smaller, but having the stylus there is very good. There's Picross 3D also, but I don't think it's as good. But you don't have to play it because there are thousands of Pickross puzzles available for you to buy for like $8 per each of these 12 games. It's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of pickross there. And that's always a good

time. Also worth mentioning from a first party perspective is the 3D classics version specifically of Kid Icarus. There are a lot of the 3D classics that Areca put together with Nintendo at the 3DS launch, Zevius, Excite Bike, a few other games. But the one that really, really is worth owning as Kid Icarus because it's the best version of the original Kidikris ever released. Now, why is that? What did they do to that version? They tweaked the control physics so that when you are jumping, if you hold down the jump button, you land just a little more slowly. And just putting that little bit of floatiness, optional floatiness into pits jump makes that game so much more playable, especially in the really difficult early going. You know, when you have to start navigating platforms and if you miss a platform and,

fall off the bottom of the screen, which is always scrolling up, you can't scroll back down and you die. And it's super frustrating in the early going. And this makes it a lot easier to mitigate that. It's otherwise like the same game. It's basically the US ROM, but they tweaked it and they added some backgrounds. But really just that one minor addition is the way to play the original Kidacarist. Don't play it on Switch Nintendo Switch online. Don't play it on 3DS, eShop or whatever, play the 3D classics version. It's very good. Yeah, the 3D classics series was really interesting to me for that reason where they actually improved with like quality of life changes or improvements to these games. And I'm surprised that there weren't more

released. Like I, and the ones that were released, I think there was like an urban champion one. There was, yeah. I don't know how they, yeah. I don't know. Again, like I have no idea how they picked those games, no idea whatsoever. Maybe it was literally just stuff that, was it, was it simply games they weren't going to do anything else with, you know? Like, did they really like, well, no, like, Kid Icarus, they, you know, they had a full ass sequel to Kid Icarus called Upbrising on 3Ds. I don't know. Which I guess we should mention here because that is like one of two Kid Icarus sequels and I don't see that whenever coming to another system because it's pretty dependent on the touchscreen controls. From my 3DS memories from that, um, that app

a web application that just got got out where Nintendo told us all our most played games. This was my most played game on the 3DS. And a lot of it was online. I mean, it was for all the problems that Nintendo gives us with its online games

and lack of features. Like, this one was actually very smooth for me with going online and getting to play a multiplayer death match with friends or team death match. And it was just such a unique experience. I can't

believe that they fit this into the cartridge. I mean, of course, there was also the unique stand that they gave you to hold it so that you didn't destroy your fingers. And I'm pretty sure part of the carpal tunnel that I suffer

from now was as a result of this game in Monster Hunter. But Kit Ikkerous Uprising was such a unique thing and like Jeremy said, it's not going to be on any other system. It can't be. I can't imagine Nintendo taking the time

to port this to the switch. Yeah, it just seems like very low returns. Maybe they'll port it if that's like the one condition Sakurai gives them to come do another Smash Brothers. He's like, I'll come, but you have to bring all the Kidikris games

that I've worked on to your current platform and let me make another one. And then I'll make another Smash Brothers for you. I feel like he's the only one who has, one, that kind of power, and two, actually cares about Kidaccharis. So we'll see. One more e-shop exclusive that I want to mention, I guess it's not technically.

There was a compilation released in the U.S., although there were three released in Japan. We kind of missed out. But that is Sega Ages. And a lot of those, the Sega 3D ages, you know, it's games you've already played, a million other places with some 3D elements popping. but there are a couple in particular Super Hang-on and Galaxy Force 2 that are absolutely worth owning

because there's no other way to play these games the way you can on 3DS because they didn't, it's not so much that Sega took advantage of or, you know, M2, I guess, the developers, took advantage of the 3D, which they did and that's nice because, you know, those are the super scalar games where things were always flying out at you.

But really, the appeal of those particular ports is they tried to replicate the arcade installation cabinets with the gyroscopic feature, like controls of the 3DS. So, you know, Super Hang-on, the original Hang-on was a really big deal when it came out in 1985 because it had one cabinet model where you sat on a motorcycle, a red motorcycle, and you controlled the game by actually leaning the bike in the direction you wanted to steer. And, you know, it was a huge kind of to-do when it came out and really put Sega's name on the map in a way it hadn't been before.

Galaxy Force 2 had this enormous, like, sit-down, spherical, full-surround cabinet that would spin as you played. Just ridiculous. It cost, you know, it must have cost like $50,000 to buy one of those damn things. And that was back in, like, the late 80s. But as much as you can recreate those immersive. arcade experiences with a handheld that has a four-inch screen, M2 did their damnedest. And you can play Super Hang-on in Galaxy Force 2 by tilting the system. And with Super Hang-on, it's really convincing.

Like, it just plays really smoothly. And it looks great. And it's really cool because, like, as you tilt, the actual screen within the screen, the emulated screen, rotates to maintain, you know, kind of a line. with gravity. So it's always upright, even when the system is tilted. So sometimes the corners of the game screen with like, you know, the game that's being emulated actually get cut off. But you're not losing any critical information. It just creates this real, it's a sense of immersion you wouldn't think you could get from a tiny handheld system. And yet it's really good.

And I really, really strongly encourage everyone. I think those were in the compilation, but don't quote me on that. In any case, I think PowerDrift also does the same thing, and Outrun also. But, you know, those are the games that really kind of stand out from this collection because it's just like, it just, you have to play it to believe it. It doesn't seem like something that could be done and yet they did it. They also stuck Mace Hunter 3D on the cartridge to take advantage of the 3D screen because that was one of the shutter-based 3D systems. master system games that came out in the U.S. and they randomly just said, hey, let's stick that on the 3Ds. So you got this one random master system game in there

that has like 3D stereoscopic graphics. But really it's the ride-on cabinet simulators that just absolutely make these must-have games. They originally retailed for $8. I don't know how much they sell for now, but, you know, worth it at any price, in my opinion, unless you wait too long and have to buy like a system that's preloaded for it with them for $1,000.

in which case you blew it. That's what this episode is for, so you don't have to do that. That was my monologue. Do you have anything to add? Yeah, one game we haven't brought up yet. between worlds, the sequel to most beloved

top-down Zelda game, we can't that we actually got a full sequel and I don't know, I felt like I was playing rom hacks of the original Super Nintendo game for so long that to see something exceed all of those, it felt like magic when it came out and just to be brought back to that world again. I don't know why it's forgotten so much,

maybe because when we talk about modern Zelda games, we're looking at Breath of the Wild now, but it's a classic. You can't, you can't, it's like one of the, I mean, not that there's many Zelda handheld games that you have to get, like there's Links Awakening, there's this, I guess Four Swords, which was released

on the e-shop for like a very timed exclusive for a few days, which you can't even get now, which is unfortunate. But if you need, if you need to get a, a portable Zelda game, get this? Yeah, 3DS was a pretty, I mean, you could, you know, 3DS you can get Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening,

Aquarine of Time, Majora's Mask, link between worlds, four swords, Tri-Force Heroes. I think the oracles were on there also. The Oracle games, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Minish Cap, Minish Cap was on there, Minish Cap was on there, no, Minish Cap,

Minish Cap was on there for the game, for the ambassadors. Yes, yes, like me. Yep. Bring out your certificate, That's right. Got it printed on my wall. My 3DS has just nailed to the wall and it's always on that screen. Yep.

Got mine in Japanese and English. Link Between Worlds is great and is the one original Zelda game worth playing on 3DS. Do not play TriForce Heroes, not even once. And then it also has remakes. But a link between Worlds is really, yeah, it is kind of a little bit of a miracle. and I think it had trouble standing out because Nintendo was like, we should launch this the same day

that PlayStation 4 comes out. That seems like a good idea, which is like within the same week as Xbox 1's launch. There was so much news overshadowing that. I remember reviewing a link between worlds, playing it at an event in New York City, the PlayStation 4 launch event,

and being like, this is actually way more fun than anything that they've given me on the system to review, but I feel kind of guilty about that. this. And I kept playing. Yeah. Well, you bring up launch. The 3DS

did not have many great launch games that I can recall. But they did have Ghost Recon, Shadow Wars, which I, one of the few Western games we've brought up, actually, or developed by Western Studio, Ubisoft Sophia, which was

this game was produced by Julian Gallup, who worked on the XCOM, the original XCOM games. And it's a real gem despite being you wouldn't expect a game that stood the test of time from the 3DS's launch like this one does it's um no online features to speak of and it's but it's such a um it's like a condensed excom experience uh a tactical RPG highly highly recommend it it i'm you might be able to find it at a game stop for like five dollars i'm not sure how much this one's

super super cheap yeah yeah uh Just because it was one of those launch releases, God, I can barely remember it or the 3DS launch games, like Super Street Fighter 4. Yeah, 3DS launch was crazy because it was everybody was going after, or the third parties were all going after, oh, we can finally do like, you know, vaguely console quality stuff on the 3DS. And I think they were all, they were all very excited about doing like this really, really high quality, realistic, you know, stuff on this system. And so you had like, dead or alive 3D, Street Fighter 4, Metal Gear Solid. 3 and 3D, you know, all the, you, the Ghost Recon thing you mentioned, like, that was what, that was what the launch was all about. And even Nintendo really took a back seat because it was like, we had Nintendo dogs and

Pilot Wings Resort, you know, and they didn't really have a killer. I mean, when Mario 3D Land came out, I mean, that was the first, like, you know, real first-party killer app for that system. It took them a long time to get it out there as well. So, again, they kind of, like, took a back seat to third parties, but third parties weren't quite sure. They all seem to think that 3DS was all going to be about these extremely high-quality graphics, basically. And, I mean, to be fair, I mean, that's kind of what Nintendo was going for, this amazing, oh, the stereoscopic 3D effect, it's going to blow you away.

Whereas in reality, that didn't really get people that excited about 3DS past the first year or so. And even Nintendo kind of abandoned it, like they brought out major games that didn't even have 3D support. Pokemon games didn't even have 3D support. It went from being the defining feature of the system to, like, an optional thing. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone was trying to jump on the 3D bandwagon around this time, and everyone quickly learned that, oh, the public does not care. Oh, I'm getting a headache from playing this for more than two hours. Yeah.

Wow, it's almost like Virtual Boy was a cautionary tale. Amazing. I mean, especially on, because it's like nobody plays the original 3DS anymore. You know what I mean? Man, that thing was so small. You know, the field of view with a 3D was so bad. Like, it just didn't hold up to lengthy portable gaming sessions. It looked at demoed really well.

But, you know, once they had the super stable 3D and the bigger screens and the new 3DS, it was actually a lot more comfortable to use. But at first, it was kind of like, I think a lot of people sort of ended up turning it off, you know, after a little while because it was like, you know, It's fun. It's cool that it works. But on the other hand, it's like, I can't really do this for three hours. Yeah, why would you do this to yourself? Right.

Yeah, some people really love it. Some people swear by it. I pretty much immediately would try a game with the 3D on and say, well, there you go. Then turn the slider off and, you know, then migrated to the new 2DSXL. And I've never looked back. I really enjoyed it in Mario 3D land. And again, if they port this to switch, obviously this all goes away. but they really encouraged you in that game to play with the 3D slider,

like in those levels, the optical illusion levels, where if you didn't have 3D on, you couldn't navigate the levels. When you turned 3D on, you could see depth, and you could figure out what the puzzle was. I mean, that was fun. Like, that was more, it's like this 3D is not just a setting that's on or off. It's like a, it's a thing you can play with.

It's a part of the control of the game. And they did exactly one game in which they did that, and then that was it. Yep. That sounds about right. Nintendo is supporting a feature or peripheral for one game, yes. So let's see. Kind of keeping in the same vein of Zelda, I do want to give a shout out to fantasy life, the extremely charming. That is the one I'm thinking of, right? Where it's kind of like you are in like a village and there's, you know, the scenery around you and you go out on an adventure and you can change your class. but the classes aren't things like, you know, night and mage.

It's more like baker and seamstress. And so, you know, there's a lot of kind of crafting and grinding in there, but it doesn't feel tedious in the way that often does because it's all sort of woven into the narrative and woven into the world that you're taking part in. And, you know, our friend Nick Marigos, I remember made an effort to play through that game

without violence. to see, like, how far he could get and just, you know, kind of take a pacifist approach. And it was open to that, you know, that it had that opportunity available. It's a very charming game and it can be, you know, it can really pull you in if you, if you let it. Also on the RPG tip, we have the Bravely games. I'm trying to remember which systems Bravely games are on now. Bravely second, or no, Bravely Default 2 is on Switch, right? Yeah.

But then Bravely Default and Bravely Second were 3D. Okay. Yep. And those were kind of Final Fantasy, the Four Hero of light realized better than originally. And I remember when I think of Bravely Default, this strange demo experience where actually it was impressive how much they gave you on the 3DS for a demo,

but I think it had like a limited 30 play-throughs or 30 times you can open it. And that was just such an odd, odd choice. That was for everything. That was Nintendo was like, oh, game demos. Well, if we give somebody a game demo, won't they just play the demo and never buy the game? I know what we'll do.

We'll make it so they can only play the demo a certain number of times. They can't just sit there and play the demo and they'll have to buy the game. Because I know when I sit down with a demo, I'm like, this is it. This is a great experience. I'm happy with this tiny slice of the bigger thing. I don't want the rest. I just want to play this little bit over and over again. That's only true for Metal Gear Solid 2.

And Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which famously people put in like hundreds of hours into that demo because, I mean, it was literally just like, you know, a little timed thing with the skateboard and you could rack, you know, you could try to set your high score. It was actually like a full game that they accidentally gave a little bit too much way with that. Maybe Iwada just played a lot of the Tony Hawk's pro skater demo and didn't want to repeat that experience. You know it's possible.

Yes. So other other role-playing games worth mentioning, I've been saving up for this, but there are so many Etri and Odyssey games on 3DS. And I don't see those making their way to another platform because they are so built around the dual screen, the touch screen, the in-game mapping. And Atlas really went Hogwild with that series, maybe a little too Hogwild, but bless them for it. There's Etrian Odyssey 4, Etriene Odyssey 5, Etrientany Odyssey Nexus, Etrient Odyssey Untold 1 and Untold 2, and Etrient Mystery Dungeon. And then there was a second Mystery Dungeon game that we didn't get in the U.S. But that's a wealth of Etrian games.

It's actually the entire series except Etterian Odyssey 3, which is now through the roof on DS price-wise because that's the only way you can play it. But otherwise, you know, these games can all be downloaded digitally or purchased physically. They're getting kind of expensive now, but the digital versions are still super cheap. And, you know, if you buy all six of these games, that's like. like a thousand hours of video game right there. Probably $1,000 too. Well, no, if you

buy the digital version. Right, yes, yes. You know, it's funny, it sort of just brings up like the fact that like the 3D, the DS and the 3DS, it was like a poison pill because it's such a unique piece of hardware

that the more you did as a developer to make the game unique and to use all of the things that the DS afforded you, the dual screen, touchscreen gameplay, the more you designed your game to use, make use of all of those things, the more completely impossible it becomes to ever port that game to something else or to bring that to another system because the hardware is so unique. And it's like, that's not the case with,

you know, it's like practically every other video game platform. It's like those games can leave that platform and go elsewhere, but you can't with the DS and, you know, the 3DS as well. And that's why, I mean, first of all, I think that's why Nintendo probably moved off of the dual screen platform in general, just because they sort of realized that they were kind of like hamstringing themselves a little bit as far as like then selling those games into the future. Yeah, I mean, once, once a week, I think, someone tags me into a Twitter conversation where someone dredges up one of the PR photos of the flip grip for Switch and paste some DS screens in there, which is the thing I did at the very beginning when we first showed off

the flip grip. And they're like, Nintendo, have you considered? And then, you know, someone sees it as like, oh, Jeremy, look. Yeah, okay, I'd love that. That'd be cool. But, you know, that's not actually an official peripheral. It doesn't have a license. Right. Nintendo's not going to design games around it. It's cool that there are third parties who have, but Nintendo is not going to support that. There have been a few DS games that have come to Nintendo Switch. You know, the Mega Man Zex collection and Mega Man, I guess, no, Mega Man Zero was Game Boy

Advanced, but the sequels for DS did show up on Switch. And I feel like, you know, Azure Striker Gunvolt, technically I guess Blaster Master Zero, so pretty much Inti creates and no one else. It's like, hey, DS stuff, we should still put that on to on the switch. Everyone else just kind of let it fall offalo. Yeah, and I think

we'll see those games come back. I mean, they try, you know, the DS games on Wii U, and I mean, I think that we will eventually see Nintendo will look at all these games, and they'll come back maybe in a variety of ways. Like, maybe some of them it is an emulation solution where maybe it's not, you know, it's not the best, but it works. Maybe some

of those, it is a full remake sort of thing. I don't think they're going to let these, you know, I mean, 99% of these games will never come back, but, you know, the one, certainly the big Nintendo stuff, Like, Link Between Worlds, they're going to figure out some way to get Link Between Worlds on a future piece of hardware. It's just a question of how and when. And what they have to do to it before that can happen.

So let's see. Also, from Atlas, some other RPGs, they also went Hogwild with Shin Magame Tense. In fact, near the 3DS launch, there was a port of Shin Magame Tensee Devil Survivor called Record Breaker, I think, was the remake. Break record. Yeah, and then they released a sequel, Devil Survivor 2. Those were like strategy RPGs. But there was also Devil Summoners, Soul Hackers, which had previously been a Saturn and PS game, never localized.

They released, you know, remade that for 3DS, and they actually localized it. God bless them. There were, there was Shinemagame Tensei 4, the actual numbered entry, and then the sort of alternate reality, side story, spinoff. I don't know what you want to call it, but it's Shin-Magame Tensei for Apocalypse. And then finally, a 3DS remake at the very, very end, surely made no money for them. Shin-Magame Tense Strange Journey, which, you know, probably didn't make any money for them on DS either. So it just seems like a losing proposition all around. But I'm glad

that it exists and you can play it. Along with a game we've talked about pretty extensively here in an episode of Retronauts, the Radiant Historia, Perfect Chronicle, a remake of a DS game as well. So a lot of really, really good Atlas RPGs worth tracking down before. I mean, already, physically, those are pretty expensive. So get them digitally while you can because they're just going to keep going up. And of course, the persona, uh, persona Q and persona Q2, which are pretty much entry and Odyssey meets persona three and four, except you don't get to do the mapping yourself. Do you? It's been a while since I've played. I can't remember. I feel like it's auto mapping. God bless Atlas for, uh,

localizing so many of these because as somebody who would see them release in Japan, I'd at the very beginning of the 3DS's life I'd say, I was just resigned myself like, oh, there's no way this niche game is going to be coming out here. Etriyan Odyssey

just doesn't have that pull in the West but most of them ended up coming out here, even the mystery dungeon games and I mean, granted, they packed them into these huge bundles that included art books and soundtrack CDs, but But that's the price you pay for getting that niche game localized for us.

Because I just couldn't see a lot of these coming over here prior, like if these had been Game Boy Advance titles or any other platform. Well, you know, I think this market was much more receptive, is much more receptive to kind of niche, formerly niche Japanese type games, you know, RPGs and dating sims and visual novels. And not a lot of people are out there. really providing that market with this stuff. So Atlas kind of, they knew, they knew

the size of their market. You know, they knew that there was a certain group of people that are going to buy everything they put out. And so, you know, it became feasible to do it for that limited group. And then, of course, that group is only going to grow larger, and they're all going to want these games, and this game's going to be like the $500 games of, you know, tomorrow. So, yes. The next Jack

Brothers. Yep. Yeah, speaking of, there was also Axis, who you have to applaud for giving us zero escape. And a lot of other games that you would not. Yeah, obviously, you had 999, which debuted on the DS, but getting the rest of the series, Virtue's Last Reward, a zero-time dilemma on the 3DS and Vita,

like when visual novels were not popping like that in the West, they really helped it. We did have Capcom's Ace Attorney in those type of games, but it seems like a very different experience than what Access was giving us. I agree. Another super niche, maybe not super niche game, but one that I'm honestly surprised made it over were the two project cross-zone games, just because the licensing on those, where you cross Sega and Namco and what else is in there? Capcom. Yeah. Like three big

companies have characters in there all colliding with each other. The gameplay is not great. It's like super generic you know kind of low mental impact strategy type gaming but those games are incredibly fun to play just because if you know these characters watching all these characters from different worlds within different companies crash into each other and have interactions and quip at each other is just a lot of fun like whoever wrote this had a lot of fun writing the dialogue and they translated it pretty well so there's It's very quippy, and the character interactions and just the overall goofiness and the jokes really carry you through the fact that you are ultimately playing a pretty generic strategy RPG that doesn't really stand on its own. But I think those may have been delisted from the e-shop already, but I'm not sure.

Definitely worth looking into. You know, I wouldn't put them super high in the rankings of great games. But if you like, you know, virtual fighter characters and would wonder what they would ever have to say to the cast of Soul Calibur and also Mega Man X, then this is the game for you. You need to play these games because, you know, this is where Cosmos from Zeno Saga hangs out with Chunli. And where else are you going to find that outside of Mido Jinchi? And I can't picture Namco and Capcom and Sega going through that ordeal again to bring a new game in the series to another platform. Two developers, two publishers teaming up, I can see.

But it's three. That's what makes it really like, did this actually happen? Is this, you know, a hoax, a dream, an imaginary story? Although when these publishers eventually buy each other, maybe. That will be the case. That would resolve all those problems. Once they're all owned by Microsoft. All right, a few more games worth mentioning.

We've been talking about RPGs. So, obviously, Dragon Quest 7 and 8 were remade for 3DS. Dragon Quest 7, this is the way to play Dragon Quest 7, because that game came out 2000, 2001, on PlayStation, and it's a slog. It's so slow. It takes, like, five hours to even get the story started. And there's, you know, there's a lot of charm in Dragon Quest, and it's really fun to just soak in the world. and enjoy it, but Dragon Quest 7 went a little too far.

And this one strips a lot of that away and makes it much zippier. So it's paced more like, you know, Dragon Quest 9 or something, Dragon Quest 11. It's got a punchier pace, but it's still, you know, kind of old school looking.

And then Dragon Quest 8 is, you know, kind of an impressive attempt to bring a huge PS2 game, like kind of top tier tech game on PS2 to 3DS. Technically, it's not all that successful. the draw distance is horrible, but the full game is still there, which, you know, that's something, that's like 120 hours

of RPG right there. You don't have anything else going on, do you? It's great to have those experiences on a portable. I just recall how we got Dragon Quest 5 and 6 and 4 on the DS, and those seemed like perfect, whereas

this huge experience put into the 3DSs, at the small screen at the time, before the 2DS maybe, It didn't have the same impact for me, but for those improvements cutting out stuff, it really did help make them more palatable on a portable or playing them now instead of decades ago. Yeah, I kind of wish with 8 they had waited until Switch, because I think that game would have worked better on Switch, but 7, I think, was a good fit for 3DS. And I'm glad they eventually localized it. It took them years to actually localize it, but they did finally do it, which was very nice of them. They never did localize slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3, however.

Oh, right. Which sucks. And Diamond Fight is over here, occasionally posting about it on Retronaut's feeds to tell you how good it was and how we were robbed. And I believe, I believe them. I think it's a damn shame. I can't think, you know, if they had kept making Final Fantasy remakes, you know, in 3D, with 3D graphics on the 3DS like they were doing on the DS, I might have played more RPGs on my 3Gs on my 3Ds. on my 3DS um because you know if they had done if they had just continued on and done like a final

fantasy five um you know 3d remake on 3d s but like i don't i really can't think of like RPGs that i played on my on my 3DS i'm not really i'm not really into any of those series so i just didn't really get into them yeah there you go yeah yeah it was kind of light on um final fantasy explorers which yeah not that great final fantasy theater rhythm which is not an RPG? Right, right, right. So, yeah, where was Final Fantasy in 3D?S? I don't know. I don't know. We did get a Kingdom Hearts game, but who cares? Okay, two more. I have two more exclusives on my list. They're also first-party kind of big ones. Although, actually, I don't know. Maybe one of them is not one people would necessarily think of,

because that series tends to sell well, but also fly under the radar, which is Kirby, Kirby Planet Robobot. Oh, okay. Yeah. Which is, you know, the Kirby games, they told me once that they alternate between like core Kirby platformer and more experimental game, Planet Robobot is kind of both because it is a core Kirby platformer. But then also, sometimes Kirby gets into a giant robot and beats up everything inside and smashes the scenery. And I'm just not sure how to classify that one. But it's a lot of fun.

It's just good, dumb fun. And I really, really enjoyed it. I should play that. You should. I should buy that. While you can still acquire it. Yes. For a reasonable price.

Yeah, a personal favorite first party exclusive from the e-shop that most people forget is Sakura Samurai, I had a lot of fun with. A very, very short game, but it takes the limited gameplay elements and like kind of perfects it. Being like almost a first person, third person, samurai experience, almost like rhythm. It's got a very rhythm-based feel. to it. Yeah, I don't understand why that one's forgotten, it being a first party game, maybe because the developer isn't as well-known grounding.

And, yeah, if you go get it, you're not going to get it anywhere else. Nintendo's not going to port this. Yeah, the first party download-only stuff is always very interesting. Like, what does Nintendo choose to do? I mean, so you had that. You also had Dylan's Rolling Western, right, by a vanpool. And again, it's sort of like, maybe they wouldn't have released it as a retail game. Maybe it was, you know, it was maybe too thin for that, but, you know, it was also a lot bigger than your typical, like, smaller downloadable game as well.

So, yeah, it was also boxy boy. Of course, yeah. Yeah, Pushmo. Yeah. Pushmo. Crashmo. And there was another one. Shovemo?

I don't remember. And then one final kind of big first party release. It's going to wrap up this list for me is Metroid Samus Returns, which basically is the reason we have. have Metroid dread. I mean, they gave that to Mercury Steam and said, please take this kind of old, unloved, dilapidated Game Boy game and redo it to modern specs in 2D. And they did. There's some stuff that I'm a little ambivalent about. But on the whole, it was really excellent, you know, the way it took kind of the framework of Metroid 2 and just flesh it out to be a much tighter, more kind of modern Metroid experience like post-super Metroid, wherever you

everything is sort of puzzly and, you know, the, the environments are really dense with content. You know, it does have that like parrying element that I really hate, but everything else is really good. And you get to see like, you know, Omega Metroids in 3D and they look like something other than gray blobs of pixels. So that's pretty rad. I'm a Perry fan. I actually liked it. I liked it more than you did. And I thought, yeah, I would actually love to go back and replace Sammis Returns, although honest to God, that really should have been on Switch. That was when it, that was right at the end of the, it's like, really going to put on 3DS? I'm 3DS?

Okay. Does anybody play 3DS? Switch was out, you know? And it was just like, ah, they should have been on Switch. I could actually see them porting that to switch just to have something to fill the schedule while Retro is like, hey, we're going to hire a director again for Metroid Prime 4 and maybe it will come out in six or seven years, maybe. No promises.

Got to do something to fill out that schedule. Hey, Redford has updated their Twitter banner with a picture of Sam and Aaron, so I mean... I mean, that's almost as good as a new game. Anyway, that's my list of recommendations. That's everything I had. Is there anything that we overlooked? I'm sure people will shout at us for having forgotten stuff and that's fine. 50 pinch barrage.

I don't even know that one. So that is... You surprised me here, Chris. I've never heard of that. So this is a game where it is a series of platforming mini challenges where it looks like pitfall, basically. Like it's super zoomed out, and your character's little guy in a jungle. And you have to, you're, I mean, literally like you're jumping onto vines and over alligators and stuff like that. But it's a series of 50 individual little challenges where you have to platform over stuff perfectly and then you get to the next challenge.

And if you fail, you just go back to the beginning of that challenge. They're kind of difficult, you know, to do, but you get to sort of repeat it over and over and over again. So you have this perfect little like, oh, okay, rolling boulder coming down the hill, jump over it, get around the alligators, jump on the vine, wait a second, then jump and then go. And, you know, it's really cool. It's really fun. I believe it's stuck on 3DS forever. So 50 pinch barrage. Check it out.

Yeah. Yeah, actually, there were a lot of really good indie games I played first on 3DS. You know, they debuted on 3DS, but then eventually made their way to everything. Like, you know, Steamworld Dig started out as a 3DS game. Zio Drifter started out as a 3DS game. I think 1,001 spikes. Yeah. Did the letter V six times start out as 3DS?

Or, I mean, I know it was on 3DS. I think it was a freeware game. And then 3DS was the first platform I showed up on. Yeah, the first like, you know, truly kind of fleshed out kind of thing. Yeah. But now it's on other platforms as well. But, yeah, I played it on 3DS. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah. Gunman Clive as well was another. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One that debuted. Yep. That's right. So, yeah, I mean, at this point, this episode is going to cost you at least $1,000 if you've been taking our advice, and you've got a year to spend that $1,000.

So I think this is a good time for us to call it a, you know, to wrap, unless there is someone, something we've overlooked, someone doesn't have something to shout out. Well, I'm going to say you have to get that money into your wallet sooner than a year from now. Like, they're going to stop taking credit cards in May, I think, and they're going to stop taking, yeah, and then they're going to stop taking, like, e-shop cards a little later than that. And then once that's done, you can't add any money to your account and you won't be able to actually purchase stuff. So, you know, take care of this now. Now is the time to take care of this. Yeah, sorry, I hope you didn't have other plans for that $1,000. But this is all in a good cause.

Playing games, you'll never be able to buy anywhere else. And very good games at that. Yeah, that's right. All right. Well, yeah, that's a plenty expensive episode. So I think we will call it a day there. But thank you both Eric and Chris for joining in this episode. And, you know, throwing out a lot of suggestions that wouldn't have come to my mind.

A few games I've never even heard of, which is awesome. There's definitely some stuff. I need to go to the e-shop and buy, even though my 3DS is loaded for bear. Like, I can always find more stuff to pick up. And it'll be good to have for the future. Yep. Thanks for having me, by the way. It's been a huge fan of retronauts,

and I can't believe that the 3DS is now a retro system. More than a decade. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get you on here again someday when we talk about more tiny cartridge-type games. But great having you on. And Chris, as always, great to have you on.

Thank you. I appreciate it, too, even though I've been on this show since 2006. I know you're also a lifelong fan. Yes, that's true. That's right. Especially the episodes that you're on. Yeah. Only the episodes. That's right.

Those other assholes, who cares? So, yeah, that's it. Retronauts, you can find us on the internet on various podcatchers and download platforms. I don't know that we're on streaming platforms, but you can download us for sure. Wherever find Retronauts or podcasts are sold or given away for free, you can support retronauts because it is a crowdfunded podcast, a venture entirely funded by the masses. You can do that by going to patreon.com slash retronauts. Subscribe to us, three bucks a month, get you every weekly episode, a week early, at a much

higher bit rate quality that sounds better. You can enjoy my malefluous tones in 96 kilobits per second stereo or mono instead of 64, which, you know, that's that's like 50% more me, which who wouldn't want that? For $5 a month, you can also, you will also get exclusive access to patron-only episodes every other Friday, Discord access, and weekly columns by Diamond Fight. So that's a lot of stuff for an extra two bucks. Check it out. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Eric, where can we find you and your projects on the internet? Tiny Cartridge.com, and you can find lots of tweets about obscure portable games and sneakers at Tiny Cartridge on Twitter.

And finally, Chris Kohler, where would you be on the internet? You know, just go to Kobunheat on Twitter, K-O-B-U-N-H-E-A-T for updates about old video games and Japanese curry, as always, as it has been for the last 15 years and as it will always be. I really appreciate the fact that your Tron Bond Mega Man Legends username, like the reference there, has definitely like greatly outlasted the vitality of that franchise. Oh, yeah. And I mean, it's literally a joke that came from us playing a lot of Marvel versus Capcom too and watching WWE. And it's just this fantasy tag team of the wrestler China, RIP, and a servebot.

And I mean, it doesn't make any sense. and it's my Twitter handle forever because that's just what I got stuck with. Well, that's good. I mean, I'm game spite, so. Yeah, I'm not even spiteful. Who knows? It was going to be a parody comic about video game journalism in, like, 2006, with a logo that looked like GameSpot, but was Spite.

But then I didn't actually do that. So it's a useless handle that I'm stuck with. You've rebranded so much. Yeah. That's terrible. Anyway, that's where you can find me on Twitter, GameSpite, and also, you can find me on YouTube working under the name Jeremy Parrish. It's an alias. Also, you can find me at limited rungames.com and here on Retronauts almost every week.

So please go get yourself some 3DS games, don't miss the classics, fill up that fridge, use every last kiloblight available, and have fun. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you.