Do you need a Nintendo 3DS?

Probably not. I bought one anyway. Figured I’d write some of my memories surrounding it growing up, as well as how I set-up my own.

Some memories

The Nintendo 3DS was one of those consoles that I mostly admired from a distance. There are a few moments in time, sparsed throughout my youth where I interacted with one, an uncommon endeavor compared to my love for the PSP or even the older Game Boy Advance.

When it came out I was too poor to even consider it, it was super expensive when it released, and it was still super expensive when the price lowered. I saw very few of them during the first few years, I was simply aware of its existence and a year and a half later I owned a PSP, not thinking much of what I was missing out on. I had an itch for Ocarina of Time 3D but I also knew of emulation already, so there was no need for it.

Somewhere in 2013, I stayed for a few days with a friend in the US. It was my first time on a whole different country without my parents! I should write about this period at some point, but for now, the important bit is that my friend had a Nintendo 3DS, and… I don’t remember playing anything on it. I think he had Kid Icarus Uprising and maybe some other title, but I didn’t do much. He had a different console I played instead, the Wii U, I’ll write about it some other day.

I dit try to convince him to buy Ocarina of Time, and telling him it was a remake of the Nintendo 64 version. He was completely sure it was a fully new game. In any case, he never bought it, at least during my stay.

Eventually I saw some other kid playing that game in some church event, not sure if it was before or after that time, I just recall the ReDeads in the middle of the ruined streets of Hyrule, with Link frozen with a scream and eaten alive, or something.

Some other time, it was my turn to have a friend stay with us for a week or so, and during that whole ordeal he brought his Nintendo 3DS, it was the original Aqua Blue model again—all of them so far have been the Aqua Blue model—and he was playing Super Mario 3D Land, a fantastic title for the system. This was the longest amount of time I got to spend playing with one myself. The game was great and I completed a bunch of random levels.

My cousins which I interacted with during Christmas and the like also had a Nintendo 2DS each, both playing whatever Pokemon was popular at the time, like Sun & Moon, but I’m really ignorant of this. They continue that tradition with the Switch today, they are absolute Pokemon fans.

Weirdly enough, I just recalled some of my best friends that I saw every Sunday at church more than a decade ago owning one too, for some reason I didn’t remember this at all. I have more memories playing on the Xbox 360 with them, but I think I grabbed it a few times when I visited their house, though I can’t recall what games I played with it—this paragraph was written after everything around it, placed here for continuity’s sake.

Last but not least, when I moved to the city I live in today, I made a new friend who owned a couple of 3DS models! From the original to the New 3DS XL. I also stayed at his house for a couple days one time.

I had my PSP and I already was a huge fan of Monster Hunter. My friend owned Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, but he barely played it at all. I gave it a spin for a few hours and it was awesome—though I kept grumbling about how this game could have run on the PSP with just a couple of compromises and raised my fist at Capcom for abandoning the PSVita—which I never even owned—but whatever.

Other than that, I’ve been aware of 3DS emulation for a while, I even went ahead and setup multiplayer with Citra only a couple years ago! This time to play some Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate using the Madness Network servers. I talked about playing Monster Hunter online already, but somehow never mentioned trying 3DS entries. Only played about a day and my setup and save have been lost to some distro hop.

All in all, other than Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 and Face Raiders, the 3DS library remained unexplored for me. That was until a few years ago, when this blog was already a thing!

A friend allowed me to borrow his Nintendo 3DS for a couple weeks, I only played two games on it, Fire Emblem Awakening, which I tried for about four hours, and Metroid Samus Returns, which I finished soon after. That game was so awesome, it is what finally pushed me to write reviews on this site, and that was my last interaction with a 3DS in a while.

Recently

For many months already, since the AYN Thor and the Anbernic DS came out in the market, with comparisons and praise and people complaining about the prices or the performance of one or the other, and after being exposed to countless YouTube videos, and lots of discussion over on the TWG Discord server, the itch to acquire a device for this was bound to happen.

The hardware of the Thor is excellent for a huge percentage of the 3DS library, and for the price, it would allow me much more than the that, as it would let me have PS2 and GameCube, Switch and even light PC gaming via GameNative or GameHub; and even though the RGDS is weak for 3DS, at least I would have save states, fast forward and other features emulating the Nintendo DS with it, on an ideal form factor.

However, as small as the impact of the 3DS was on my life, I couldn’t help myself. It was something I had wanted for a while. With prices not going down anytime soon, and the Switch 2 tempting me every once in a while, I figured this would be a nice middleground.

I looked around for a bit, and eventually landed on a red New Nintendo 3DS XL for about 333 USD with shipping. There were cheaper alternatives out there, such as a regular 3DS XL or a 2DS XL, but this is the top of the line and you can tell the quality is up there once held.

As I write this today, I saw a posting selling the same model and color I got at $290! which is better though still expensive, but the week I had to return it is over and I’ve already played with it for a dozen hours, so whatever!

My set-up

My model already came pre-modded, I took some time to make sure the modding tools were up to date. The 3DS modding scene is as crazy as the PSP, and emulation for many systems is available. However, I own plenty of devices that are better at emulation at this point. What I really care about here is the existing library for the Nintendo 3DS, and the original Nintendo DS, as was seen on my current setup.

The first thing I did when I purchased it was check the alternative shop every modded 3DS is bound to have, and grabbed myself a few titles. I do not encourage piracy much nowadays, when buying titles officially is possible, but this is not the case here. Nintendo doesn’t sell carts and they have no digital shops, so whatever. here’s a list of things on my 3DS that will probably be expanded soon.

Nintendo 3DS titles

• Ace Attorney Trilogy
• Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
• Fire Emblem Awakening
• Fire Emblem Echoes
• Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser’s Jr’s Journey
• Metroid Samus Returns
• Pushmo
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Nintendo DS titles

• Dragon Quest IV
• Dragon Quest V
• Ghost Trick
• Pokémon Black

Homebrew

• 3DSident
• Anemone 3DS Theme Manager
• Cave Story
• FBI
• FTPD
• Luma3DS
• NDS Forwarder Generator
• The Hombrew Launcher
• Univeral Updater
• hShop

My experience so far has been awesome. Since it came modded I haven’t really had to thinker that much with it, instead, as of the time of writing, I have played about 20 hours of Fire Emblem Awakening—I just beat chapter 13 of the game—and honestly, the hardware is pretty nice! Due to the nature of the game I often quit and reopen it—I’m sorry I can’t handle permadeath—and the loading times are rather quick! I guess it’s up to the title and how well optimized it is, but still impressive. Buttons and battery life on my device have been really nice for me, but I lack a point of reference and I recharge it whenever needed.

I made a couple folders for the built-in software, all the homebrew and a couple GBA games I added but will probably delete. Either way I added it for now. I have installed a few themes using Anemone, right now I’m using a Parasite Eve theme, but I may try and do my own, and share it in the nearby future! I didn’t like any of the ones for Chrono Trigger, though some of the Final Fantasy ones were tempting. In any case. I’m really happy with how everything looks and feels!

This is day 89 of #100DaysToOffload