NINTENDO 3DS

To be fair the first gen was running the GBA games natively the same way they run DS games natively, they boot up in a different mode. Emulation is a lot more CPU intensive. The lack of crossbuy is however utterly laughable in 2016, and the pricing of these games is crazy. £8.99 for a 20+ year old ROM?!?

nintendo's cross-buy policy is insane

You'd probably pay more for the carts on ebay to be fair... after a few shitty years i wouldn't blame them for not glutting the market
with ultra cheap fantastic older games that will fill up peoples consoles in place of newer premium ones that they have more reason to sell

To be fair the first gen was running the GBA games natively the same way they run DS games natively, they boot up in a different mode.

Couldn't they just do that for the SNES games too though? I mean even if that locks out your streetpasses while you're playing or whatever. I'm sure people with older hardware would rather put up with that than feel they're being encouraged to buy a whole new machine just to play pilotwings in 2016.

No, the 3DS contains a DS chipset which incorporates a GBA chipset, so when GBA games are played they are run natively using a GBA hardware chip. There is no SNES hardware chip in the 3DS so they can't be run natively, they would need to be emulated by the 3DS CPU. Presumably the OG 3DS CPU is not powerful enough to run SNES emulation.

Pocket Card Jockey is legit, one of those perfect "just one more" portable games.
It's a solitaire horse racing hybrid, where you race horses around a track by playing games of simplified solitaire to a time limit. Yes really.
If you lose too many races your horse gets sent to the farm and you try again with a different horse. Horses at the farm can be paired off to breed the next generation of horses, inheriting characteristics of their parents.
The presentation is simple but cute, reminds me of the Rhythm Heaven games in its flat cartooniness.
Oh yeh and it's made by the Pokemon people, there's a lengthy free demo available. Try it!

Every single time I leave my 3DS alone for more than 5 mins, the next time I pick it back up my bf has slid the 3d and volume sliders up to max :(

nothing worse as a 32 year old than opening my 3DS on a bus having left the volume up and the Donkey Kong theme then making a loud monkey noise for all to hear

the volume and 3d sliders seem to go up pretty much every time i put down the machine, i think it's just really easy to slide them when holding it closed? i've gotten good at checking both before opening it at this point

agreed re: Pocket Card Jockey; I've been getting absolutely destroyed ever since I had to give up the horse I got for the first race, but it's still incredibly compelling. also they let you name the horses, meaning I can finally attempt to restage the 1974 Kentucky Derby.

BTW there's a current Humble Bundle with 3DS/Wii U games in it for anyone interested:
https://www.humblebundle.com/friends-of-nintendo-3ds-wiiu
In for Rhythm Thief

Pocket Card Jockey is something

i just realized yesterday when i friend told me, but earthbound is out on this now. i am going to finally beat earthbound this time. (i borrowed the cart twice in my life, and never finished it...)

I got excited when that came out, then realised you need a 'New' 3DS system to play the SNES VC games.

whole bunch of 3ds news worth bringing up:

- stoked for the imminent release of the DQ7 remake (even though it apparently requires you to go through an eight-step process every time you want to save), but nowhere near as stoked as I am for Natsume's port of River City Tokyo Rumble. naturally that one isn't available for preorder for some unfathomable reason, though.

- played a whole bunch of the crossword puzzle game on a train ride up to SF recently; it really is quite excellent, even though its handwriting recognition is kind of questionable at times (although then again so is my handwriting).

- I also plan on picking up Rhythm Heaven Megamix (which apparently has been out for months and I just never realized it) and Picross 3DS in the very near future.

- I guess the real big news is the recent expansions to the Streetpass games, which I am beginning to love all-encompassingly. the new games are all pretty great, as is the ability to get more puzzle pieces from StreetPass folks and bank up to 100 StreetPass instances at a time. I really ought to start taking my 3DS with me whenever I go out walking around the neighborhood if only to rack up connections.

also super stoked for DQ7 which hopefully turns up in the post tomorrow.Have been playing 3D Outrun quite a bit as it was on sale last week, a perfect pick up and play game and the 3D really enhances the game imo.

streets of rage 2 for £2 this week = SO GOOD

God, this is even more depressing than the Vita thread

Man, I am totally being suckered into buying River City: Tokyo Rumble now for that stupid keychain. If I can find it in stock anywhere...

um, is that a River City Ransom redo?

Full blown sequel as I've heard :)

man i bought a first gen 3ds and quit playing as it hurt my delicate little hands but that might make me bust it back out

The lack of hand comfort is one of the excuses I give myself for barely having touched the system

Never had any comfort issues, can play for hours at a time. Maybe I've got weird hands tho.
DQ7 is a total treat if you like old school JRPGs, love the way you visit an island in the past, solve a problem and then visit it in the present to see how it changed - not all happy endings either.

1st gen system is very boxy and has sharp edges, they promptly rounded off and made it more grabbable for the update

Even the XL I have still feels like you're grasping a slippery cigarette case

physical copies of River City Tokyo Rumble sold out in less than an hour, although it appears that fart-huffing ebay flippers bought a statistically significant number of copies. luckily I managed to get my order in during that brief window (although they're pressing a second run, complete w/ the Kunio keychain that came with initial copies); it showed up today so I haven't gotten to sink my teeth into it yet. unfortunately no co-op mode, though.

in other news, a game I've been playing a bunch lately is Gotta Protectors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHv0TbTUG4s

Tokyo Rumble is the shit, it's basically a Yakuza game drenched in 8/16-bit charm. hopefully the demand is sufficient to convince Natsume to bring other Kunio games stateside; there's already a 3DS collection in Japan compiling basically everything as well as romhack translations of a few titles (although not the basketball game, unfortunately) that they could use as a reference:

http://nintendoeverything.com/kunio-kun-nekketsu-complete-famicom-compilation-coming-to-3ds/

thanks for making my decision easier! i can' tell from the list, but i hope the samurai version is in that comp

I hadn't even heard of the samurai Kunio, but from what I understand the collection is pretty comprehensive so if it came out on NES it should be on there

ok i checked and it IS on there. man i hope this comes out here

to the great surprise of nobody, Kirby: Planet Robobot is pretty great. I'm only a couple of worlds in, but so far it's at least as good as Triple Deluxe (which also rules).

From a few years back: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-emergent-heartbreak-of-tomodachi-life#

I played through the demo for Miitopia (the Tomodachi Life RPG) in one sitting; that game appears to be extremely my shit.

https://www.polygon.com/23024014/atlus-nintendo-3ds-sale-store

I already picked up Radiant Historia - haven't played any of these though. I'm surprised the SMT IV games haven't been ported to Switch already

I picked up a 3DS XL recently. Hacked it and have been dumping 3DS, DS, and GBA game on it. Lovely, fun little device.

I mostly just wanted it to play Dragon Quest 8, but there really is a wealth of other great stuff in those libraries to explore. I’ve kinda scoured the “best games for _____” lists, but if anyone has any good recs I’m all ears.

any preferred genres?

Not particularly. I picked up a bunch of Mario, Castlevania, and Metroid stuff, always a safe bet. Got some DQ games, Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei 4, even some Pokémon. I suppose I should just take the time to just read through this thread too. Just curious if anyone had any in particular that stuck out for them.

OK some less obvious 3DS games off the top of my head:
Pocket Card Jockey - very addictive card based horse racing game, made by Pokemon people
Fantasy Life - Level 5 action RPG, has become a cult hit and a Switch sequel finally got announced recently
Ever Oasis - a Nintendo published action adventure game that somehow passed everyone by
NES Remix - kind of like a Warioware game that takes NES games and mashes them up for quick challenges
Attack of the Friday Monsters - really charming adventure game made by the "My Summer Vacation" guy. explore a small town in 1970s Japan as a kid, play card games, investigate giant kaiju footprints on the edge of town etc. makes you nostalgic for a childhood you never had.

could go on for hours about the incredible weirdness that can be found in the DS library, almost rivals the PS2 for the amount of creative madness that went on

i second the ^ pocket card jockey & attack of the friday monsters recs
assuming you have FBI running, it's pretty straight forward to find a QR for mother 3
kid icarus: uprising is good fun
sega arcade classics and things like 3d outrun are worth an install
inazuma eleven is a high school soccer rpg
dillon's dead heat breakers is a lot of things mixed together in a fun weird way
on the DS bangai-o spirits is something to behold, i mean again i'm repeating what zappi says but there's a ton of great DS games

I'm just finishing Devil survivor 2,both of those games are decent smt x tactics games, not mind blowing but solid

thanks all! will be checking all these out. it is kind of a crazy library, 3DS, DS, and GBA all together, figured there had to be plenty of off-the-beaten-track titles worth exploring.

not to derail but zappi, i'd love to hear your DS recommendations

I'll do one later! was thinking a lot last night about the DS library before falling asleep: playing stuff like Ouendan, Trauma Center, Layton etc for the first time and how amazing that was. also Bangai-O Spirits is a good shout, forgot about that one

also just checked and no one has done a translation patch for the Mushishi DS game ;_;