Nintendo made a controversial decision last week to shut down the 3DS eShop and Wii U eShop for good come March 2023, meaning players now only have a finite amount of time to buy certain games before they disappear for good. While physical copies of games will still be available for purchase from resellers, there’s a large amount of downloadable-only games that won’t be available in any form post-shutdown. Adding funds to the shop will no longer be possible as soon as May this year, so for people who want downloadable games from the system’s collection, they’ll have to act fast in order to pick up some titles.
Although support for games like Pokémon Bank will continue following the 3DS store's closure, there are many titles that are worth buying that will be gone forever. The 3DS eShop has a lower quality of titles overall than its full physical releases but that doesn’t mean that the history of the platform should be forgotten. It’s a bit of a challenge to find games on the system, however, and the interface for the eShop is somewhat cumbersome to sift through.
After going back and looking at the downloadable 3DS library, there’s not a lot from recent years that’s worth buying. On top of that, some of the popular downloadable games like Mutant Mudds and Shantae: Risky’s Revenge have seen physical releases and ports since their releases. Even with the Nintendo Switch outselling the 3DS and having more software available, there’s a long list of both 3DS and DSiWare that will cease to be purchasable that system owners should definitely pick up before it’s too late.
Fire Emblem Fates was split across two separate games, much like the various installments in the Pokémon series. Birthright, the easier variant, followed the story of Corrin as they helped their birth family fight the evil empire of Nohr. Conquest was a much harder storyline that followed Corrin if the player chose to help Nohr rather than their birth family. Revelations was an extra side story available as DLC which showed what would happen if neither alliance was chosen.
After the release of both Birthright and Conquest, a special physical edition was made available that included Revelations. The problem is that for those who didn’t get the special edition, Revelations is only available as a download, meaning that when the 3DS shop closes Revelations will disappear alongside it. The special edition has the game pre-loaded onto the cartridge, but that version is becoming one of the most prohibitively expensive 3DS games worth lots of money. For any fans of Three Houses with any interest in playing the complete series, picking up the base games and Revelations before they disappear will be extremely important.
One of the biggest losses of the shutdown will actually be the loss of the DSi Shop content that was ported over to the 3DS. While the system also had a lot of ports like Puzzle League Express and Dr. Mario Express, there were many original downloadable games that will be lost to time after the 3DS eShop closes. Of those, the Art Style series is probably the largest loss as they haven’t been ported to other platforms like Dark Void Zero or Mighty Flip Champs have.
The Art Style games were hidden gems for the Nintendo DS. They were small puzzle games that often had action elements, but each one was radically different from the other. The best ones were PiCOPiCT, which allowed players to build pixel art out of falling blocks, BOXLIFE, all about cutting boxes, and AQUIA, a match-three puzzler about finding combos in columns. All of these games retail for only five dollars on the eShop and their gameplay is addicting and challenging to master.
Another puzzler that will be gone from the eShop is the Nintendo-published and produced games Pushmo and Crashmo. Developed by Intelligent Systems, Pushmo and Crashmo were both games that revolved around pulling blocks out of pixel art to create a staircase to the top of a level. It’s a game with a surprising amount of depth that also works with the 3D effect of the now-discontinued Nintendo 3DS quite well.
Pushmo and Crashmo also had an excellent level editor that works through using QR codes. Even with the online services going away, players will still be able to access hundreds of puzzles from across the internet. The game has a cutesy art style that still holds up, and both have a reasonable cost at 8 and 9 dollars respectively.
Probably best known for Yokai Watch, Professor Layton, and Ni No Kuni, Level-5 has developed some smaller titles for the 3DS alongside well-known Japanese developers. In two collections named Guild01 and Guild02 respectively, six different games were developed that all have been released on the eShop in English. Although there is a physical Japanese release of Guild01, Guild02 doesn’t have any physical releases and none of the games will be available in English after the eShop closes. Unfortunately, these aren't Japanese games easily enjoyed by English speakers, so picking them up now may be the only way for non-Japanese speakers to enjoy the games.
Of the games on offer, the best are probably Weapon Shop De Omasse, Attack of the Friday Monsters, Crimson Shroud, and Liberation Maiden. While all are wildly different games with niche and unique styles, Weapon Shop De Omasse sets the bar for uniqueness by being a studio sitcom that’s also a rhythm game about blacksmithing. All these games are worth buying and they all have a good price of $8 on the eShop.
Alongside the games that won’t be available anymore are the ones whose physical releases are rising in price. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology still costs near retail prices in digital while physical copies have reached near triple digits. DS games are becoming expensive and other 3DS games like Pokémon X and Y are following suit, commanding prices that are much higher than their value at release. Even with physical copies still available, these games are going to continue rising in price as copies get scarcer.
The 3DS and Wii U eShop stores also had access to a myriad of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games through Virtual Console that will also be leaving come March 2023. Despite some having the opinion that the generation was underwhelming compared to the Wii and the Switch, the systems had a lot of original titles and legacy content. It’s disappointing to see these games go, but at least for the next ninety days, people with 3DS’s should check out the eShop and see if there’s anything they want to buy before Nintendo closes the shop down for good.
