The King is Dead. Long Live the King.
On March 27th, 2011, I was 15 years old. I’d nearly made it through my first year of high school and all the changes that came with it. Elementary school was a tough time for me, from bullying to less-than-ideal teachers to just a general outsider-ness that I never really outgrew until midway through high school. I became a band kid, meeting friends that I still hang out with today. I found people I could be myself around, people who made me feel happy, included, and at home.
I connected with a lot of these new friends through a shared love of video games — specifically, Nintendo games. In elementary school, I was ostracized for liking Nintendo. In the advent of Call of Duty, Gears of War, and Halo rocking the minds of adolescent boys across the world, I was more concerned with the ongoing adventures of Mario, Olimar, Kirby, and the rest of Nintendo’s vast cast of characters. Their colourful worlds were a retreat for me, an escape from a world I never outright disliked but also never felt particularly at home in. Isle Delfino was a vacation for Mario and myself, the islands of flooded Hyrule belonged to me as much as Link, and Chibi-Robo’s impossibly big house became as intimately familiar as my own.
On March 27th, 2011, 15-year-old me marched into Microplay, my local games store (rest in peace), with $250 and a beaming smile. Nintendo’s new 3DS console was out, and I needed it. It was the first console I’d ever bought with my own money — my parents funded my love of video games, much as they bemoaned it on occasion. I walked out with an Aqua Blue 3DS and copies of Pilotwings Resort and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition. I was not a fighting game fan, and I’m still not, and I’d only dabbled in the Pilotwings games. But, I think, even then, I knew I was investing in something bigger. Something special.
It’s 2023 now. I’m twenty-six years old with a career and shelves too full of video games. And as other systems have faded away — so long, Wii U and PlayStation Vita — my 3DS has never left me. My shelf remains full, my system remains charged, and some small part of my mind thinks about what games I should play on it alongside my Switch and PS5. And that, really, is what makes today such a somber affair.
Twelve years to the day after the console launched in North America, Nintendo shut down the 3DS (and Wii U) digital storefronts — the eShop. With it, countless games, DLCs, and exclusive content are now lost to the ether. Sure, there are folks working hard to preserve these games, including YouTube’s own The Completionist, and you can download them by hacking your system, but the fact remains that Nintendo has made the conscious decision to let these games slip through our collective fingers. The eShop was always an hourglass, slowly counting down, and now that sand has spilled.
The 3DS defined itself in a lot of different ways. The titular 3D was an impressive feat of technology, made even more so by the upgrades the “New” line of systems introduced. Its Circle Pad is a genius way to incorporate analogue movement without sacrificing the signature clamshell design. The graphical and processing upgrades made it feel like you were playing a portable Gamecube, or some lost console between it and the N64 and. All these things are still important, sure, but none of them feed into what I think the 3DS’s primary purpose was. Its thesis.
The 3DS wanted to connect us. It wanted to take our enjoyment of games and not only bring it into the world but towards other people. It achieved this through Spotpass, a feature whereby the system will connect to hotspots and WiFi signals to send updates from Nintendo straight to you. Sometimes these were updates about games, sometimes they were short videos, and sometimes they were just messages from Nintendo letting you know that, in some small way, they wanted to talk to you. It also achieved this through the later addition of Miiverse, Nintendo’s much-memed and much-beloved social network. They wanted you to share your love of games with folks across the world through messages, drawings, and, yes, sometimes innocent posts from kids asking why Metroid can’t crawl.
The 3DS wanted to connect us, and in no way did it want to do so more than with StreetPass. The premise was simple: put your system into sleep mode, throw it in your bag and purse, go about your day, and when you get home, suddenly there were other people visiting your 3DS! The first time I got a StreetPass at school was, in a word, magic. Seeing that little green light come on became more than just a way for me to rack up puzzle pieces — it was my link to a larger world of people like me. People who loved video games and wanted to share their love with the world.
I carried my 3DS around with me into 2017 when the Switch came out. It came with me to university classes, trips to the mall, on the public bus, airports, and so many other places. And seeing that green light never got old. It reminded me that video games aren’t just insular affairs — they’re for everyone. I connected with kids playing Pokémon X&Y, adults playing Shin Megami Tensei IV, and so many people playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I was playing those games, too, and so many others.
Games like Bravely Default, which let me populate my village with the people I StreetPassed with. Games like the aforementioned New Leaf, which let me visit the homes of StreetPassers. Nintendo even let you visit the homes of people like Reggie! Games like the numerous StreetPass originals, which asked you to do anything from grow flowers together to explore a haunted house.
Most importantly, though, Nintendo asked you to do these things together. You can’t build up Norende Town without other people. You can’t grow the best flower without others’ fertilizer. You can’t find folks you vibe with unless you go out there and try. Open your communications channel, see who comes around. Life’s better that way.
Since I was an early adopter of the 3DS, I was granted the “Ambassador Program”, a digital certificate and a selection of NES and Gameboy Advance games as a sort of compensation for the quick price-drop of the system. My 3DS still proudly bears that badge of honour. A few of the games given to ambassadors still aren’t easily accessible, making Ambassador systems genuine rarities. They fetch a high price on used markets, as most games do nowadays.
The impending closure of the eShop has effectively exploded the price of 3DS games. For a system so hellbent on bringing us together, the inherent greed of the used games market leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The 3DS wouldn’t want this — Nintendo doesn’t care, but their quirky, gimmicky, friendly little system does. It wants to be enjoyed, it wants to be played. And it’s infinitely more difficult to now unless you shell out hundreds of dollars.
Everyone should experience Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, a game about the lengths we go to save the ones we love. Everyone deserves to enjoy Fire Emblem: Awakening’s theme of how our connections with others are baked into our fates, powerful enough to traverse time and stop wars. Everyone needs Kid Icarus: Uprising’s messages of optimism and hope in the face of overwhelming odds. And, sometimes, we all just need to eat some shit and stop an eldritch horror, a la Kirby: Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot.
The 3DS’s ethos of connection extends through its games and into its players. Those games become the ties that bind us, those StreetPasses how we hold hands in an increasingly scary world. Video games were never meant to isolate us, the 3DS asserts. They’re invitations, focal points around which we connect through play and connect through what happens after we play. The after-party and the party itself. The 3DS understood this in every facet of its being, from its multiple models that allowed as many people as possible to enjoy it to the fact that, even though the eShop is dead, you can still StreetPass with people.
The 3DS will cling to every bit of life it can, and it’s our job to do the same.
High school was where I started to blossom. I went to parties, hung out with girls, and joined even more extra-curricular activities. I went to Europe with a group of classmates, and of course brought my 3DS along. I was coming out of my shell and embracing the fun and joy that come from other people. People I could love and trust — people I could play my 3DS with. Pokemon battles in the cafeteria, Mario Kart and Mario Party on the bus during band trips, playing with the sound and camera filters late at night, all through a little system with barely working 3D. But it did work, and still works. As do the buttons, as does the touch screen, as do the speakers, and as do I, an adult now.
I’m sure there will come a day when I’ll close my 3DS and it will remain closed. I’ll say that silent goodbye to my villagers, my hundreds of StreetPass companions, my countless hours in countless games and the ones I never got around to. I’ll think back on late nights and plane flights, headphones on and worlds in my hands. For a young man standing at the edge of the universe, my 3DS was my antenna, pointing me where to go. Pointing me to others, to where I needed to be.
I still keep my dark grey New 3DS XL close by. Some of the paint is chipping and the battery doesn’t last as long as it used to, there are some scuff marks and scratches on the outside, and some wear around the buttons. Signs of life and love. Signs that, even with our scars, we keep living. We keep connecting. We pass each other on the street and that little green light comes on. It tells us that things are going to be okay. Everything dies, but that doesn’t mean we stop living.
