It’s easy to get caught up in the Nintendo Switch – from its line of cardboard accessories taking the internet by storm, through to its revival of Nintendo’s fortunes the hybrid console has become the platform of choice for many gamers-on-the-go. It’s important not to forget the 3DS altogether though – it remains a platform with a vast and affordable library, with some new releases still coming down the pipeline. The Switch may be getting its own Pokemon roleplaying game sometime in the future, but the 3DS is the only place you can play the recently released Detective Pikachu. Perhaps the least-likely sounding Pokemon spin-off to date, the mix of Pikachu, Sherlock Holmes’ headgear and a mystery solving adventure has proved so popular that Detective Pikachu is even being turned into a movie.
The 3DS releases are certainly slowing down, but there’s life left in the platform yet. To begin with several of the still-coming titles are remakes of such favourites as Luigi’s Mansion and the Mario & Luigi role-playing games. In Nintendo UK’s online store the only ‘Coming Soon’ title listed is Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers.
The previous two games in the series were e-shop exclusive, and this game is digital only in North America, so this is something of an exciting upgrade for franchise. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux is also still scheduled for release this month. The slowing sales of the 3DS are a reason to snap up games you’re interested in before its too late, especially for franchises without a huge following or niche genres like JRPGs.
I recently had to do quite a lot of searching to find a copy of Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology – a game that only came out in February. With no online store seemingly having it in stock -or even out of stock– I had to scour eBay and Amazon’s second hand sellers for a copy that seemed likely to be a UK copy. Given that the game is a remake of a game frequently listed as one of the best RPGs out there this scarcity was surprising – especially as the original never got a European release. So, if you want to try Radiant Historia for yourself you might need to hop to it!
There’s still an insane library of 3DS games that are already released that its easy to forget about. While the Switch may be gobbling up Wii U games for re-release it remains to be seen if we can expect much of the same treatment for 3DS games. From the later releases in the Inazuma Eleven series, with their increasingly lengthy titles, through to the second Pokemon-like Yokai Watch game and even the confusing-looking card-RPG hybrid of Culdcept Revolt the 3DS is also a repository of harder to find hidden gems – so if there’s something you’ve been meaning to pick up this might be the time to start looking.
