#429 The 3DS Time Capsule

The next installment of Super Smash Bros. is right around the corner, while I have been patiently waiting to buy my Wii U edition of the game I have been killing time and getting more excited for Nintendo’s newest brawl by playing some of the original titles of some of the fighters in the rosters on my 3DS. Blame it on the fact that I am a history fanatic that enjoys a good origin story, and where some of these original, now iconic, tunes that I hear over and over again in the brawl soundtracks WITHOUT resorting to emulation or romhacks.

I have mentioned before I already own a copy of the NES port of Super Mario Bros (Be MOP #380) and Metroid (Be MOP #406) and through one way or another I also picked up 3D Classics: Kid Icarus. It seems that Nintendo was thinking the same thing because I received an email about their discounted Wii U and 3DS games starring the stars of Brawl and with that I picked up a copy of Mega Man II.

 

Who says Nintendo doesn’t know their player base and have an on point marketing team

With the the released replenishing of the Featured Games offers and my surplus of Club Nintendo rewards coins I also picked up the Legend of Zelda on the 3DS for myself and the first Super Mario Bros for my younger brother.

Because that what bigger brothers do.

While I am still clicking through Tomodachi Life, waiting for the right moment to open up Bravely Default, these proper 8 bit games have been holding me off the itch for buying another action platform game. All of these games are challenging, way tougher than I anticipated, as I mentioned at the origin point at the start of this blog post, I get to see and hear all the original tunes and experience the first boss fights that all future installments of Mario and Zelda games base themselves off of and for the cherry on top, I also get to see, first hand, the inspiration of the levels and bosses in Shovel Knight.

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#409 Doubling the gaming library on my 3 Dual Screen device

This past weekend, as I mentioned in last week’s blog post I indulged with the ‘buy one 3DS game and get one free’ sale currently held by Best Buy, or in my case a local Toys ‘R Us, or  any other store that offers a price match guarantee, and I went out bought four new 3DS games for my collection.

I justified the hefty purchase to myself later by saying I would have spent that much anyways if they were 50% off on Steam.

 

All of these games were games I wanted for the in one way or another but I never found the incentive to go out and get them until now.

Zelda A Link Between Two worlds, and all the praise and Game of the Year awards it received, was the major reason for participating this promotion. Currently there is a void in my gaming schedule for another well crafted top down dungeon exploration to play before the release of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth hits the shelves.

Bravely Default was bought because, through word of mouth from other gamers, I was told that this was the closest thing to a Final Fantasy game without the Final Fantasy name and baggage that comes with it.

Kirby Triple Deluxe is the game that I am currently playing through as of right now it is serving as a palate cleanser. Only to be played after getting frustrated from the countless attempted trying to complete the later levels the more intense platforming games.

Only three levels in but even if the game difficulty spikes towards the end the game’s aesthetics are so sweet and adorable that I do not think I can even get frustrated.

 

Lastly Tomodachi Life, a life simulation game that got a spike of bad publicity, while never showing interest in previous life sim games like Animal Crossing and The Sims this game got me interested on the product from all the wackiness that was crammed into the initial English reveal trailer of the game in the April Nintendo Direct.

 

it takes some serious courage for someone at Nintendo to suggest to poking fun at one of Nintendo’s worst products (and then include the Nintendo executives into the skit) 

 

As a result I have not only doubled my current AAA current 3DS library (ignoring the remastered original NES ports of Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Super Mario Bros. 3) but I now have a backlog on my handheld something that I never had before. When I own previous versions of Nintendo’s Handhelds, a lack of personal funds getting a new game for the Game boy color/advanced or DS was far and few between, and following the code of the big brother gaming code, I will be passing down every 3DS game that I complete to my younger brother who is currently in my shoes with regards to disposable income.

Thank you again Nintendo for continuing to make your games cartridge’s DRM free and with multiple save files especially considering that with the integration of Streetpass in this generation you could easily enforce it. 

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#406 Adding some much needed games to my 3DS library

I have noticed that over the past few weeks I have been neglecting my 3DS lately, between my regularly scheduled Twitch PC streams and my weekend play time dedicated to getting through the HD remake of Zelda Wind Waker on the Wii U. The last 3DS game I bought, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, was described as ‘meh’ at best.

My 3DS gaming drought has been so bad I have been resorted to replaying my old copy of Pokemon White to unlock the ability to transfer all of my Pokemon from my GameBoy Advance games to the PokeBank. Recently I have been looking for an opportunity to get some new/more games onto my handheld and thankfully Nintendo just happened to finished their 2013-2014 year long Club Nintendo session, and with all of my recent purchases I got the option to choose my pick of a free Nintendo game the gold status rewards tier.

Filling out all those surveys have really paid off

 

Last year was a big year for me and for my Nintendo collection with my purchase of my 3DS, Pokemon Y, Super Mario 3D Land, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, my Wii U console, Mario Kart 8, and my beloved Super Mario 3D world I have gathered some nice Nintendo coins just sitting collecting digital dust. I have been waiting for a chance to redeem them with this yearly thank you of Nintendo to seems like the best time to use those coins to download some free games. This past weekend I chose up Metroid for the 3DS as my prize of the Gold membership reward, I used my Nintendo loyalty reward coins to pick up the 3DS port of the classic Kid Icarus and the first Paper Mario game for the Wii U just for the sake of nostalgia.

While I was downloading classic 8 bit NES games I also decided to buy Shovel Knight for the 3DS, I almost have to buy it for a Nintendo platform if I wanted to pay respects to the old ways of Action Platformers. In all of my research for figuring out which platform to buy Shovel Knight on (Be MOP #403) nobody told me that the 3DS port of a third-party indie game company -that was funded on Kickstarter- actually kept 3D feature/gimmick in mind when programming the game.

That’s pretty much an Insta-buy for the 3DS right there

 

Between all of those recently downloaded games to my virtual library,  Best Buy’s current Buy one get one Free sale on 3DS games, and my next paycheck coming in this Friday, it looks like my 3DS is going to get some much-needed attention.

Run my little paycheck RUN!

 

 

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#380 Finally buying a 3DS game through Nintendo’s eShop

Well it finally happened ladies and gentlemen, after months of owning my 3DS got around to buying a completely digital game through Nintendo’s eShop store. Those of you might remember that I wrote a post about my concerns about the 3DS store before (Be MOP #335) so what changed? The short answer is -as always- Pokemon. During my annual spring cleaning I found my old copies of Pokemon White, Emerald, and Fire Red and with the recent announcement of the long-awaited Hoenn remake I thought that now would be the perfect time to cave in and commit to buying a Season Pass for the Pokebank, Nintendo’s latest service for transferring Pokemon on the DS titles to the newer and fancier 3DS titles and any new titles in the future.

 

Pokemon might be the only driving force to convince Nintendo fans to upgrade to the newest model or device. Now Nintendo just needs to release or hint at a New Pokemon IP for the Wii U

Sidenote: No screenshots in this post. because as I ranted before the 3DS does not support the ability to take screenshots of the store or any other software and I did not want to take pictures of my 3DS screen through my phone.

I soon found out that I could not just buy the Pokebank directly from the store, in a truly evil move my Nintendo and some other video game companies, if  you want to buy the item from the store you have to purchase credits of increments of 10, 20, 35, 50 dollars before entering the shop’s checkout line. The PokeBank cost was $4.99 as a result I was forced to buy the ten dollar credit. After confirming my purchase for the yearly pass I was left with $5.01 on the account and I wanting a new game for my 3DS I decided to pick up the Virtual Console version Super Mario Bros 3. A classic videogame that I have not played yet, but I blame that on the fact that it came out a year before I was born and that by the time I started playing videogames Super Mario Bros. 3 was two gaming generations away.

The PROPER sequel to the first Super Mario Bros

 

Now I am left with two pennies trapped on my eShop account that I will never use again, a common result in games with heavy micro transactions or in-game shop where game forces you to trade in common and perfectly normal currency for their specific brand of credits. I would go on ranting about this videogame sin but compared to all the other practices the video game industry I am tempted to let this problem slide under the radar for now and that is saying something.

So where does that put us now, with one season pass and one completely digital game purchase later? Well I am a bit open to the idea of buying cheap and indie games on the 3DS through the eShop, but only as an additional or consolation prize when I want to buy a digital exclusive game (like the newest Pokemon Battle Trozei game) but when it comes to the full priced, proper 3DS game I am sticking to process of going to my local game shop and buy physical copies of the game. Because if my 3DS gets stolen or damaged beyond repair or recovery I can be assured that my most expensive games are on currently resting on my shelf in my room. On top of that the 3DS games on the cartridges are DRM free, which is not only important to me when it comes to handing down games to my little brothers, but a concept that I believe in and I should find every excuse to support that idea whether it comes to preaching about the topic at the last paragraph of a blog post or by voting for it with my wallet.

 

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Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays