Alfred’s 3DS travelogue (3D mode for ages 7+)

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I have 69 games I’m ready to write about, in fact. I think I played closer to 90 though. and downloaded at least 150. You start to ask yourself some hard questions, after a while, if it’s really even worth copying a game like Ever Oasis (Grezzo, 2017) onto your SD card when you know you’re going to be skeptical from the first millisecond, and start to hate the game in 30 seconds, and delete it another 4 minutes later.

I downloaded a lot of Virtual Console games too. Honestly I think it’s great making yourself play what they sold on the VC rather than injecting exactly what games you want. Now when I take out my 3DS there’s a tiny chance I might play Binary Land or Catrap.

I considered starting these posts a while ago, but struggled how to present it…how far do I need to get into a game before I should write about it? I ended up choosing the greatest format for writing serious opinions, which is the ranked list. starting from the bottom means that I’ve already bounced off of all these games. and it gives me time to play a little more of the ones near the top. I’ll post around 10 at a time.

The 3DS is a weird console? Kind of feels like a artistic/spiritual failure even though it apparently sold ok? it’s weird to think about that time circa 2011 when there were 3D TVs and 3D blurays and stuff. I remember being very impressed that there was going to be a handheld and it could run Street Fighter IV and the screen was 3D without needing any glasses. Looking at the library there were a lot of companies early on trying to jump in & capitalize on what they thought would be another runaway success like the DS (I loled at the existence of a 3DS Splinter Cell game), but a couple years after that it was the same couple of japanese companies supporting it and mostly pumping out sequels.

If you’re thinking about hacking yours you totally should…they made it a little easier (no longer need your own GPU to crack whatever file) and you should probably do it ASAP. it all feels very precarious, like it’s depending on both Nintendo’s servers & volunteers’ servers and if one jenga block gets pulled out in a couple of years then the whole process will be ruined.

Anyway let’s start this, since we’re at the bottom I’m going to try really hard to post more than just “this game sucks, I hated it” just bear with me, we’ll get through this part.

Also, I only took a couple screenshots (using whatever homebrew tool), but I didn’t know how to switch between the top & bottom screens. So here is the only screenshot I can post.

2022-06-05_21-37-53.820_top_right

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63 - Andro Dunos II
This game is awful, it feels like there’s input lag, there’s a ridiculous (and not very well drawn) animated view of the pilot’s lower half steering the ship on the bottom screen, andro dunos 1 wasn’t very good to begin with…is this what people really want? andro dunos 2? It honestly bothers me imagining that a single person could be excited about this game. (That would be hypothetical, since the only excitement i’ve seen has been how this is the last physical (physical-only!) 3DS game, nobody appears to be excited about the game itself.) Are there people who just want to play licensed & approved sequels to old things for the sake of being licensed & approved? Maybe it’s just a bad port. I wanted to make fun of the title screen, that says something like Copyright 2021 Josh Productions. but that doesn’t seem to be on the other versions, so Josh must have specifically been responsible for the 3DS port. Maybe it’s Josh’s fault…

62 - Steel Diver
I read that Shigeru Miyamoto designed one of the modes in this game. That mode seemed pretty complicated…I read the instructions for that mode & then I uninstalled the game. If anyone ever wanted to play with me IRL I would reinstall it though…

61 - Poochy & Yoshi’s Wooly World
Kirby’s Epic Yarn seems OK, but that game was co-developed by HAL & Good-Feel…this game was Good-Feel doing it alone. I don’t think those guys know how to make a good video game. I assume they are the ones responsible for the art direction/graphics engine only. Why can nobody make a good Yoshi game…they seem to all use Yoshi’s Story as the template i.e. extremely boring.

60 - Dead or Alive Dimensions / Tekken 3D
These games are very depressing, idk I wouldn’t even want to play doa5 or tekken tag 2 on a big HD screen, those games have very bummer vibes, now we’ve got the portable spinoff versions of those games here. This will be the first of many posts where I mention how uncomfortable the 3DS is to hold and to look at the screen.

59 - Metroid Prime Federation Force
This game seemed kind of interesting & underrated but it requires you to use gyro aim. On a handheld…that’s a no from me dawg. (also trying to use gyro aim with 3D on is hilarious)

58 - Runabout 3D / Crash City Mayhem
I always want to play Runabout games because they feature that iconic Ram truck and they might bring me one step closer to solving the mystery of why Climax Entertainment went from making games about fairies & princesses to making games about vehicular carnage. This game is very rough though, as an early 3ds game by a failing company, there’s just not a lot going on, it’s very austere.

57 - Corpse Party
I finished the first chapter of this game. It got me thinking why I would even play a horror game or (very occasionally) watch a horror movie…the silent hill games are beautiful for instance, even though I’m not crazy about playing them. This game, on the other hand, is very ugly. the voice acting & animated OP really push it over the top into unwholesome territory. I bet playing the pc98 original isn’t a bad time, but whatever good pc98 juju (like the intro where you’re just a disembodied eyeball) is cancelled out by how exploitative & ugly this game is

56 - Chibi Robo Zip Lash
I played halfheartedly until a little mini-cutscene showed these NPCs or enemies or whatever interested in a treasure box. Normally in a video game, it’s the kind of visual signpost to tell you that that treasure chest is super important, maybe you need it to progress to the next area or something. The treasure chest ended up containing an actual licensed likeness of a Tootsie(R) Pop(R) which just went into some kind of Candy Compendium or something. then I uninstalled

55 - Shantae & The Pirates Curse
This game felt like if Prestige Flash Games just kept getting bigger & more prestigious on a straight trajectory from the 2000’s…it’s a facsimile of a video game. It has towns and platforms and dialogues and collectables and bosses, just like a real video game, but it’s not

54 - Rodea the Sky Soldier
I actually thought this game wasn’t the worst thing in the world. This was early in my project when I told myself I would play anything if it had a 3DS port. I had to pare that down a bit in the end. So yes, this is based on the cursed Wii U version. The particular combination of framerate, resolution, draw distance, etc made me feel like I was playing a 2010’s Unity art game. But this game really doesn’t make sense without a wiimote, and life is too short to play more than one version of Rodea The Sky Soldier for too long, so I had to call it quits.

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the pre-hacking pre-new 3ds was a big disappointment for me. the original ds had hundreds of cool weird games, even including a pretty big simple series! it was like a portable ps1 in a way the psp never was. so i got a 3ds expecting a similar kind of experience. instead, it seemed like all there was was spin offs of all the big name series on home consoles and a whole bunch of kiddy shovelware. plus it was region locked, so when something cool got released in japan, you couldn’t even play it anyway!

nowadays, it’s a pretty decent emulation handheld for 2d systems and through piracy it’s a lot easier to find the diamonds in the rough. i still love the vita more, though.

dead or alive dimensions had the best use of streetpass! as you played, it put together an ai based on your playstyle, like some virtua fighter games can do. then when you streetpassed someone else with the game, you could fight their ai fighter!

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Nice

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Alfred crafting this thread:

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Strangely enough I think the only two games I played where I really liked the 3D effect were the 3D Classics port of TwinBee and Crimson Shroud otherwise I could really take it or leave it.

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I thought the 3D effect was divine in Super Hang-On and Galaxy Force lI.

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i’ve said this many times before, but sega 3d classics archive 2 (or sega 3d classics collection outside japan) has the master system game 3d maze walker as an extra, and the 3d effect in that game is incredible

of course, all the sega 3d classics look great, too.

and along similar lines as crimson shroud, that ghost recon strategy game really looks like miniatures moving around a map if you turn the 3d on.

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aside from sega 3d classics the 3d effect was spectacular in link between worlds

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You are a hero.
Looking forward to read the rest of your reviews

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Don’t worry about numbering just post them game impressions!

These guys were/are involved with Play-Asia and a lot of the last 10 years of Dreamcast releases. It makes sense. I actually saw the Shmups’s Guy review of this game and he was extremely positive so I might give it a try (on a real system).

Oh yeah they did do that. I forget and have never touched Runabout.

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53 - Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Edition
Oops, this game probably should have been lower. Why are all mobile game presentations/interfaces scientifically designed to be as depressing & boring as possible

52 - Boxboy
This game is kind of like sutte hakkun but more boring :sleeping: also…visually/thematically this game is also very lame, if HAL Labs thought they were being iconic and Minimalistic–nope, sorry this game looks like ass. If you think about it, this game is kind of like the “straight pride flag” of videogames, it’s all gray and it stars BoxBoy and BoxGirl (who is just BoxBoy with a bow on her head)

51 - the Theatrhythm series
I admit to some cheap pleasure loading up my favorite songs with dopey looking renditions of cecil, butz, squall & tidus prancing along, but after 1 or 2 plays I was done. The game design is kind of weird, like they separated all the music into field/story/battle categories, and came up with different gameplay styles for each? sort of contrived…but I bet the arcade version is fun since you can play SaGa songs.

50 - detective pikachu
This game is weird in a boring way, you could have told me it was made by Europeans and I’d believe you

49 - professor layton vs. phoenix wright
Wonderful presentation, seriously how much did this game cost to make? Professor layton puzzles are boring. I was pleased to hear Maya & Phoenix voice-acted (“Naruhodo-kun!”). this game felt like it was going nowhere, I don’t think I missed anything by quitting shortly after the long introductory part.

48 - Resident Evil Revelations
The 3DS screen is hard to look at and the system is uncomfortable to hold. This has a similar bummer vibe to tekken/doa in that it has big 2012 energy. I wonder how the HD version would be to play.

47 - Fantasy Life
I broke one of my cardinal rules (never play a level 5 game) for Cania’s sake. This game seems pleasant and the 3D looks great. But there was just a little too much cruft to make me want to play past the intro, like just finding the first dude and killing him felt like it took hours, you can feel in the presentation with all the prompts and waypoints and stuff that it was destined to be a mobile game.

46 - kid icarus uprising
strange game. as a typical game from 2012 it is one of the most overproduced games I have ever played, from every pixel on the screen is dripping somebody’s overtime labor. It is sort of a rail shooter with some inventive touchscreen-controlled TPS parts. It has 2d sprites of fruit as pick ups! But at the end of the day, the action radiates this super smash bros-esque grossness that my body rejects. And I mean at the end of the day you fly through a lot of sky levels (which just means clouds everywhere) and the ground levels are all just like castle ramparts or castle interiors, it gets old pretty fast :sleeping:

45 - hatsune miku project mirai
This game was in my activity log but I don’t remember playing it at all. that means all the games up to this point are worse than a game I do not remember. Do you want to know what ever happened to Sega AM2, after Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown? The company itself is not credited, but the key people from VF5 all worked on the mainline Hatsune Miku games. (I’m sure they worked on other arcade-only games that are not in Mobygames, like those weird arcade mobalike games)

44 - tie: warioware gold / rhythm heaven megamix
It interests me that after years of reinventing themselves to match whatever control schemes of Nintendo’s console du jour, both of these series had a very deliberate “best of” theme going on for their 3DS iterations. For warioware they added voice acting which is the key point of interest to the game…look up how many views those cutscenes have on youtube if you want to surprise yourself. Otherwise damn these games have lost a lot of soul over the years.

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This is the only game in either series I’ve played and I got maybe 65% of the way through before I’d had my fill. It was decent but I have no real idea how it stacks up against the best of either series (and I have no motivation to find out).

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That’s crazy mikey, you should play the phoenix wright trilogy thingy

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If the backlog ever permits

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this means a lot to me

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I played the original Phoenix Wright trilogy and all the Layton games before this one, and this would clearly be the weakest game out of all of those. If it is a case of “I just don’t care for this type of visual novel/puzzle game at all” then ignore away, but the quality of either half here is not representative of what the actual entries are like.

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That judgment sounds familiar enough that now I think maybe folk on here have told me this before. FWIW I actually did enjoy the game a good deal I just sort of burnt out on it after a while. The Layton parts especially just sort of felt a bit boring.

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43 - I am an air traffic controller - airport hero hawaii
I think what I played was some kind of tutorial/easy mode? I could only watch my plane in while it was in the air…I could switch between a bunch of different camera angles, including on the ground. It must have been 15 or 20 minutes and I still hadn’t landed yet? there was nothing for me to do really. this is a pretty cool game actually now that I think about it. There is a 3ds game called “aero porter” (which i’m not reviewing) where you manage baggage for different flights, but that’s actually just like, a color coded puzzle game disguised as work. This is real simulation soft for air traffic murderheads.

42 - azure striker gunvolt
I gave this game another chance because I liked Bloodstained COTM. and indeed I liked it a little better, but not that much better :sleepy: :sleeping: COTM was clearly a fluke (and at its best when it ripped directly from castlevania 1 level design/enemy placement). It was funny when I died & instead of dying became super powered up. and a vocal pop song started playing. I had to look up what happened because it was so strange. Apparently you can talk to your girlfriend to raise your affinity between levels, and it makes it more likely that she will revive you. I only played long enough to die that one time, but that would make me sad if I just died without being revived, picturing my scorned/tearful moe girlfriend back at my apartment watching me on a video monitor as I explode into a million balls like megaman.

41 - labyrinth no kanata
This game was kind of interesting at first, then I sensed it wasn’t going anywhere interesting. I think I watched parts of a longplay video later to confirm this. But the beginning is still kind of interesting.

40 - legend of legacy
this is a saga-like rpg worked on by a bunch of semi-famous people. You’ve got some saga battle systems people credited, as well as masashi hamauzu composing, tomomi kobayashi doing some illustrations (although notably not the character designs), and somone I’ve never heard of narrating who has a nice voice. the game itself is by cattle call, who I believe are some ex-data east rpg (i.e. metal max & heracles no eiko) people. (they have gone on to make dungeon encounters, and another game, which may or may not make an appearance later in this thread…) the vibe reminds me of final fantasy 4 heroes of light, meaning serene & maybe beautiful even…and like that game I find this boring and not really going anywhere. The game puts a lot of significance on filling in maps which means a lot of walking into edges of the map trying to get the game to recognize 100% completion. and the graphics engine has trees & stuff popping up out of the ground as you approach them…sounds nice but I found myself running into trees a lot, especially during the aforementioned map-filling.

39 - river city rival showdown
this is a full blown open world adventure with a time limit to complete the game and seemingly tons of optional stuff to do & places to go. Unfortunately I’m kind of overwhelmed by games like that, and nothing was really grabbing me in the opening hour or two…but the vibe is awesome, it’s got like an HD-2D sort of thing going on with old kunio sprites, and monospaced serif font that gives the game that je ne sais quoi.

38 - mahjong cub3d
This isn’t “mahjong”, it’s the sunsoft (or is it activision?) game “shanghai” where you have a big pile of tiles and you have to match them up to remove them. It was actually published by sunsoft in japan! In 2011! What could have been the state of the company at that time? And yes, it’s in 3d, like picross 3d, it’s a 6 sided pile of tiles you have to rotate to find. Isn’t that sort of a pointless contrivance? I was really bad at finding the tiles. and in the end it’s not cooler than “shanghai ii” for the famicom, which has that sweet sunsoft bass sound.

37 - tie: pro baseball famista returns / pro baseball famista climax
Here is my opportunity to say, the famista series is awesome. these are quite in depth/polished revivals of the series by Eighting. They tried making it on par with PowerPro, with like a story mode & stuff. I just wanted to play a little baseball, and I was getting absolutely creamed…and I consider myself OK at famista…maybe losing was part of the story, like when you face an unstoppable boss in an rpg to advance the story, but that would be cruel for 9 innings…

36 - bust a move universe
this is the “it’s fine” section of the ranking…bust a move universe. it’s fine. it’s by arika…how bad could it be? I actually don’t remember.

35 - dragon ball extreme budoten
Nice sprite work…looks great in 3d…I wonder how fun it would be to play against real people

34 - tie: mario tennis open / mario golf world tour
I don’t remember playing these. How bad could they be? All camelot does is make these golf & tennis games, they must be pretty good at it by now…Actually I might not have played the tennis one. You know I automatically assume these licensed mario games get 8/10 from reviewers. And I remember seeing mario tennis open had like a 69% score on metacritic (via wikipedia, I don’t go to metacritic.com). that actualliy made me not want to play it…metacritic doing its job for once.

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38 - mahjong cub3d

I’m watching footage of this and it looks like the greatest video game of all time?

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