Hindsight is Always Three Dimensional

Quick, name a product with a 3D focus that's no longer in production!

Image from Columbia.EDU

Well, there's that too. But I was thinking of something with less nacho dust.

Image from eBay

Yeah, that. After a bungled launch and nine moderately successful years on the market, the 3DS has been retired by Nintendo. Yes, that includes the more recent deluxe and budget models. It's not to say that you can't still find good uses for a 3DS... the New model with the upgraded processor has a quartet of homebrew console emulators that are more user friendly and run better than anything you'll find on the Playstation Vita, the system's hapless rival. If you're waiting for officially licensed 3DS software, though, you might be waiting a while. Perhaps billions of years, if there's any truth to the theory of a cyclical timeline.

The 3DS was fun while it lasted, though... and it lasted quite a while! I still have a lot of memories tied to this system, like how badly I wanted it after it launched. The technological shortcomings of the standard DS were starting to chafe, and the promise of a handheld with near-GameCube quality graphics had me licking my lips like a hyena that stumbled upon an elephant graveyard. Sadly, the 3DS proved elusive until two years later, when an acquaintance gifted me one after he upgraded to one of the XL models.

It looks a little rough now, but yanno, 2011.
(image from Amazon)

An equal measure of fun and frustration soon followed. I put a lot of time into the system's star attraction, Super Street Fighter IV... it obviously didn't look as nice as its console counterparts, but it had nearly all the content (plus an odd gachapon mode where you could collect figurines of all the characters) and it played pretty well, with the touchscreen making up for the system's lack of face buttons. 

On the downside, there was Kid Icarus Uprising... its graphics were downright breathtaking by handheld standards, with Pit gliding over vast cityscapes and battling enormous (yet often silly) monsters, but its visual luster couldn't disguise the ugliness of the control. Thanks to the lack of a second analog stick, I felt like I needed all the hands of a legendary Greek monster just to play it. The torturous grind to unlock new weapons didn't help its appeal much either. Sure there are tons of clubs, wands, and swords to collect and combine, but I would have been happier with just one weapon that did a reasonable amount of damage...

You're still a dink, rabbit.

Soon afterward, I moved to Arizona, and found not only a 3DS XL of my own, but a love for Nintendo's daring but distressingly short-lived social media experiment Miiverse. More of my 3DS time was spent scratching out black and white pictures and posting them to the service than actually playing games. I also developed an equally passionate hatred for the Arcade Bunny, the annoyingly chipper, occasionally schizophrenic rabbit who wanted real cash for chances to win simulated enamel pins you could put on your system's home page. I'm embarrassed to admit that I gave more of my money to the bunny than any rational adult should. I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that I heaped abuse on him in Miiverse whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The New 3DS was a worthy follow up to
the original model, but I still question the
wisdom of that stubby second stick.

A few years later, the 3DS XL was retired to a drawer and replaced with the New 3DS XL. They were selling them for half the suggested retail price at K-Mart, but since our local store was in the process of shutting down, I had to request a price match from a nearby Wal-Mart. At the time, the New 3DS XL seemed like a pointless, extravagant purchase, but in hindsight, its added horsepower really did improve the overall experience. Miiverse loaded faster, games ran slightly better, and the 3D that was so spotty on previous models was greatly improved with a head tracking sensor. That faint red LED looks creepy in low light conditions, like your system was possessed by the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can't argue with the results!

It's been three years, but I never really
got over this.

After the death of Miiverse in late 2017, my enthusiasm for the 3DS, and Nintendo in general, sputtered out. The Vita became my handheld of choice, although I really wasn't doing much with it beyond playing PSP titles I bought on Sony's online store and old arcade games in Final Burn Alpha. I'd pick up the 3DS occasionally to play a round of Kirby: Planet Robobot, but reading news posts made it clear that the system was running out of fresh releases... and running out of time. I purchased a Switch Lite last April, in anticipation of the 3DS's inevitable demise... and now the dual screen handheld is officially history.

Would I say the 3DS was a better system than the Switch? Not really. People complain about the quality of games on the Switch eShop, but the 3DS eShop was far, far worse, loaded with shovelware that demanded the extra power of the New 3DS, yet would have been underwhelming on the decades-old NES. The hardware suffered from shortsighted design (why make a handheld with a single analog stick six years after everybody complained about the single stick on the PSP?), and promising services like Miiverse, Swapnote, and Nintendo Video were ended prematurely, frustrating the system's owners.

Steve, aka OkayGreyOwl, drew this image
as a farewell gift to everyone he met on
Miiverse. That's my bear alter ego on the left.

Despite all that, I got a lot of emotional mileage out of the 3DS. I still remember running off to McDonald's with system in hand to catch a few stray puzzle pieces from other users, so I could finish that interactive diorama of Kirby, or Mario, or that goofy mutt who wanted to sell me mini-games. I recall all the time I spent on Miiverse, not only posting doodles but admiring the work of others, which frequently pushed the boundaries of a tiny, monochrome digital canvas. I remember scooping up cheap software at game stores and pawn shops and Humble Bundles, and having a lot of fun with everything I found. (Well, maybe not Asphalt 3D.) I fondly look back at the dozens of hours I spent playing Smash Run, and slowly developing an appreciation for the Smash Bros. series after years of shunning it. I remember settling my nerves during hospital visits by watching episodes of Bravest Warriors on Nintendo Video. This thing is just packed with memories, and I'm sure I'm missing some important ones.

Wait, there's this one. Wayne Brady from
Let's Make a Deal totally helped save me
from a monster once. Let's see your
fancy-schmancy Switch do that.

There will never be a gaming experience quite like the 3DS, and it's not likely to be forgotten by the millions who owned it.