Considering how relatively young the handheld was when it happened, it just feels…wrong that so many 3DS games can now not be downloaded following the eShop closure. Well, downloaded…officially, matey. These are just some of the awesome 3DS games that are stuck on the handheld and need some kind of official port to the Switch or its successor, but let’s not kid ourselves about this first one rising up out of the 3DS…ever.
Kid Icarus Uprising
An absolute classic and one of the 3DS’s best third-person shooters, Kid Icarus Uprising leaves behind the platforming roots of the series to chuck its angel hero, Pit, into on-rails sky battles and ground-based scuffles.
Though the moment-to-moment gameplay is easy to pick up on once you get used to the controls, Uprising features pretty robust systems and mechanics, some of which would even return in director Masahiro Sakurai’s later work on Smash 4 and Ultimate.
An in-depth weapon system gives Pit nine different weapon classes to choose from, and each individual weapon has its own stats and abilities. Meanwhile, the Intensity system — which eventually migrated to Smash — is a granular difficulty slider.
All of this is tied together by vibrant graphics and art, as well as an incredibly charming script filled with hilarious dialogue. Kid Icarus Uprising is full of personality and brimming with potential, so the lack of a Switch port or sequel has been nothing short of disappointing. Although there’s been speculation from fans and teases from Sakurai himself over the years, he’s also gone on record saying that a port would be difficult due to the lack of a team. And despite the fandom’s appetite for it, Nintendo themselves haven’t shown any interest in returning to the franchise either.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Atlus may have a reputation for constantly re-releasing its RPGs in upgraded form years down the line, but one case where it hasn’t happened yet is Shin Megami Tensei IV, which instead got Apocalypse, a pseudo-sequel set in an alternate timeline.
Shin Megami Tensei IV is kinda a back-to-basics approach. Rather than feature up to six endings like Nocturne did, IV returns to the three alignments of Law, Neutral, and Chaos. As with other Shin Megami Tensei games, what route your character eventually takes is determined by your dialogue choices.
The combat builds off of the famous Press Turn system, where striking weaknesses rewards you with extra turns. IV features a few twists, such as the new Smirk mechanic that can grant extreme boosts to offense and evasion. It also completely removes any form of defensive stats outside of HP — making combat much faster paced, as both sides can devastate each other in short order.
Though solid all-around, Shin Megami Tensei IV is held back by several annoyances. That intro is slooow, and the alignment stuff just does not land.. A re-release could tidy things up and revive the game for a new crowd — especially the players in Europe who only ever got this game on the now-defunct eShop.
HarmoKnight
Game Freak’s primary duty is to keep the Pokémon hype train rolling with new mainline entries, apparently with like a £45 budget. Given how much money the franchise makes, it’s a hefty responsibility — but not one that prevents the studio from occasionally indulging in other creative projects without a Trubbish in sight.
One such project was HarmoKnight, a rhythm platformer and Game Freak’s 3DS debut. Its gameplay, which sees protagonist Tempo navigate autoscrolling stages, is simple, if unforgiving. Because Tempo runs forward automatically, gameplay is limited to simply jumping and striking enemies in time with the music; proper timing is key to surviving (as Tempo has a health meter) and getting a high ranking at the end of a stage.
Pokémon fans will find a bit to love here as well, as there are bonus stages featuring music from the series. There is, again, though, no Trubbish.
Though Game Freak’s efforts here didn’t blow anyone’s minds, they still put out a decent rhythm game. Sadly, unless the game receives a port or remaster, the shutdown of the 3DS eShop has rendered this game inaccessible for everyone who hadn’t already bought it. A piece of Game Freak’s non-Pokémon history has been lost, and it underscores just how important game preservation is, and why more people should take it seriously. Watch it never get a port, though.
Yo-kai Watch 2 and 3
Developed with plans for a massive, long-lived franchise, Yo-kai Watch was a huge hit in Japan. Featuring creatures based off of Japanese yokai, the series revolves around exploring the town of Springdale to collect the titular creatures. But half of this series remains stuck on the 3DS.
Combat takes a different approach compared to most RPGs. The Yo-kai in your team attack on their own initiative, and you’re left to play as the support. Instead of issuing direct commands, your role is to heal, buff, and choose targets for your Yo-kai. You can also have them use ultimate attacks — which involve touch screen minigames.
The success of Yo-kai Watch led to its sequel being highly anticipated in Japan, where it became just as popular. Yo-kai Watch 2’s biggest change is the creation of multiple versions: two initial releases (Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls) that differed in available Yo-kai, and a third superior release (Psychic Specters) with new content. Yeah, it’s a bit Pokemon.
Yo-kai Watch 3 likewise received three versions in Japan, though the west only got one release, based on the enhanced third version. This third entry spices up combat and story with new positioning-related mechanics and a dual-protagonist system respectively.
Despite its initial popularity, Yo-kai Watch has sadly fizzled out, with Yo-kai Watch 3 failing to reach the sales figures of its predecessor. Though the series got a fourth main entry on the Switch and PS4, it has yet to be localized, and the shutdown of Level-5’s North American operations leaves the series’s future in the west — including potential re-releases — looking bleak. Quick Q: would you like to see this ported? Q2: is also the next entry.
Persona Q and Persona Q2
Ever since Atlus’s social sim masterpieces took the world by storm, every new Persona game has become its own brand with spin-offs and merchandise. Among the beefier spin-offs are the Persona Q titles, which fuse together the characters and Persona fusion mechanics of the main series with Etrian Odyssey’s dungeon-crawling and map-making gameplay.
While the first-person dungeon exploration and turn-based battles take after Etrian Odyssey, the Q games put their own spin on things. Instead of custom characters and classes, you have a massive pool of party members to pick from, each with specific skill sets. Characters can be equipped with sub-Personas to boost their stats and add more skills, but generally, what you see is what you get. Naturally, there’s also a much larger emphasis on storytelling here.
Of the two games, Persona Q2 is the more polished experience, ditching the original’s dual campaign approach for a single focused story. It added a plethora of quality of life improvements as well, such as free healing when returning to the hub and better fast travel. More importantly, Q2 improved on the writing, with characters who were annoying and one-note in Q now being a bit more nuanced and in-line with their main series personalities.
Atlus has proven that Etrian Odyssey can work on modern systems like the Switch and PC, so hopefully they’ll follow up with the Persona Q titles as well. Perhaps they’re waiting for a lull in Persona content after both Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor ReFantazio released last year? They might just need a push.
Pushmo
Here’s another digital classic lost forever to the cruel fate of storefront shutdowns. Released in late 2011, Intelligent Systems’ Pushmo was one of the earliest digital-only killer apps for the 3DS. Utilizing a vibrant, cartoonish art style that still holds up today, Pushmo is a simple yet brilliant puzzle game.
The core gameplay revolves around pulling and climbing blocks to rescue trapped children — think of it as a portable, kid-friendly version of Atlus’s Catherine. The mechanics are incredibly simple and limited, but the fundamentals alone manage to carry the game through over 250 puzzles. And if that wasn’t enough, you can even make and share your own puzzles via QR codes, which still work despite the online shutdowns. It also helps that the game made good use of the 3D effect, a gimmick that was sadly underutilized in the rest of the 3DS’s library.
Pushmo was critically acclaimed at launch, and Intelligent Systems would go on to release three more games: Crashmo, Pushmo World (for the Wii U), and Stretchmo. Though Pushmo World played it relatively safe, Crashmo and Stretchmo were a good bit more ambitious.
Sadly, the series has not seen any activity since Stretchmo’s release in 2015, and is an even more egregious case of lost digital games than HarmoKnight. As the entire series was only ever released on the eShop, the entire Pushmo series is no longer available to buy. It’s time it was awakened.
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Released in early 2013, Awakening was developed with the knowledge that it could’ve been the final Fire Emblem game. After experimenting with some truly bizarre ideas, Intelligent Systems settled with making the game a celebration of the series at its best, incorporating various past mechanics like support conversations, marriage, child units, and the ability to disable the series’s infamous permadeath.
Awakening also added new mechanics of its own, such as the ability to pair units up on the battlefield and have them attack and defend in tandem. This was also the first entry in the series to feature extensive DLC, with maps and characters released to bolster the game’s content.
Set 2000 years after Marth’s campaign in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Awakening features a grand tale of its own — what starts as a typical medieval war story eventually unravels into an epic of time travelers from the future looking to save the world before it’s destroyed.
It’s been two years since the release of the latest mainline Fire Emblem entry, Engage, and a remaster of one of the most popular and iconic games in the series would be a perfect chance to bring in fresh blood in between mainline titles, and to allow those who started with Three Houses a chance to experience what they missed out on. Bundling it with all of the previously released DLC would be a boon for preservation, too, so let’s get rolling on that Nintendo, cheers.
Dillon’s Rolling Western (the series)
Yeah, it should take you one glance at this art to go all the way in on it. An armadillo? In a hat? Dillon, you son of a bitch.
Developed by Vanpool, this action and tower defense mix stars an armadillo — the titular Dillon. Though met with lukewarm critical reception, Dillon’s games have endeared themselves to the general audience.
As a ranger, Dillon is charged with defending villages from invading rock monsters known as Grocks. Gameplay is split into distinct phases; during the day, Dillon can explore the landscape to find materials to upgrade the village’s defenses, ranging from doors to towers and weaponry. As night falls, the Grocks emerge and begin their offensive, and Dillon must fight them off by rolling into them. And after successfully repelling an invasion, the rest of the night is an opportunity for Dillon to recuperate his health, take on side quests, and practice his abilities.
As with some of the other entries on this list, Dillon’s Rolling Western was eventually followed by a few sequels: The Last Ranger and Dead-Heat Breakers. Though The Last Ranger didn’t innovate on its predecessor, Dead-Heat Breakers was a more ambitious effort. This final entry moved the setting to a post-apocalyptic one, added a player avatar system known as Amiimals, and expanded on the nightly invasions by adding race segments where Dillon must chase down Grocks at high speed to cap off the night.
Like Pushmo, the entire Dillon series is now completely inaccessible due to the eShop shutdown. The third entry was at least released physically in Japan, Europe, and Australia, but North America had no such luck.
Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains
Listen, I never said they had to be amazing games to make it into this video. Sometimes a stranded game, a strand-type game maybe?, can kinda just be immensely, terminally flawed, and still be interesting and worth talking about.I think that applies to Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains.
It’s a bit of a shame how it seems to be hard to properly, definitively translate the IP over to gaming. Zipping around using ODM is pretty fun, but it always just gets a tad repetitive across all the official games.
That’s absolutely the case with Humanity in Chains too. The game just doesn’t evolve beyond a pretty basic mission structure with you either killing titans, or saving people. It’s short too at just a few hours long — you’d feel pretty mad if you spent like 30 quid or 40 dollars on downloading this back in the day. Add in some jank and frame rates that are slower than certain people at dodging bullets, and yeah, it’s obvious why this reviewed poorly.
But, I dunno man, it’s still quite…charming. It has gigantic N-Gage energy, if that makes sense? It’s the Attack on Titan you know and love, just compressed way down with a lovingly crunched soundtrack, and has scenes from the anime too. Even if you don’t love the series, Humanity in Chains is still worth “acquiring” just to see how it all works.
There was actually the visual novel Escape From Certain Death and direct sequel called Future Coordinates to this that both came to 3DS too, but neither of those left Japan.
Etrian Odyssey IV – Nexus
Alright, so there are actually quite a few Etrian Odyssey games stranded on the 3DS. Etrian Odyssey 4 all the way up until Etrian Odyssey Nexus are all currently stranded on Nintendo’s double-decked delight, and that’s a pity.
It’s kinda tricky to jam describing six games into one single segment of a big gaming…orange, but basically the Etrian Odyssey series features a bunch of eclectic first-person dungeon crawlers revolving around mapping out dungeons yourself, building up a fully customisable party, and battering kangaroos.
The 3DS era does shake things up a bit though, adding in things like overworlds and a more approachable but still tough level of difficulty throughout. These are Atlus games, after all. There isn’t a single out and out dud among all the 3DS Etrian games, so just start with Etrian Odyssey IV and fight alongside your best friends Ass McBandit and Scoots Biggens on your way to Yggradsil, then do it like another 5 times.
However, I’d say there is maaaaaybe a decentish chance of these games coming back. The Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection released in 2023 for Switch and PC, and features remasters of the original three games. How that does over time will probably determine if we get a new collection, or maybe even a new game. I think most fans would like to probably see Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2 at least, as that one never got an official release outside of Japan. Realistically, Atlus will probably release a collection minus the two Mystery Dungeon spin-offs, but don’t lose hope: I never thought we’d get SaGa Frontier 2 again, and then somehow conjured it a bit.
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