
Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade - lloyd678
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54191058
======
DCKing
The 3DS, in particular the "New" models, I think are really recommended to
pick up cheap. They are well built devices that are supremely hackable with
access to lots of fun games.

The 3DS library is good despite somewhat lacking in diversity. But the 3DS
also has native compatibility with the entire excellent DS library, and after
hacking it can _also_ run the entire great GBA library without emulation (like
Matroshka dolls, the 3DS hardware includes the complete DSi hardware which in
turn includes GBA hardware, and it has firmware support to access them both).

The old models emulate a lot of 8 and 16 bit consoles well, whereas the New
models have nearly complete compatibility for 8 and 16 bit consoles and
additionally can emulate some Playstation 1. Moreover, hacking the 3DS has
become even more accessible due to recent newly found exploits. Still getting
a lot of fun out of mine.

~~~
komali2
Yes! Don't forget you also get GameBoy Color and GameBoy games. IMO this
massive library (N3DS, 3DS, DSi, DS, GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, NES) has at least 10
"must play before death" games in them (for people that care a lot about
videogames, anyway).

Of course all of this can also be achieved on a PC with a simple 10$ amazon
controller and free emulators, if you're comfortable pirating games.

~~~
komali2
Edit: You're right, that was rude of me lmao. This is an UNORDERED LIST:

1\. Super Mario Bros 3

2\. The Legend of Zelda (1986)

3\. Super Metroid (1994)

4\. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

5\. Super Castlevania

6\. Pokemon: Silver/Gold

7\. Advance Wars: Dual Strike

8\. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (tecccchnically an n64 game though)
(Majora's Mask would make this list if the DS version wasn't a butchered
shadow of the original)

9\. Metroid: Fusion

10\. Like... ANY of the billion Final Fantasies available between NES and N3DS

edit: 11. Mario 64 baybbeeeeeeeee

~~~
jldugger
So many questions. Like, do you really need pokemon to live?

And why specifically Super Castlevania, which is regarded as kind of a garbage
castlevania (the player sprite is bigger so you get less of a heads up on
whats ahead, and it's not part of the "metrovania" pantheon).

Why Fusion and Super Metroid?

Does the original LoZ hold up as well as say Link's Awakening?

Why are there only 3 companies represented on this list? Did Capcom run over
your pet dog?

~~~
simlevesque
Metroid Fusion in my opinion was the king of Metroidvanias for a really long
time. It achieved perfection.

~~~
jldugger
I think there's a number of people upset it doesn't have any sequence breaks,
is super linear, and much of the exploration is of the "guess and check"
variety.
[https://youtu.be/FsZ9Bb4IW5s?t=1315](https://youtu.be/FsZ9Bb4IW5s?t=1315)

~~~
simlevesque
> doesn't have any sequence breaks

I would never hate on a game for this.

> super linear

point taken, but speedrunners would say otherwise.

> much of the exploration is of the "guess and check" variety.

I finished the game as a 10 year old so I think it wasn't too easy or too
hard.

To each his own !

~~~
jldugger
>I would never hate on a game for this.

I think "achieved perfection" was the bar you set =) And Super Metroid set the
bar quite high.

------
gambiting
I always try to imagine what the final production run looks like at a factory
for one of these. Is there usually some sort of ceremony for the very last
unit rolling off the line? Or does it just run towards the end of the shift as
normal, everything gets boxed up and shipped to retailers as normal, there
just....isn't another shift after that? What happens with all the
manufacturing hardrware?

~~~
gugagore
It's not the same, but ‘Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu’ (you can find it easily
online) is a documentary about the last day that the New York Times used
linotypes and hot metal typesetting before they switched to electronic/optical
typesetting.

I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt, and technologically fascinating
documentary. I recommend it when you have a half hour to spare.

~~~
bfieidhbrjr
here it is

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU)

great video

~~~
eezurr
Voice over sounds like George Carlin, but the accent is slightly heavier. He
did a lot of voice over work though (e.g. thomas the tank engine).

It's hard to tell, but that room seem really loud

Edit: I'm always more amazed at old mechanical technology than modern
technology. Thanks for sharing

Last edit: "Sign language is used, among the many deaf printers". HA!

~~~
jcranmer
> Last edit: "Sign language is used, among the many deaf printers". HA!

People with disabilities historically had very few job opportunities. Printing
was latched onto in the late 20th century as the major trade career for the
deaf--essentially every deaf trade school was teaching it. The noise of the
printing machinery making spoken conversation difficult was probably a
motivating factor, but it also appears that there was generally little issue
with printers not being able to listen ([1] lists that most deaf printers in
1923 used written communication for tasks and their employees generally found
deafness no handicap).

[1]
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/44462325?seq=4#metadata_info_ta...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/44462325?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents)

------
JohnBooty
I'm nearly blind in one eye.

The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D.

 _In my life._

I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in movies or
a game console."

It was the first time I ever saw in three dimensions ever. As a human being.

It's a little bit hard to describe my typical experience with you, since I've
never had "normal" version and I don't know what it's like. I would compare my
life to playing a video game with a first-person perspective. You know how
when you play one of those games, you're _thinking_ in three dimensions, even
though you're _seeing_ the game on a flat two-dimensional television?

Well, that's my life. I see the world in two dimensions, even though I'm
thinking about it in three dimensions.

But playing Zelda on a 3DS XL? Wow. I mean, it took my breath away. THAT'S HOW
NORMAL PEOPLE SEE THE WORLD? You can just look at things and immediately know
how far away they are? You don't have to move your head around to see a
parallax effect to help your brain compute the distance? WOW. AMAZING.

I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure _why_ the 3D system on the 3DS worked
for me when nothing else had ever worked for me before, such as 1950s-style
red/blue glasses. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the 3DS relies upon a
lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. It seems to me that it
shouldn't work. But it did.

(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I
don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but
obviously that was ancient tech)

Regardless, I had never ever experienced three-dimensional vision until the
3DS XL showed it to me. Thanks, little dude.

~~~
messe
> I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure why the 3D system on the 3DS works
> for me when nothing else does. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the
> 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes.
> Maybe the newer VR headsets would work for me as well; I don't know.

Not a brainologist either, just a guy with a maths/physics degree who works in
IT. My first thought is that the 3DS was close enough to your face that the
parallax might have been apparent just from your one good eye looking at
different places on the screen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax)

~~~
JohnBooty
For folks missing an eye, "manual" parallax is one of the primary ways we do
depth perception in real life - you get it for free by having two eyes; we
have to move our heads around sometimes. =)

That's an interesting theory but I _think_ that's not what's happening.

For those unfamiliar, the 3DS uses a lenticular screen. It renders two
separate images: the "right" and "left" image. The one you see depends on your
viewing angle. If my good eye was seeing both images, I believe I'd experience
a sort of double vision or as least discontinuities.

Perhaps more to the point, the 3D effect disappears if I close my "bad" eye!
So my "bad" eye is contributing... somehow.

------
dpiers
My first job coming out of college was working on a multi-platform game
engine, and my first task was assembling a 3DS prototype board[1] and porting
the engine over.

It was horrible and fantastic at the same time. The debugging tools were poor,
most of the documentation hadn't been translated to english yet, and testing
the dual-camera rendering pipeline required hunching over the desk to be in
the sweet spot for the parallax to work.

I still love that kind of low-level development, but these days python and
shell scripts pay the bills. RIP 3DS, and thanks for the memories.

1: [https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-17-is-this-a-prototype-
of-t...](https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-17-is-this-a-prototype-of-the-
nintendo-3ds.html)

~~~
gxqoz
The docs were probably better than they were for the NES. Nintendo's were poor
translations from the already sparse Japanese version (think of an entire book
full of the Engrish found in early NES games). Australian developer Beam
Software did good business writing their own NES docs that were much more
user-friendly.

Dominic Arsenault goes into why this was something of a deliberate strategy
for Nintendo in his book on the SNES, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and
Silverware.

------
perardi
I wonder what the game plan is for offering these games in the future. The
dual-screen setup obviously doesn’t map to the Switch, so it’s not just a
simple eShop port like you’d have for an old SNES game.

I am mostly thinking about Pokémon. They’ve got this rich new Pokémon Home
system to transfer between generations, but that’s reliant on having
functioning older hardware. Now, there’s a massive pool of functional 3DS
systems out there, so it’s not a pressing issue, but eventually, some poor Ash
Greninja will be trapped on a 3DS cartridge. _(I suppose the answer is: port
all the Pokémon games, profit, swim in giant Scrooge McDuck moneybin of
coins.)_

~~~
umvi
I'm honestly surprised Pokemon is still around. The first one came out in like
1996, and it was initially addictive because there were a fixed number of
pokemon to try to collect (150). But each iteration was basically a carbon
copy of the previous gen with some map and monster changes. 7(?) gens later
and now there are what 500? 600? More? I just don't understand the motivation
to collect something now that you can no longer "catch em all". Is it like
Hearthstone or Magic where you just collect what you can knowing certain cards
will forever be beyond your reach?

~~~
echelon
> I'm honestly surprised Pokemon is still around.

I'm honestly surprised chess is still around. It's basically the same game
with the same rules from centuries ago.

~~~
GhostVII
Chess is not a game based around collecting a fixed number of items.

~~~
echelon
Pokemon isn't based around collecting a fixed number of items.

There's strategy to pick an ideal team. To ev/iv farm if you're really into
it.

There's a story, you can battle friends, you can make trades.

Pokemon isn't pog collecting.

~~~
evan_
Can you understand how one might believe that the franchise with the slogan
"Gotta Catch 'Em All" might be about collecting a fixed number of items?

~~~
aflag
It's understandable, though not accurate.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Looks like it's finally time to grab all those games I held off on grabbing
because my backlog was already extraordinary, lest I have to find them in a
couple years on eBay at wildly inflated prices.

~~~
peruvian
Most in-demand 3DS games have not been cheap in years. They've been pretty
expensive due to low printing (Bravely Default, DQ remakes, most Atlus RPGs)
for years now. I'm guessing Nintendo games are OK due to so many people owning
them though.

3DS eShop might be a safe bet but aside from the usual downsides of digital,
the games are tied to the system, not your eShop account.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
There are some that remained _in print_ , however, and so I held off on taking
the plunge because I didn't feel like dropping $40 for Fire Emblem Echoes (for
example), knowing it would probably be a year before I played it.

But knowing that the console and likely all first-party games will soon be OOP
certainly lights a fire under me, as I'd much rather pay $40 for a new, sealed
copy of the game than $70 for a cart-only copy of the game off eBay in a
year's time.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology evidently went OOP while I wasn't
looking, and the Ebay price has already skyrocketed. Argh!

EDIT: And yes, I've got a couple from the eShop (Devil Survivor's 1 & 2 and
Soul Hackers), but I prefer carts since they're not locked to my
system/account. And who knows when Nintendo will decide to shut down the
eShop, just like they did for the Wii shop?

~~~
Macha
You can dump your own carts or eshop titles to ROM files with custom firmware,
which you can then install on another system. Technically piracy, but it's not
something I personally have moral qualms about, especially when the clock is
ticking on the store's own existence.

~~~
anon9001
If you were to go a step further, the eShop actually trusts the client and you
can download the entire 3ds library direct from Nintendo with the right hack.
Google "freeshop" and read their FAQ if you're curious. I won't link it here
in case it offends anyone.

~~~
mmebane
Nintendo fixed that loophole back in August 2018, didn't they?

~~~
anon9001
Oops, you are correct. I didn't think they'd be able to fix it. Thanks for the
update, it's been a while :)

~~~
Gamemaster1379
Funny story, this loophole existed for both the Wii U and 3DS eShops. While
3DS got it patched, the Wii U is still vulnerable.

~~~
anon9001
Do you happen to know how they patched it? I thought the idea was that it was
bad encryption and once the license generation was broken, eShop couldn't tell
if it was a real license or a fake one.

------
rootsudo
3DS is an excellent platform to learn Japanese games. I fully recommend it.

I think it's an amazing time, and the games will stand the test of time just
like the original mario series because the content is rich and great vs having
to fall back on pushing systems & I/O to the max.

Nothing recently has given me as much joy as to replay N64 classics on the 3DS
with better graphics, added gameplay and 100% solely in Japanese after
originally growing up with them as they were released in the USA/English.

The context and general idea helped alot to drive me to replay the games and
relearn vocabulary in a different language. And how the games are targeted at
a young audience makes full kana or furigana available, with settings to use
_just_ Kanji if you want is fantastic.

It's something that every other learning app doesn't have for Japanese - but
then again when you learn more languages you don't really go for the cultural
angle, you do it to communicate and use culture as a reference point.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
Can you make some recommendations? I‘ve tried my luck with the Japanese DS
Zelda games because they have furigana (either above characters or when
tapping), but I couldn’t get far since there has been too much dialect. In
Pokemon B/W there overall has been too much text. I didn’t try playing
something I knew by heart yet tho. Are you referring to something like the N64
Zelda 3DS remakes (which are excellent)?

~~~
rootsudo
As with learning any language, immersion is key.

This is very late intermediate stage - to put yourself into having to read
"Japanese."

I would only do it after knowing and writing/speaking Hiragana and Katakana
outloud, several times, written it over and over and listening to songs (or
any text, but songs have lyrics and it's easy) over and over and doing the
lyrics over and over to kick in the muscle memory.

My secret, really, was learning the kana via Kyary Paymu Paymu songs. I
enjoyed them, but, after doing that, over and over, the alure was lost and it
took me about 3 years before I could listen to Pon Pon Pon again. But - the
repetition in the song drilled down the kana for me.

If you already know Kana, then basic vocabulary/grammar. There's a great app
on the Android App Store called "Kanji Study"

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwiste...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en_US)

It's been further tweaked and is more refined then what it used to be, but the
memory games are super useful for both kana and N5/N4 Kanji - the basic of the
basics.

As for playing with a game/any game, it all falls together after a while - you
see the pattern, you "get" the idea, but I would use a dictionary such as
Akebi on Android or Jisho.org (Jisho literally means dictionary.) or even
translate.google.com and each word you don't know, add it to a unique list and
study/drill those over and over.

Soon it will come together. It's very slow at first, and painful, even though
I could read Kana and had N5, I suffered reading the "warning" screens on the
3ds even though they're for kids, some of the words did not make sense, but
the context was implied.

That's it, as for the games:

Pokemon is great, Zelda is also great, but if you really want to excel -

Karaoke.

You can go to youtube, and find karaoke songs to listen too - the 3dS joysound
app stopped/died, but it's still on the WiiU and on the Switch and it is
excellent, it offers near 100% furigana (except for very very simple kanji)
and being forced to sing along makes you vocal quick.

You can also youtube "karaoke battle" or general karaoke after songs.

"カラオケバテル”

”カラオケ”

I personally enjoy lots of J-pop (which made learning the language much more
easily/motivated) so I used songs I knew such as Tatsuhiro Yamashita

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzBvkcHUz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzBvkcHUz4)

山下達郎 RIDE ON TIME （カラオケ）

And then just drilled on that as if it was memory cards or study drilling.

Pokemon games are good, zelda is great. Mario isn't per se as there isn't much
"text" The inkling for a bit of puzzle makes it more that you need to
"understand" what the meaning is, as it's different in English.

Context is much more inferred then stated in Japanese.

Phoenix Wright Professor Layton Animal Crossing

Then you can go onto some normal plain jane ds games, final fantasy and Square
Enix titles are great once you're nearing the end of intermediate
understanding.

------
Multicomp
Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the
same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the
DS began.

Something tells me this is Nintendo hedging bets

~~~
derefr
Nintendo has never really wanted to discontinue a platform. Their vision was
always that developers could support old and new platforms together through
funky cross-compact measures.

• Did you know that the SNES’s CPU starts up in a “NES 6502 compatibility”
mode, sort of like x86-64 processors starting up in 16-bit real mode? It’s
fully possible to design and build a game entirely for the NES as a
6502-assembler codebase; and then to “port” the game to the SNES, by taking
that very same 6502-assembler codebase, and just adding a few minor SNES-level
“enhancements” that temporarily switch to 65c816 mode, do something, then
switch back to 6502 mode. Since the market penetration of the NES was so high,
many games in the early 90s _were_ “dual-released” this way.

• Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-
fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a
SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in
the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super
Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even
demoscene devs.

But, well, third-party devs just seemingly have no interest in releasing for
old platforms. They want to “be where the action is.” And Nintendo can’t carry
the momentum of a platform all by itself. (Plus, Nintendo’s software dev-teams
are too busy acting as stewards and shepherds for how to make use of the
newest-gen hardware capabilities — by making games for them, and by
interfacing with third-parties — to have any labor left over for making games
for older consoles.)

That being said, Nintendo _did_ try to keep the gameboy line going after the
DS. They released the GB Micro. It was its whole own thing, with its own
product code (OXY) that signalled that they had likely built up separate
factories just to build it. But basically nobody bought it.

(But really, I think Nintendo was speaking to developers there, not to gamers.
They meant that there’d still be a point, as a game studio, in _producing GBA
games_ , because the DS would also play them.)

~~~
coldpie
> Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-
> fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into
> a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic
> in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a
> Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not
> even demoscene devs.

One game did! Space Invaders, of all things. Jeremy Parish did a video about
it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c)

~~~
derefr
_Fully_ exploited. Space Invaders was a partial exploitation at best. It was
just a tiny stateless SNES ROM-image, that got loaded _from_ the GB cart's ROM
_into_ the SNES's tiny work RAM, and then executed from there (leaving
approximately zero WRAM for actual gameplay state. Good thing it was Space
Invaders!)

A full exploitation, IMHO, would look more like the thing Pokemon Stadium did
with Pokemon RBY — but done purely in-cart in the GBC game. A SNES game that
"interacts with" a GBC game through the SRAM, such that you're playing the
same game, two different ways, when you put it in your SNES vs. when you put
it in your Gameboy. (Pretty much like Dragon Quest XI Definitive Edition's
ability to reboot the game between 3D and 16-bit mode.)

Of course, to do that, you'd need actual separate ROM chips in the GBC cart
for the SNES game, so that the SNES ROM-image could be larger than WRAM yet
still fast. All that ROM would be untenable to fit into a GBC-cart sized
cartridge even in 2003, the last year of the GBC's lifetime. It'd be perfectly
doable _now_ , though!)

------
Razengan
I've been playing games all my life on many different platforms, but some of
the best fun I've ever had has been on handhelds.

Even when I also have the PC or console version, some games just feel more at
home on a handheld, and more appealing when you don't have to _commit_ to a
whole session of playing them.

On one hand, handhelds take less focus than sitting in one place staring in
one direction, so you can play on them in bite-sized breaks, putting them away
at any time and instantly resuming where you left off.

But on the other hand, something so close to your face, that you can snuggle
with in any position anywhere, also has a level of intimacy not found in
bigger screens and bulkier controls.

Nothing can compare to dozing off in bed while engrossed in a game with a
captivating story, mechanics, and music..

Laptops are too bulky, and phones or tablets don't have built-in physical
controls.

Which is why I'm a bit concerned about there being only one handheld left. The
Vita was amazing and I still love it but Sony did everything they could to
kill it off, and the Switch's success hasn't inspired them to try again.

If anyone feels like making a new handheld that anyone can develop for, my
money is yours. :)

~~~
mikepurvis
There are a whole bunch of those OGA-derived handhelds (see
[https://obscurehandhelds.com/](https://obscurehandhelds.com/)). I have an
RGB10 on its way to me right now. Unfortunately, the library of native titles
is very, very small, basically just Tux Kart and whatever open source engine
recreations have been packaged for the particular distro you're running on it.
So it's mostly about emulation, which means that what you're seeing is a
pretty far cry from the "real" capabilities of what that processor could do on
a 480x320 display. For my part, I'm hoping to get the toolchain set up enough
to try compiling OpenJazz for it.

On the other side of things are deliberately wacky low-powered, lo-fi devices
with novel distribution mechanisms, like Playdate:
[https://play.date/](https://play.date/)

~~~
Razengan
Ah thanks, some of these look pretty cool, like the Retroid 2 and the RG350,
and I love Panic so of course I know about the Playdate. :)

The problem as you say is the lack of native titles, and an uncertainty about
how long the devices will be supported for. In this day and age an official
distribution channel like the App Store/eShop is important too, even if it's
just a website you can download from onto an SD card.

But I'll try one of these out!

~~~
mikepurvis
The whole value proposition of emulation handhelds pretty much assumes rampant
piracy of old titles, which gets especially murky when you have, say, a SNES
game which is abandonware, clearly unavailable except at collector prices,
whatever, but then it got remastered for the GBA or DS, and is definitely
still available for purchase in the 3DS online store (alarm bells).

Besides that the population of these devices is relatively small, it seems
there are a lot of subtle incompatibilities between them too, in terms of
button quantity and layout, number of analog sticks (ranges from zero to two),
etc.

So yeah, I'm sure someone will try it at some point, but it's not hard to see
that this isn't a super appealing target for trying to stand up a paid app
store. The best-case scenario I could imagine would be an all-you-can-eat
Netflix-style affair where you pay $10/mo for access to a rotating catalogue
of titles that are a mix of native ports, emulation under legal license, etc.
On the other hand, if legal emulation was part of the pitch, it's hard to
imagine it going anywhere without classic NES and SNES titles, and Nintendo
would have basically zero incentive to legitimize such an effort by playing
ball with it, when they're actively selling those titles under emulation on
their own storefronts for their own hardware.

------
NYCHomosapien
I can’t believe it’s been a decade! I bought one on launch day - $250 and
barely a 3 hour battery life. I later bought a New 3DS XL (or whatever the
crazy naming scheme was) and it was wild how much better the newer hardware
was than launch day.

------
datalus
Hopefully Nintendo releases the SDK? It's been a decently active platform for
indie titles and homebrew games. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the 3DS
is covered by the same NDA as the Switch in terms of toolchain/docs/etc. I
believe you can find those after signing up for a developer account at
[https://developer.nintendo.com/](https://developer.nintendo.com/)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I can promise you Nintendo won’t do this.

~~~
mattl
The way things are going lately they’re probably already leaked.

~~~
xena
The kernel source code was leaked too

~~~
toper-centage
The 3ds has so much homebrew stuff right now. At this point Nintendo stopping
to release updates is a relief.

------
Wowfunhappy
The small New 3DS is the last portable console I can actually fit in my
pocket, and for that I still take it out with me instead of the Switch on some
days. So much easier to whip out of my pocket.

~~~
kawsper
I do still play on my PS Vita, and I'm still sad that Sony abandoned it quite
quickly after it was released, for me it's a perfect portable "Risk of Rain"
machine (although I've played other games on it too!), it's also cool that
they've ported some PS1 games to it like Metal Gear Solid, I wrote about my
experience here: [http://kaspergrubbe.com/i-bought-a-ps-vita-in-2016-first-
imp...](http://kaspergrubbe.com/i-bought-a-ps-vita-in-2016-first-impressions)

~~~
JohnBooty
The PS Vita _really_ deserved better. It really did so many things right.

The OLED screen is still unmatched by portable consoles IMO. Sure, somewhat
higher resolution or higher refresh rates would be nice, but those infinitely
deep black levels? Just amazing.

There are a few multiplatform games like Undertale for which I consider the PS
Vita the best version.

~~~
bogwog
The PS Vita is an awesome console for homebrew and game development. I've been
working on a small cross-platform game, and used my Vita to both implement
cross-compiling in my build system (to port to other systems later), and
develop the game for both a touch screen and physical controller. Why bother
carrying around a controller, android/ios device, and cables to develop a game
when a single Vita will do!

If Sony and Nintendo would release their official SDKs for these dead
consoles, maybe people would have less reasons throw them away. I don't
understand why they're so defensive about it anyways.

~~~
JohnBooty
God, if I can ever get some free time, I really want to get into that. Thank
you for sharing that!

------
TillE
The nice thing about the 3DS is that the emulator (Citra) is pretty good. I've
used it to play "undubs" of games I own, where fans have taken the audio from
the Japanese version of a game and put it into the US or EU version.

It's not perfect, but tons of games are fully playable and development is
still very active.

------
gldev
At long last it can rest, one of the best consoles ever and kept the legacy of
the DS going im glad i was able to experience it first hand!

------
kyoob
This is like when someone like Gerald Ford dies and I say, "Wow. I could have
sworn Gerald Ford died 8 years ago."

~~~
ralmidani
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tX6jdoruH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tX6jdoruH8)

~~~
mcphage
I'm glad you linked this, so I didn't have to dig it up :-) An excellent
sketch.

------
beefhash
I sort of wonder if there's going to be a barrage of exploits held until end-
of-life that's going to be released now.

EDIT: I'm already aware that the system has been exploited to death and back,
so I'm mostly curious if people haven't already dumped everything.

~~~
goda90
There's actually quite a large community of 3DS hackers:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/](https://old.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/)

I was able to hack mine(though I don't use it much anyway) fairly easily. My
brother did it to his so he could dump DS carts onto the SD card for better
portability.

~~~
Narann
There are some cool homebrews still made: [https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-
wumiibo-amiibo-emulation-for...](https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-wumiibo-
amiibo-emulation-for-3ds.572442/)

I suspect 3DS hacking community will stay active for long time as it's the
only cheap (second hand 2DS), wide spreaded, hacked portable console
available.

------
r00fus
Doing some Marie-Kondo style cleaning, found a 12 year old Nintendo DS with
Advance Wars 2 cartridge.

Hadn't been plugged in for years (I don't have a charger). Turned on and
played a game. Amazing.

~~~
Guybrush_T
It's a shame how many people didn't get to experience the Advance Wars series
since they were only released on the GBA/DS. I think a Switch version would do
really well.

~~~
snicky
There's a PC game similar to Advance Wars called War Groove. I haven't played
it yet, but I've heard it's decent.

------
causality0
Ever since the 3DS launch I found myself hoping for an upgraded version that
would render at a higher resolution. 400x240 has always looked terrible to me
for 3D graphics.

------
fomine3
Finally portable gaming console platform is dead now. Why portable-only form
factor isn't accepted well nowadays? (Switch is the replacement with hybrid
design)

~~~
ThatPlayer
Phones have replaced it for the majority of people. The same way they killed
mp3 players and point-and-shoot cameras by being good enough.

------
undersuit
Are there any other programs like SmileBasic? Maybe Squeak, APL/J/K, Lisp?

Or maybe are there any better ways to input text into a 3DS?

------
m-p-3
So it's a great time to run homebrews and emulators on it, as it's unlikely to
be patched or updated.

------
dikknavis
Coming soon--All your favorite 3DS classics on the Nintendo Switch for $20
each!

------
optimuspaul
seriously?! I just bought one now after putting it off for years

~~~
jefft255
Personally I wouldn't be mad, the homebrew and hacking community will probably
stay strong for years. I'd be surprised if you bought it think you'd be
playing brand new games?

~~~
fishtacos
Right? There is a tremendous game library on the 3Ds, with several well known
titles being exclusive to the console. Thousands of hours of gameplay on
native games, let alone the emulated ones.

------
coding123
Sorry about this, as it's an old argument that everyone here knows, but I wish
Nintendo would stop making systems and just focus on their games on competing
platforms. They do it for the money. So if I want to have the next Zelda,
Mario/MK, DK I have to pay the 300 cost for the system first, then the price
of the game ($60 on release day?) I mean, I get it from their perspective.
Every Nintendo I purchase the number of games I buy for it seem to drip closer
and closer to Nintendo only titles, essentially making it so my favorites
really cost about $135 each. (Z/M/MK/DK + 299). I suppose that price is still
worth it - not really - but what's killing me is this new thing they're doing
where they just kinda stretch a title out for 9 years between the AAA
releases. I don't consider a bunch of ports from DS style Zelda games as one
of the titles I would buy.

~~~
ben7799
Nintendo has a long history of taking hardware risks that are targeted at
actually making interesting new types of gameplay possible.

The richness of games available would not be possible if Nintendo was not in
the picture as a hardware manufacturer and had to target all their games at
MS/Sony hardware.

Sony & MS have almost never tried any novel hardware and been able to tie it
to unique gameplay that was actually successful. They've only tried to copy
Nintendo's ideas, mostly failed, and then cancelled the hardware. See Kinect,
Playstation Move controllers for PS3, etc.. it was all just copying the Wii.

A lot of the games on DS and 3DS would never have seen the light of day with
their unique gameplay elements without Nintendo doing the experimental
hardware required.

~~~
fomine3
I want to defend Kinect. I suspect that it's made by tech driven rather than
copying idea from Nintendo.

