The 3DS and Wii U eshops are closing on March 27

[Bongo]

So if there's any digital purchases (games or DLC) that you wanted to make, it's your last chance.

You can now no longer add funds directly via the 3DS or Wii U eshop, but you can still add to your balance via the Switch eshop and it'll be available. Additionally, although purchases will be discontinued, it'll still be possible for the indefinite future to redownload software, so it won't be necessary to clean out the fridge just yet.

A lot of 3DS games require you to purchase DLC from within the game, and that capability might not be available at the start of the game, so watch out if you want any of that.

Download Pokemon Bank and Poke Transporter now if you think there's a chance that you might ever want to use them in the future. That service will still be running and will in fact become free.

Pokemon Picross, a free game, is said to be useful as a way to install custom firmware on a 3DS, if that's what you're into.

There are a lot of great exclusives you may have missed. Tell us about 'em!

 

[SpoonyBard]

Strongly recommend the ****mo series of games. Pushmo, Pullmo and Crashmo on 3DS, and Pushmo World on Wii-U.

It is goddamn inexplicable we haven't gotten a new game in this series on Switch.

 

[Bongo]

Strongly recommend the ****mo series of games. Pushmo, Pullmo and Crashmo on 3DS, and Pushmo World on Wii-U.

It is goddamn inexplicable we haven't gotten a new game in this series on Switch.

Note that in Europe and Australia, these were called Pullblox, Crashblox, Fullblox, and Pullblox World respectively.

 

[Bongo]

The Boxboy series of puzzle games is another strong recommend for digital exclusives: Boxboy, Boxboxboy, and Bye Bye Boxboy. The fourth game in the series, Boxboy + Boxgirl, is on Switch.

 

[Bongo]

I have a dim recollection of being curious about some RPGs that I ended up skipping: "Fantasy Life" and "7th Dragon III: Code VFD." Who can tell me about these games? Isn't one of them getting a sequel soon?

 

[madhair60]

Spoiler

In case you happen to miss out, it's very easy to put custom firmware on your 3DS, which will allow you to play anything you missed.

 

[pudik]

great time to get into the guild games:
01:
Liberation Maiden
Aero Porter
Crimson Shroud
Weapon Shop de Omasse
02:
Attack of the Friday Monsters
Starship Damrey
Bugs vs Tanks

I got all except bugs vs tanks, which i hear isn't very fun but also the premise didn't sell me. Really recommend Crimson Shroud (Matsuno rpg that feels like a really good d&d one-shot. dice based battles and a really well developed story for the short runtime... about 7-8 hours for a single playthrough, though ng+ does offer an additional ending), Weapon Shop (little blacksmithing game, cute with fun little minigames), Attack of the Friday Monsters (Kaz Ayabe, signature laid back style, fun little in game card game), though I have enjoyed all of them so far (haven't played starship which i hear is pretty niche, but it seems cool)

 

[Bongo]

Be sure to pick up "Save Data Transfer Tool" if you're thinking you might end up with both physical and digital copies of anything.

DSiWare block puzzle game "Pictobits" (aka Pictopict) is a fun exclusive.

 

[Rascally Badger]

Anyone with a WiiU should buy Affordable Space Adventures

 

[q 3]

I have a dim recollection of being curious about some RPGs that I ended up skipping: "Fantasy Life" and "7th Dragon III: Code VFD." Who can tell me about these games? Isn't one of them getting a sequel soon?

7th Dragon III is actually the final game in that series, though the only one that got officially localized, and knowledge of the prior games isn't really essential as it's set in their distant future (?). Anyway the basic premise of the franchise is Etrian Odyssey party building, combat, and music combined with a Dragon Quest style world, writing, and top-down exploration. III is gonzo anime bullshit in all the best and worst ways, with an ambitious time travel plot that doesn't take itself too seriously, a surprisingly pansexual approach to relationships, and some really terrible character designs. One of the last projects of the late Rieko Kodama (Phantasy Star, Skies of Arcadia). Definitely worth it as long as you can tolerate the anime aspects.

 

[Bongo]

I may just bite. I like gonzo.

The 3DS had some stereoscopic conversations of various arcade games, some of which used the depth slider in novel ways. I think the standouts are Excitebike, Space Harrier, and perhaps Out Run.

 

[Vaeran]

I have a dim recollection of being curious about some RPGs that I ended up skipping: "Fantasy Life" and "7th Dragon III: Code VFD." Who can tell me about these games? Isn't one of them getting a sequel soon?

I didn't finish Fantasy Life but I enjoyed my time with it back when it came out. You have a dozen or so different jobs/classes you can switch between at will and level up independently, with each job having a master who assigns you quests. Some of the jobs are combat-focused (warrior, archer, wizard, etc.) and others are gathering or crafting-focused (fisherman, miner, blacksmith, cook, etc.) In that way it's like a tiny single-player version of FFXIV, or at least I thought so.

If I have a complaint it's the dialogue. Your protagonist is silent, and you are accompanied by a talking butterfly who converses with NPCs for you. The localization is good, and clearly there was an effort to make the dialogue punchy and occasionally funny but there's a lot of it, and every conversation begins with someone going "WH-WH-WHAAAAATTT, A TALKING BUTTERFLY?!?!?!" It gets old pretty quick.

Anyway, I found the game mostly charming and engaging, and I'm definitely planning on getting the Switch sequel when it comes out.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

Okay good, one of y'all summarized it so I didn't have to, cause BUDDY was my sleep-deprived ass strugglin'

I would also add that the crafting portions also have their own minigame you have to play whenever you make a thing, and ymmv on that.

But I agree that it has charm for days!

7th Dragon ... III is gonzo anime bullshit in all the best and worst ways

Yeah, one of the character classes is literally a Yu-Gi-Oh player. It's so ridiculous. I love it.

 

[Peklo]

The 3DS had some stereoscopic conversations of various arcade games, some of which used the depth slider in novel ways. I think the standouts are Excitebike, Space Harrier, and perhaps Out Run.

There are two development and source material branches for the 3D Classics line as they termed it. Out of Arika's NES conversions, Kid Icarus and Kirby's Adventure are likely the most interesting picks. For M2's Sega 3D Classics, the recommendation is ultimately universal--this might have been the studio at the height of their obsessive powers--but I'd call special attention to Super Hang-On and Galaxy Force II in particular for their incredible showpiece quality and the former's implementation of gyro controls and simulation of the arcade cabinet experience.

I did my round of cleanup a couple of weeks ago with this stuff, and my final purchases were the entire Style Savvy series. I'm happy to leave that as the going epitaph.

 

[Bongo]

I think I understated how good 3D Out Run is, now that I've gone back to it. 60FPS is a literal game changer there.

 

[q 3]

 

[Purple]

I have a dim recollection of being curious about some RPGs that I ended up skipping: "Fantasy Life" and "7th Dragon III: Code VFD." Who can tell me about these games? Isn't one of them getting a sequel soon?

I would highly recommend both of these.

Fantasy Life is like... a Nintendofied single-player version of FF14? This is a terrible analogy, but it's a fun little action RPG where the idea is there's a bunch of classes, including standard RPG stuff like Fight Gal or Magic Blasty Guy, and also more economically focused things like tailor or chef or miner (and the rest), and then it's got your standard here's a starting town then some wilderness than another town deal, and the whole thing's designed so that it's pretty satisfying both if you just take every class and do all the things, but also actually being a game you can finish even if you just go like pure carpenter and never fighter it up or even go chopping your own trees.

And 7th Dragon 3 is the... 4th 7th Dragon game somehow, in which you go around and kill uh... I want to say roughly 100 dragons? Math is hard. Also I believe it's the formal conclusion to the series, which has the following big deal things going for it:
- It's a series of JRPG-as-hell JRPGs produced by Rieko "oh wow I didn't realize she was personally responsible for like every good thing Sega ever did until she died last year" Kodama and thus has kind of a Phantasy Star/Skies of Arcadia kinda vibe to some degree.
- The combat/class design is by the original Etrian Odyssey designer, so lots of weird class design approaches and cool team composition stuff. Like just the initally available classes include hackers who do weird debuffs and stuff by hacking uh... this RPG that you are playing, CCG players who have a whole deck mechanic and yeah there are in fact "trap cards," and the basic healer class is also a boxer and has to chain up punch combos to heal.
- Dragons play by similar rules to the EO series' whole FOE deal, except instead of "here's a noticeably more difficult monster you maybe want to avoid" it's "here's a noticeably more difficult monster you are actively here to exterminate and get major upgrade points from," which changes the dynamic a lot.
- It is EXCEPTIONALLY and overtly queer. Pretty sure literally the entire cast is canonically bi, at least one super major NPC is openly trans, and when creating characters your class, appearance, and voice actor can be completely mixed and matched at will, so like, whatever, Yugioh playing maid with a super gruff masculine voice, go for it.
- The plot is extra bonkers, involving stuff like a video game designer making a time machine, using said to evacuate Atlantis, and a point where the game's chapter numbering breaks because hang on there's a dangerous monster filled world out there and what if something happened to stray cats, so you'd better go find like a couple dozen cats and just let them roam around your office building full of game devs and Atlanteans.

Kinda my game of the year for whatever year it was, honestly.

 

[Peklo]

I also recommend 7th Dragon III but I'll note that Kazuya Niinou (the Etrian Odyssey dude) last worked on the series for 7th Dragon 2020, the second game--by the fourth game's time he was no longer at Imageepoch but at Square Enix, working on stuff like Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest Builders (side note: Natsuko Ishikawa, who's now famed for her writing on FFXIV, worked in planning and scenario for those same first two 7th Dragons). Some of its other prominent staff are Shirow Miwa on character design (he's done Soul Hackers 2 since) and Yuzo Koshiro on music--Miwa held the position since 2020 and Koshiro handled all the music for the series from the beginning.

 

[Kazin]

I'll add my recommendation for 7th Dragon III as well, and while playing the first three games in the series is by no means necessary to enjoy the 3DS game, it does amplify your enjoyment a bit in my opinion. It's sort of like playing Phantasy Star IV - if you've played the first three games, your experience is a bit richer though it's not necessary at all to enjoy.

(the original DS 7th Dragon, while charming, is not a great time, really. Quite grindy and is the worst game in the series - so much so that the fantranslation came with a hack to boost your experience and gold lol. The 2020 games on PSP are fantastic, though, and well worth playing imo, at least the first one)

 

[Violentvixen]

I have a dim recollection of being curious about some RPGs that I ended up skipping: "Fantasy Life" and "7th Dragon III: Code VFD." Who can tell me about these games? Isn't one of them getting a sequel soon?

Fantasy Life is wonderful game. They just announced a sequel last month, it's supposed to come out this year. There was a phone game too but I tried it and it was unplayable due to bugs and they'd changed so much from the original game I wasn't willing to try again. Also I just confirmed that it shut down, I'm hoping they learned from how poorly those changes were received, the trailers for the sequel look like they did.

I found one of the original trailers too:

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

I really liked what I played of Fantasy Life. I should really get back to it.

 

[RT-55J]

DSiWare was also purchasable on the 3DS eShop, so now's your last chance to get X-Scape (aka X-Returns or 3D Space Tank), sequel to Japanese exclusive 3D vehicular action game X for the Game Boy. Don't let its sequel status intimidate you though --- knowing that the original game exists is all the context you need to enjoy the flat-shaded 3D goodness and truly baffling color schemes.

 

[Issun]

One week left. Payday Thursday I plan to get Omega Ruby, Rhythm Heaven Megamix and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn. I want to get Paper Jam as well but I need to be able to eat and I hear it's the worst M&L game anyways so *shrug*

It really is bullshit that Nintendo isn't having a massive sale on Wii U and 3DS games, They're probably making a lot of money right now but I'd imagine they'd rake in even more if they made everything 50% off because people tend to spend more money when there's a sale event (see: Steam Sales).

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

 

[Sarge]

That's a lot of cash... yet somehow much less than I was expecting for everything on there.

 

[Issun]

And apparently the total download size for every single game combined is only 17 GB more than the latest CoD.

 

[chud_666]

Spoiler

In case you happen to miss out, it's very easy to put custom firmware on your 3DS, which will allow you to play anything you missed.

Only if you delete the roms after 24 hours though.... ?

 

[madhair60]

Natch

 

[Sprite]

Word on the street is that Wii Us can brick if you don't use them often enough due to a software error related to the deterioration of the on-board memory. So factor that into your buying decisions if you planned to store your Wii U away.

Mine seemed to be working when I jumped on last year to pick up some VC games in anticipation of the closure. Once the eShop is down my plan was to mod it and back up all my discs. Please hold out, little one! I still love you!

It looks like the Wii U experience can be replicated with a Steam Deck, so I'm glad the few unique games like Nintendo Land won't fully disappear once these systems break en masse. The Game Pad was a terrible idea but Nintendo Land specifically has brought me and mine a lot of joy.

 

[Kazin]

I liked the Game Pad, I just wish other people did too so they made more games that took advantage of it lol. I'm a really big fan of two screen gaming, even Wii U style, after how much fun I had with the DS/3DS.

Anyway. Hack your Wii U and 3DS, don't pay full price for games just before the shutdown!