Image: Damien McFerran/Nintendo Life

Soapbox features allow our individual contributors and contributors to give their opinions on hot topics and random things they’ve discussed. Today, Andy MacDonald celebrates and remembers the console that showcased Nintendo’s out-of-the-box creativity at its best…

As the days of the 3DS as an active platform are numbered due to the upcoming closure of the online store, I decided to dust it off and pick up a few digital exclusives that will soon be officially gone so we don’t enjoy re-releases or the advent of time travel. It’s always strange to see the console “obsolete”; how these advanced devices, to which we devote years of intrigue, money and time, are suddenly usurped by ever-evolving technologies. My love for the 3DS, however, is particularly deep-rooted, and as I browsed the storefront for the latest additions to the collection, my mind began to wander.

It was 2013 and I returned to my old hometown after graduating from university. It’s a story that’s probably familiar to many people—you go from the regimented nature of face-to-face learning to losing that structure overnight, suddenly at the mercy of a relentlessly competitive job market and cut off from the comfort of friends and freedom. This lifestyle shift can be difficult, and after the first ten or so rejection letters from potential employers, life can start to feel a little aimless. A few months later, the days seem to merge into one.

One thing was new though, my shiny 3DS. During my years at the academy, I’ve pretty much lost my Gaming habits, my last purchases being the GameCube and the original DS. But a colleague from my last part-time job, which I left to go home and look for something in my field, insisted that I try the latest Nintendo handheld. Succumbing to this one-on-one peer pressure, I indulged in the red XL version. Soon, the colleague said, my colleague and I were sitting on overturned buckets in the warehouse of the store and playing Mario Kart 7. Something dormant in me stirred.

Image: Zion Grassle/Nintendo Life

The 3DS became something of a beacon of light in the following days of job hunting as I immersed myself in games like Super Mario 3D Land, Luigi’s Mansion 2, Resident Evil Revelations, and Fire Emblem: Awakening. Just as the slowly launching console supported Nintendo while the Wii U went through hardships in the mid-2010s, it also supported me through those difficult days. Ironically, I never made it into Animal Crossing: New Leaf, though its idyllic escapism must have made it a dream game at the time.

It was also my first augmented reality experience. Scan pre-packaged AR cards with unlocked 3DS camera features, including mini-games. Even for the modest technology of the time, I found the snooker/golf hybrid, the AR Shot, to be an impressive gimmick as it carved hills and bunkers into the kitchen counter. Meanwhile, Face Raiders let you take selfies that flew around the room as targets for shooting. I may not have seen my university friends save on this much anymore, but I could still lovingly blow up their ugly faces. This thing really seemed like a bastion of Nintendo’s Boundless Creativity.

Images: Gemma Smith/Nintendo Life

However, I didn’t just sit at home playing video games. The portability of the 3DS had its advantages. Equipped with a built-in pedometer, carrying it around will count your steps, converting them into game coins that can be used to get bonuses in various games. I walked for miles with my shellfish buddy, mostly to use the coins in the pseudo-social StreetPass Plaza.

This app lived up to its name; when two people passed by each other with the wireless function turned on, their Mii avatars would later appear in each other’s plazas and could be used to participate in various activities such as trading panel parts to create stereoscopic portraits or confronting monsters in Street Pass Quest. My ever-growing army of 3DS vagrants has always been an incentive to stay active.

Image: Gemma Smith/Nintendo Life

Despite all this polygonal positivity, I could not completely forget about my problems, and the problem with work still seemed big. I am a journalism graduate and one of the ways I supported my skills was writing. My relative success as a freelance music journalist was in stark contrast to how unlucky I was with Lady Employment, having written some heartfelt articles for British rock magazines. Ultimately, however, my experience has shown that music journalism is largely impenetrable; nepotism; ungrateful.

But now one rediscovered pastime was massaging my literary muscles. Is there still room for the little one in the UK gaming press?

Around the same time, Pokémon X and Y appeared, the first installments of the series on the 3DS. This new region of Kalos was vast and mysterious, and upon its release there was a noticeable lack of official information – some of its mysteries persist to this day. Using my pre-existing knowledge of critter-catching adventures, on a whim, I decided to publish a short article in a gaming publication on how to train Pokémon competitively in this wild land. It was worth it…

No, really, it was. This modest online publication opened the door, and a few months later I was writing a multi-page preview of the upcoming Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, remakes of the Game Boy Advance games I had read about in the same magazine over a decade ago. Other freelance gigs followed, bringing in money and self-respect when I needed it most. With renewed motivation, I eventually got a job based on the written word.

Image: Gemma Smith/Nintendo Life

By and large, unemployment was a mercifully short period, but now I look back on those dark days with strange fondness. This is in no small part due to the 3DS, not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a vessel for creative and professional activities. It’s doubly sad to see it being consigned to gaming history as it could very well be the latest in Nintendo’s long line of standalone handhelds, and the Switch likely signals the company’s constant convergence of home and handheld technology.

It is with heavy heart that I download the remaining exclusives from the online store, but with its stellar catalogue, communication features and innovative new products, I will always remember the 3DS as the console that made my lonely world a little more three-dimensional.

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