As the 3DS and Wii U eShops progressively come to a close, I have increasingly seen articles talking about the Top 10 3DS Games, or the Best Wii U Games to Not Skip Out On Before March 22, 2023. Other similarly titled headlines telling you of their favorite games or the games you should buy before the respective storefronts go offline to buyers in March 2023 if you do not want to pay out of your ass.
I have my own list of games for both the 3DS and Wii U that I would like to pick up before the respective eShops stop accepting payments which in turn will only increase the cost of physical versions of not only the games that are also available on the eShop, but just because. Not because I think they are will be the most amazing 3DS or Virtual Console experience, but because I want to play them. eBay is going to be even more of a scalpers paradise for people willing to pay for games that can only be acquired physically. For me, I will most likely be sticking to digital media for both the Wii U and 3DS, although I have already purchased three Wii games (coincidentally all are on-rail survival horror games, which probably says something about me) and I will obviously still look .
There is the part of me that wants to jump on a number of digital games before March 2023, but the level-headed part of me knows that the digital games will still be there on March 21, 2023, so there is no real need to buy them now. Why not just wait for them to go on sale? Because they may not go on sale is what I know you will tell me. And you are likely to be correct, especially regarding games like Fire Emblem: Awakening, Metroid: Samus Returns, and the Metroid Prime Trilogy, but they could go on sale is my point. And why spend the $39.99 now and only be upset at myself if the game drops to $24.99 the last week of November? Or maybe there is some kind-hearted soul out there who wants to get rid of their DS/3DS games and just decides to give me a copy of Metroid: Samus Returns or Silent Hill: Frozen Memories (yes, I know that is a Wii title)? I am not holding my breath on either of those, but it would be a generous surprise.
I had thought about putting out my own list of games that I personally felt were the best on the 3DS (as I have literally not played a Wii U game on the Wii U yet, only Virtual Console games, which might be an article for Friday?) that I would recommend people to go out and buy either in physical or digital form, but with there being 1,378 games released on the 3DS and me having only played maybe 100 (my 3DS has 151 recorded titles including DS games, demos, and applications, so that guess is probably not too far off), I am definitely not qualified to make that kind of judgment. Instead, I will just list the top 10 games that I played on the 3DS both in terms of total playtime and longest average playtime; something I wish that every video game console/system could tabulate for you. And I could probably take all of the following data to extrapolate the kind of person that I am or my Myers Brigg* based on the games I played on the 3DS, but that would be boring, inaccurate, and would also take too long. And also boring. So instead, I will say that these are the games that I either enjoyed the most (in regards to total playtime) or "could not put down" (in regards to average playtime); especially when there is an overlap between the two.
Total Play Time:
- Pokemon Picross - 100 hours 47 minutes
- Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 76 hours 44 minutes
- Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call - 66 Hours 5 minutes
- The World Ends With You - 56 hours 32 minutes
- Theatrythm Final Fantasy - 46 hours 35 minutes
- Radiant Historia - 39 hours 42 minutes
- Infinite Space - 34 hours 31 minutes
- Fantasy Life - 34 hours 20 minutes
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - 34 hours 7 minutes
- Chrono Trigger - 27 hours 12 minutes
Average Play Time:
- Assassin's Creed - 5 hours 20 minutes
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 3 hours 9 minutes
- Chicken Wiggle - 1 hour 48 minutes
- Theatrhythm Final Fantasy - 1 hour 43 minutes
- Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 1 hour 37 minutes
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate - 1 hour 36 minutes
- Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call - 1 hour 34 minutes
- Ultimate NES Remix - 1 hour 34 minutes
- Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - 1 hour 33 minutes
- Infinite Space - 1 hour 26 minutes
What is not represented in either of these two lists are all of the older games that I picked up from the eShop or just games that I would either play in short spurts and for fewer than 30 hours. Games like Mega Man 3 and Weapon Shop de Omasse, where I spent a few hours here and there and beat the games and were never designed to be more than a handful of hours. I found that I played a lot of games that were re-released on the 3DS that were previously on the NES (Mega Man I - VI, Castlevania II & III, Bases Loaded) and Game Boy (Castlevania: The Adventure, Golf, and Tetris) that I had not played in decades or ever finished; kind of like what I end up doing all the time with every system I have that lends itself to either being backward compatible or where games are ported to newer systems.
I know that there are games that never made it to the eShop that I will inevitably remember long after March 2023 and the price for the physical game will be through the roof, but that is destined to happen to all video game systems, regardless of how many of their games make it to the digital storefront or how much people talk about video game preservation. And I do think that video games should be preserved, but that is a discussion all on its own, which I may or may not get to in due time.
But for now, I am just going to remember the hundreds of hours I spent playing DS and 3DS games on their respective systems, and pick up a few more Virtual Console games on the Wii U before next March. And maybe another physical Wii or even a Wii U game along the way.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Gott will es, auf ewig, Amen
*P.S. In a surprise to probably no one, I usually hover around/between INTP and INTJ.
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