Well, I took some time to jot down some thoughts on the one handheld that everyone seems to agree was the bee’s knees: the Nintendo 3DS (and all its various iterations thereafter!)
It’s one I’ve gone through a few ‘phases’ with - collecting, modding, selling, then buying a ‘perfect’ one, then…the pattern just repeats and repeats. I love how truly customizable it is now that it is…essentially an abandoned generation. The community took things to great new heights (those themes!!!), 3D printed docks and displays, vinyl stickers…it makes me so happy to see how very few 3DS consoles look like anyone else’s.
The market is getting crazy though. Prices are only going up (and special editions are going waaaay up), but it’s nice to see options like the Thor, Pocket DS and Anbernic’s RG DS coming up to give modern users some solutions to playing.
Anyway
Don’t expect anything wonderful here, I wasn’t even sure what to write for this article. I guess while I call it a retrospective, it just touches on some key points in the lifetime of the 3DS system.
P.S. 100% ready for any 3DS games recommendations to be shared!!!
After finding out that you can (rather easily) jailbreak the 3DS family consoles, I promptly did so for my childhood 3DS, loaded a bunch of Layton games onto it and gave it to my SO for her birthday two years ago. She’s had a blast with it. No way in hell will I be paying 100+€ just for two used copies of the 3DS Layton games if I can just jailbreak the console and get all the games I could want.
After clowning on it for years, I also got myself a 2DS because it was the cheapest 3DS-family handheld I could afford and have had a lot of fun with it too