Come 2016, having a 3DS in your bag wasn’t a niche enthusiast marker — it was closer to the default. Nintendo moved enough of the handhelds that it was a safe bet the stranger seated opposite you on the bus was carrying one, or its 2DS relative.
Too soon for nostalgia? We’d argue not.
That library still stands up. There were remakes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Dragon Quest 8, alongside fresh installments in franchises that had already been going for decades, Mario Kart and Animal Crossing among them. Throw in backwards compatibility with the DS and the system could run thousands of titles stretching across a window of more than 10 years.
Sales were healthy across plenty of 3DS releases. A handful, though, felt impossible to avoid.
The town that took over everybody’s commute
Animal Crossing: New Leaf ended up among the best-selling 3DS games ever made. Frankly, it might well have claimed the top spot for the entire franchise, had New Horizons not arrived on Switch and consumed the world’s attention during the 2020 pandemic.
New Leaf is still widely regarded as one of the series’ high points, and for a good while following its 2012 debut, it seemed like every single 3DS owner in your circle was in there tending to flowers.
There was a staggering amount to do. Customizing your village was more open-ended than in any previous Animal Crossing. Picking up shifts for Brewster. Commissioning public works projects. Two standouts from a long list.
The handheld format surely played a part. A game built around dropping in on a little town daily lands better when that town travels in your pocket. It’s an enormous amount of fun.
The generation with the Lumiose City problem
When Pokémon X and Y arrived on 3DS in 2013, they carried a save bug in Lumiose City capable of bricking your file entirely. It made no difference. The Gen 6 duo still climbed into the ranks of the system’s best-selling releases.
Kalos drew its inspiration from France and delivered starters people never let go of, Froakie and its final form Greninja included. This is where Fairy-types debuted. Sylveon too, which remains the newest Eeveelution to date.
Visually, the leap was obvious. And Mega Evolution is still counted among the most beloved mechanics the 30-year-old series has ever introduced.
Thanks to the National Pokédex, rolling credits didn’t mean the game was over, and that’s a large reason these cartridges stayed lodged in systems for months on end.
Few franchises had a 3DS stretch like Pokémon’s: Gen 6, followed by the ORAS remakes, then Sun and Moon for Gen 7. X and Y, though, are the pair everyone seemed to have.
The one bundled in the box
Mario Kart 7 holds the title of best-selling Nintendo 3DS game. Which is hardly a shock.
The reason we say “hardly a shock” is that bundles — 2DS packages among them — came with MK7 preloaded. That’s a serious advantage out of the gate.
It isn’t the finest Mario Kart ever released. It’s a dependable entry that simply happened to be sitting in everybody’s hands, and that made it the single easiest game on the planet to play with friends.
Own a 3DS or a 2DS and chances are you put time into it, either solo or hunched around a table with three other people who owned one too. Enough consoles eventually shipped with the game attached that it became, almost by default, the one title everybody had.
Go ahead and try to imagine a 3DS with anything but Mario Kart 7 in the slot. It doesn’t work.