transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] I have major FOMO about that. I think going back, one of the few things I'd, I mean, outside of tragedies, one of the few things I'd fix with a time machine is like, just go back and get this plate. Number one, save lives.

Speaker 2:
[00:16] Number two, you can only use it for completely useless things. Yeah. You've switched to Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of April 23rd, 2026, where this week we're talking about one of my favorite Nintendo consoles of all time, the Nintendo 3DS. I'm Logan Plant, joined this week by Brian Altano.

Speaker 1:
[00:42] Hey, how are you?

Speaker 2:
[00:43] Seth Macy.

Speaker 3:
[00:44] It's Three Dimensions.

Speaker 2:
[00:46] And Jada Griffin.

Speaker 4:
[00:48] Just here, masking my appreciation.

Speaker 2:
[00:50] Oh, hey, we got matching ones. That's the Majora's Mask New Nintendo 3DS XL. That's a great one.

Speaker 4:
[00:56] Your lighting hits yours way better, like yours look way shinier.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] I dug out so much garbage from my closet this week, like this, like the Circle Pad Pro accessory for the Nintendo 3DS.

Speaker 4:
[01:05] That was the goat during the 3DS.

Speaker 1:
[01:07] Actually, we called it the boat.

Speaker 2:
[01:09] The boat. No, we did.

Speaker 1:
[01:10] I think that was like a joke that we had on NBC, right?

Speaker 2:
[01:14] Yeah, I think so. Beautiful, huh? Look at that. Two analog sticks, like 20 games used it. It was mostly for Monster Hunter or Smash Brothers.

Speaker 1:
[01:21] It's so elegant and sleek, and it just fits perfectly. Oh, the puck.

Speaker 4:
[01:26] Amiibo reader.

Speaker 2:
[01:27] To scan your amiibo on, like this giant Mario Galaxy amiibo history. That's because the first line of 3DSs didn't have amiibo support. This charging cradle that came with the very first 3DS that you could just plug the charger into the back and charge it. And that was nice. And the last thing is my favorite of all, the stand, the stand that came with Kid Icarus Uprising that shipped with every copy of it.

Speaker 1:
[01:49] The stand came with a book, now a major motion picture or a TV movie.

Speaker 2:
[01:53] Yeah, it's pretty great.

Speaker 1:
[01:55] The stand was cool. I liked it. It was basically necessary for Kid Icarus because that was a very painful game. But yeah, man, there was a... I really liked the 3DS.

Speaker 2:
[02:08] Yeah, me too. I've been just excited thinking about it this week because it's the 3DS's 15th anniversary this year. We missed it by like a month. It was March 27th, 2011 when it came out in the States, but we didn't want to let it pass us by completely. So this week is all about the 3DS until a little later. We're going to talk about two new Nintendo trailers that came out this week for Splatoon Raiders and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. And then we're going to hear the panel's thoughts on Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream. But let's talk about the 3DS. And I want to start well before 2011 because I think a lot of people think that Nintendo just slapped 3D onto a DS because it was the trendy thing to do at the time. Avatar had just come out in 2009. 3D televisions were starting to make their way into home. So 3D was a hot thing in the early 2010s and late 2000s. But Nintendo's history of experimenting with 3D dates back to the 1980s, even before the Virtual Boy. Have any of you heard of the Famicom 3D system? Yes I have. Yeah. Okay. So this was an accessory only released in Japan. It was Nintendo's first shot at 3D. And it used these shutter glasses to rapidly flicker back and forth between two slightly offset images in each lens. And like four games used it. It was a commercial failure. It never left Japan. But Brian, what do you know about or what do you remember of the Famicom 3D system?

Speaker 1:
[03:24] Just what you said right there. I have a very thin understanding of it. But yeah, I've seen them before. I know of them. I've never worn one personally, but I did buy a Virtual Boy about a month after it came out and didn't learn my lesson and then bought the new one this year.

Speaker 2:
[03:40] Did it again. Yeah. 30 years later. Yeah. So of course the Virtual Boy in 1995. And when the 3DS was coming out, there was a series of Awada Ask series with late president Satoru Awada, who asked the 3DS designer, Kenichi Sugino, who they were talking kind of about the trauma that the Virtual Boy left on the company. And Awada said, I talked about this the other day with Itoi-san too. That's Shigesato Itoi, writer of the Mother series. And Awada said, until we experimented, not everyone was ready to give their wholehearted consent to going with 3D. What did you think about that, Sugino-san? And then he said, I too had been through some really tough times with 3D. I think I was traumatized by it. So the moment I heard the 3D idea, I instinctively reacted against it. I even said, no, let's not do that. But when I saw the demo, I thought that's amazing. And when other staff members asked me what I thought, I told them that even if someone like me, who had been traumatized by the Virtual Boy, thought it was amazing, then everyone else would think it was amazing too. So they finally did it. They experimented with 3D on GameCube. Luigi's Mansion was compatible with a 3D filter you could put over your CRT TV. So this was a huge thing for Nintendo. And they finally committed all in, like a major pillar platform with 3DS in 2011. Seth, kind of what was your reaction to when the 3DS was revealed with this?

Speaker 3:
[04:51] Uh, extreme jealousy of everyone who paid the $249 to buy one when it was first came out. I mean, I thought that the 3D was going to be dumb. I thought I would never use it. Yeah, it was like a super fat, you know, people had 3D Blu-ray players and 3D TVs at home, and you'd go see Avatar and you'd never shut up about it because you saw it in 3D. So I definitely was not impressed. However, as someone who has very limited depth perception, the 3DS is one of the only places where I was actually able to experience the world in 3D. And when I finally got my own, I was like, oh, this actually rules so hard. And I would just like, look at these tiny little, these tiny little dioramas inside of exciting things, like that submarine game that came out at launch that I can't remember.

Speaker 2:
[05:42] Steel Diver. Steel Diver, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:44] Oh, man. Yeah, it was a gimmick that actually worked, and I found myself using it whenever I had the opportunity to. And then they did other cool things with it too, like the built-in games, like the puzzles that you do in StreetPass were 3D. And that was really cool.

Speaker 2:
[06:03] Yeah. Yeah, Jada, what was your first experience with 3DS?

Speaker 4:
[06:07] I was selling these. I was slinging these guys in the back of a truck or a truck back of the GameStop truck, which was my business that I was running that there. Yeah, no, I was all in on Nintendo and Nintendo handhelds during this period of time. So like the 3DS was very exciting for me. I was very hyped for it. The early launch games weren't like the most amazing suite of things to pick from for a 3DS, but I did enjoy what we did get, which was what? Street Fighter, the Steel Diver was like, I was just like, yup, I'm passing on that.

Speaker 2:
[06:45] Pilot Wings, Nintendo Dogs. It was not a great launch.

Speaker 3:
[06:49] Wait, what? There was a Nintendo Dogs for 3DS? I don't remember that at all.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] It was at launch, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[06:53] Yeah, you could actually, well, I mean, I guess you could always pet the dogs in the original DS ones, but the 3DS version, you know, that made them feel larger than life, which is always Nintendo's kind of goal, right? So, but yeah, no, I was all in on the 3DS. I really dug it. I've always had a high tolerance for what it comes to like 3D features. And I know like you had to kind of fiddle with that slider a bit to get it to that right setting for each person. I had my, I had that sucker cranked to the box.

Speaker 3:
[07:24] Yeah, me too. All the way up.

Speaker 4:
[07:26] I was like, I got to see it full 3D.

Speaker 2:
[07:28] And some games were really inconsistent with how strong it was at max depth. Like I remember Rayman 3D was, it gave me a headache. The 3D was so strong where some games it felt a lot gentler. So it did vary from game to game. It was officially revealed at E3 2011. And there's this very charming trailer of Miyamoto, Iwata and Reggie, like getting sucked into the 3DS. Like they're falling into it. And like it's kind of trying to demonstrate. There's another trailer that talks about this like fish tank. And it was Nintendo selling you, this isn't like a hand popping out at you at the screen, like it's Spy Kids 3D. This is depth. And it's about adding layers to your games, like looking into a fish tank. And I remember not being super sold on the idea at the time, till I was in the car on the way home with mine and I turned up the 3D and you see the 3DS logo like fall backwards into the screen. And I thought it was really cool. And I did use it a lot throughout the generation. Brian, did you use the 3D much?

Speaker 1:
[08:24] Oh, yeah. So the 3DS is really special to me. And I was thinking about why. And I realized that I think I went hands-on with it at my second or third E3 ever. And so I believe it was the first. So I think pretty much every... When I started in 2009, the Wii had come out, PS3 had come out. This was, I think, the first new hardware that launched while I was working at IGN. So it was my first time covering a hardware launch, getting to play it before it came out. There was one in the office that we all got to check out before it was available to the public. And I actually found hands-on impressions I wrote about the 3DS at E3. And I said, Near instantly my face lit up with joy, delight, and the actualization that this was going to be the handheld platform. I was going to spend the next few years happily huddled over. I talk about how much I love the 3D screen and the effect and stuff like that. I thought it was awesome. I've always been a gigantic Nintendo handheld fan, specifically. I've talked about that for years in this show. And you guys are right, it had a really weak launch. There was nothing in there that was screaming to people to go get it. The price was way too high. But still, I bought every launch game. I loved playing with the 3D effect on. I loved the AR cards it came with and the silly little things. It was the kind of thing where friends would come over who were outside of the industry or just friends who liked video games but weren't totally locked in on things the way we are and our listeners are. And they would come over and they would come to my apartment in San Francisco and I would be like, yo, check out this toy I just got. It's super cool. Look what it can do. And it blew people's mind. And I think the thing is like, and Seth, you're a few years older than me, but we grew up thinking 3D anything was super cool. We had lenticular hologram trading cards and anything that like, anytime you got a magazine or a comic book that came with 3D glasses and the image could pop out, all of those things came with all these caveats, right? And this was the first time I was like, oh, I'm playing 3D fully colored games. I'm not wearing like, you know, weird glasses at the movie theater. I'm not wearing this, these blue and red lenses looking at like a comic book or something like that. I'm holding this, this, this new handheld and it's got a slider on it and you could play with that slider to see how far you wanted that depth to go or you could turn it off entirely. And I was, I was completely sold. Like I know Steel Divers was boring. Pilot Wings was, was fun for what it was, but like it was, you know, it's the sequel to the other N64 launch game that nobody really talks about. And so making it the primary, you know, the sort of like flagship title was a little odd. And I, you know, I played a bunch of Nintendogs, but I'd already kind of been there, done that. And, you know, I wasn't really sure what the long tail of this thing was going to look like, but I loved all of the little features under the hood. I loved that there were like mini games built into the system, right? Like, what was it? Face Raiders was one of them or something?

Speaker 2:
[11:40] Yeah, we got your face on the Flying Enemies, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:42] Yeah, yeah. And I loved that, you know, eventually we got stuff like the StreetPass and Puzzles and all of the mini games they added to that. And it became this system that you didn't just carry around for games. You carried around because it was deeply personal. Like, you could customize so many things under the hood in here that it actually makes every other Nintendo system feel sort of barren in comparison. And I understand their philosophy behind the Switch. But like, man, once you were going into like Badge Arcade and meeting that gambling rabbit and unlocking like, you know, chachkies and key chains and stickers to put all over your 3DS home screen. Like, I opened my 3DS that I've had since, you know, I had, this is my 3DS XL I got like when it first came out. And like, it's got this entire custom menu to it Is that the Samus Returns background? Yeah, with the Samus Returns background. And, you know, it's got some dead pixels on it and stuff. It survived some falls, but battery life still rocking. This thing was in a drawer for several years. And I pulled it out just about a year ago and completely reconnected with the library. Like it is just, it is one of my favorite video game systems of all time. I think it's aged incredibly well. I think it hit that perfect balance of like power and battery life and games and lightweight, all the stuff that you need for a good handheld system. Yeah, I was all in on all these games. The Street Fighter 3D, I was like, I'm not even the biggest Street Fighter guy, but like.

Speaker 4:
[13:15] That was my go-to on it for launch. I played so much, so much of it.

Speaker 1:
[13:19] Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it was like it was so deeply connected to like the e-shop and I was downloading games on it constantly. And like it was, it was this, it was a really cool thing for Nintendo at the time where, you know, they had a console happening with the Wii U around the same time and it wasn't working out so well, right? But they were doing a bunch of little weird experiments on 3DS that I was really grateful for, like games like Pushmo and man, yeah, I could, I could talk about, yeah, I could talk about this system forever. I loved it at the beginning, I loved it even more when it got a price drop and I got that apology letter from them that was on my home screen for a while, along with a bunch of GBA games. I loved it when it turned into 3DS XL and I love it now more than ever. So yeah, 3DS rules, man.

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Speaker 2:
[17:13] Yeah, Brian, you mentioned the apology letter. So let's talk about that now because the 3DS did launch in the US on March 27th, 2011 for $249.99, far and away the most expensive handheld in Nintendo history to that point. It did come with a lot. It came with the console, a charger, the charging stand I showed off earlier, the AR cards that you could scan in with your camera to play these augmented reality minigames. The launch line up was not great. So Brian, you mentioned that people didn't know what was coming yet. So people didn't really buy this thing at first because nobody knew what was coming right away. It did not meet Nintendo sales expectations in its first quarter, causing Nintendo to make an unprecedented move and cut the price. Just four months later, on July 28th, 2011, Nintendo announced that 3DS would drop $80 to $169.99. And as an apology for anybody that bought this early, they launched what's called the Ambassador program, which gave 20 games to early adopters. It was 10 GBA games and 10 NES games. And those GBA games never got sold otherwise on 3DS. They never brought GBA Virtual Console to the system. So if you were an ambassador, that was the only way to get those. And here, I have here this ambassador certificate that we were talking about earlier.

Speaker 1:
[18:23] I was just looking for mine.

Speaker 2:
[18:24] It's still on my home screen. And it's funny, it's just a three minute video that if you press play, some text scrolls across the bottom that says if you want to receive updates about the ambassador program, there were no updates. I gave you your 20 minutes and that was the end. It never was a thing again after that. But who here was an ambassador? I got mine on launch day, so I was. Yeah, Brian.

Speaker 1:
[18:44] I definitely was. That was hilarious. That was one of the funniest things they've ever done. Like the price drop was obviously necessary. Keeping the Make Good exclusive to early adopters is a crazy commitment to the bit. Because it's like like Minish Cap was in there.

Speaker 2:
[19:04] It was Wario Land 4.

Speaker 1:
[19:06] Some really good games were really good games that you couldn't play on a 3DS like ever again. It's kind of nuts. Yeah, it's absolutely nuts.

Speaker 2:
[19:15] You were not an ambassador. When did you get your 3DS?

Speaker 3:
[19:17] I got it much later. I don't actually remember. I remember my my homie Leisch got his day one. Like he brought it into work and he was like, I remember he turned off the pilot when she's like, Oh my God, this is the craziest thing. And he eventually became an ambassador. But no, I was I was so very, very poor and broke in 2011. So I did not have this until the price dropped. And then we ended up getting like 3DS is for the kids as well for Christmas. So that was pretty, pretty, pretty awesome.

Speaker 2:
[19:51] Back when it was a much easier to sell to buy like 3 or 4 of these things for a household when because of what the 2DS ended up being like $80 or something like that. Like the price of the game nowadays, eventually in the generation, things got much, much cheaper, which was good to see. But yeah, so I know some people probably comment this, so I'll share it. I asked in the NVC Facebook group, like what's your favorite 3DS memory? And six or seven people commented that Walmart honored the ambassador price drop five days before the cutoff, so you could go in, buy it at the cheaper price, and then still go be an ambassador. If you hit this perfect window at specific retailers, you could do it that way. Because how it worked was you had to connect to the eShop by this cutoff date. And so some places sold it early.

Speaker 1:
[20:33] That's called stolen valor.

Speaker 3:
[20:34] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[20:36] I know, fake ambassador.

Speaker 1:
[20:38] You're not a real ambassador. I'm sorry. It just, you know, it doesn't... I'm happy for what you did, but you're a liar and you don't count.

Speaker 2:
[20:46] Sorry. Yeah, it's true. You don't count. That's you're a tree ambassador if you got it, if you made the mistake of buying it early. But then things did turn around very shortly after this. I have this issue of Nintendo Power, which to me is just a very iconic issue. This is from August 2011. And on the cover is Star Fox 64 3D. And in it there, I remember just reading this over and over when I was a kid, because I had a 3DS at launch and there were very few games for it. And there was this section called Nintendo's Next Wave here that kind of detailed all of the games that were coming to 3DS over the next year or so. There's Star Fox 64 3D, got a two page spread. And then there's Super Mario, which doesn't even have a name yet. This game is out in like a month and it doesn't even have a name yet. And this issue of Nintendo Power, it has an asterisk on it because it's not its final title. And that ended up being 3D Land, which came out later that fall in 2011. Kid Icarus Uprising, which was the first game ever announced for the console, which is just wild. Got a big spread that ended up coming out in March of 2012. Mario Kart, which also doesn't have a title, despite being out in four months. It's not called Mario Kart 7 yet, which is really fun. But yeah, this is just an awesome issue.

Speaker 1:
[21:57] I forgot how vague they were about that stuff. That's nuts.

Speaker 2:
[21:59] Yeah, Paper Mario, Animal Crossing, none of them have titles. It's just like they're coming to 3DS, but not Sticker Star, not New Leaf. Yeah, they're all to be named later.

Speaker 4:
[22:08] I mean, we've got... Tradition is still somewhat carried on. We've still gotten a bunch of Nintendo games. Remember Project Triangle? Like, obviously, that's not Nintendo developed, but published by Nintendo. That became Triangle Strategy down the road. I don't think Breath of the Wild had a title on it for a while.

Speaker 2:
[22:28] It didn't for a very long time.

Speaker 4:
[22:29] It was just like Legend of Zelda.

Speaker 2:
[22:31] Tears of the Kingdom was the same way. It was the sequel to The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. But for every game to not have a title, and games that were coming out in three months to still not have a title, I just found was kind of wild. But yeah, that was a really fun time to be reading Nintendo Power when this was coming out. And then the 3DS did turn it around. It sold 75.94 million units lifetime, which was no doubt helped by five separate hardware revisions, the 3DS XL, the 2DS, the new 3DS XL, the new 3DS and the new Nintendo 2DS XL, which has gotta be one of the best names in Nintendo history. What's everyone's favorite hardware revision of 3DS?

Speaker 1:
[23:11] I mean, I've told my 2DS story a million times on this show, but I never even bought one of those, but that was one of the funniest things they've ever done. Hands down.

Speaker 2:
[23:21] The wedge, it was the door stopper. Here it is. I have it here on screen. This was the kid-friendly one. This thing is indestructible. You could throw this at the wall and it will not break. And it's only one panel inside, so it's much cheaper to manufacture and it doesn't have 3D. Hence why it's called the 2DS. They dropped their flagship beacher. Seth, you got one too there?

Speaker 3:
[23:41] Yeah, this was Parker's when he was little. We had gotten them original 3DSs. And I think because he was a little, see he got, for being a good boy at the dentist, he got this little doggie sticker.

Speaker 2:
[23:52] That's so cute. It's so crazy.

Speaker 3:
[23:55] But he had the original one and he was just too little. And I think he made a broken the hinge and then we gave him this one. And I mean, it just, it lasted until we got him. Oh, it's also got a Spongebob sticker on the back. Again, I think from the dentist's appointment. But then one Christmas, we got both of them this 3DS here, which is the new 3DS with the removable faceplates. There was a black one and a white one. The black one sold out pretty much instantly. And so they both got this one. And then we got them plates for their favorite games at the time, which would have been Splatoon and The Legend of Zelda. So yeah, that.

Speaker 1:
[24:38] I have major FOMO about that. I think going back, one of the few things I'd, I mean, outside of like natural tragedies, one of the few things I'd fix with a time machine is like, number one, save lives, number two.

Speaker 2:
[24:54] You can only use it for completely useless things.

Speaker 1:
[24:57] Yeah, because there was that line in the sand that when those systems came out, right, where it was like you either wanted the XL, which had bigger screens or the what the new Nintendo, what was it called?

Speaker 2:
[25:09] The new 3DS, new 3DS XL.

Speaker 1:
[25:11] Yeah, the new 3DS and the new 3DS XL. And the new 3DS had smaller screens, but it had those swappable faceplates and also DS games, so it looked better on it. And I didn't, I was short sighted at the time.

Speaker 2:
[25:27] Well, actually a wrinkle for us at the time was that the new 3DS did not come out in North America until like a year after the new 3DS XL and people lost their minds because this really cool customizable that looks like a toy and has the Super Famicom colored buttons were on the XL. It was just like the letters that were colored. It was only in Japan and Europe and North America was just kind of left watching in 2015 when the XL was all that came here.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] And I wanted one. I believe, I believe Per Schneider or somebody at IGN at the time imported one. And I got to hold. Yeah. And it was after I had already gotten mine. And I loved the, I'm on like the 3DS subreddit to this day. Right. And I like these faceplates, some of them now are so incredibly rare and expensively. I mean, all things 3DS.

Speaker 2:
[26:15] There's an ambassador set that's really rare.

Speaker 1:
[26:18] What?

Speaker 2:
[26:18] Yeah, it's called the Nintendo. It was this, I don't think it was related to the Ambassador program, but there was a Japan exclusive bundle. I don't remember the details of how you won this, but it was it was an ambassador bundle that came with a new 3DS and faceplates with the Nintendo in Kanji logo on them. And it's amazing. And there's very few of them in the world.

Speaker 1:
[26:38] You guys, this we just saw some footage of Smash Brothers running on 3DS, which blew my mind. Just the fact that they just took that console game and they added some cell shading to it. And basically it's feature complete on 3DS. We got our codes early for that game and we went to Tokyo Game Show in Japan. And the day after we wrapped the show, a bunch of us went to Tokyo Disney Sea, which is like their big crazy theme park there. And we were waiting in line to get on rides and we were beating each other up in Smash Brothers. And it was just like the coolest thing in the world. I'm like, we have a portable console complete Smash Brothers. That's what I loved about the 3DS. Like it got so many unique, interesting, exclusive games, but also like it was powerful enough to like kind of hold it down. Yeah, you know, like it really was able to run like even stuff like 3D land. Like that's that is a console quality game that doesn't feel like your traditional sort of like pared down handheld game. Same with same with Animal Crossing, right? Like there were a bunch of games there where it was like, OK, this thing is actually like it's, you know, it's not like pushing Vita levels, but it's it's tough. Like it's it's it can throw down.

Speaker 3:
[27:50] I might be misremembering, but Smash Brothers was only playable on New 3DS, correct, because it had more RAM or more.

Speaker 2:
[27:57] No, that one was across both is just that there were a few games that were exclusive, like Hyrule War or Fire Emblem Warriors, Xenoblade 3D, but no, Smash was on both. It's just you wanted the you wanted the little nub for for Smash Attacks, which is why it was so much better on New 3DS.

Speaker 1:
[28:12] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:12] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:13] And that game took like a minute and a half to boot on my base 3DS by the time I had all the DLC and stuff. That game took forever.

Speaker 1:
[28:19] I remember that.

Speaker 2:
[28:20] I want to.

Speaker 4:
[28:21] It was crazy to have DLC on a handheld to begin with. Like that was not something I ever had in my bingo card of playing handheld consoles for ages, you know. Obviously PSP had done some of it and stuff, but like I just didn't, it wriggled my brain a weird way when it came to Nintendo doing it.

Speaker 1:
[28:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:41] No, I actually had that written in the notes here is that it was crazy to me that there was like a full blown eShop with retail games on a handheld. And I remember the first game Nintendo ever released, what used to be limited to like a kiosk demo, you'd have to go to Toys R Us or something to play. It was for Mario and Sonic at the London Olympic Games for 2012. And I remember just waiting for that demo to drop. Like I was obsessed with that, like I'm going to get to play a demo at home. I thought that was crazy. And then I played it. I'm like, this game sucks. And then I deleted it. But I just thought that was so novel. And being able to download full games, not just like the DSI where that was crazy. So yeah, it was definitely just a huge step forward.

Speaker 1:
[29:22] It was the, so early on I was all physical with, or predominantly physical game collecting on 3DS at launch, right? And I think back then at IGN, like the games that we would get for review or for preview or just, you know, sent to the office were predominantly physical games. This was like before they were like, oh, we're gonna, we'll send codes out or whatever, right?

Speaker 2:
[29:46] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:47] And so early on, I think I had about 20 3DS games and I had them in like a little pouch and I went to New Jersey and spent the week with my family and forgot it there and got back in the plane. And my mom mailed it back to me. But after that, I was like, I'm going all digital from here on out. That decision has carried over, especially to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, because the idea for me personally of having a pouch where I have thousands of dollars worth of games and I'm on an airplane and I leave it there, like I would a hat or a charging cable, terrifies me. And so yeah, the eShop made it extremely easy for me to go back in and they would have sales all the time or rarely on first party stuff. But yeah, I built up my whole digital library there and virtual console stuff like I was like new games would drop and I was buying like Tayo insane man. I say the virtual console, he just pulls up the B roll. He's a legend. I was, I re-bought all these GBA games, like playing Link's Awakening on the same. Mike, how are you doing this? Amazing. And then I got a million dollars. No, I wish you could do that for me, Tayo. Yeah, but I remember playing all these like awesome little eShop games, these exclusive games, these like very experimental things that they were putting out. And there was really nothing like it for me at the time. It just felt like Nintendo was kind of firing on all cylinders. And to be honest, like this did a lot of heavy lifting for me as a Nintendo fan during the Wii U era. Oh, you know, like, yes. And if you listen to the show back there, back then, you know that like, you know, the releases were few and far between. I knew pretty early on with the Wii U that it wasn't going to be, you know, something that really lasted. But the 3DS had a long life.

Speaker 2:
[31:37] And no one would have guessed after the first six months.

Speaker 1:
[31:40] Yeah, not at the first six months. It was it was interesting back then because I feel like we saw the same thing with the PS3, right? Where that system launched, it was way overpriced. Early adopters flocked to it. But other than that, people didn't really want it. It got a significant price drop. And that that hardware generation was pretty close. It kind of leveled out, right? It was pretty neck and neck between them and Xbox.

Speaker 4:
[32:02] PS3 overtook it at the end.

Speaker 3:
[32:04] Yeah, I'll say at the very end overtook the Xbox 360, which had a year launch ahead of the PS3.

Speaker 1:
[32:10] Yeah, and I don't I don't know if we would see anything like that ever again, you know, like I it's it's it's odd to think and it's it's it's why it's it's been really fascinating watching the Nintendo Switch because Nintendo Switch is taking the two pillars that they've always had and joining them together and it's a huge success. But if one of those things didn't work, they always had the other one to back to back up with. And that wasn't you know, that's no longer the case. But with the 3DS, it was there. And you know, I remember by the end, I was like, no more games on 3DS. Please just put it on Switch.

Speaker 2:
[32:43] Like to say, yeah, sad, but true, because yeah, they were making 3DS games till 2019, like two and a half years after the Switch was already out. I know that that Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story remake has got to be one of the more selling games Nintendo's ever put out, because it was a remake of a DS game, which was backwards compatible on 3DS that they put out on 3DS two years after the Switch had replaced it. So eventually it died, which was sad. But I'm glad you brought that up, Brian, about the bright spot of an otherwise pretty terrible generation for Nintendo. Because I feel like there's a lot of revisionist history online. And you just see people talk about exclusively the Wii U era. And they're like, the Wii U era was terrible. And I'm like, it was the Wii U and 3DS era. They were together. And the 3DS was killing it and had a ton of awesome games. And was just, has one of the best libraries in Nintendo history. Especially if you add in the virtual console and the backwards compatibility with DS. Like this machine is unbeatable.

Speaker 1:
[33:37] Yeah, yeah. I loved it for that. The backwards compatibility stuff was really cool for me personally. Because I had a huge Nintendo DS library. Loved the Nintendo DS. And yeah, I think that's why I wasn't too pressed about the weak launch line up. Because I knew that this thing was going to grow into something bigger. And honestly, it's like, I'm not going to say that the Nintendo Switch 2 by any means has a weak launch line up. But like, the philosophy for that system has largely been outside of Mario Kart World and a couple of other, like, you know, like they gave Donkey Kong his own game early on, right? Like I'm playing, you know, a ton of Tomodachi Life and Pokopia right now. And it's like games that I don't think when people were thinking like, you know, you need a Mario, you need a Zelda at launch. And they were kind of like, well, no, we don't. We'll get there eventually.

Speaker 2:
[34:31] But we got some other stuff that'll be air riders instead of Smash Brothers.

Speaker 1:
[34:34] Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. And, you know, it it it paid off for 3DS. And like it, it obviously didn't hit DS numbers because like people's aunts were playing it at the same clip. They, you know, it didn't have its like brain age. Yeah. Yeah. It had that. But it didn't have like its Sudoku, you know, brain training or whatever. I got to do my puzzles every day.

Speaker 2:
[34:57] Yeah. And the smartphone had fully eaten that lunch by the time we got there.

Speaker 1:
[35:01] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[35:01] Yeah. Well, I want to I want to talk about some of our favorite games on 3DS, but I do want to quickly show my face plates. That is like my most prized Nintendo possession is this one. So the Majora's Mask face plates, which were Japan only gift from my fiance when we were dating like five or six years ago.

Speaker 3:
[35:20] Now we know why you're marrying her.

Speaker 2:
[35:22] Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[35:23] Just please, please.

Speaker 2:
[35:24] We're going to talk about our favorite 3DS games. But first, I want to tell you the tickets are officially on sale for IGN Live 2026. The two day celebration of gaming and entertainment will take place June 6th and 7th in downtown LA and be filled with celebrity panels, exclusive game reveals, live stage shows, giveaways and much more. Early bird tickets are on sale now on Show Clicks and fans can purchase one day tickets for $15 or a weekend pass for $30. We'll all be there. It'll be a ton of fun.

Speaker 1:
[35:56] I'm going to say something real quick. If you come to this show, there is a very significant chance that somebody that you're watching right now will throw a prize at you. That is almost certainly going to happen. And it's almost certainly going to be Seth or Jada. Because you have not seen energy from a human being until you've seen the two of these people on stage. Going absolutely... I don't even understand it. It is just pure adrenaline. This show is super fun. We're definitely going to do a live NVC there. So yeah, come through. It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 2:
[36:28] And I'll say there's a really good chance that you'll StreetPass somebody. Or maybe one of us. Oh yeah, I'll probably bring my 3DS to get some StreetPasses.

Speaker 1:
[36:36] Last year, I got hit in the face with a pie. So that was a good chance.

Speaker 4:
[36:39] Yeah, I got to do the pieing.

Speaker 1:
[36:40] That was great.

Speaker 2:
[36:42] Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 3:
[36:43] You got me so hard too.

Speaker 1:
[36:47] You rocked me with that pie. It shot out behind my head by like 20 feet.

Speaker 4:
[36:54] I just looked at it as like, when am I ever going to have the opportunity to pie Brian Altano ever again? Probably never.

Speaker 2:
[37:02] I got to make this work then.

Speaker 5:
[37:03] This year, we're bringing it back.

Speaker 3:
[37:05] We're not doing it like this year.

Speaker 4:
[37:06] PieGN Live 2026.

Speaker 2:
[37:09] Well, let's chat about our favorite 3DS features and games. I just mentioned StreetPass and Seth, I know, aren't you still StreetPassing when you go to events?

Speaker 3:
[37:18] Bro, I have a StreetPass right now.

Speaker 2:
[37:22] Oh, that was perfect. That is such a rare 3DS by the way. That is a really good one.

Speaker 3:
[37:27] I had no idea. I bought this, the story behind this is I bought it on my very first like significant freelance paycheque when I was writing news for IGN.

Speaker 2:
[37:36] Nice, that's special.

Speaker 3:
[37:39] In rare form, I kept the box and all the inserts. And now this is like a $7 to $850 like thing right here.

Speaker 2:
[37:48] This is the Zelda gold, highly encrusted one.

Speaker 3:
[37:51] Yeah, it's the Hyrule Edition is what it is.

Speaker 1:
[37:55] And they made a gold one with just a Triforce on it too, right?

Speaker 2:
[37:58] That is a 3DS XL that two of us pull it out. We are all insane people, by the way. Brian's like, did they make this? Here's two of them on screen right now.

Speaker 1:
[38:08] I don't know, because I know I had that one, and I don't know why I don't why I just have a plain black one now. I actually have two. But yeah, no. So these, I have two 3DSs and they're just constantly StreetPassing each other.

Speaker 3:
[38:22] Yeah, there's a very good chance that this StreetPass is just from the 2DS that I turned on briefly to see if it was still working. No, that's actually not true because we transferred everything. So yeah, I brought this. I try to bring this with me to Pax East every time I go. And the peak of Pax East was untenable. It was just not. There were so many StreetPasses that I had to go through. And I brought both of the kids 3DSs and I just would just spend half of the time sitting on a floor going through StreetPasses. But I'm about to see right now who's at my Plaza Gate. So I'm thinking this is probably just a leftover person because the battery ended up dying while I was at. And this is I've got one it is my wife.

Speaker 2:
[39:17] That's great. StreetPass is such a special thing. I mean we talked about how the 3DS is more personal of a device. I mean, Brian said you can customize it under the hood with the badges and everything. If you had the faceplates, you could literally customize the hood. And then StreetPass was just this, it made you want to take this system with you and pass people and you're just sending your me's back and forth and you're doing that to complete these passive games. It's like, it's a really cool way to have a community game that is still personal and individual to chase. But it's such a brilliant idea and it's such a shame that it didn't come back on Switch.

Speaker 3:
[39:53] No, the other thing that I think we all forget about is it also counted your steps and would give you coins that you could use to kind of unlock maybe extras while you were playing the games that were built in. Of all the things that Nintendo has ever done, this is the thing that I miss the most. It is so fun still in this day and age to just see that green light and be like, oh my God, it's...

Speaker 4:
[40:18] Who did I pass?

Speaker 3:
[40:19] Who did I pass? I don't even have all 50 states, which is a bummer. I think next year, if I go to PAX West, I'll take it with me because primarily PAX East was... Who would have known? A lot of people from the East Coast and a lot of people on the West Coast, I have a feeling are at PAX West. But yeah, some people will be like, oh my God, I got StreetPass from Brazil. They're like, and then you just be walking around like, is that person Brazil? You're looking for like Blanca from Street Fighter somewhere in the corner playing 3DS. But yeah, man, what a frickin and then, you know, the other thing was it worked in games like like Bravely Default had that like whole village on the moon or maybe that was Bravely Second. I don't remember, but just wanted to.

Speaker 1:
[41:04] It's like it's impossible to not miss this stuff. Right. Like I'm it is it is undeniably awesome. And again, I completely understand the design philosophy of keeping the Switch as, you know, minimalist and bare bones as possible. But like this stuff was so cool. This is that like this this is just that that personality weird, just kind of like they still fold all of these kind of ideas into their software. Right. Like I'm playing Tomodachi Life right now. We'll talk about this later. Like obviously, like this is they're still doing all that weird, crazy stuff in their games. But having it become part of the hardware, right? Or, you know, basically baked baked into the OS is something I deeply miss. StreetPass was awesome. Same deal. I brought my 3DS with me everywhere. Every time you saw the lights getting Logan, we were talking about like the like getting beamed like those official me's like Iwata or Reggie would show up. And I was like messaging you and I'm like, how do I get these guys into Tomodachi Life? And you're like, well, what color pants do they have? And I was like, what? And you're like, no, that's really a thing. Like depending on what color pants they have, they're either grayed out or you can import them onto an Amiibo and I'm like, Nintendo, come on. Yeah, why not?

Speaker 2:
[42:19] Yeah, why not? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[42:21] They gotta show up in style. If they're not matching, they're not showing up to the party.

Speaker 1:
[42:26] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:27] And there was Miiverse also, which was also a Wii U application, but this was basically Nintendo's proprietary Twitter. And it led to some of the best Nintendo memes we've ever seen. Like the guy who just liked the nice looking water and would just post pictures of all his favorite water and games. Or that's where YCAMP Metroid Crawl comes from, who I believe, the writer of that listens to this show and is in the Facebook group because they commented once. They're like, that was me. And I felt like I met a celebrity. Sorry, I cannot remember your name right now. But yeah, the person who made the YCAMP Metroid Crawl has reached out to me in our Facebook group, which is just amazing.

Speaker 1:
[43:00] Did they make it as a kid that didn't know how much?

Speaker 2:
[43:02] It was a joke the whole time.

Speaker 1:
[43:03] Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:
[43:05] It was not real.

Speaker 1:
[43:05] I loved that so much. Yeah, that and the guy who you just mentioned, but he posted hundreds of pictures of water and games and you'd be like, water, water, water, water, water.

Speaker 2:
[43:14] Great water. Yeah, so I missed Miiverse. That was a great little thing to check in on. Swapnote, not so great because it got shut down for some illicit reasons, but still a fun idea to send, like a new version of PictoChat, essentially is what that was with Nicky, I think was the Mi's name who ran that. Yeah. Anyone remember Dinosaur Office from like Nintendo Video? It was this video app that you downloaded and there were like 3D videos, the Pikmin shorts were on there, but the one that like was first released. Oh, amazing, Tile. Dinosaur Office. I want to watch this 50 times.

Speaker 3:
[43:48] Oh, I remember this.

Speaker 4:
[43:49] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[43:51] I remember the Pikmin 3D videos. It's still huge in my house, or tiny. But there was that band that was like constantly putting their music videos on here.

Speaker 2:
[44:03] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:04] And I wasn't into their music, but their videos were incredible and they looked super cool in 3D.

Speaker 2:
[44:10] Yeah, I don't remember, but I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[44:12] Yes, or something like that.

Speaker 3:
[44:15] Yeah, I know who you're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[44:17] Yes, and none of us can remember the name.

Speaker 3:
[44:18] I can not remember. It's funny you mentioned that the 3DS has seen a resurgence at concerts. You'll see somebody holding up a 3DS recording for some reason. I don't know why that is, but it rules and I love that.

Speaker 1:
[44:33] It's response. No, go Jada.

Speaker 4:
[44:35] I was going to say, it looks like the bands that were there were the Shins. Skrillex, OK Go, Death Cab for Cutie, Wale, BoB and I Fight Dragons.

Speaker 3:
[44:45] My God.

Speaker 4:
[44:46] That is 2010.

Speaker 1:
[44:48] Amazing.

Speaker 2:
[44:49] Now you can't even watch Netflix on your Switch, but you could watch new music videos on your 3DS.

Speaker 4:
[44:54] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:54] Well, it's funny because they never ported Avatar or any other big... I thought that that would be like, hey, make that handshake, right? Like, have like a movie section on the eShop, but they just didn't do it.

Speaker 4:
[45:07] James Cameron didn't want it. And he was holding his masterpiece in the way that Nintendo envisioned.

Speaker 1:
[45:11] On a 480p screen. I will say that the 3DS internal camera is responsible for probably the most unflattering angle you can possibly have on a human being. I remember opening that up and you would just be like, you'd just be like, like your chin. Every time that happened, it was like, like the, the other cameras, the external ones, you could be like, okay, cool. I'm taking pictures of something. And the internal ones were just like the blob underneath your neck. And you're like, I hate you.

Speaker 2:
[45:42] Yeah. Well, I think it goes to show how special the system is that we've talked for like 30, 40 minutes and have not talked about the games yet. So let's, let's do that now. Let's, let's just go around and shout out some of our favorite 3DS games. Seth, like when you think of 3DS, what game comes to mind?

Speaker 3:
[45:57] You asked me this and I like, I gave you the most like milquetoast boring list of games. But then as I was looking for the 3DS in my house, I came across a lot of the games. And I, I think one of the games I probably played the most was Mario Golf 3D.

Speaker 2:
[46:14] Oh, that's a great game.

Speaker 3:
[46:15] That is the best, probably the best Mario Golf game actually. And I'm, now that we're talking about it, I kind of want to start, I kind of want to start playing it again. But yeah, that is, I wasn't at IGN at the time, but I remember when that game came out, like everybody on every podcast was just talking about, like their inter-office rivalries with Nintendo, excuse me, with Mario 3D Golf. But if you do not have this game, well, you're kind of out of luck, but absolutely wonderful, the best Mario Golf game in my opinion.

Speaker 2:
[46:49] Yeah, yeah, really good one. And interesting how great it is in kind of just a terrible era for Mario Sports. Like the ones on Wii U and 3DS besides this one were very, very bad. But then this game came out and it's like, whoa, like they made a really, really great golf game.

Speaker 3:
[47:04] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:04] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[47:04] And I shouted out like Bravely Default earlier, but that was Bravely Second especially. Those were just two absolutely wonderful games. But yeah, I spent a lot of time on my 3DS playing DS games because you'll never see this again. You used to be able to just go in a GameStop and buy DS games for like 10 bucks and like the best DS games. So I had every Dragon Quest that ever came out for DS, which I've since sold off because they are so valuable. But yeah. Look at that. What a freaking lovely game. This game, man, it used the 3DS so well for like the overworld maps or the town maps. Oh God, what a great. I might just play this game again. There it is. I said it. 3DS is back, baby.

Speaker 2:
[47:48] Jada, how about you? Favorite 3DS game?

Speaker 4:
[47:50] Oh, so third party did a lot of the heavy lifting for me during the 3DS era. Ended up being a bunch of my favorites. But I think Theater Rhythm, Final Fantasy Theater Rhythm was probably one of my favorite ones. Just being able to play the music of one of my favorite franchises. And when you play one winged angel and you're using the stylus and slashing to like an Octo slash or Sephiroth slashes, it just like it just it's super nerdy. But I absolutely fell in love with it. This game also added, you know, we talked earlier about DLC. This game added where you can buy new songs. And so it's like, hey, here's a bunch of new tracks from Dragon Quest. And here's some tracks from, gosh, one of other Square Enix's big RPG franchises. Here are all of these. The music that you want added to this game. And it's just it was amazing. It had music video, not music videos. Well, I guess technically music videos. You're playing music while the videos are playing in the background. But it was just, it was fantastic. I think it was probably my favorite rhythm game of all time. Just absolutely love this one. It either this one or the later port on, that they put on consoles. I did the final bar call or final bar line review, which I absolutely loved. But it definitely loses something when you move from touch to buttons.

Speaker 2:
[49:15] I know you mentioned Monster Hunter to me also, and that was a really huge move by Nintendo that generation to pull Capcom and Monster Hunter away from the PlayStation handhelds and onto the 3DS. Because they had been a staple on the PSP, huge sellers in Japan. And then Nintendo gets the deal for Monster Hunter on 3DS. You get Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Generations. And that just helps the 3DS catch fire in Japan because it's such an enormous series over there that everybody bought a 3DS in Japan to play Monster Hunter. And that's a huge part of how they turned this thing around was was this deal with Capcom. And then that's continued. I mean, we got Monster Hunter Rise and Generations Ultimate on Switch. So that's continued there. But it was just a huge deal for the 3DS at the time.

Speaker 4:
[49:57] I was honestly kind of upset that it went from PlayStation handhelds to Nintendo handhelds because at the time PlayStation handhelds had the better graphic performance and it just felt like a stronger console. But man, after booting up like 4 Ultimate on my 3DS, I was like, oh, this is good, especially when you got the attachment. I don't have my attachment handy.

Speaker 2:
[50:19] The boat. Yeah, the boat.

Speaker 4:
[50:21] I don't have the boat handy. But it was so good. It reminded me of hanging out with my friends in our PSP era playing Monster Hunter 2. And this was just it was peak like DS time. And then this is translated all the way well. Like we also got Monster Hunter 3 Try, which was on the Wii U, which I played on the Wii U, which was great. There's yeah, Monster Hunter. That thing is a system seller. Like Capcom has been on fire for so long. And they just know how to make good games, man.

Speaker 2:
[50:53] Yeah. Did you guys know that they made a boat for the 3DS XL that they only sold in Japan? So it's a bigger boat and it's just enormous. It's just a it's a huge accessory. I do remember that. It's so ridiculous.

Speaker 5:
[51:05] Why did they do that?

Speaker 2:
[51:07] Just to add the second analog stick to the 3DS, to the base 3DS XL that didn't have one.

Speaker 1:
[51:12] That's so ridiculous. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[51:14] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:14] No, because I remember, I remember playing Resident Evil Revelations, and that was that was one of the ones that that I believe needed it. Right. Like it needed or you could play without it, but it wasn't as terrible, wasn't as good.

Speaker 3:
[51:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:28] Brian, what are your favorite 3DS games?

Speaker 1:
[51:30] I mean, obviously, well, this one, we'll start with that. Resident Evil Revelations and Resident Evil Mercenaries blew my mind because they were both fully 3D third person Resident Evil 4 style action games running on a little Nintendo handheld. Mercenaries specifically was one of those things where it was like, I knew at the time that I was kind of getting ripped off because I was buying a game that was just a bonus mode in a different game. But man, I loved it so much. I played so much Mercenaries. Jada, I know you did too.

Speaker 4:
[52:03] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[52:05] This was awesome just having like this, like basically a Mercenaries arcade game in my pocket at any given moment. Had tons of characters in it. I would just try to outdo my high score and kill count every single time. And I don't know if they had leaderboards, but Jada was definitely at the top of them. I was far, far away. But yeah, unlocking characters and levels and missions and all that stuff. I loved it. I knew I wanted an actual story driven Resident Evil game. But while I waited for that, this was awesome. This was one of those things where I was like, I got a little bit of RE4 in my pocket, right? It took one of my favorite modes ever from any video game and made it a standalone thing. And yeah, cool. I loved it. Obviously the biggest one for me is The Legend of Zelda, Link Between Worlds. That is, to me, that is one of my favorite video games of all time. I just replayed it a few months ago and I adore it. I think that like it fits the 3DS so well because of the same things I was talking about earlier about the customization, right? Like your journey in that game feels personal. And I think that's because you're allowed to do anything in any order. You're allowed to go to any dungeon, any temple, you know, you can basically go to the item shop and rent any weapon you want and go explore. And the 3D effect was awesome in this game. You know what it takes to make a sequel to one of the greatest video games of all time and pull it off? Like that is so incredibly rare to do. Like they basically did a legacy sequel to Link to the Past and crushed it. And I loved this game so much. I truly believe that this set the sort of the template for where we are now with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Like, yeah, we talked about that before, right? We talked about how the ability to approach this game at your own pace with your own play style was really, really special for me. It was really evocative of the original Legend of Zelda, actually, where I just... It felt like playing that game again for the first time and just walking out in this huge world and going, I don't know where to go, but I can go anywhere. And yeah, I loved it. The turning into a 2D art to go onto a wall. And it created so many interesting puzzle and platforming and exploration opportunities. I adore this game. It holds up so well. I really hope they find a way to put this on modern hardware. I think that like, yeah, if you've only had like a Switch and a Switch 2 and you really want to play this game, I'm really hoping Nintendo finds a way. It won't have the 3D effect, obviously, and it will be missing the second screen with the map and all that stuff. But like this is one of those games that I want them to port to Switch 2 to hold us over while we wait for the next Zelda game.

Speaker 4:
[54:55] This is the bar that I have set for this. I think we talked about either last week or the week prior about the rumored Ocarina of Time remake. This is the bar that I have set for that game, is doing something along this line. This is like the quality and just creativity. This is the bar that I have set for that, if that is a real thing.

Speaker 2:
[55:16] Half remake, half sequel, basically, is what this game is.

Speaker 1:
[55:20] Yeah, that would be awesome. Also, I want to shout out Samus Returns. Obviously, the Metroid Dreads is even better, but Samus Returns took one of the most difficult and obtuse Metroid games and gave it a fresh coat of paint, and it's awesome. I really, really, really like this game, and I loved what the devs did with the more hands-on combat approach. You've got melee options now. There's a map, so you can actually see how many Metroids you need to hunt down. It's not the best remake of a Metroid game. I still think that's Zero Mission, but I love Samus Returns so much. It was really, really cool. Again, amazing 3D effects. Loved having a 3D, 2D Metroid game for the first time, which was really cool. Yeah, great game. Let's see. I'll shout out one more. And that is Animal Crossing New Leaf. Nice. Like just the easy one, right? Like everyone loved this game. The connectivity in this game was awesome. Playing with friends was awesome. Like going to other people's towns and all all of that stuff. And like, I don't know, Logan, you you said I think it was you and Reb a year or two ago on the show. We're talking about how like ultimately, you like New Leaf better than.

Speaker 2:
[56:44] I do. Reb really hated me for that take, but I do.

Speaker 1:
[56:48] And yeah, you said that New Leaf is a better Animal Crossing game than the Switch one. And I'd agree with that.

Speaker 4:
[56:55] I'm a team leader on that.

Speaker 1:
[56:56] I played a bunch of New Leaf this year, and I think I agree. Like, I think it's I think I've come around on it. I think it's and I I don't want to say it's because the Switch one is too polished. But I think that this one is just enough weirdness to it that I gravitate to it a bit more. Either way, like, I feel like the DS Animal Crossing was like a really like a it was really solid. But this was like, this was everything I wanted from those games. Like this was basically just a culmination of everything I've ever loved about Animal Crossing and took it to the next level. This was an absolute triumph.

Speaker 2:
[57:35] Yeah, no, and we might have a similar conversation about a different 3DS to Switch series in a little bit based on what I've heard from some of you guys. But no, I agree. New Leaf is just the it's the ultimate finish line of that original franchise of I live in this town. This town does not entirely revolve around me. I am not God. I cannot form this town to my will. You are the mayor in this one. So you get a bit more power than that. But it still feels like a more slow paced life simulation game where you're a resident among your neighbors rather than these these villagers are kind of just shells to live in my little doll house that I design, which is New Horizons. I agree. New Leaf is a top 5 3DS game. It's incredible.

Speaker 3:
[58:13] I remember my kids were hanging out with one of their friends and my wife was like, speaking about the friend, she's like, I think he's having a party over his house or something. Like, do you know about this? They said they're going to go over it away. And I was like, I don't know. And we went and they were talking about Animal Crossing. They were going to have a party and it was so cute.

Speaker 2:
[58:33] That's great. Yeah. I'll shout out probably just two games. I mean, Link Between Worlds is my favorite 3DS game far and away. Like Brian, one of my favorite games of all time. And yeah, we've talked that one to death. So I go any further on that one. But I have to talk about my my true love, Kid Icarus Uprising, which I just, man, man, I broke this game out this week in preparation for this show. I still can't believe this game exists. That Masahiro Sakurai took a break from Smash to direct a revival of a 25 year old NES series that only ever had a sequel on Game Boy. But it's an on-rails Star Fox like shooter with, I think the best writing and voice acting in any Nintendo game to date. I play this and I'm like, it is funny. It is dry. It breaks the fourth wall. It references the NES game all the time in hilarious ways. Like just like an example of this is it's just super fourth wall breaking where you're in this level, you're traveling with this guy, you see a hot spring and you get in the hot spring. And of course you're wearing all your clothes. And the dude you're with is like, don't you want to like at least take off your tuning before you get in the hot spring? And they just like break the conventions of games all the time and it's writing in really clever ways. The shooting feels amazing. There's a million different weapons. There's a checklist board like all Sakurai games have. There's a credits fake out where you think this game's over and you're like barely a third of the way into it. It had one of the most robust online multiplayer modes, any Nintendo games ever seen. And I still like visually, this is the best looking game on the system. When you're on these on rails levels, I play it in 2026 and it's still unbelievable to me how good it looks with the 3D turned up just a little bit. Man, I just think this is such an underrated gem because of its wonky control scheme where you use the touchscreen, the L button and the circle pad and nothing else. Yeah, your wrist can hurt after you play for a while if you don't use the stand, but that's it. That's the only con to what I otherwise think is like a freaking masterpiece that needs to come back in some way, because it's such a special Nintendo game that so few people have played.

Speaker 4:
[60:35] Question for you, Logan. We just got Kirby Air Raiders. Would you have preferred getting a new Kid Icarus over Kirby Air Raiders? Because I know you're a big Air Raider fan as well.

Speaker 2:
[60:43] Oh yeah, I would have 100% preferred Soccer Eye to make a sequel to this game on Switch 2. Because like with motion controls, you can just have the same control scheme where you just do gyro aiming like Splatoon does. You could do it the exact same way. And nobody would bat an eye at the control scheme.

Speaker 1:
[60:58] This is another one that needs a port. This needs a remaster. This is one of those, it shouldn't be locked to ancient hardware that's really expensive to buy in the aftermarket right now. This is a really, really awesome, really special game. And I loved it. And Logan, just like you, I revisited this recently too. Oh nice. It's incredible. It's so cool. Also a buddy of mine, Mike Drucker, did some writing for this game.

Speaker 3:
[61:27] What up, Mike?

Speaker 1:
[61:28] It's very funny. And you can thank him for help with that. But yeah, this should be on Switch 2. It should be.

Speaker 2:
[61:36] And it has this dynamic difficulty, which later is an idea soccer I brought to Smash 4 and in classic mode where you choose how hard the level is and you are given more rewards for choosing. And it's a dynamic slider scale where you're picking between 0.0 and 9.0 and the levels just play completely differently with how many enemies are on screen, what types, how hard they hit. And it's just this amazing system that makes this game so replayable and then there's missions like beat every level on 8.0 or above. And that's really really hard to do. Just this game is packed with stuff to do. It's like a Smash Brothers game but entirely devoted to this on rails third person shooter. I can't believe they made this and that it was the first game they announced for the console. Like what a weird bizarre risk for them to take. But it just paid off so much. Seth, have you played this game?

Speaker 3:
[62:25] In 2012, I stood in line at PAX East for like two and a half hours to play this. And it was, I think they just did like the multiplayer and I was not impressed at all. And I do have the shirt, the PAX East 2012 Nintendo 3DS Kid Icarus shirt, which isn't a small because I got it for one of my kids. However, I, again, looking through my games, found we own this game. Like I own this game. I didn't realize it. I think maybe my kids did it and I just didn't remember. So I'm very tempted to give this one a go. The controller scares me and they never updated it for like work with the nubbing, right? Like it just-

Speaker 2:
[63:14] Nope, nope, only for lefties. Cause the nub was out at the time, but it was only like, if you're a lefty, you can move with the right stick and use the touch screen with your left hand.

Speaker 3:
[63:24] I'm considering playing this.

Speaker 2:
[63:25] Soccer is a stubborn man.

Speaker 3:
[63:28] Because it's a game like, I loved Kid Icarus on NES. I was just like really interested in it as like the world that it built. I mean, obviously it's Greek mythology, but it's not. So now, yeah, now that I know that I own this, I might give this a go.

Speaker 2:
[63:44] Yeah. And it is aware that it's a sequel to the NES game. They talk about how it's been 25 years since any of them have been seen. They use the sprites on the bottom screen all the time as they're telling the story. Like the first line of the game, Pitt says like, sorry to keep you waiting as the first level is starting. And something I love about it is that the dialogue is happening at the same time as the action. There are not, there's like three or four actual cutscenes in this game, but for the most part, the story is playing out as you're doing the levels. And so you're listening while trying to shoot and following along with these conversations that are sometimes main story related and sometimes just jokes and banter between the main cast. And it just works so brilliantly to me. And yeah, there's no other Nintendo games like this with this level of production and in its story. Like people always say, I want Nintendo games to care about their story more. Play this one, because it does in ways that no other ones do. Shout out to Kit from Kit and Krista on our screen from Nintendo Minute right now, from 2011. So that's my main shout out. I love this game to death, but there's so many other good ones that we haven't touched on like Kirby Planet Robobots, maybe the best Kirby game, Tomodachi Life. We've been talking about a bunch. Fire Emblem wouldn't exist today if not for the 3DS generation. That console Awakening saved that series, and now it's like the most popular strategy RPG there is. Just a fantastic generation.

Speaker 4:
[65:04] And Fantasy Life.

Speaker 2:
[65:05] Fantasy Life, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[65:06] It came back, what, last year? Yeah. I remember playing that for days on end with friends.

Speaker 2:
[65:12] That was so good. Yeah. Well, that is our 3DS retrospective. Let us know your favorite 3DS game in the comments or email us, nvc.ign.com. Well, we have a couple more things to get to. We have two first party updates to talk about. The first is a Splatoon Raiders Release Date Trailer. This is coming to Switch 2 on July 23rd. It's a bit of a cheaper game from Nintendo. It's gonna be $49.99 digitally and $59.99 physically. So $60 at retail, 50 digital. That is way below some of the other first party games right now. This is a single player focused Splatoon game, but it will feature local or online four player co-op. That was confirmed on Twitter after the trailer dropped. So yeah, let's talk about this trailer. Brian, what'd you think?

Speaker 1:
[65:54] I liked it. You mentioned something in one of our conversation channels about how you were kind of surprised that this is more like, it feels more like a single player mode of like a modern multiplayer game. There's a lot of like go out there and collect this stuff and bring it back. And I think we were expecting a little bit more of the, I guess, like a story driven single player campaign. And that's not to say they won't be doing this. But I will say my optimism for this has dropped a tiny bit. It's still day one for me, but it doesn't feel exactly like it. It doesn't feel like the original, what I thought the original elevator pitch was going to be, which was basically like, Splatoon characters get their own Zelda or Mario style game. Yeah, their own action adventure game. It doesn't feel like that to that extent. I'm also, I'm a little bummed out at how washed out it looks. I feel like just in general, like it needs, like when you're in a lobby of a Splatoon game, like it's just bombarding you with colors and hues. And I feel like here, it's just, it feels a bit drab. And I-

Speaker 4:
[67:09] The colors are a little muted compared to-

Speaker 1:
[67:11] Yeah, I'm surprised about that personally. Cause it's, I don't know, to me, this is a franchise that has always been incredibly vibrant and chaotic. And that's part of the visual identity of it. It was, you know, something that like, it made it stand apart from so many other multiplayer third-person shooting games. So yeah, I don't know. I would like if they went in and bumped up the saturation and the contrast a bit. But I'm in, I'm just not, I'm not like totally over the top hyped for this just yet.

Speaker 2:
[67:47] Yeah, Jada, how about you?

Speaker 4:
[67:50] Yeah, the trailer didn't do a whole lot of work for me. I am curious if this is going to play kind of like the closer to the Roguelite DLC that we got. Like they haven't said if it's a Roguelite or if that it's definitely not a Roguelite, right?

Speaker 2:
[68:05] I don't think it is. But no, they haven't said either way. But no, to me, it looks more like almost a survival crafting type deal where you're upgrading your weapons as you go to be better and better on subsequent runs. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[68:15] Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's, I'm definitely interested. I'm definitely going to play it because I love Splatoon. I just, I'm missing that X factor in this, the Splatoon game that most Splatoon games come with. Like what is the, what is that big overarching new thing? Obviously, you know, single player kind of advancing through kind of more of an open world kind of looking thing is kind of a new thing. I don't know if that is the right move for Splatoon where it's, I mean, it definitely had from the trailer, we have all the chaos and excitement that we get from normal Splatoon games. But is it going to be able to match that intensity always, or are we just seeing the greatest hits in the trailer? Kind of thing, you know? So, I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be fun. I just, I don't know how fun it's going to be.

Speaker 2:
[69:06] Seth?

Speaker 3:
[69:08] I'm getting kind of like Splatoon meets Borderland vibes.

Speaker 4:
[69:13] I can't see that.

Speaker 3:
[69:14] A little like-

Speaker 2:
[69:14] Numbers coming out of the enemies, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[69:16] Yeah, like not quite as like looter shooter, but then you know, you're finding all this stuff to craft and make your better stuff. I don't know. I'm much more interested in this now actually than I was before. But I will say like kind of what Brian and Jada were saying, the stylistically doesn't have that like Splatoon pop. It just, it does look a little too open and a little too, I don't know. I don't want to say unfinished, but it just doesn't have that feel of Splatoon outside of the characters and obviously like ink flying everywhere or having AV cables as a hair attachment, which I think is pretty awesome. But I'm cautiously optimistic on this one. I think, especially like having co-op play, because like Borderlands 2 is one of my favorite gaming experiences ever because it was just me and three of my friends like teaming up every night on Xbox Live for months and months just to play. So if that sort of thing happens here regularly, I think this could be something that I find myself playing more than I even expected. So we'll see. I'm glad that it's only $49.99, but at the same time I'm like, oh, but what does that really mean?

Speaker 2:
[70:35] Yeah. I know. I, yeah. Go ahead, Jada.

Speaker 4:
[70:38] I was going to say, I'm wondering if that we all spoke on the kind of visual distinction from other Splatoon games. I have to wonder if that is intentional. I mean, obviously, I imagine it's intentional because it plays so differently. So they want it to also look very differently compared to the other Splatoon games to make it very distinct. Because that's something Nintendo is very much about. Like, if it is something different, they want it to have this different aesthetic look.

Speaker 2:
[71:05] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[71:06] Want it to, you know, plays differently. Like, look at all the different Paper Mario games they've done. They look similar, but they have these different, distinct flares to them. It's like, hey, this is Paper Mario, but it plays differently compared to other Paper Marios.

Speaker 2:
[71:19] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[71:20] Have you seen the new Amiibo?

Speaker 2:
[71:23] Yeah. Three new Amiibo also coming out on July 23rd. Yeah. Three deep cut members from Splatoon 3.

Speaker 3:
[71:30] They're amazing.

Speaker 2:
[71:31] Yeah. I can't do it. I'm out. I can't get this. I'm sure I will. I said that too. I'm in right now, but I'm out for now.

Speaker 3:
[71:37] When I saw on Big Man's backpack, the texture of the fabric looks so real. I was like, oh, my God.

Speaker 2:
[71:44] Yeah. Okay. He's got a little camp role. Yeah. I'm with most of you. I think this was, I'll be even harsher. I think this was a pretty terrible trailer for this game. I think that this trailer seriously should not have come out like this. It spends the first minute picking hairstyle. And that is like, so Nintendo is going forward marketing things on Nintendo today. And that's a whole different conversation. I think that's largely fine. I know people want their direct, but as long as we get the news, that's fine. However, this trailer played to me as if it was something in the middle of a direct, where you know people are going to watch Shelley and to see what happens. Like if I was not as committed of a fan watching this trailer, I might have clicked off of it at the at the 32nd mark, because you are just like selecting inkling hairstyles and like we've done that in every Splatoon game. We know at this point that's how that works. And then I don't really feel like I know what this game is after the trailer either. And I want I thought it was going to be more of an action adventure. Like we said, it appears to be more of like an action based, like level based. There's a threat here. Go to it, get the treasure, come back to camp, improve your loadout, go out to the next one. But then there's like a little hint right here where it says dungeon menu. What does that mean? We don't know. The game's out in three months. We'll probably get an overview trailer like we do. But I feel like we're having to do a lot of heavy lifting to get excited and figure out what this thing is. And I thought this just looked like single player Salmon Run. And I think if this came out as a $20 DLC for Splatoon 3, no one would blink because that's what it looks like to me. It does not look like a big standalone single player Splatoon campaign like they're kind of billing it as. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out in an Ask the Developer that this started as DLC for Splatoon 3 and they decided to put it out as their own thing. That is really how it is playing to me.

Speaker 4:
[73:34] This game more than pretty much anything else Nintendo has talked about this year would do well to have a demo. I think I think a demo is would help a lot with this game.

Speaker 2:
[73:46] Yeah, yeah, I think so, too. And I'm sure we'll see more, but I just I've kind of sensed this pattern a little bit recently with Nintendo where their first trailer, their first big trailer of stuff really almost tells us nothing. And it's really that big overview trailer that you wait for. That's like six minutes. It then tells you a ton about what the game actually is. So I'm waiting for that on this one. I'm still excited. I love Splatoon. I have a hundred hours in every single one. I'll play the crap out of this. But if you told me I could have a single player Splatoon game, I would have I would have pitched something like we're going to have these puzzle platforming elements and dungeons with Splatoon items or it's playing out maybe like a Metroid Prime or a Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, not really just another single player shooter mode. So we'll see on that one. That's out July 23rd. That's three months from today. And then we got a new Yoshi and the Mysterious Book overview trailer. It's that six minute one that I was just talking about for Splatoon. And also we have 15 minutes of gameplay up on IGN now as well. Leanne from our team went over to New York to play Yoshi and you can read her impressions up on IGN as well. Brian, what do you think of this trailer?

Speaker 1:
[74:54] I think the conversation around this one has been pretty fascinating because it seems to me that we're always talking about how Nintendo makes experiences that work really well for kids and scale really well for adults. And I don't know how this one's going to pan out specifically, but it feels and has always felt, and I think some of the previews kind of confirm this, that this is deliberately skewering or aiming for a much younger audience than your traditional Nintendo platforming game or even first party game. And that's fine. That's cool. I actually don't like, I think this is going to be a hit in my house and I don't think it's going to be because of me. I'm also not the biggest fan of the original Yoshi's Island. I think that, I don't think that game is great. That's okay. I don't really like the mechanics of it and I don't like aiming eggs and I don't like the sounds that he makes. But this one is really, really pretty. This is an absolutely stunning looking video game. I love all of the effects they're using here to sort of mix 3D and 2D, the storybook filter they've got on things here. This is one of those things where it's like every now and then Nintendo makes a game that's like incredibly painterly or it feels like sort of like classic children's book illustrations and this is stunning. So yeah, I really hope it's fun. I hope there's enough under the hood and it's deep enough and there's enough collectibles and stuff like that to really hold my attention. But yeah, my daughter and I will totally play through this game from start to finish.

Speaker 4:
[76:32] This trailer was the opposite effect for me of the Splatoon Raiders. I thought this was a very good trailer. It showed off exactly what to expect in the game, showed some of the things to look forward to, poised a couple of questions about how deep does this mechanic go. I feel like this is next gen, this is this generation's Yoshi 64. That's what this is giving me vibes of. I loved Yoshi 64 and I think this is going to be this generation of it. So I'm actually pretty interested in it. I think it will definitely be one of those quicker play throughs for me. But that's not a bad thing in nowadays. There's so many games to play. I am more than happy with something that I can blitz through real quick.

Speaker 2:
[77:20] Yeah, it even has a storybook. It's Yoshi's story, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. The levels are on pages that you're jumping into. It totally feels like a spiritual sequel to Yoshi's story. I agree with that.

Speaker 4:
[77:31] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[77:33] It's made me sad because my kids are grown up and I don't have anybody. I'm not going to play this game. But if my kids were little still, then this is the exact kind of fun game. We used to play Epic Yarn. We used to play that together when they were little. No, I don't have that.

Speaker 4:
[77:51] What if I told you that Yoshi was voiced by Donald Glover?

Speaker 3:
[77:54] Oh, I don't. I mean, in the movies, yes.

Speaker 4:
[77:58] They got him on contract.

Speaker 3:
[77:59] That's true. He's like, hey, I want to say one word and make a lot of money. And he did. So, yeah, I mean, it looks beautiful. It looks, I mean, I say that, like, that's selling it short. It looks fantastically beautiful. It's just not a game that I'm ever going to, that I'm probably ever going to play.

Speaker 2:
[78:19] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:20] Makes me sad.

Speaker 2:
[78:22] Yeah, I think, I'm with Jada. I think this trailer is really good. I think that I lamented the Yoshi franchise a year ago on NVC and said, hey, it's time to figure out something different. And I feel like this is kind of what I wanted. Now, I mean, I would never thought of this idea, which is this is not a platformer about reaching the goal and getting one ups and going from left to right. It is like Yoshi is a detective and Yoshi is investigating these different creatures and figuring out systems based gameplay and interactions between them in a very Breath of the Wild or Donkey Kong bonanza way, but in a super young skewing kid friendly platformer. It almost feels like a tutorial of me of how to play and engage with modern Nintendo game design. I think that's really smart. Like we see Yoshi needs to get muddy and then pick up a flower and then jump in the dirt and then pour water on it and you'll grow flowers. And as you're learning all these things about these enemies, my hope is that for players like us that there's going to be that extra layer of, okay, here's a level where we're not going to spell anything out for you. Use what you learned in this encyclopedia that you formed to figure out how to get from here to here. If they do that, this game could be really, really cool. But even if it stays on the simpler side, I think there's something really clever about its approach to say, hey, Yoshi can't take damage. This game isn't about combat. This is a 2D platformer, Nintendo's bread and butter for the last 40 years. That's about something completely different. I think it's neat. I am actually really thrilled about where this is going.

Speaker 1:
[79:53] Yeah. Also, I can't see Kamek in games anymore without hearing his Mario movie voice. And that's great. I love that voice so much.

Speaker 2:
[80:01] Yeah, it's really good. But yeah, I thought this was a fantastic trailer. That's Yoshi. That is out in less than a month on May 21st as a Switch 2 exclusive. And we're going to have Tom Marks on NVC next week to rank every Yoshi game ever made. So come on back for that, including Yoshi's Universal Gravitation, or Topsy Turvy, as it was called here. We have one more segment to go. We're going to talk about Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream. But first, I want to ask you, do you have what it takes to host videos for IGN? We're looking for new voices who love games, movies, pop culture, and more. If you have a strong on-camera presence, can read from a teleprompter and know your way around the world of video games and entertainment, we want to hear from you. Head to audition.ign.com for more details.

Speaker 3:
[80:45] I'm so glad that that was a read, because somebody asked me if it was still going on, because they hadn't put in yet. I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[80:52] It is.

Speaker 3:
[80:53] So there you go. Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[80:56] Well, let's talk about Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream, which has been out for a week now. Seth, we talked about it a bit in our meeting this week. What do you think?

Speaker 3:
[81:04] I, it's so fun. It's so hilarious. And it completely lost something in the move from a dedicated handheld to the big screen. I don't know what it is. I just don't find myself as like compelled to play as I did when it was on 3DS. And granted, yes, I was also doing the guide for it, but I just loved, I loved it so much. Playing it, something stupid before I would go to bed, click close my 3DS and, you know, lay it down to the next to the bed and go to sleep. But it's, it's hilarious. It's fun. I love creating things. It's hard to draw because no stylus works and the kind that does work, I don't actually have. So I have to use my finger and then do, ah, dang it, L button to undo and then, ah, dang it. And then L button to undo. But I mean, it's, it's everything that you would expect out of a modern version of Tomodachi Life, except for what you, you know, the part that you really like, which is sharing everything. That's what sucks. You get to make anything you want. And then I had to take, turn my switch off, take these, the card out, put it into my computer, download it, edit it in Premiere, and then upload it to the internet. And it was so stupid. It's such a bummer. But I'm honestly, I'm a little bit disappointed in spite of the fact that I still love it. It's just not, it's not hitting the same in a way that I can't really explain. Cause it is so funny. The interactions are so like interesting, but yeah, it's a bummer. I really wanted this to be like the game that, you know, took over my life from Pocopia. And it's, unfortunately, I don't think it's gonna be. It makes me sad. And the thing is, I can't explain, because it's not by any stretch of the imagination, even a bad game. It's just not a game that's like, that's grabbing me the same way that it did. I went in with too high of an expectation, I think that's the problem.

Speaker 2:
[83:01] Yeah. Now I agree, it doesn't fully hit for me the same way as the 3DS one either. Ryan, you've been playing the 3DS one a lot recently and your daughter has too, so how's this one going in your household?

Speaker 1:
[83:10] Oh, we totally dropped Pokopia for this. This has completely taken over our home, completely. Like this is every, this is, this game is doing the unthinkable, which is getting my daughter out of bed and downstairs every single morning so we can play before school. Like she's coming home from school, she's running in from the front door, dropping her bag on the ground, grabbing the Switch 2 and sitting on the couch. And we're obsessed. And the thing is, it's like, I understand all the caveats, like the sharing limitations are frustrating, getting me's and stuff like that on there are frustrating. We put, I think maybe like, I think we have like 24 different me's on our island, and it's a good mix of like our friends and family and like pop culture characters and video game characters, right? So there's just like, there's a bunch of nonsense in there. And I think that if you take all of those elements and you throw them in and you give them all a different lingo and you give them all, you know, funny clothes and you find out their favorite food and you give them all like different items and toys, that's when this game starts cooking, right? Like you have to, and I understand why for some people, they don't want to put that legwork in and they don't, because it's kind of a lot, right? Right? Like you, it's pretty top heavy in terms of how much setup you have to kind of like, it's gathering all the ingredients and letting them sizzle. Like it's, and we've done that. And now we're at a point where we're at level 48. Um, and our, our characters are like Miyamoto and Mario, like we're best friends and now they're in a huge fight. My wife and I got married and we live in a house with our kid and Diddy Kong. Because my daughter was like, the problem with playing with her is that she doesn't, she's seven, so she doesn't understand that I don't want to live with a monkey. She also doesn't understand money. Like when we got married, they put wedding dresses in the shop for $1,000 each. And she bought one for Rosalina and she bought one for Peach because both of them have like romantic interests in Mario and Luigi. And I came home from work, I brought her home from school and I was like, honey, where's all our money? And she's like, oh, I bought wedding dresses. And I'm like, did they get married? And she's like, no. And I'm like, are they engaged? And she goes, no. And I'm like, you can't spend $2,000 on wedding dresses if people aren't married or engaged. This is basic. Like I'm teaching you this now because I don't want you going and spending $1,000 on a wedding dress after like you haven't even had a first date in a couple of years. Like save your cash. Yeah, so it's just, I love this game. We found for the first time, so my character in this game, his favorite food is cheeseburgers. And when he eats a cheeseburger, he has this like out of body experience. My daughter made her cousin, and if you feed her celery, she basically dies.

Speaker 3:
[86:18] She turns into a ghost.

Speaker 1:
[86:20] But we had something where we gave, we gave chocolate cake to Rosalina and she parted the seed. Like she had this like, there's this like peak level of like the most somebody can possibly like something. But yeah, I love it. And I love like, I love, like we put Toad in there and he's just so off model. He just looks like a demented little freak, like Toad from Mario and he's, he hates everything we give him. He hates all his clothes. His hat keeps coming off. I don't understand. He's, he sucks, but he's in there and he's like, it's, it's great. We have, we have Ganon in there, but he's just like this miserable old Karen. And he just never wants to like, they'll cut to news reports about, about stuff. They'll be like, hey everyone, like we have benches now on the island. It's really great. And he's just like, I don't really see the point of that. You're such a curmudgeonly old boomer. You're just like, oh, why? What are these kids making all these noises with their guitars out there? So yeah, I love it. There's so much funny stuff happening every single day. We were constantly cracking up, laughing out loud. It's, it's frustrating that like, you know, like my wife and I went on a honeymoon in this game and we went to Kyoto, which is, which was super cool. And it's like, hey, do you want to take some screenshots? I'm like, yeah, I'd love to. And I'm just like hitting A, taking all these reposing in front of, you know, shrines and stuff like that. And afterwards, I like, I go to share them to my Switch and it's like, no.

Speaker 2:
[87:43] No, why did you tell me to take the screenshot?

Speaker 1:
[87:47] Like, you don't, so I can, I can only take a picture of my Switch or I can take the SD card out and then put it into my computer and then take them off of there. And it's because why exactly? Because some people are doing nefarious things with it anyway.

Speaker 2:
[88:03] That I'm seeing anyways, that I'm very tired of seeing, to be completely honest.

Speaker 1:
[88:06] Yeah, it's like, there's all this like, you know, edgelord humor stuff happening around this game right now. And like, that was gonna happen no matter what. So, whatever in...

Speaker 3:
[88:15] I would argue it was gonna happen less. We would have seen it, but it would have been overtaken by all the cool, good, funny stuff that people were easily sharing. And now people are doing stuff just to be jerks about it.

Speaker 1:
[88:29] I think you're spot on. But yeah, I think if you play this game in a bubble and you play with your family or your friends or people that live with you or you're passing the switch around and stuff like that, it's an absolute blast. I don't know, ask me in three months if it's still at the same level as the 3DS one, but I love the island customization stuff. I love that you can make your own, like my daughter made a pizza that just has pictures of her face all over it and everyone hates it. There's just so many funny things. I gave myself a Wu Tang T-shirt. Yeah, it's great. I have a little leather jacket. Miyamoto has these 8-bit sunglasses on. My wife was like, why did you put Michael Jackson in this game? I'm like, it's Miyamoto. There's all these great, I could tell stories for years about how many funny things have happened just in the first week alone. We've played it for 20 something hours. Awesome. So far, first week, adore this game.

Speaker 3:
[89:25] I think you made me realize what it is that is not hitting for me, is that my kids were young and super into this as well, and we played it together and it was like a funny family sharing thing and I don't have that anymore. So I think, yeah, I think that's why it's not hitting. So I put my finger on that one, double downer, empty nest syndrome, let's go.

Speaker 4:
[89:46] I'm right there with you, Seth. This one is not doing it for me either. I'm still in the Pocopia train. I just, it's part of A, I don't have kids as well to share those stories, but also B, Brian alluded to it about like, you have to do a lot of legwork to get this kind of up and running. And I just, I've got so many other games I want to play and other things that I'd rather, time I'd rather spend on other hobbies outside of gaming than putting time in making these me's, making these custom like artworks, making all this stuff and like setting up this simulation. It's just, it's not for me. And that's okay. I'm glad that like Brian and his kid is having a great time. Logan seems, you enjoyed it. A lot of folks out there, I know you enjoy it. I've seen some posts and stuff for people that go through the effort of sharing their things. This one just, yeah, just never, it didn't, the DS, the one on handheld didn't really do it for me either. Back in the day, it was better, but for me, but just, this has never been a franchise that I've been like super in love with. So.

Speaker 2:
[90:46] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still playing it a bit. And my sister was actually over last weekend and helped make a bunch of awesome Zelda me's. We made this Ghirahim from Skyward Sword, who is incredible. I don't have a picture because I didn't go through the multi-step legal process to show it to you. But it's there's some really, really fun Zelda me's living on my island now. Yeah. And I just want to see more fun creations. I'm sure the Tomodachi Life subreddit has good stuff. But just what the algorithm is feeding me from this is just like, wow, friendly character says shocking, X rated thing. And it's just, yeah, I think it's disappointing that that's what much of the online conversation has become and almost like people are just trying to get likes from the shock value of this. And yeah, I much prefer it when it's smaller. Like you're saying, Brian, just share it with your friends and family. I think that's what this game is is getting really good at. Well, we should run. That is another episode of Nintendo Voice Chat in the books. We're here every Friday with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on Spotify or the IGN Games channel on YouTube. Next week, I already teased it earlier. We're ranking every Yoshi game with Tom Marks. So come on back. Thank you so much, Seth, Brian and Jada. Thank you to Tayo for working behind the scenes and thank you so much for listening. But for now, that's all the time I've got. I got to get back to playing Kid Icarus Uprising on my Nintendo 3DS. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more Nintendo Voice Chat, the only place you can get the thing.