My Experience with the Nintendo 3DS

Posted on Feb 18, 2025, by sirkorgo

Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

The DS family lineup is probably the BEST thing to happen in the 21st century. And sadly, now that it’s been officially discontinued with the closure of Nintendo Network (R.I.P) I think it’d be cool to tell my experience with the 3DS.

The nintendo 3DS was probably one of nintendo’s best consoles at least in my opinion. and sadly, now that it’s been officially discontinued with the eshop shutdown and nintendo network shutdown rest in piece, i think it’d be pretty cool if i told my story with the 3DS

My First Nintendo 3DS

I got my 3DS somewhat late into its lifespan from a thrift store. It was a launch model cyan 3DS. I remember the first day I got it, I took the console and the stylus into my grandparent’s patio.

Now, the patio at their house has these planks with holes in between each plank that led to the crawlspace. Small enough to fit a stylus through. Do you see where I’m going with this? Standing in the patio, I somehow lost my grip on my stylus, and it fell through into the foundation. I. Was. Devastated.

You’re probably thinking, just get a new stylus! It’s not that hard… For whatever reason my brain didn’t think of that for another 2 years.

The Games

I don’t remember what games I had on that 3DS, but I distinctly remember playing LEGO: Pirates Of the Caribbean. I couldn’t get past the first part though because the game kept crashing. I remember my 3DS installing the Tomodachi Life demo after I reset it and removed the previous owner’s data.

The Nintendo 3DS Sound app was a game of itself. The horrendous sounds I recorded on that thing probably broke the microphone. Looking back at them, I’m not sure how I even MADE some of them.

But, my experience didn’t last long with my beloved 3DS. I somehow lost the charger for that console. This charger makes a comeback though, so keep it in mind.

3 Years Later

It’s now 2018, and I find my 3DS in my closet. And it finally came to me that I should buy a new charger and stylus for it! It only took 3 years.

So, after an Amazon shopping trip, I got my 3DS back from the dead, and I wondered, what should I play? I looked at the barren home screen and saw the demo I once played in 2015.

That game was Tomodachi Life. Sadly, I lost the SD card that had my 3DS memories, so I started over in the full version of Tomodachi Life. I played Tomodachi Life for a really long time grinding it to its brim. I was browsing the Games at a Good Price section, because i’m a cheapskate, and I saw Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer. This $20 game was somehow the best game I’ve ever played.

I LOVED designing the houses for the Villagers with wacky requests, and it has very special place in my heart right next to Tomodachi Life.

I also remember I would shake the HELL out of my 3DS so I could get enough play coins in the Streetpass Plaza, I never got any streetpasses sadly, until I homebrewed my 3DS.

Homebrew Launcher

In around 2020, I found out about 3ds homebrew. If you don’t what that is, it’s basically modding your 3DS to do basically whatever you wanted. This opened me up to all these cool community projects, even something called Reverse! Reverse was a project that would revive the Miiverse service which was social media for Nintendo consoles. Miiverse was something I never experienced, as I couldn’t figure out how I could make a Nintendo Network ID. But with homebrew, I could. I loved setting custom themes on my 3DS and dumping my Virtual Console and DS games to play on my devices.

Shopping Grind

At first, getting things for my 3DS were rare, but My Nintendo would keep me busy, as there were exclusive items I could get using platinum points. I would finish every single quest there was so I could a theme or two, but there was also Flipnote Studio. Flipnote was pretty fun to make edgy animations, but then later down the line, I fortunately got more games.

Sadly, Nintendo announced that The 3DS eShop was closing down, and I didn’t want to be stuck with the few games I owned, since physical games would get much more expensive.

I got a lot of games. Just to name a few games, I got: Animal Crossing New Leaf, Mario Maker, Rhythm Heaven: Megamix, Nintendogs+ cats and a lot, and I mean a lot of virtual console games.

What I couldn’t get, however were the new 3ds exclusive games. So, for my birthday, I got my current New 2DS XL. I remember the first thing I did was get Earthbound and Super Mario Land.

Random Reunions?!?!

Remember when I dropped my 3DS Stylus I dropped? It made a comeback in 2023 because of my brother.

I told my brother about the stylus, and for whatever reason, he thought it would be a good idea to get the stylus that was in the crawl space. To be honest, I thought it was buried in the sand in the ground like a fossil.

My brother got it out of the crawl space and this stylus was rusted, and I mean really rusted. The stylus somehow shrunk and no longer fit in the stylus holder on the 3DS.

The charger, also made a comeback in the weirdest way. My cousins were moving out and needed to throw out stuff they didn’t need. They asked me if I wanted to take anything, and among the piles of wires I found the 3DS charger that I lost many years ago. And I don’t have a recollection of taking the 3DS to my cousin’s house and they never owned a 3DS themselves.

The 3DS was a really big part of my childhood, from me losing it for the first 2 years of me owning it, and then it becoming one of my most favorite consoles. Personally, i thought that my history with it was pretty interesting.

That’s all from me! See ya. -sirkorgo

This post was imported from my YouTube Video, “My Experience with the Nintendo 3DS”