When the 3DS was officially revealed at E3, the system was showing a lot of promise. At Nintendo’s press conference, we heard a lot of third party games that were coming the platform such as Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D, Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle, Kingdom Hearts 3D, Saints Row: Drive By, Resident Evil: Revelations, and a some other (in my opinion) less noteworthy games. Kid Icarus: Uprising surprised everyone when it was shown, and Nintendogs + Cats received a warm reception from the audience. After the show, the flood gates opened with titles Nintendo was publishing: Steel Diver, Pilotwings Resort, Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Animal Crossing, and Paper Mario 3D. The future looked extremely bright for the 3DS – there was no way this thing wasn’t going to be a hit.
Launch games
As time went by, though, we started to learn that third parties weren’t going to have their heavy-hitters ready for launch, or even the “launch window”. Nintendo was staying quiet on release dates for their games as well. When the launch titles were revealed for all territories, it was… underwhelming. I will be focusing on the North American launch. From Nintendo we got Pilotwings Resort, Steel Diver, and Nintendogs + Cats. Pilotwings was looking really nice before we learned how small of a game it was, Steel Diver was a bit disappointing (again from a value standpoint), and Nintendogs + Cats was never going to make the hardcore gamers excited, but it doesn’t seem as though the casual crowd went wild over it ever (compared to the first game, at least). Most notably, there isn’t a Mario or Zelda game in sight. Even the Nintendo DS, which had an underwhelming launch as well, at least got Super Mario 64 DS.
