Nintendo is making it clear that the Wii U and 3DS gaming platforms are coming to the end of their supported life. As with the Wii before them, they are turning down services and trying to make it clear that the future, as far as their platform exclusive titles are concerned, is on the Switch.
This past week it was announced that the Nintendo was set to turn off Virtual Console support as of March 2023, after which no new purchases or fresh downloads would be allowed. This set off some wailing and gnashing of teeth, but if history is any sort of lesson, this was inevitable. Even Sony, which supports their hardware long after it has been supplanted by newer models, eventually ends that support… though push back got them to extend support for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita stores after they initially announced those were to be turned off last year. But that is merely a stay of the inevitable execution. The PlayStation 3 launched in 2006.
Anyway, in order to soften the blow or to turn the pending demise of the platform into a moment of nostalgia, Nintendo has put up a page that allows you to explore your Nintendo 3DS and Wii U memories.
I saw that Aywren had posted about her memories, so I went to check out when the site had to say about my own play time.
Of course, I never had a Wii U, so that part of the report was not much use to me, but I did have a Nintendo 3DS XL. In fact, I had… have… still have sitting on my desk, still charging… a pair of them, including the final revision of the line, the 2DS XL.
I’m still a tad bitter about that, having bought and moved onto the unit at just about the exact moment that Gamefreak declared that there would be no more core Pokemon RPG titles on the platform.
Why would that irk me? Well, I think the play time report they provided illustrates that.
The top three on the list are Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Y, and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.
Those three titles alone add up to 440 of the 518 hours of play time I recorded on the console.
Other titles that they show beyond the top three include:
- Pokemon Omega Ruby
- Pokemon Ultra Moon
- Pokemon Blue
- Pokemon Silver
- Pokemon Bank
- Pokemon Sun & Moon Special Demo
- Poke Transporter
Given that it takes 30 or so hours to play through the main story of a Pokemon game, there is enough time left unaccounted for to have played a couple of those titles through. I know I played through Pokemon Blue for the 20th anniversary of the series, there being a blog post about it.
Pretty much the only non-Pokemon apps on the list were YouTube, Netflix, StreetPass Mii Plaza, and Mario Kart 7. I doubt I spent much time with any of them on the 3DS. I certainly only tried Netflix and YouTube to see what watching video was like on the unit. It was no substitute for an iPad… or even the average smart phone.
So that is my time spent on the Nintendo 3DS. That might have been past my peak of Pokemon play times… I put 243 hours alone on Pokemon SoulSilver on the old cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite… but it was still an era that saw a decent amount of play time.
The Switch Lite I now own hasn’t seen anywhere close to that much play time, but the platform is still young.