Obviously piracy is a bit of a bone of contention when it comes to gaming. There’s cases to be made about preservation, I don’t think people without means should be locked out of the hobby either. My main rule is don’t steal from the indies and I usually buy everything first party until I can’t… with that being said, Nintendo shut down the eshop for the 3ds in March 2023 meaning you can’t buy new games or download the free stuff anymore. Buying games second hand isn’t going to get much money to the creators either, so basically, when all these things are true, I’d say it’s fine to hack your machine.

It’s crazy how easy it is to hack the 3ds era machines. I did both my “new 3ds” and 2ds in no time at all and can now download all those old cartridges I bought, direct to the system, meaning no more cart switching. There’s even an app that acts as a completely free, text based eshop! The most nuts thing is I could install this Virtual Boy emulator with a QR code using the 3ds camera! Unscrewing the backplate to take the micro sd out of the new 3ds is the only ball ache in this entire process. Definitely get all your files right before you start this and DEFINITELY go as big as you can for storage or you’ll be undoing those tiny little screws way more times than you’d ever want to. I’m pretty happy to never look at that micro sd ever again.

This is it! I spent years of wondering if I’d ever get to play on these games and, to be honest, I think I spent about20 minutes farting around with it and then haven’t really gone back since!?

V-Tetris

I’d say Tetris is one of my favourite games of all time, it’s endlessly replayable, there’s so many great versions out there and have you ever watched a professional Tetris player? This version is sluggish, convoluted and kind of frustrating. You’re clearing lines in a cube now but don’t have much control over the cube to see where you’re actually dropping your shapes and it never stays still. A bit of a let down really. Turned it off quite quickly.

2mins - bad UX

Jack Bros I wanted to see what all the fuss was about as I had a vague memory of people really liking this one and it’s ,made by Atlus (known for being good). It was just OK. The 3d effect is quite cool and I love the overall sprite work but it’s probably quite telling that the most impressive part, for me, was that they recognised that there are three JACK characters out there that work together thematically: Jack Frost, Jack Lantern and Jack Skelton… who’s basically Jack the ripper (update: he was actually called Jack ripper in the Japanese version). That’s Jack Bros. You collect the keys then find the exit, there’s boss battles… I’ve moved way beyond this type of game

4mins - cool visuals, archaic gameplay

WarioLand - !!The main event!!

Warioland/ Mario Land 3 was probably my favourite game on the original gameboy when I was a kid, and Warioland 4 was the very best game on the gameboy advance, surely this HAD to be good? …it’s OK. The original Warioland had an overworld map, secret exits, secret levels, Virtual Boy Warioland has completely linear progression. It’s interesting to see the 3d effect in action and i do like some of the pre-rendered sprites ( donkey kong country style), but it doesn’t need to be 3d. I’m glad to be able to finally play it but I don’t think I could justify using my limited game time on completing it.

10mins - Nostalgic but too basic… might chip away it at on the toilet.

Side note: Each game starts with the option to set a timer for 30 minutes of play because of the headache thing, which is kind of nuts that the recommendation is hard baked into the games.

Are some things better left in the past?

Virtual boy failed, countless people have made videos on how lame it is, the writing was pretty much on the wall so I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess I’d hoped they’d be a bit more fun now you could avoid migraines and eye strain from the Virtual Boy displays. Really, it’s just just a bunch of meh launch games made harsher by the amount that game design has evolved since then. I’m glad I finally got to try some of them (couldn’t be arsed with the others, I might get round to it some time), but I guess I’m not that into the simplicity of retro gaming anymore. Got too many cutting edge gamer things to do.