Get these Nintendo 3DS games before you can't: DSiWare, Pt. 3

Even more DSiWare titles to grab before March 27, 2023.

Nintendo announced that, as of the end of March 2023, they will be shutting down the digital storefronts of their last generation handheld and home console, the 3DS and Wii U. And without plans to make the games on those shops available elsewhere. This means a massive chunk of video game history will be closed off to the rest of us; before that can happen, let’s figure out what you should seek out and add to your system memory on those platforms, via a series of posts on the subject.

As of March 27, 2023, you will no longer be able to make new purchases on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. That’s a shame for a number of reasons, from both a short- and long-term view, but in the [counts] month to go, you’ve still got time to grab what you want to from the store. For the third and final time, let’s focus on DSiWare releases.

DSiWare was the handheld cousin of Nintendo’s WiiWare service, when downloadable titles on consoles and handhelds were still relatively recent affairs, and the desire to brand them existed. Nintendo had the -Ware appendage, Microsoft had Xbox Live Arcade, Sony had Playstation Minis. It was a different time. You couldn’t get DSiWare games on a standard Nintendo DS or DS Lite system: you needed the mid-generation DSi for those. That iteration of the DS system dropped the Game Boy Advance backwards compatability, but added in a digital storefront. And while Nintendo did a pretty poor job of marketing the games it released on the service, be those their own developed and published titles or third-party ones, there were still some real gems on that shop.

And as short-lived as the whole endeavor was, it has lived on through the Nintendo 3DS eShop, and will continue to do so until Q1 of 2023 is at its end. There is only one real flaw with the DSiWare games being available on the 3DS, but it’s one worth noting as you consider what to grab while you still can: unlike the rest of the digital games available on the 3DS, DSiWare titles cannot run off of a micro SD card, which means you need to use the 3DS’ limited internal storage for them. You can store DSiWare titles on your micro SD just fine, but you’ll need to swap around which ones are installed and which ones are stored in order to actually play them and that’s especially worth mentioning given that, at some point, you presumably will not be able to access the games you’ve previously purchased.

Link ‘n’ Launch

A pretty active puzzle game whose difficulty spikes in a hurry, and forces you to really think about what it is you’re about to do before you do it. You have two different countdowns to worry about: a timer, and the amount of fuel that your rocket ship has to traverse (the puzzle) space. There are a series of tiles you must connect to both the ship and to fuel sources: when you’ve completed those connections, your ship sucks up the fuel, and blasts off a distance that depends on both the size and power of your ship as well as how much fuel you acquired. You drag the tiles with the stylus, and they rotate based on how they’re moving: they must move along the edges of other objects, so they’ll flip top to bottom, or left to right, depending on the orientation of both the tile and the object it’s touching. It starts out easy enough to get you into the sense of how it all works, but then that timer never quite seems like it has enough time on it. Which will either make or break the game for you.

You have a number of paths to travel — there are five different lanes — and you reach them by ensuring that the rocket is injected into one of the three engines of the ship. If you want to fly to the left, fill the right tank, the middle, middle tank, right, left. You’re attempting to reach the planet at the end of the stage in order to complete the puzzle, and are unlikely to do so in most stages as the basic form of your ship: you’ll need to upgrade it, which you can do by making sure you’re collecting not just fuel, but also the screws that you find in each mini puzzle to be solved. Three screws equals a ship upgrade, but beware: fly your ship into danger (which you’ll be warned is imminent on an incoming screen before you make a decision about which way to fly next) and you’ll damage the ship and its upgrades.

It’s a fun little game I return to sometimes, even if the tougher bits don’t quite visualize themselves in my head the way they need to in order for me to succeed. Maybe you can see all that you need to see, though, and will have an even better time with this Intelligent Systems puzzler published by Nintendo.

Art Style: Aquia

Another puzzle game from Nintendo, this one part of the skip-developed Art Style series. You’re clearing blocks by matching them, but it’s not a drop down match-three kind of game, or anything like that. Instead, the blocks are contained within a vertically oriented rectangle that stretches across both of the (3)DS’ screens, and you have to insert new blocks in through the side of it. You find where you want to place the two-block piece you have on the exterior of this large rectangle, and press the A button to shove it in from the left or the right, depending on which side you’re on. If it’s on the right, it’ll pass through the object and grab whichever blocks were on the left side, and vice versa if you start on the left. So you can grab blocks from within the larger shape in order to put them where you want them, matching three or more of a given color in order to clear those blocks, which will power the dive of a little guy shown on a meter on the side of the screen.

You have to clear blocks fast enough for the diver to make it to their destination at the bottom of the touch screen; if you move too slowly, a little red icon will begin to catch up to the diver, and you won’t be able to see all of the blocks any longer. Which makes matching them a guessing game instead of a strategic one, and things become much more difficult for you.

There are different shapes for you to choose from in the Timed Dive mode: a two-block vertical rectangle, a two-block horizontal rectangle, and a four-block square. Obviously, the shape you choose will completely change the way in which you have to strategize moving blocks around to where you want them to be, which gives the game varying difficulties that stretch your thinking, and plenty of ways to experience Aquia. Here’s an extended look at how the gameplay works:

There’s also a Free Dive mode, and an Aquarium if you just want to watch stuff swim around while calming music that fits an underwater diving vibe plays.

G.G. Hidden Ninja Kagemaru

The G.G. Series can be real hit or miss, but Hidden Ninja Kagemaru is a fun one. They’re meant to be bite-sized games that hone in on a single concept and execute it for a short time at a low cost: Hidden Ninja Kagemaru has you playing an old-school style single-screen platformer as a ninja whose goal is to not be seen by the various enemies patrolling a level as you attempt to collect the hidden secrets — green scrolls — scattered across it.

It’s simple, and you don’t fight so much as throw down some caltrops to make an enemy that’s seen you or is in a precarious position for your secrecy and speed slip, but know that any kind of attack like this will infuriate the enemy, and they’ll be intent on catching up to you: instead of just patrolling left and right, they’ll turn red in the face with steam coming out of their head, and give chase. Which will include jumping to other platforms. So don’t just toss your caltrops or your bombs (both of which have a limited stock per stage) wherever in the hopes they’ll eventually catch a foe napping. It’ll cause trouble for you later. You’re probably better off using your other abilities — a… sheet? that lets you hide behind it and blends into the wall so enemies pass by, and another limited-use item that lets you see your foes’ line of sight. You’ll want to use all of them, just don’t become overly reliant on the offensive bits, especially since they stun and infuriate.

You get a score bonus for the time it takes you, as well as for remaining undetected. You have three hearts, and every time you’re caught, you lose one: whenever you’re caught, the secrets you’ve found in the level to that point are removed, and you won’t get that health back at the start of a new level. It’s better to think of them as lives than health, really. You just kind of keep going until you can’t, and attempt to beat your previous scores. A real throwback, that.

Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon

If you like pinball video games, you’ll like Pinball Pulse. It doesn’t do anything particularly spectacular, but the physics are notably good, so everything reacts and acts how you believe it should if you’re used to real pinball tables. The controls are also simple, and while there’s no TATE option given this is the DSi/3DS, the fact you have two screens worth of pinball table real estate does keep it from ever feeling cramped.

It’s also tough to talk about the game without mentioning the visuals, which are honestly surprisingly detailed for a DSiWare release. It’s not that DSiWare games look bad or anything, but this was back when digital releases tended to be real small, so the level of detail that is put into Pinball Pulse’s graphics is notable in and of itself. Especially since, file-size-wise, Pinball Pulse isn’t particularly large: it comes in at 80 blocks (the 3DS file size measurement) which is on the bigger side for a DSiWare game, sure, but considerably smaller than something like Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (117 blocks) or X-Scape’s 126 blocks. (For comparison on size here, so you understand just how small DSiWare games are: 3DS titles Fire Emblem: Awakening is 8,577 blocks while Shin Megami Tensei IV comes in at 14,334 blocks, and Game Boy title Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (available through the Virtual Console) takes up 36 blocks. So yes, it’s surprising that Pinball Pulse looks as good as it does, both static and in motion.

The concession that made this work is that there’s just the one song as you play. You’ll probably tire of it, but on the other hand, hey look at how nice that pinball looks.

Rayman

Handheld ports of the first Rayman game are notoriously a mixed bag for one reason or another — the Game Boy Color version had to cut content that you’ll definitely miss if you’re familiar with the original console editions of the game, and the Game Boy Advance edition has reworked (for the worse) music in order to fit on a cartridge, and the visuals have also taken a hit since the game was ported to a system that did not launch with a backlight for its screen: the contrast and brightness were cranked up, which caused quality to drop. The game also has some bugs that are very annoying for a platformer as focused on extremely precise movement like Rayman.

The DSiWare version, of all things, is the best of this bunch, as less was lost from the console versions in terms of quality: the camera is a bit worse, since the sprites retained their large size but the DSi’s screen resolution is smaller and more cramped, but Rayman was already a difficult platformer that expected a perfect performance, so you should already be in the right frame of mind to adjust for the new wave of leaps of faith you need to take. You also get a map now on the lower screen, which is not a terrible thing for a game so focused on hidden or out of the way paths and secrets.

There is no shortage of Rayman ports out there, but if you want an inexpensive handheld one, the DSiWare version is the way to go, not Rayman Advance on the Wii U’s Virtual Console or the GBC Rayman on the 3DS’ own VC. The DSiWare version still isn’t quite to the level of the Playstation or Saturn console editions from back in the day, but those aren’t (legally) portable, are they?

Dark Void Zero

Dark Void Zero’s whole deal is funny, because Capcom announced it as an April Fool’s joke and then actually went ahead with it. Dark Void was a Playstation 3/Xbox 360/Windows title that you probably haven’t thought about for years, because there’s not really much to think about: it showed up, scored 5/10s all over the place, and disappeared from consciousness. Dark Void Zero, rather than a forgettable big-budget 3D game on HD consoles, is an 8-bit side-scroller meant to evoke exploratory platform games from the 80s like Metroid.

Capcom promoted the game as if it were a long-lost title in their vault that had gone unreleased until right now to keep up the whole joke thing, but it’s actually far more enjoyable than the game it’s a spin-off from. It legitimately feels like an NES title, and not just because the game make you blow into the system’s mic to start it up as if you’re blowing on an NES cartridge, which Capcom certainly made plenty of in their day. It received high praise from basically every outlet that bothered to cover it! I mentioned that Dark Void scored in 5/10s from everywhere: it ended up with a 59/100 at Metacritic in aggregate, while its 8-bit cousin with the comparatively tiny install base capable of playing it scored an 84.

Forget Dark Void, which you can find used all over the place I’m sure, and grab Dark Void Zero while you can. It doesn’t get nearly the attention of Capcom’s return to making 8-bit Mega Man games, but it’s worth your time all the same. Which is maybe the only thing involving Jimmy Fallon in some capacity that I’ve ever said that about.

At least this one isn’t being lost to the abyss, since it has mobile and PC releases, but still. The DSiWare version was the original, and it’s about to disappear.

Art Style: Digidrive

Another Art Style series game, but this one developed by Q Games (X-Scape, Pixeljunk, Star Fox 64 3D) rather than skip. It’s one of the Art Style games that had a Bit Generations release on the Game Boy Advance and then made its way into a new form for Nintendo’s next generation of hardware. It’s basically a game where you control the flow of traffic. Here, just look:

I hadn’t covered Digidrive to this point in part because it’s pretty what you see is what you get: direct the traffic so everything goes where it’s supposed to. You can play in an Endless mode or against someone, and the music is, as you can tell from the video if you bothered to watch it, going to be enjoyable to listen to while you try to make everything go where it’s supposed to at this intersection. (Outside of North America, the game is actually known as Intersect. There’s a reason for that!)

Trajectile

Another Q Games title, though, not an Art Style one, but it does similarly require a look to see what’s happening:

It’s sort of like a cross between Breakout and Bust-a-Move, and it’s called Trajectile because it’s all about trajectory. You have a limited number of turns to strike all the bits you’re supposed to strike, and you have multiple firing options to choose from to get there: as you see in the trailer, sometimes one shot is fired off, sometimes it’s two, sometimes three concurrent ones following parallel paths — at least, parallel until they start to bounce off of walls and blocks. The fewer turns it takes you to accomplish your goal, the better.

Mentioning all of these Art Style and Art Style-adjacent games makes me miss that series, and the version of Nintendo that spent a lot of time either developing small games themselves or getting studios like Q Games and skip to do it for them. I’d say “at least we still have the ones we got,” but you can’t buy WiiWare titles as of 2019, and DSiWare are about to be locked away, too. Sigh.

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Previous entries in Get these Nintendo 3DS games before you can’t:

Digital Exclusives, Pt. 1

Digital Exclusives, Pt. 2

3D Classics

DSiWare, Pt. 1

DSiWare, Pt. 2

Virtual Console, Pt. 1

Virtual Console, Pt. 2

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