Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, your host, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. In addition, we have our second ever guest. Joe, would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, yes, I’m Joe Skrebels. I am executive news editor at IGN, but more importantly, I used to be Matthew’s underling on Official Nintendo Magazine. Well, And what an underling. Yes, I mean, what juicy content that we can finally hear a perspective on Matthew from someone who worked for him. Or the dunkings can commence. I think, yeah, unfortunately, I did somehow come out of our relationship thinking Matthew was amazing. And unfortunately, I’ve been trying to think of like, really, you know, like, like fun, mean things to say. And actually it’s mostly like, oh yeah, kind of shaped my career. Even Catherine wasn’t that complimentary when she’s on the podcast. And she’s married to me. Oh, so Joe, do you want to talk a little bit about your background in games media and how you came to be, you know, this big IGN bod? I don’t know why I said that. I mean, that is, I mean, if we’re gonna go into magazine stuff early, big magazine bod is very magazine language. So yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I guess I kind of had an odd route in. Like I read a lot of games magazines when I was a kid, but I never, I never obsessed over one. I was very much like a covers person. I would always just go into Sainsbury’s or whatever and choose whatever cover looked the best. So I’m, I’m that, you know, hanging voter that everyone’s looking to grab in the magazine world. And then I sort of fell off it for a while, particularly when I was at uni and I started chasing, like I wanted to be a music journalist or work in music in some regard, apart from playing music, couldn’t do that. So just anything else. And I’d spent like a year after uni sort of vaguely chasing that and doing like a radio show and like writing a blog and all that stuff. And then quite quickly realized that everyone I met in that industry was absolutely miserable. I just hated it. And at the same time, I’d really gotten into games podcasts and ended up hearing that you could like write community pieces for Destructoid that they would then put, if it was good enough, they would put it on the actual site as an article and that I did something about Halo’s multiplayer that got put on there. And then one day I just decided to DM John Hicks from Official Xbox Magazine. I don’t remember the thought process for this at all, but just went, well, if I just ask him if I can go to their office, maybe he’ll say yes. And he did. It was really weird. So I kind of just said, hey, do you want me to work for you for a week for free? I wrote this on Destructoid and he said, yeah. So I came in and got invited back for a second week. And then Steve Hoganty of Official Nintendo Magazine at the time left and recommended that I go for the open position and then Matthew and Chandra hired me. So that’s how I got in, it was quite odd. Yeah, the funny thing was, I remember that interview process. Going in, John Hicks sent me and Chandra an email and was like, oh, I think you’re going to be interviewing this guy, Joe Skrebels. He’s really, really good. He should be the guy. And I remember going into interviews thinking like, no way, like we’re not going to just do what John Hicks tells us to do. No, you know, we don’t want, you know, John Hicks leftovers. And then, yeah, it was just so obvious when we did the interviews. It was like, oh, of course this guy, you know, like, so you managed to overcome like my weird childish, like we’re going to hire our own staff right here. Yeah, so, and then, yeah, I kind of, I spent, well, I got, I rode O&M into the ground and then RIP. Then went to Official Xbox Magazine for a while. Then Future decided to move to Bath entirely and, or, you know, mostly, and I did not make that move. And then I sort of muddled my way into IGN in the end, is the long story short. Oh, that’s a beautiful tale of one man’s triumph over… Over the music industry. Yeah. So what was working with Matthew like, Joe, and how did you find sort of working on O&M generally? What was that process like to you as a kind of relatively new writer? So, there’s been a couple of… I’ve listened to a lot of this podcast. Well, I’ve listened to all of this podcast. And the interesting stuff that really sticks out to me is, A, I’m a lot more fond of O&M than Matthew clearly is. Oh! No, not in that you’re… As in, I think you had the… A, you had the brunt of the stress. There was a surrounding problem with Nintendo stuff at that time because it was… I came in almost at the perfect worst time for Nintendo writing, as in, like, during the kind of… the midpoint of 3DS where it was getting quite good, but then also the Wii U. But the other thing that really stuck out to me was, Sam, you saying that you were the guy that wanted to play Warhawk on your early magazines, and I was O&M’s version of that when I came in. I wanted to do everything on O&M. And so the kind of the oddness of that situation, and like particularly the emptiness of the release schedule for a lot of the time made me so excited to do everything I could to fill that magazine, and I just loved trying out new stuff. And so that’s my abiding memory of O&M is just like every day having something different to do and being really excited by the process of like, how do you fill a magazine when Nintendo not only won’t give us anything, but doesn’t have anything. And so but it’s also made me like incredibly fond of the Wii U because I think at one point, I’m not sure if Matthews mentioned this before, but certainly early on our remit on the magazine was, we will cover every single Wii U game because it was possible to do that at that time. Yeah, all 22 of them. Exactly. Unfortunately, they then opened the gates to Indies and got cool games on there. But for a while, we touched every single thing. And so certainly, this is probably kind of obvious and is the same for anyone who works on a single format magazine, but the Wii U is definitely the console where I’ve played the majority of the games that ever came out for that console. And I think that really builds like a, you know, it’s maybe in this case sort of Stockholm Syndrome-y, but, you know, I certainly have like a real love for the weirdness of that machine and a very almost certainly rose-tinted view of what it was. But yeah, it was just such a… I found working on O&M such an amazing education in all that stuff as a new writer. Yeah, it was a fascinating time. Yeah, I think I have discovered from doing this podcast that I have a similar affection for the PS3, a console that I know is objectively the worst PlayStation. And yet I did go and buy, not to spoil our next Sammy Robertson trial episode, but I did go and buy Heavenly Sword for £1.98 after we recorded that podcast. Because like you, I have fond memories of this bad hardware because I spent so many hours just looking at it and playing games. So yeah, I totally get it. For a while I convinced myself Miiverse was genuinely the next big thing in social media. That’s how into the Wii U I was. Also, I should say, I totally didn’t answer the part of that that was what was working with Matthew like, which is basically incredibly friendly version of being edited to within an inch of your life all the time. It was great, I don’t want to come on here and A, embarrass Matthew and B, look uncool by being nice all the time, but some of Matthew’s early edits on my stuff completely changed how I write. And I’m not sure how early this was, but one specific thing I remember was writing this wild, unwieldy written in the moments after I finished the game at 2 a.m. review of The Wonderful 101, the Platinum game that came out. And I had so many big thoughts about it. I really wanted to be like, this is important and I’m gonna give you important language about it. And I just remember Matthew’s edit coming back and being like, I think you’ve forgotten to talk about why the game’s fun. And kind of getting this like, you know, the edits reflected that more eloquently than that. But you know, it was like a really interesting sort of funneling of ideas where, you know, you can talk about the big things in games, but I think one thing O&M did really well, and this is primarily because Matthew was heading it out for so long, was I think we talked about why games were fun a lot in a way that I think, particularly at the time, a lot of video game writing wasn’t as interested in. And maybe that’s a symptom of Nintendo as well, but I felt that was a big formative thing for my writing. I remember like editing your stuff because you’ve got such a mega brain and you’re like a wildly creative guy. And like, you’d never get anything which was like obvious or basic. It was always a little bit kind of galaxy brain thinking, which is like, it’s just so fun. Like that stuff’s so fun to work with. It’s also like, it’s the challenge of when you’re given a writer who has like big ideas and such a clear like writing style, the art of like editing that stuff without like treading on that voice or like nuking that voice. It’s a really fun challenge to have. It’s not one you face that often. Like not many people give you those kinds of words to work with. So it’s like a two-way thing, you know, you have to have something kind of interesting to work with in the first place. I do remember that you did point out and I still think about this quite regularly when I write about stuff, that you pointed out that I made the point that almost every single game had a mechanic that was essentially a puzzle game in disguise. And I would say it about everything. I’d just be like, point one mechanic. I was like, if you think about it, right, this is basically a puzzle game, except it’s football. Yeah, you like that kind of stuff. Yeah, I really had to cut back on that. Yeah, Matthew, I feel like you underestimate your sort of valuation as a kind of cult figure in the UK games media. You’re very well regarded. And I wonder if you had a- Oh, thank you very much, Sam. Well, if given a right to reply on Joe’s allegation that you weren’t as into O&M as him, how would you respond? I would say that was me trying to do my job in that part of editing a mag is like basically trying to create the kind of environment I had on InGamer when I joined, which was, you know, I had no idea of like how a mag was doing, what it was doing, what it, you know, I was just there to do my thing and Green had kind of made a space where I could kind of do my thing as a staff writer and not have to worry. I was talking more about the, you talking in retrospect about it on this podcast rather than, my memories of the time are very, you know, jolly. Like there’s very- Yeah, that’s the thing. Like when I read the mag, it’s just packed with stuff and the second I see it on the page, like I can instantly remember the conversations we had and like the dumb shit and taking the photos. We were quite big on silly photo stuff because Future London had like a photo studio in the building and there are only like four magazines that used it. So I don’t know if we were encouraged to use it per se, but if there was ever an excuse to go down to the photo studio and ass around. And I remember there was like a little dressing room next to the photo studio. And for some reason there was a face, a mask of- It was Cesc Fabregas, the Arsenal midfielder. And so like that just ended up in loads of the photos. So there was always lots of weird jokes in the end about this sort of, like someone wearing this footballer mask. Like dumb stuff like that. Like when I see those pictures, I’m like, oh yeah, I remember Joe found that mask and decided he was gonna wear it for the photo shoot. It was like, we got really, this is slightly different, but we got really obsessed with this one guy that played Aladdin in Just Dance, who had this like incredibly smug grin. And so we ended up putting him all over the magazine to the point where I think he’s in, I think he’s in the staff page of The Final Issue where we have a staff bio for everyone who ever wrote for the magazine. I think smug Aladdin’s on there. Yeah, smug Aladdin, yeah. The stuff like that was really good and, you know, yeah, I do have a lot of happy memories. So quite strict, everything, it’s all tinderous, like stressfulness, because a lot of it, often we print it and send it and then there’d be this sudden thought of like, was that too much? Like, did we, should we maybe have done that? Like some of it was quite sort of silly and there was an incident with some like Alternative Christmas Carol lyrics, where I was really worried that one of the Alternative Christmas Carols was implying that we were making fun of how the head of Nintendo in Europe spoke English. Which was not the point. It wasn’t at all, but I just, if you read it in a certain way, it sounded like that’s what we were saying. I was just like, oh no, are we going to get busted? But we didn’t, so it was all fine. No, we got busted for other things that we can’t talk about. Clearly this must weigh heavily on you, though, Matthew, because we became friends long after you worked on O&M, and yet you still told me that story about the Christmas cow or Sandy, head of Nintendo Europe. So clearly you’ve been worrying about this for like seven years now. So Joe, do you want to talk a little bit about IGN and working there and what that’s been like? Yeah, can do. I mean, it’s very different to O&M, I’ll tell you that. It’s, so I worked at Future for the bulk of my career before, well, all of my career before I got to IGN, or at least, you know, my games writing career. And then I joined this. IGN is quite an odd one in as much as the team I joined, the UK team at the time was five strong and is now six strong. So the UK side of IGN specifically is quite magazine-like in that way, or, you know, certainly the magazines that I’ve worked on, like. And so we have that very sort of small team, scrappy approach to stuff. But IGN as a whole is, you know, it’s huge. There’s like a hundred people on the content team. So you have this, it’s quite hard to kind of, when you first get there, get your head around how many different people are there to do how many different things. And I think a good thing about the company as a whole, this is not just me evangelizing my current employer, but they do prize people doing lots of different things. So I’ve done podcasts and videos and documentaries and reviews and previews and all that stuff, despite being in a news role almost the entire time I’ve been there. But it is, you know, unlike magazines where everything kind of falls on you or your, or the people who sit right next to you and everything is a discussion or working out like, how we could possibly make this happen. There’s quite an interesting thing at IGN’s side where it feels like everything kind of will happen and you can make yourself a part of it, if that makes sense. So it’s quite an abstract way of thinking about it. But somewhere, someone is working on the thing you want to work on and it’s just a case of finding them and making sure you’re a part of that. Which sounds like Valve. Yeah, we just, yeah, we wheel our desks across the Atlantic. If enough of you get together, you can make Half-Life 3. Yeah, exactly. But I really, I think the thing that’s kind of been most, you know, apart from that, news is a very different thing online to magazines. So that, you know, that was a change for me. But in terms of the way, I think there’s quite a lot of old magazine people on IGN, particularly now, and particularly in like, executive positions. So we have, we still have some of that, that writing style, that thought about making new weird stuff, as well as, you know, the things IGN is known for, which are big reviews and exclusives and all that stuff. There is always a weird feature going on, or someone testing out a video show that’s trying to be something different. And I think it’s quite easy to, because I certainly did it for years. I think it’s easy to ignore because IGN does its thing. And everyone sees what it does. But there’s so much happening behind the scenes that these little weird bits can squeak out and do their own thing. I think you only need to look at Daniel Kruper and Gavin Murphy and Rory Powers, who set up a Let’s Play show called Prepare to Try. And then that became their career because it just grew and grew and grew as this offshoot of IGN until it became a point where they were like, well, we can just go and do this. And I think that’s kind of the amazing thing that they do support that kind of magazine approach, which I wasn’t necessarily expecting going in. I don’t know if that answers your question of what it’s like to work on IGN, but yeah, it’s good. It’s basically the answer. It’s different, but it’s good. Yeah, in the US, you’ve got John Davison as like the big boss, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah, a lot of very well-respected figure and a lot of magazine DNA from that side, for sure. And the interesting thing being the editor-in-chief in the UK, Alex Simmons, and John, both started on magazines when they were about 18 back in the day, and now they’re both kind of doing it in a different way all the way, you know, now, which is amazing, you know? Yeah, it’s cool as well that, like you say, you’re not just locked into doing news. Like, if I want to find your Nintendo writing on IGN, I can, you know? That’s… Yeah. Yeah, it’s cool to be… And that’s partly because I just badger people until they let me do it, but, you know, it’s… It is very nice. And I have to say, the Nintendo writing in particular is the stuff… That’s when I really kind of feel like I’m doing the old… The stuff from the old days, to a certain extent. It’s… There’s something about… I think maybe we get kind of caught up in a… There’s almost something culty about it sometimes, but there’s… There is something about writing about Nintendo games and how they force you to write because they don’t have the sort of trappings of… Or most of them don’t have the trappings of, like, Hollywood cinema or, you know, the things that there is established criticism for that you can ape. And I think Nintendo games really force you to think about how you write much more interestingly. So I love those moments where I get to, you know, take on a Mario game or a Zelda. You know, even just reviewing Zelda DLC for Breath of the Wild was amazing because, like, how do you write about Zelda DLC? Like, you know, it doesn’t exist. So, you know, there’s fascinating ways in there. It’s great. Yeah, absolutely. The art of writing about Nintendo is something we talked about in our Mario episode. And, yeah, as someone who’s never had to do it, it’s really interesting to hear what the kind of challenges of that are like. I mean, it sounds like a good way in is to go, it’s like a puzzle game. Yes, yes. But it’s a light gun shooter, you know? That is, you know, it’s an old standard, but it will work. Awesome. So I forgot to say what this episode is actually about, which is the best Nintendo 3DS games. And that’s why we brought you on, Joe. I know the 3DS pretty well, but you and Matthew are obviously experts. So in this episode, we’re going to count down the top 10 best 3DS games, rather than what we normally do where we alternate. Doing that with three people, we think is a little bit messy. So we’ve actually just assembled a kind of a master list that aggregates our votes on the different games. And before we get to the list, we’re going to talk a bit about the 3DS itself, and also some of the kind of weirder games or more interesting games that didn’t make our list. So we’ll take a short break. Thank you for introducing yourself, Joe, and then we’ll get into the 3DS. Welcome back to the podcast. In this section, we’re gonna talk about the Nintendo 3DS, which released in Europe on March 25th, 2011. So it’s coming up to the 10 year anniversary, and will almost be the 10 year anniversary by the time you’re listening to this. So before we get to our list of the top 10 best 3DS games, we’re gonna talk a bit about the 3DS generally, how it performs, what its place in the gaming landscape was, and then touch upon some of the more interesting games that happened. Also, Joe and Matthew can talk about what it was like to kind of cover the 3DS from a press perspective. So when the 3DS launched, it was a bit of a slow start at right. It got an early price cut because sales went fantastic. It didn’t launch with amazing games, though great games did come within its first year. And over time, it found its feet. So for the two of you, what did you think the environment was that the 3DS was launching into, and how did it differ from when the DS launched years earlier? So I wasn’t on Mags when the DS launched, and I think that the DS was such a sort of surprise mega-smash. I don’t think anyone could have necessarily have predicted that. And in fact, it didn’t really feel like it massively took off until you got the DS Lite, which is where it really kind of came alive. I remember at the time thinking, there was definitely a sense that something new had to come along, because it felt like they were really stretching out the DS, because we’d had the DSi, which was the last form of it, which added the weird little camera and some kind of eShop stuff. There was a sense of kind of beginning to get a little bit bored. I don’t think the software had necessarily dried up. It’s not really how I remember it. It wasn’t like, oh god, we’re desperate for something to come along. The thing about the 3DS is it’s quite hard to remember the exact moment, just because when they announced it, it was so mad, and the idea of it was so kind of crazy. The whole 3D screen thing. That was just such a massive, exciting story that it instantly became the story. So what was happening before gets washed away a bit. Yeah, I joined O&M just over a year and two. So maybe approaching a year and a half after the 3DS came out, I think. And so I kind of missed the really bad part for it, and I don’t really have a kind of a vibe for what it was like coming in. I think the really interesting thing about the 3DS is the DS was so… And you kind of touched on this, Matthew. The DS was so huge and such a sort of ubiquitous device that the 3DS almost felt like there was something kind of… I don’t think arrogance is the right word, but there’s something about it where it’s like they almost didn’t need to release something like this, and yet the idea was so strange that they kind of… It’s very Nintendo-y. It’s very odd to think that this is the thing you need to do next with that idea. In the same… I guess, you know, it’s reflected in Wii to Wii U. There’s something about the choices made here that I think is… In retrospect, like, you can’t really trace the line they were following there for me. And I think that was reflected when it launched, you know, it didn’t necessarily find the audience that it needed to. And I think that also ties into what I think the 3DS did more interestingly as time went on, which is it forced developers and Nintendo to sort of reckon with it a bit and do interesting things with it that they weren’t doing elsewhere. Like a lot of the 3DS library, and we’ll get on to it, is quite singular. You know, there’s a lot of games that came out just for 3DS and never carried on on a different platform later. They found their feet there, they maybe did well there, and then that was kind of it. And yeah, I just I think the 3DS is such a fascinating and I think easy to overlook bit of Nintendo madness that was really exciting to cover. The launch of it, like I thought it was going to be massive just because everyone was so excited, like at preview stage, you know, it makes such a good impact in a five minute demo because of the screen, like it’s such an interesting like gimmick, you know, it’s a bit like when you try VR for the first time, you’re just like, oh, wow, how can this not be the biggest thing ever? And then you remember that not everything kind of has, you know, can sustain that. At launch, it felt a lot more like the DS in terms of software. And 3DS is definitely where you basically see the death of like touch generation Nintendo, the kind of casual Nintendo, the Nintendo, which had basically been built on DS and Wii. And it becomes like the version of what is now doing really well on Switch, I think. Like I would say, you know, especially the a couple of years into 3DS, it’s a much more like hardcore kind of console than the DS was. Like the first party games, particularly. And they’re a big shift away from some of the stuff they were doing first party on Wii. I don’t know, that must have been in the works. Like I think the mistake sometimes is to see that as a reaction, to say like it didn’t launch big, so they changed direction, but that simply couldn’t be true. Like they must have made the decision to change direction. But the fact that it launched with like a Nintendogs and a Pilotwings or whatever, and you know, Nintendogs was one of the big games that made DS. And here, it just had very little impact at all, you know, it was like, oh, this doesn’t work anymore. And on the Mag, that was kind of interesting, because on one hand, we were like, oh dear, why is there no more interest in 3DS? That’s going to affect the magazine negatively. On the other hand, Nintendo started making the kind of stuff which was more like appealing to us personally. So you know, and I think by the time we got to like O&M, actually, we kicked into most of the games on our top 10, I would say, come from that period a couple of years in. There’s very little from like the first year in a bit of 3DS on here. None, in fact. I think it’s, you know, it’s easy to, like, you definitely said it there, you know, there is something of the effect of VR to it as well. And I think that cuts both ways in that the 3D is still, you know, I turned on my 3DS for this, and the 3D is still kind of amazing. The fact that I’ve not seen anyone else try to do the No Glasses 3D is kind of confusing to me because it’s still a magical effect that it can do that to you. It’s really cool. But I think it also has that effect of, you know, anything. I almost went into the Arthur C. Clarke thing about being indistinguishable from magic. Anything that goes that far into techie weirdness, I think, inherently loses some of the mainstream appeal and I think kind of trying to make that sell to a mainstream audience of like, well, you’re going to love this because, you know, it makes your eyes feel weird. I think that is a hard sell. I mean, that was the official slogan. It was, yes. It’s going to make your eyes feel weird. Yeah, but I definitely, I consider it one of the more fascinating Nintendo experiments and their kind of approach to, because like you say, it must have been in the works. The hardcore side of that stuff must have been on the way. They must have made a concerted effort to go, we’re going to make cool, weird stuff for this. And yeah, it turned into, I think certainly by the time I got to O&M, it was really picking up steam and doing some strange things. In terms of the environment it launched into, so I think that 3DS reflects a real moment in time where there was this fascination with 3D post-avatar, and you were starting to see 3D TVs and 3D Blu-rays, and that in itself feels very much like a long time ago at this point. And I think that I agree with you, the 3D effect is very powerful, but I almost forgot that it was part of the console at certain points during its lifespan, because I never really, past a certain point, I never really switched it on. There’s a few first party Nintendo games where I felt like the 3D slider was kind of essential, so Mario 3D Land, which we’ll talk about in a bit. That, that the way the kind of levels were designed in that felt like it was kind of perfect for that tunnel 3D effect that 3DS has. But as Nintendo itself started revising the 3DS to remove the 3D, it did kind of carefully phase it out as a USP. What do you think was the sort of story there? Oh, I mean, I don’t know that I’ve never, they’ve never like gone on record and specifically said like, you know, 3D is a bust or whatever. I mean, there was definitely when they released the 2DS without the 3D, it began, like the conversation began to change a little bit. I remember reading, I think there was an interview with like Aonuma when they were making Link Between Worlds, saying that they tweaked a few things that were maybe more 3D dependent, because basically they couldn’t have anything like that anymore. And you were like, well, this seems like a bit of a bust. I was never a big fan of the 2DS. No, I wasn’t either, but they did. And interestingly, when we first got shown Link Between Worlds, it was at a 2DS sort of reveal as well. So they made a point of linking those two ideas quite overtly. Also the name 2DS is still the worst. Like, what a way to do down your own console. I think it’s one of the worst looking and feeling Nintendo bits of hardware. It looks like an Itchers sketch or something. It’s like a real 80s chunky thing. It’s just so big, the tablet, the fact they removed the hinge on it. I didn’t get it. Also, very much aiming at a younger audience, and yet the thing barely fits in my hands and I’ve got horrible big hands. Like a kid, it’s just going to be sort of halfway up it, unable to reach the triggers as far as I can understand it. It’s a bizarre thing. You’ve got a child with incredibly long, long fingers. Yeah, just like the Pepparami Man. Just sort of a gangly child. That’s who you’re going for. And the maddest thing about it, like being on the mag, that was like a definite moment where I didn’t really like something and there was absolutely no way that could be the line of a fish in Nintendo magazine. I remember Chandra was actually quite into it. I think he had a kid and he was like, yeah, great. So basically Chandra wrote all the stuff about the 2DS saying like, my kid will love it. But I remember thinking like, that’s the kind of thing endgamer would have had a field day with. Just because it looks so weird. And I didn’t like it when they did the massive DS that was like the kind of grandma DS. The XL. The XL, yeah. I was never like particularly into that either. And that was a rare point where I wished I had a bit more leeway to just crack some jokes about it. But that wasn’t really the place of a vision dinner magazine. It’s funny you mentioned Chandra taking on that 2DS stuff because it occurred to me as you were talking about it that I have no memory of writing about that console at all. I think I must never have actually put into words any feelings about the 2DS because, yeah, I agree. It just wasn’t… Did we even have one in the office? I don’t know that we did. I think Chandra may have just taken it. I think we got sent one that became not O&M’s. Classic. Yeah, but they’re messing about with it was interesting. The 3DS in general, the number of different, what do you call them, form factors it had over the time it was a thing. I suppose it still is technically a thing. When you get to the new 3DS and the new 3DS XL, I think you start to see them really sort of taking on and messing with what that thing could be. I really liked the new 3DS. Oh, fantastic. With its one exclusive game. It was a very strange idea again. But the look of it, the feel of it, I really liked its matte. Like the matte finish, they had the SNES buttons on one of them and it was just, it was a lovely thing. That really felt like the moment at which they were embracing those people who were coming in for the hardcore in inverted commas games. And like, we’ll give you this, you know, this thing that’s a throwback, but it’s new and it’s shiny and it’s got this whole, you know, we’re going to pretend to give you more power. Yeah, it was, it was very cool. Like I do like when they start messing around with that. And I wonder whether we’re going to start seeing that with Switch or whether that this was kind of the end of Nintendo really quite regularly changing up what its what its handhelds are. Yeah, so is that where you two come down like this is the best version of the 3DS, the new 3DS. That was the the best version of the console to you two. I think so. Yeah, it’s just very pleasant. Like the original 3DS was like a little hard to hold. Okay, I think it had a few pointy corners, a few pointy bits. It was it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t like the DS fat, but it was it wasn’t quite as sleek as the DS Lite. I think it, you know, it took them a while to kind of find the perfect form. It did also scratch its own screen, which was never great. Like that bottom screen, why they put ridges that touched the top screen never made sense. Not ideal. Yeah, it was like the most varnished piece of like hardware I’ve ever owned though. Like the top screen was so shiny. It was yeah, it was constantly covered in fingerprints. Yeah, and they had the metallic finish, you know, models as well. So it’s just like fingerprints inside and out. It looks like a crime scene. What a mucky little gem. Yeah, it looks like that scene in Seven where they find the hidden message on the wall in fingerprints. That is, if you read Iwatarasu, that’s exactly what they wanted. That’s what they were going for. I want this to have the essence of Seven. Yeah, I want this to be the bit of, I think it was Greed in Seven. So what was it like covering the 3DS on O&M then? You touched a bit on it there, but I suppose as well, Matthew, it would be cool to go a bit more in depth with how you sort of perceived the console on Endgamer, but like, what was the, I guess what was the kind of course of its life over the years? How did the sort of feeling towards the console change? I mean, I’d say one of the weird things about being on a mag is that you are, like, you’re aware of how a console is doing, but you’re also kind of insulated from it because you’re like, well, like, however it’s performing, we still cover it and we’re still kind of enthusiastic about it. So you exist in this little bubble where you’re just kind of having the best time with it, because you’re playing all the games. Like, I remember it being generally like a constant flow of really good stuff. Like, it was very, very well paced. On Endgamer, like, one weird quirk is that the 3DS, because it was region locked, was like instantly killed a lot of our import fun. Like, we bought a Japanese 3DS, but we were doing these import reviews thinking, well, is anyone really going to, is anyone else actually importing a 3DS to buy this? Because on DS, you know, because it was region free, all that import stuff felt a lot more valuable. So that killed some of the fun, like from a technical level as well. I wanted to mention, like, the way you capture from Nintendo handhelds is that Nintendo build like a capture device, which is like, you know, like a debug version of the console. So it’s, you’ve got the console, but then it’s attached to this like massive metal box, which is often like 10 times the size of the console. And you think, what the hell is this thing possibly doing? And then you plug that into the PC and you can capture video and screens off it and whatnot. The 3DS capture unit looks like submarine equipment. It’s absolutely wild. It’s this huge, like, gunmetal grey box with two wires come out that stick into a 3DS that can’t be removed. The 3DS is imprisoned in its capture device, which then in turn links to a PC. The software that you got provided to capture stuff from is, it looks like Mac shareware from the 90s. Like, it was wild. I have no idea who was making it. It did make it feel like you were on the inside of something, but it also felt like you were in the 1980s trying to use a 2000s console. But, like, until you got that machine, you basically couldn’t take screenshots from the console. And remember, that was definitely a problem on Endgamer, because I think it took us about a year to get a 3DS capture device. So, it’s like, we could only use press shots, and there were, like, maybe five shots per game, which is why, like, any preview or review of those games is the same thing over and over again. I think to the point where, like, we actually ended sending one of our 3DSs to, like, this random bloke in America who was, like, offering something, they modded it. He modded the console so he could plug it into a PC. I think he added, like, a, you know, HDMI port to the back of our 3DS. And it was kind of one of those things where you’re like, that just looks so illegal. Like, the DS itself, that sleek design, and it had all this, like, box coming out the bottom of it. It looked like some sort of back alley cyber mod in Cyberpunk or something, you know? It was, like, clearly dodge. I had a fascinating conversation this week with a guy at IGN who was trying to get his… who was trying to get a capturable 3DS. Right. And he is talking to a guy, it may be the guy you’re talking about, who apparently became sort of the god of 3DS capture in the old days, and went into retirement and is now coming out of retirement to make one more 3DS capture device. For one last job. It’s absolutely nuts. I want to write about him. I can’t wait for the film where he’s played by Robert Redford. It’s such a weird niche industry, but it had to exist at some point, that someone was just shoving HDMI’s into the backs of 3DS’s that couldn’t handle it. God bless them. But on our own end it was all above level. Yes. The region lock thing is interesting because that felt very much like a reaction to the proliferation of piracy on the DS. Nintendo were just so wary of that, they were doing everything they could to just lock things down, but I agree with you, it does make for a less interesting console. One of the fun things about being an early DS owner was tracking down a Wendan on PlayAsia or whatever and then figuring out these cool games and not having any barriers to playing them. Yeah, or like the… was it the… I can’t remember if it was like the Ace Attorney’s… like some Japanese games had the English localisation in them as well. You know, things like that, you were like, oh, you just missed out on a whole lot of stuff. Back then they weren’t as good at like international releases either. Like sometimes there would be a big gap for certain things. So the import scene was vital. 3DS was just, I don’t know, it felt like the whole thing was kind of… you were kind of doing as Nintendo said. It was a lot more like, you know, their version of the console kind of locked down. Yeah, for sure. So I suppose then let’s get into the games lineup. 3DS, to me, looking over the library for this episode, I felt like there were a lot of gems, but the library clearly wasn’t as deep as the DS. And it felt like that was partly due to a less in the way of third party support. And I wonder if like the rise of mobile gaming at this time meant that some developers or publishers threw more attention at that. But for the two of you, what did you make of the library of the 3DS overall, looking back? I think you’ve nailed it there for me. I think the 3DS maybe has one of the… has an incredibly strong top 10, 20 games. There’s some genuine all timers in there. But I think, yes, it could never be deep. And I think partly that’s the mobile thing. And I think partly it’s the… I think if you were a developer making a 3DS game, certainly in the first few years, and you weren’t thinking about the 3D element, then you were going to get pilloried for it when it came out, because people would go, well, why is it on the 3DS? But equally, do you want to be a developer making a bespoke 3D mode for your game? So I think it put people in this kind of odd midpoint of, well, should we even bother? Because we’ll have to put in so much extra work to make this a good 3DS game. But I think it also led to, like I said earlier, a lot of developers doing one-offs or weird experiments or strange versions of games on 3DS in a way that makes it maybe not a sort of console full of 10 out of 10s, but certainly a console full of, like, if you’re really into your games and development and weird ideas, there’s so much to dig into there. There’s so many bizarre little things where you could see people kind of getting to make the one thing they always thought maybe they wouldn’t get to, perhaps. Yeah, which I always enjoyed. Yeah, I agree with that. I think a couple of things happened. I think this is the first Nintendo console where, like, the eShop had some, like, genuinely some of the best games on the console were on the eShop, which had happened, like, WiiWare had a little bit, but it was kind of baby steps. I felt like Nintendo kind of got their indie act together a little bit more with this, and then a little bit more with Wii U, and now Switch, it’s obviously sort of flying, and it’s almost like the second place you expect to find indie games after PC. And the other thing is, like, there was just such a step up in, like, first-party quality in certain series just really got their act together, that it almost felt like, you know, there were some games which had been massive on Wii, but critically probably as badly received as that series ever had been. I’m thinking mainly Mario Kart and Animal Crossing, but the Animal Crossing on Wii, not a great Animal Crossing. The Mario Kart, you know, massive, but it isn’t an all-timer, I don’t think. And there was this sense of, like, all or nothing, you know, and we got these first-party versions of, like, older games which were just, you know, all singing, all dancing. They pulled out all the stops. I mean, they single-handedly basically revitalised Fire Emblem as an important series, and it was basically dead up into that. But, you know, Fire Emblem on Wii, there was one, but can anyone name it? You know, it’s… And now it’s absolutely massive. People look forward to a new Fire Emblem, like they’d look forward to a new, you know, maybe not Mario and Zelda, but it’s definitely second-tier Nintendo now. So that was really exciting. I actually, looking over at the library, wonder if… Did 3DS have a 10 out of 10 game, do you think? Because I think it had loads of nines, but I don’t know if there’s an absolute 10 out of 10, like, all-timer in the lineup for me. I… Well, I mean, we’ll get onto it. I do think Fire Emblem has a shout there, and I think, for the right kind of person, Animal Crossing would as well. I think there were a few, but I think it’s those… I do think it’s those sort of, for want of a better term, like B-tier Nintendo games that sort of stepped up on 3DS rather than the old standards that really, you know, really went full all-timer. But I definitely think some of the massive smashes we’re seeing on Switch are built on a foundation of, like, the affection people had for their 3DS versions. You know, I do not think Animal Crossing on Switch is the huge thing it is without New Leaf having been excellent and likewise Fire Emblem. Like, you know, that just wouldn’t have happened. Yeah, absolutely. So there was one other weird thing that I forgot to mention about the 3DS that I think spoke to a little bit of Nintendo’s, I don’t know, I don’t want to say insecurity, but certainly they were trying to be reactive. The second stick you could add to the console. Yeah. This is worth talking about because what a weird add-on that was. Like, it made the console very unsightly and required a battery and was built mostly for Monster Hunter, I believe. Did either of you have one of these? I didn’t get into Monster Hunter and will definitely get onto Monster Hunter until the new 3DS properly. So I think I was playing, so I think I was playing an early version of Monster Hunter 4 on an original 3DS where they they bodged second stick controls without the second stick. And then once the new 3DS came along with its weird extra nub, this strange kind of miniature fairy sized stick that they added to it. That was when I actually realised that the game was amazing. So yeah, I never actually used the proper second stick because it was frankly too bizarre and so obviously doomed as an idea. Just an abomination. Nintendo’s ability to make beautiful things in a stick that means side ugly things is just really second to none. Yeah, that kind of stuff. I think Resident Evil Revelations didn’t use it for twin stick control as well. But whatever it was used in, I don’t think I owned one. I think we had one in the office. Well, we did have one in the office. But yeah, just terrible. Yeah, absolutely. So from here then we’ll fire through a bunch of interesting games that didn’t make our top 10. There might be, for the two of you by the way, I might throw in a couple more in here that I think are worth discussing even if they’re not necessarily on our list right now just so we cover. Try and be as comprehensive as possible. But Matthew, why don’t you kick us off with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars and why this was interesting. Yeah, so this is a weird one. This is actually like a Julian Gollop, so Mr X-Con developed a tactical game. It’s not as deep as X-Con, it’s more like the ones he did on GBA, which I think is like Rebel Star, I think is the name of it. Apologies to any people if that’s massively wrong. Just a really, really solid little tactical shooter in the vein of X-Con in terms of moving units around. They were quite fixed characters, had special abilities. This was one of those really weird launch games which we probably paid the least amount of attention to. It was a Ubisoft game. Ubisoft had gone quite heavy at launch. They hadn’t talked about it at all. This is the one that I don’t think we played at any previous events. We didn’t know that this is being made in a genre by someone who’s amazing at that genre. I think literally we were going to stick it in reviews or something and then I remember Kitsy playing it and he was like, God bloody hell, this is great. It’s just seemingly forgotten. This is a classic. Buy it on eBay if you can. I think you’d have a good time with it, like eight out of ten. Yeah, this was one of those ones where I kind of, we talked about it so much that I just went scouring CEXs until I found it and it is a really neat little thing. I, forgive me. Did this come out before the XCOM reboot or afterwards? Because I can’t remember. Before. I can’t, like, because I think if it had come out after the reboot, people would talk about it way more, because XCOM on 3DS would be a thing that sold this game in a really interesting way. Whereas, like you say, it just kind of flew under the radar to a certain extent. Post XCOM, even though he wasn’t involved with it, post the reboot, Julian Gallup suddenly had a lot more heft all of a sudden, because they did all that Phoenix point, which is basically from the maker of that series that you now like, which you wonder if they might have said that about this too, if it had become after. I’ve just looked, it came out the year before. So, almost really unlucky timing, because it could have been the perfect selling point. But that’s like a classic 3DS hidden gem, I’d say. Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, Julian Gallup. I think as well it was generational thing, where XCOM Enemy Unknown came out just as people kind of like were ready to sort of get nostalgic about the older XCOM games. So yeah, missed its mark. But yeah, not very expensive on eBay. I was looking at it quite recently. So, Fluidity Spin Cycle, Matthew. Talk me through this one. Yeah, so this came from Curve. This is actually a sequel to one of the better WiiWare games called Hydroventure, which was like, like Metroid, but you’re a puddle. And you sort of slurped it around, and it was a 2D game, but it was like water physics. So it was about like tilting this water. I guess so. What was the tilty game on? Wasn’t there a tilty game on PSP or Vita where you controlled liquid? Flow. Is it Flow? No, Flow is just that game that’s got water in it. Maybe not. What was the one with the little like space hopper ball characters? Is that the one? That was a tilty game, wasn’t it? Yeah, you just use the shoulder buttons to do that. Yes, it had a kind of similar energy to that, except here you use the gyroscopes and on the Wii you use the remote to tilt it. This was like a slightly more cut down version, so it wasn’t like a big open world thing. It was like contained levels, basically all revolving around the water, gas and ice, the changing states and the different abilities that they gave you. Just really beautifully made, really great little puzzle game. I just really rated this one. It is an eShop game and eShop will get like deleted, I’m sure, at some point. So probably worth getting down sooner rather than later. Such a bad name though. Fluidity Spin Cycle. I mean, what were they thinking? It may have been called Hydroventure Spin Cycle. I can’t remember. It had loads of different names in different places. But Hydroventure, good name. But Fluidity Spin Cycle, decent. Curve actually, they went quite big on DS stuff because they did that and they did Stealth Bastard or whatever it was as well, which was good. Yeah, for sure. The eShop thing is a good point actually. There’s a couple of quite rare Shin Megami Tensei games I’m sort of debating dropping like 30 quid on a piece before they vanish into the abyss forever. So, Matthew, talk us through Project X Zone, a kind of mash-up game featuring lots of different characters from Japanese publishers. Yeah, so this was Capcom, Namco Bandai and Sega getting together to make a sort of a… wasn’t it turn-based RPG? It was approaching… it’s kind of a tactical RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem to a certain extent. There’s a lot about positioning of characters and teaming them up and kind of making, you know, controlling a battlefield to a certain extent. But all the characters were taken from like popular games from those three publishers. And so it was like this mad mash-up of like, you know, what happens if like Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine have to team up with, you know, these two bots no-one remembers from Valkyria Chronicles and whatever RPGs Bandai Namco made. This is such a good game on paper. I do think the cast list kind of drops off pretty fast. You know, there’s a couple of people you’re like, oh, wow, that’s really cool. And then, you know, it’s like Mega Man teaming up with Resident Evil and whatever. And then very quickly, like the bottom two thirds of the list is like quite obscure JRPG characters. You do realise quickly how many more iconic characters Capcom has than Namco or Sega put together. You know, everything I think of is like, oh, yeah, Dante and Mega Man, Capcom and Capcom. Like it’s all, you know, you do have a sense of that, particularly the Namco side. I mean, there’s maybe like, hey, Hachi from Tekken. And then is that it? Like what else were they going to have in there? This game was so weird that I have almost no memory of what happened in it. Like every line in it was so baffling that it immediately left my brain. I just know it existed. It had like, it had quite big like Kingdom Hearts energy. It just went like full in on its own lore as well. Like it was pretty baffling. But it’s an interesting thing. And it always looked great in screenshots in the mag because it just had such weird characters together. Like probably more fun to write about and think about than to probably play. Yeah. But it’s one of those ones which I think people will years from now say, oh, you know, I wish I’d seen that or that was an interesting thing. It certainly won’t be a useless thing to own in, you know, Damo. Yeah. Matthew trying to manipulate the second-hand eBay market yet again. Yeah. What’s it all about? There was a sequel too, right? Did they ever add Phoenix Wright to this series? I actually don’t know. No, the sequel did come out in the West. I don’t think we covered the sequel or it was post-ONN. I think it was post-ONN. Yeah. So not worth talking about. I’m looking at the cover art and Phoenix Wright is right at the top of it. So yes, he was in there. There you go, Matthew. You better track that down immediately. Yeah. Cool. So Tomodachi Life. This is something I know was kind of like big among like UK games journalists or some. Basically, I’m talking about you two and then like three other people. But what was all this about? Tomodachi Life is, on the surface, is an attempt to do something like The Sims with Mies. I think that’s how you would pitch it to someone had they never kind of looked at it. So you would build a little, you’d build a group of Mies and they’d all live in a little town. And I think you kind of manipulated relationships and, you know, sort of kept them all happy. But really, it was just a bizarre Japanese joke generator. The whole thing was this wild, like, portal to cutscenes that made absolutely no sense. And really funny localisation and very interesting, like, comedy decisions being made. And it kind of, at a certain point, you were no longer playing the game to see what happened to the Miis. You were playing the game to unlock the next joke. It was really, really weird. And it had, like, speech synthesising. So it was all spoken in, like, Microsoft Sam. They all used to talk like this. Hello, I am in Tomodachi Life. That’s an incredible impression of Tomodachi Life characters. Like, they all sounded very, sort of, highly strung. And it’s just, like, a mean machine. I can’t remember what the singing portion was, like, whether you could type the lyrics in. You could, yeah, because it would have… But there are so many things where you get, like, these people singing, like, little, like, Reggie Mi, singing, like, some gangster rap to, like, you know, an awatame or whatever. But, yeah, you could type… The tunes were set, but you could type the lyrics and it would attempt to fit the lyrics you typed to the music. So we were doing… It was, like, it is a gift to a magazine, Tom had actually lied. The sheer oddity of the screenshots alone was great, but, you know, in terms of building a, sort of, mag culture and a personality, the amount of stupid bullshit, sorry, I forget if you can swear or not, but the amount of stupid bullshit in Tom had actually life is just… It was so much fun to play with and I remember it being… I think I’m getting this right. I think it was announced for Japan before it was announced for a Western release. And I think it was one of those ones we sort of looked at really longingly on the magazine. And when it did get announced, we wrote about it constantly for a few months because it was just wonderful for that stuff. Nintendo went quite big on this, I think. They thought it could be like a Sims or an Animal Crossing. I think they put a surprising amount of heft behind it. I think Chandra went on a trip. Did you go on a trip? No, I didn’t. Someone went to Nintendo of Europe to interview. It’s like Mr. Metroid, who is the head of this one, the WarioWare Metroid-y guy who I’ve talked about before and now his name escapes me. Yeah, terrible. Yeah, super, super weird game. Completely shapeless, but very, very funny. Very similar vibe to playing Animal Crossing. You kind of dip in and you play it loads for like the first few days that you have it. And then after a while you’re maybe just going in and seeing like your, you know, Michael Jackson me screaming at whatever Robocop me. That seemed less controversial in 2014. Yeah, somehow Robocop was the one who seemed more controversial at that time. Moving on then, so on the Nintendo eShop side, fairly early on, Level 5 experimented with Guild 01 and Guild 02, basically little sort of seasons or collections of smaller games released onto the eShop. There’s Liberation Maiden, Aero Porter, Crimson Shroud, Weapon Shop Dio Mass, Attack of the Friday Monsters, Bugs Vs. And I would say they all got a mixed critical reception in some way or another, except maybe, Joe, one of the ones you put down on your original long list for the top ten. Yeah, Crimson Shroud, right? That’s the favourite of yours. Yeah, it’s by, and I’m about to forget someone’s name again, but it’s the guy who did Vagrant Story, Matsuno. Oh, Matsuno. And so Guild as a whole was, I absolutely loved it. Like, as a writer and a fan of the games, I thought it was such a cool idea, because all of these things had a name attached. So Liberation Maiden was Suda 51, Aeroporto was Yut Saito, who made Seaman, and Odama, the pinball microphone game on the GameCube. Weaponshop DOMSA was a comedian in Japan. Attack of the Friday Monsters is a guy that makes all of those kinds of games. I can’t remember his name. Bugs vs. Tanks was The Megaman Man. Oh my god, I’m bad at names. Yeah. And the Starship Damrey was like the odd one out, I think, kind of a smaller team. But just like fascinating, like tiny little bite size games made by people who were kind of given free reign to just make whatever they wanted. And Crimson Shroud was the one that stood out for me. It’s a traditional RPG, like JRPG, but told as if you’re playing a tabletop role playing game. So it has an element of storytelling from sort of outside of the game to some extent. And a really nice, you know, it looked like it looked like Vagrant Story cover art kind of being played. And you were rolling in game digital 12, like 12 sided die and stuff or dice. And it was just like it was a really good, chewy RPG in bite size form with one major floor. It had an area where you had to grind for one item and the whatever algorithm behind it was kind of letting you get that item made it so incredibly rare. And it didn’t give you enough of a hint as to what was going on there that people just stopped at this point. But if you carried on to the end, like spoilers for Crimson Shroud, Crimson Shroud ends with the entire world ending in a huge apocalypse and it just stops. And you’re like, what on earth is going on? And then it turns out you’re meant to play it again in kind of like Proto Nier style to fix the game in New Game Plus. So it had these great ideas. And I think it really speaks to The Guild Project’s sort of successes. I think a lot of these games were sort of sixes or sevens for us, but there was some just lovely thinking in all of them. And I love the feeling that Level 5, you know, I think Japanese development in particular doesn’t necessarily prize the individual a lot of the time. And these were very personal games for a lot of people. And I thought that was a great experiment. Yeah, of these, I’ve played Attack of the Friday Monsters and Liberation Maiden. I quite like Liberation Maiden. I think that was a nice looking game for the 3DS. Yeah, it really was. Yeah, fast moving shooter. Attack of the Friday Monsters, I believe, is like, I remember it being kind of like a slice of life anime, but with monsters in the background. Yeah, it was sort of a, you’re a kid in the summer with those very specific sounding cicadas that they have in Japan playing all the time, so it sounds really warm and lovely. And there was sort of a card game element. You would collect cards and you could play against other characters. But there was this backdrop that there was going to maybe be a Kaiju fight on the Friday of the game. So you were sort of playing under a time limit and not quite sure whether it’s the main character’s imagination or whether there is actually going to be Godzilla stamping on his little lovely town. It’s a little bit of a persona energy. Yeah, I really loved Attack of the Friday Monsters. I think it really holds up. And the creator recently announced what’s it called? Crayon Shin-Chan, the kind of kid’s anime. And he’s announced a game that looks fundamentally identical to Attack of the Friday Monsters, but licensed and it looks really lovely, which is currently Switch only. But yeah, it was just a great little thing. For sure. So yeah, but I’m sure we’re going to send at least like five people to go and buy those games on the eShop now. So the N64 ports that came to 3DS wanted to raise these because we decided to leave them out of the top 10 because we thought it made more sense to keep the top 10 as like original 3DS games for the kind of most interesting suggestions. But these were all the best versions of these games, right? So Star Fox 64 released in 3D. That is a game where I remember playing with the 3D slider fully on and it looked amazing because the kind of, you know, the tunnel base sort of like, you know, shooting in that game is kind of perfect for the 3D slider. Yeah. But also you have the two Zelda games, of course, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask and both got like a frame rate upgrade for the 3DS and also I think the textures were a bit nicer as well. Did you have any thoughts on these? I mean, you know, beautifully made things. I mean, it kind of makes me laugh that literally the highest rated game on 3DS is a port of Ocarina of Time, which, you know, it’s just like you can never, ever escape the shadow of that game. They did some like quality of life improvements to Ocarina of Time with like the inventory on the touchscreen things as well, which was nicely done. They were like amazingly made. I actually think like replaying more Ocarina than Majora’s Mask, like it showed its age a little bit, you know, it seemed less alive to me. I could kind of, you know, see how it was all working a bit more. I don’t know if that’s because I’m so familiar with the game, but it didn’t have quite the same like wow factor, I guess. But it probably is the best version of that game. Yeah, you know, and the 3D was nicely done. I just wish that, I know it’s a big ask. I wish they’d done like big like orchestrated music for it. Yeah, but I want that of every Zelda remake. So yeah, to get my wish. Yeah, I thought like, like you say, I think they were, they are sort of fundamentally the best versions of those games. But I have to say, I never quite got the, I don’t think I ever got the buzz that a lot of people did out of seeing them pop up. I think, and maybe it was because we were so focused on like trying to sell the new things. But I certainly don’t remember being on the mag and being like incredibly excited to talk about that stuff. Because it felt, you know, it felt almost easy to a certain extent. And we’d been so conditioned into seeing re-releases. And I know these were sort of better versions of those things. But I think that we set up a lot of expectations around Nintendo doing re-releases. That it didn’t feel like a sort of a moment when they came out to some extent. But certainly like a great way of getting new people into those things. And like a lovely, I think, you know, it’s a lovely after-effect that a lot more people will have played those games who might be younger. But yeah, I’m not the, they aren’t what defined the 3DS for me. So Joe, we’ve got a few of your suggestions here. So SteamWorld, Dig and Heist, this is a series that kind of like blossomed on 3DS and kind of exploded elsewhere eventually. Is that the case? Yes. Yeah. So this is, I have a huge fondness for SteamWorld and it’s partly tied in with covering it on O&M because I remember, so as it turns out, there was a SteamWorld game on DS or the DSiWare, which was SteamWorld Tower Defense, which I think got quite good reviews, but it was bastard hard, like horrible. And for whatever reason, they decided to stick. This is a Swedish studio called ImageInform, who I think were making licensed games mostly at the time and then decided to kind of try their own thing and SteamWorld Dig. I remember, I specifically remember Matthew passing me the code and being like, I’ll just have a look at this, but you know, maybe we’ll give it a third of a page on the review. And I remember starting it and just within about 10 minutes being like, we have to give this at least a page review because it is, it’s a, Dig is like a really sort of sumptuous, interesting, mini Metroidvania-esque thing. There was some, basically you are a robot who digs into the ground and as you go further down, the ground gets harder. So you have to pick up more upgrades so that you can get further into the ground. And there’s a sort of a vague mystery about why these steam powered robots are here and what’s happened to humans in the world, because there are these sort of drunk idiots under the earth who were appeared to be the last vestiges of humanity. And so there’s all this kind of like neat little, neat little set up. But it’s just it’s it’s almost like pure game design. It’s just they had one really solid idea and they carried it all the way through this sort of eight hour game. And I just loved it. And then because of I think we were one of their first reviews and we gave it a very good score. And the the studio ended up really liking us for that. And so I remember getting a call from Brian, the CEO, and him being like, We can’t do anything with this yet, but I really want to tell you about our next game. I was like, OK. And it was and I was expecting him to say Steamworld Dig 2. We’re doing this and this and this. He goes, We’ve made a 2D XCOM. And so Steamworld Heist was this. Like, I think it’s genuinely incredible. It’s they made, as he said, a 2D XCOM, but built on the idea that your shots aren’t. They aren’t randomized. They aren’t mathematical. You literally point the gun. There will occasion. Some guns have lasers. Some don’t. And you have to take the shots. And it just turned it into this, like, really tense, smart, tactical game. Really nicely put together. Really compact levels with lots of choices, lots of decisions to make. You only had a three person squad, but there were about 10 or 11, I think, different characters to choose from. So you were really messing about with how all those things slotted together. And again, just a game built on one incredibly solid idea. Just pulled all the way through it. And I think Steamworld Since has got a pretty hefty following out of this stuff. And they did a really good job of porting to everything else. But those first two 3DS games really, really took us by surprise. And I just loved writing about them. I still do. They’ve got a really charismatic studio head. And he was like big into it and we had quite a decent relationship with him. Mainly, well, specifically through Joe. But he used to write these really mad emails about how he was building weird shrines to Joe and things like that. Which always used to make me laugh. I will say that didn’t affect coverage, alright? But yes it was. But they are. I think they’re really… I still talk to them. They’re making a game called The Gunk for Xbox Series X now. Which I think looks really good. Or at least sounds really good. A really nice success story in that they have this really like singular vision and just kind of pursued it and you know, did brilliantly with it. Like have made great games. And now, weirdly, are just a huge company. They now run distribution for Nintendo in Sweden. Which is completely wild. Like they just got… And SteamWorld is the thing that kind of got them all this stuff. It’s fascinating. I think it’s a real, really interesting sort of indie story through the… Especially on 3DS. Great shout. I had to feel bad that neither of these made the top ten. So StreetPass isn’t something we’ve discussed much, but Joe, you suggested StreetPass Mansion here. Did you want to talk about StreetPass a bit generally as well? Yeah, we should. StreetPass is… I think more than anything else from 3DS to Switch, I miss StreetPass. It was such a lovely idea. It’s this… I think it’s… Is it near field communication or is it some other, you know, boringly named thing? I don’t think it’s exactly that, but yeah. So the idea being you carry your 3DS and in idle mode, it will be able to communicate with other people’s 3DSs that pass it in the street. And you would swap me’s and those people would visit your plaza and just say hello. And on the basic level, it’s just that. But they built this suite of games specifically for it. And I mean, to me, Mansion is the one. But so Street Pass also integrated with a lot of specific games. So the one that really sticks out, people did interesting stuff with it. The one that really sticks out is Shovel Knight, which is a game I’m not hugely fond of. But its Street Pass implementation was really cool, which was anyone else who had the game, you would record essentially half of a fight in an arena with Shovel Knight. So you would be trying to get some gems and also hit the other person. But you’re fighting no one. But every time you Street Pass someone with it, their mirrored version of that same fight would be passed to your thing and essentially slot together like a puzzle. And you would just watch these two people trying to have a fight with no one and seeing if they could beat the other one. It was really cool. But the real kind of the heart of Street Pass really was in its bespoke games. And Mansion was one designed by Prope, which is Yuji Naka’s studio, who’s most famous for Sonic. And it was… For me, Yuji Naka is most famous for getting very cross with me at E3 because I was in front of him in the queue to play Luigi’s Mansion 2. I took too long doing the demo. And he was genuinely… I could hear him huffing behind me. You know, when someone’s trying to make their displeasure known, they’re like… And looking at his watch in an over-exaggerated way. I mean, that does feel like you’ve purposely done that to him because he invented Sonic. Maybe he’s like Sonic. Maybe he likes to do everything at incredible speed. But I was playing that demo at a normal rate. But, you know, to me, genuinely, as someone who is not a fan of Sonic, Street Pass Mansion is Yuji Naka’s greatest accomplishment. It’s a Street Pass game built around the idea that every… So your Mii has a different favourite colour and wears a different coloured shirt. And in Mansion, every Mii’s colour would give you a coloured puzzle piece. And you would be building a map. This is another thing Matthew used to tell me off for, is that I love maps. And I talk about maps too much. But you would build this map out of these coloured pieces. And the same colours would slot together to reveal either enemies or chests of different kinds. And you would have to like fill… It’s kind of like Tetris block bits of map basically. So you’re sort of slotting it all together. And when you finish a level, you have a fight with a boss. You move to the next level and you start building it again. And it just… It consumed my time on commutes. Because I would be purposely trying to get as many streetpasses as possible, building levels in the most efficient way. And I just think it’s like… It’s a perfect use of a unique bit of technology. There’s no reason for it to be there other than it’s a fun thing to do. And that’s what sings for me. The time around that of like going to E3 and Gamescom or whatever, there was so much StreetPass going on at E3. It gave the impression of 3DS being like an absolute phenomenon because every demo room you’d go into, or wherever there was a big crowd, so many people have their 3DSs out. Because at those events is where you could maybe get the me’s of like Miyamoto or Reggie or whatever. So everyone was just trying to see if they’d StreetPassed someone famous from Nintendo. And people obsessing over the StreetPass puzzles as well, where you swap puzzle pieces. And there were loads of those things. I mean, I don’t know if there were hundreds by the end, but there was such a constant update of things you could be getting. And maybe we have a skewed version of this from working in an office where most people had a 3DS, but it was just great for that. We were always collecting all this stuff. I remember Chris Scullion was like the gold mine of 3DS puzzle pieces because he just, for whatever reason, had collected the most. So if you Street Passed him, you’d always get something new, which was good. Yeah, it was fun. I missed that period. I wish Switch had something similar. When they announced the remaking Miitopia, that 3DS Miibase game, I really thought when that first popped up during that director, that was them reintroducing Street Pass somehow. I was really excited. I genuinely, honest, I must have played more of Street Pass Mansion than any other 3DS game. I spent so long in it. It was ridiculous. It was just a fantastic thing. It’s a real shame that these games have basically lost to time now with the technology gone. What a shame, because I never played any of the Street Pass games. It completely passed me by, even though I was carrying my 3DS everywhere and kept getting these kind of coins or whatever to tell you that you’ve been past people when it was going on the train and stuff. But yeah, these are like Nintendo-published games that are just going to be gone to history. There’ll be no way to play them. That seems like a real shame. Again, made by interesting studios. I think there was Street Pass Garden, which on the kind of face of it wasn’t very interesting, but it had this, you would get different plants from different people, then you would have to cross breed plants. There was almost a long form strategy element to it of who you were going to pass and what you were going to get from them. That was made by Grezzo, who usually make, they did the Ocarina of Time port and stuff like that. They do smaller side projects for Nintendo. I liked that they were giving those opportunities to smaller studios to try out. Like you say, it’s not only hard to get them, it’s literally practically impossible to play them. It’s sad. So I put down three more games here from stuff I played. So Codename Steam, I wondered if you two had thoughts on this. This was like Intelligent Systems run at basically Valkyria Chronicles. Kind of like, you know, or XCOM, I guess, like a strategy game turn based. And I think it looked a bit janky on the 3DS because it goes for like full 3D visuals. But an interesting game that you can almost always find for about £2 now, from like retailers still trying to get rid of copies. But I thought it was like, I thought it was pretty decent for what it was. And one of the, I don’t know, a few kind of, not really deep cuts, because it was Nintendo published, but I don’t know, one of the more interesting games on the platform. It was weird. I remember E3 when they were promoting it. They used to have, the way Nintendo did their E3, they had their big conference and then they had their stand. But then they’d have these sort of developer sessions in the evening, which were basically like, they had a big, they hired out a room. And it’s where they’d have, that wasn’t shown to the public. It was like a top secret presentation on a game, which probably hadn’t been announced at the show. And there was always a huge amount of buzz about what it was going to be. And that year it was codenamed Steam. And yeah, it was odd because it’s a first party game. But I remember the guy who designed it was, I remember, because I think he’s like a Polish guy who came to Nintendo. It was quite an unusual presence on those kind of panels, because normally it’s all Japanese teams. Yeah, it was wild. I need to play more of this one. I’ll put my hand up and say I never finished it. But I think it was cool. I think this was, I mean, this definitively was post XCOM. And I think a lot of people sort of saw it as, hey, intelligent, you know, moving away from, you know, they’re not doing Fire Emblem right now. They’re doing an XCOM game. And it really wasn’t that when it came out. But I do wonder whether that was a part of its sort of slightly lukewarm reception. Also, again, codename Steam is such a bad name, particularly when the subtitle in Japan is Lincoln vs. Aliens. You’re like, call it Lincoln, call it Abraham Lincoln Fights Aliens. And it will sell twice as much. It’s just so obvious. Yeah, I guess the flip side to this is they’re not really that similar types of games, really, but they’re close enough. You know, Mario Rabbids, for example, is the way you can sell something like this, a bit more unusual. But without any kind of pre-existing characters, all you had was… Steam was an acronym as well. I mean, yeah, it’s like bad game title 101, really. So, yeah, a couple more I wanted to mention. Theatre Rhythm, Final Fantasy, and Curtain Call. There weren’t as many kind of like rhythm action games on 3DS, if I recall, as there were on DS. It felt like that was partly because the genre as a whole had died off a little bit over time. I’ve got a bit, a few knowledge gaps there though, guys, so maybe I’m wrong about that. But I thought it was quite a nice, a Wendoni kind of like, you know, follow the Final Fantasy music sort of game. Yeah, I remember playing it and thinking, wow, a lot of the Final Fantasy music sounds the same. Like, when you get it pushed together like that, there’s, you know, it’s obviously the work of one bloke. A lot of it is the work of the same guy and there’s a lot of similarities. But it was quite a luxurious thing. Like, it was quite, it had really nice production values. It’s basically just like a big kind of, you know, expensive piece of Final Fantasy fan service on a platform that had very few Final Fantasy games. And, like, basically none of the games that were, like, included within theatre rhythm itself, which is quite unusual. But yeah, I quite like that one. And finally, Matthew, just to spite you, I’m mentioning the one Kingdom Hearts, sorry, the one 3DES game that I actually reviewed when I was working in media, which was Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance 3D. Do you get it, Matthew? Do you get it? Yes, I think it took me about two years to realise that. I genuinely haven’t, I remember being like, oh my god, that’s what that means. That’s why they’ve given it this nonsense name. Yeah, there’s truly no stopping Tetsuya Nomura. But I thought it was worth mentioning because it was, the production values on it are really high. Like, it’s got full voice acting and a lot of the kind of like handheld Kingdom Hearts games sort of recycled worlds you’d been to before, but this had a lot of like all new worlds and new music and stuff like that. So it was a proper kind of like big 3DS effort. I gave it a 7 out of 10 though, because I think this marked the exact point that my brain had tuned out of Kingdom Hearts lore and being able to like tolerate it. And I was like, oh no, I’m a man now and I must play man games. Yeah, that was kind of my memory of that. But yeah, thanks guys for sharing your memories. Is there anything else that kind of comes to mind you sort of wanted to mention before we move on to the top 10? Oh, I think we’ve done quite a lot. Yeah, I can’t think of many other things. I think the one thing I would like to talk about, and the reason it wasn’t on any list is because I cannot remember what it was called, but I do remember a 3DS game coming out in which it was entirely vehicle based, but it was kind of do crazy things with vehicles under the vague idea that there’s a story for doing any of this. And one of them started with parachuting a school bus onto a road and then like doing a bunch of stunts. I think it was called something like Crash City Mayhem. Oh, yeah, that rings a bell. It was really odd, and it kind of speaks to this like the B tier of 3DS. So, you know, significantly less money put in than anything else, but just all these odd developers trying to get one hit by doing something completely odd that maybe was perhaps was cheaper to develop for 3DS or something along those lines. But it really sticks out in my memory as just one of these things that came along. I think we reviewed it and it didn’t come out for about eight months afterwards. And so I ended up just talking about it on the Official Nintendo Podcast a lot. And yeah, I think that’s what I like about 3DS. It kind of sums it up for me. It’s this bizarre place where people would just try things and then inevitably give up on them. It was great. Yeah, just looking at images of it, it looks like if EDF was a car game or something. Yeah, so it was called Crafts at Emeiham. I haven’t looked at this for years. Yeah, it was completely odd. It looked all right for a 3DS game as well. But yeah, it was really, really strange. And I think you’re right, EDF, but a car game is a very good way of putting it. What if EDF had no insects? Would it be a better game? That’s quite an interesting looking thing, actually. Pure 5 out of 10 drivel, but exactly the kind of thing I’m going to buy on eBay after this. To be fair, I agreed with you. I think I gave it an 8. But that might have been an M madness. No, that’s fair enough. I guess something was amiss in the drinking water at the time in the Futures London office. Thank you very much for sharing your memories, gents. We’ll take a brief break and come back with our top 10. Subs by www.zeoranger.co.uk Welcome back to the final part of the podcast. And in this section, we’re gonna count down the top 10 3DS games. So the process basically worked where we all made top 10 lists of games on the 3DS, put them together with a kind of point-based system, and then Matthew tossed all that out and made a list that he was happy with, and that’s the list we’ve got here. That’s not entirely true. It’s a couple of bits that Matthew sort of like manipulated into the list, but it’s otherwise like pretty reflexive. See if you can guess which. Yeah, I didn’t know that that had happened, and I can immediately see the points on the list where this is definitely Matthew. Yeah, this is all, I mean, I have only spotted like the most egregious part of this in the last five minutes, and I’m like, oh, that wasn’t on there yesterday, but nonetheless, I’m sure it’ll be good. So let’s kick off then. Number 10 is Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate, which is a game that we brought up on the last podcast, actually, kind of like smushed between the two Lords of Shadow game that came to console. And I really rated this at the time, but I felt like the Castlevania fan base in general wasn’t as into it as they were the DS games that had launched a few years earlier. But yeah, like talk me through it, Gents. Why is this actually better than people think it is? I think I looked back at this because I gave this a very high score for O&M. I thought this was brilliant. I really enjoyed it. And I looked back and it got a very mixed reception. And I look at it got a 4.5 on IGN. I know it’s it’s ludicrous. But the I kind of I look at it and I look at the reviews and so many of them are about what it isn’t. They all want it to be Symphony of the Night just because it’s a 2D Castlevania game. When actually what it is, is like a very good, very stylish 2D action game. It’s like it’s probably the best out and out action game on 3DS and which isn’t, you know, a huge it’s not a crowded field. But I think it’s a genuinely good one. Like it stands up alongside other action games. You know, it’s not hobbled too much for what it’s on. And I think it’s just I think it’s gorgeous for a 3DS game as well. And it just does a lot of very interesting things. And again, speaks to a mindset from developers where I think 3DS was the place that they would go and try something else. There was another game, which was Batman Arkham Blackgate, I think it was called, which was a similar idea, much less successfully done. But I like the idea of these big franchises coming and trying something else quite weird and quite different, but still but not in the old license gamey way of like, we’ll just make something that’s called the same game, but it’s a fundamentally different game. They had a different story, it was a sequel. There’s some good stuff in there. I think you could always trust Konami and Capcom to throw quite a lot of money, probably because of their good ties with Nintendo, at their games. This had amazing production values, and brilliant 3D, it’s a 2D game fundamentally, but it’s one of those 25D worlds where it leads in and out. The art design on it is fantastic. I really rate Lords of Shadow 1, which Mercury Steam made. This is also Mercury Steam. I just felt like this was a studio that was incredibly proud of the series it was making, didn’t want a weak link in there, so it really poured in a lot. It’s incredibly cinematic in the way it tells a story, in a way that isn’t very Nintendo-y at all. It’s very Flash and very God of War, in a way, like imagine a 2D God of War, I’d say. But it had boss fights that would massively change the environment and turn into these crazy quick time events. It had this interesting time structure where you played the game as several heroes at different times and it meant that the story didn’t make entire sense until you got to the end and you saw how it all added up, which maybe wasn’t like an absolute… there wasn’t any shocking revelations or whatever, but it did some nice stuff. There was one particular boss who you fought in every time frame and how you dispatched him and in the previous time frames changed his form so there was less of him every time and he was becoming more machine than monster and all this kind of stuff. Just very satisfying. I actually played a bit of this yesterday on PC because they ported it to consoles and PC as Mirror of Fey HD and it loses a lot in not being 3D. I think the wow factor of this is when it’s on 3DS so if you are going to play it I would advise trying to find the 3DS version rather than trying to play the console PC version and to get the same effect. Yeah I think I agree with you Joe that what it isn’t is part of the reason the reception was cool here but I also wonder if there’s an element of like people didn’t really mind… Lords of Shadow was a legit good game but people didn’t really mind someone making a 3D Castlevania because the series legacy, its best days were never in 3D and therefore I think people are a bit more receptive to it here. I think people thought like it was a western studio infringing a bit more on something that was you know kind of sacred to that audience. Yeah. Yeah I wonder if that’s part of the backlash. Yeah, yeah probably I mean it is you know 3DS is the weird period where Konami stopped making those traditional 2D games, what’s his face, is it Igarashi? Yeah. Who made them had left at this point and he obviously comes back later with Bloodstained but you know everyone was starved for this. I think like the big Metroidvania revival hadn’t started happening at this point either so people were particularly hungry for it but taking on its own terms it’s a very good game. I was going to read the little bit from the I’ve got the O&M directory for these games. It says fluid combat chains itself to classicvania for some of the best portable action ever. Once you’ve seen a man eat a demon and sprout wings little else matters. There you go, that’s the O&M verdict. It’s lovely. It’s a little rush of nostalgia. Yeah, I’ve nothing more to add to that. It’s perfect. Number nine then Matthew. Sorry, I shouldn’t say Matthew there but I’m giving away the game a bit here but Professor Leighton versus Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. A game I don’t remember being on the top ten two days before we recorded this. And yet. Talk me through it. Listen, I’m putting this in. This was one of my highest ranked games in this list. This is pure fan service. Marries two things which were really important to me throughout my time on Nintendo Mags which was Professor Leighton and Ace Attorney. Professor Leighton had actually had a bit of a bad run on it on 3DS. The two 3DS games are two of his weaker ones, I think. Was it… Yes, two. Yeah, and then the fourth one was… Yeah, that’s right. And at this point, Ace Attorney hadn’t really made much of a comeback either. This was exciting because it was the original creator of Ace Attorney, Shutokumi, was writing it, so he’d kind of come back to the fold. So that was a great relief because he’d been away since Apollo Justice. It was made by Level 5, who kind of at the time, you know, for a lot of end-gamer and O&M, Level 5 were like an absolute powerhouse. I think they’re a bit diminished now or they haven’t had a hit in recent years, but people forget that they’re about as big a success story as Japanese Studio had. There was a long time I was absolutely convinced the head of Level 5 would one day become the head of Nintendo, because he just had the golden touch. He came from a very similar creative background, you know, he was a game maker turned studio head, like really, you know, he knows his name. He was making hit after hit, more on the DS than on 3DS, but it had their kind of incredible kind of production values. The mashup of these two worlds is so fun, the way that it like plays the classic Phoenix Wright music, but it’s all played on like accordions like in Professor Layton. I mean, that’s the real reason that’s on this list, the soundtrack is one of my favourite things in games ever. And it was so, it was so cleverly done, the mashup of these two worlds, the way Professor – basically Phoenix Wright found himself in the kind of mystical bullshit of Professor Layton and vice versa, you know, that it was really like two worlds colliding, you know, Professor Layton trying to solve, find the logic in a kind of world of magic and witchcraft, and Phoenix Wright trying to prove things in a world where like magic and seemingly impossible things could happen. Some people are super down on this game, like they feel like it’s not a great Layton game and it’s not a great Wright game. I partially agree on the Layton side of things, it’s like not the strongest Layton puzzles ever. I actually think the courtroom scenes with Wright are excellent, like it introduced this mechanic where you have like group testimony and you have to turn the different testimonials against each other, a bit like in LA Confidential where he’s the two, he has the different dudes in the different interrogation rooms. That is really up-selling. Yeah, this just like a great, great thing, you know, I have very fond memories of doing this on O&M, we put it on the cover. I was amazed we were allowed to put it on the cover. That issue had loads of Phoenix Wright and Layton stuff in it, had a really funny back page about Professor Layton solving mysteries in other Nintendo games, which was super dark. I don’t know if you remember that. I don’t remember that. What was that? So it was all like Professor Layton turns up in other Nintendo games and then reveals how those worlds are actually sinister. So there was this thing about like him turning up in Animal Crossing and it was like, Professor Layton, I’ve been made the mayor of this town, I don’t know why and I’m digging up these fossils and they made me plant this tree and Professor Layton’s big reveal was like, oh, you’re an amnesiac serial killer and as your punishment you’ve been sent back to the town where you killed loads of people, you’ve been forced to dig up their remains which were the fossils, they’ve made you the mayor in this like weird power play and the tree you planted is the tree they’re going to one day hang you on. Oh my god, yeah, I do remember that, yeah, Black Mirror was big at the time. I love that that was in official attorney office. The Layton Phoenix Wright thing also gave, I’m not sure it was a running joke but it was certainly a joke we made a few times which was that it was incomprehensible to me that not everyone who faced Professor Layton was screaming because this man with a tube for a head had turned up, like everyone in that world is a normal looking person except this one dude with weird black eyes and a long head. It was really weird that he was there. They make no attempt to make him look like anyone else. Was that also the issue of the magazine where you interviewed Shutokumi? It was the second one, yeah. That’s one of my favourite bits of Matthew writing ever. If people can track down really old copies of a dead magazine. The interview you did with Shutokumi, which you were a massive fan, but you were also very, very well up on crime fiction and that stuff. And I think your discussion along those lines is one of the best things that was ever in O&M. It was so, so good. Yeah, that’s the stuff. Joe gets it. That is actually preserved by the Web Archive, isn’t it, Matthew? Because we linked it for our interviews episode. I think that one’s actually… that’s the first Shooter Kimi interview we did. That’s what I’ve been trying to find. It is there. I’ll find it. I will find it somehow. No, that’s good stuff. Joe, did you have any take on this game? Was Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton, were they sort of part of your 3DS kind of world, I guess? I really like Phoenix Wright. Professor Layton has never been my thing. I very much left this one to Matthew at the time. I played enough of it to kind of go, this is… you know, they’re smart ideas and I do like weird crossover stuff like this, but it was never something that sort of became part of my 3DS canon, for want of a better term. It wasn’t my bag, necessarily. One thing I did want to kind of also crowbar in here and just give a little shout out to was the second Ace Attorney on 3DS, Spirit of Justice, is genuinely an outstanding game as well. Like, it’s not a shoot-a-koomi game and I like Dual Destinies, which was the first one the team did, and I thought, well, it feels a little bit like a tribute act, but I actually think the Spirit of Justice stands with some of the shoot-a-koomi games. It’s probably my third favourite Ace Attorney game, so that also comes recommended. Well then, Matthew, actually, I was looking at the spreadsheet and you were right, you did get this into the top ten, so I was wrong to call you out there. You didn’t manipulate the process. You’ve been absolved. I would love you to dig out your Professor Leighton Solve’s Crimes in Nintendo Games feature because I think your little narrative there about Animal Crossing is going to haunt my dreams. It’s like a Silent Hill storyline. Every Leighton game ended with a big twist, like a really mad twist, and that was our attempt to… I can’t really remember the other ones. We’ll have to do an episode on Back Pages. I genuinely was going to say it, probably off it, I’m surprised given the name of this podcast that that hasn’t already happened, because there’s some good stuff on Back Pages. It’s on the cards I think for maybe like three or four weeks from now. So we’ll finally launder some of that content, but Matthew, just to close out then, why don’t you talk us through what the directory says about this game. This one, it says, this is less collision, more collusion, as two masters of mystery aggressively point their way around a classic Takumi tale of murder and maths problems. That’s great stuff. Lot of nice alliteration there. The directories were brilliant, weren’t they? I mean, I say that after two, there might be eight absolute shiteers after this. Let’s find out. Number eight, then, is The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds, a Zelda game that Matthew has slammed on this podcast multiple times. Not really, but it’s not one of your favourites, Matthew, is it? No, but it’s still like… Lesser Zelda is still better than most things. I’ve been seething listening to the podcast and hearing Matthew constantly do down Link Between Worlds because I think it’s absolutely wonderful. I think it’s very easy to say that it presages some of Breath of the Wild’s ideas, and I don’t think it says direct align as some have drawn, but it certainly represents a moment where the Zelda team really started messing with the idea of what became the set idea of what a Zelda game was. I think it’s easy to have an idea of like, oh, Zelda started as this and it was this the whole time. And actually, it’s been a lot more variety-led than perhaps people think. But I think Link Between Worlds was a very conscious attempt to go like, let’s just try something else and see how it works. And I know, I’m assuming, Matthew, you haven’t spoken about it on here too in depth, but I’m assuming it’s the rental system that doesn’t work for you. I think, yeah, so just to explain the rental system, it’s you basically rent the items instead of finding them in the dungeons, and then you can tackle the dungeons in any order. It’s basically the hook of this game. My problem with that is I feel like, to accommodate that, the whole game is very one-note difficulty-wise. I don’t think there’s any escalation to it. I just found it all a little bit too simple, which is the downside of that kind of design. There’s no sense of, oh wow, I’m really hitting the exciting stuff, which I do get from other Zelda games. That’s my big beef with it. To me, the rental system, I totally get that. And I think it also makes some of the dungeons a bit one-note, because they can’t design them to involve multiple items in as in-depth a way as these kinds of Zeldas often do. But what really works for me is there’s this whole separability where you can merge into walls and become essentially a living cave painting of Link. And those puzzles and the kind of 3D elements of those puzzles really worked for me. Like I had such a nice time sort of navigating this. It feels quite pointed that they’re introducing like literally 2D elements into their 3D game and how that played out. And I just, I really enjoyed them playing around with those kind of extraneous elements and sort of, you know, harking back to the older games while purposely messing with the structure of them. I thought, you know, it’s very clearly a riff on Link to the Past. So I had a lot of fun with it. It’s definitely tied up with how I played it as well. I played it all over one Christmas and it was just so, it was such a good Christmas. I had such a nice time. And I remember where I was sitting to play it and I remember getting to all the different, you know, major beats and I just had such a good time with it that it’s definitely tied up in some level of nostalgia. I feel you’re trying to shoehorn Christmas into this list basically. What you write here is Christmas. Yeah, Christmas is good to be fair. But yeah, no, I remain a very big fan of this game. I think I’d love to hear what, do you think it has any of that kind of, do you think it represents anything about the Zelda team kind of moving towards Breath of the Wild or do you think that’s a stretch? Like a little bit in that, in Breath of the Wild, you can tackle the divine beasts in the order and it kind of freed you from, you know, well it gave you all the equipment at the start basically. So I kind of get that for sure. Yeah, I just, I find the link from the 2D ones to the 3D ones quite hard. You know, just the flow of them is so different and the scope of them is so different. Don’t get me wrong, this is beautifully made. It’s really nostalgic. The kind of the way it taps into that world from Link to the Past is obviously brilliantly done. There’s like a tavern where they play like acoustic versions of tracks. That is good. I mean, that’s like, that stuff is… You should buy the game just to listen to those, basically. I don’t hate this game. I was just surprised because I saw recently, you know, there was a, oh, our old O&M friend Kate, in fact, did a big feature on Nintendo Life where she gathered together like all the top 10 Zeldas from like every website to create the ultimate top 10. And I was just surprised at how much A Link Between Worlds features on those lists. Like it is so highly rated and I like it, just not to that extent. A little bit of recency bias, maybe with them. Yeah, maybe, it’s really well, like, it doesn’t do anything wrong. That’s a weird one. I think I just like 3D Zelda more than the top down ones. Like I don’t rate Link to the Past, going back to it and replaying it recently, I don’t think it holds up particularly well. I think Link Between Worlds is a better game than Link to the Past, certainly, like for me. But some Nintendo fans will kind of like, you know, get pitchforks and whatever for saying that. So I don’t think that’s a popular view. So what’s the directory verdict on this one, Matthew? The directory says, Link’s new adventure in familiar surroundings is a beautiful mesh of old school ideals and new ideas. Top down, top game. That’s mag. That’s mag work. That’s the kind of thing I miss. That’s nice. What does the directory say about Christmas, meanwhile? Anything about Christmas? Too much heartburn, but you might get a toy. So very solid all around. Oh, listen, I’m not an improv master. That sounds more like the magazines I worked on, to be honest. But yeah, good stuff. So our number seven is a game that, with my editor brain, I would probably put in the top three if I was making a Nintendo magazine, just from how I know this game is perceived. So Fire Emblem Awakening. Joe, you had this particularly high on your list. Do you want to talk us through it? Yeah, so yeah, Fire Emblem was a series, as we said, that was kind of nowhere for Nintendo when this came out. And certainly I had never really engaged with Fire Emblem before this. And I remember being put on the review and just absolutely falling in love with it. It’s such a smart, like, I like a tactical RPG anyway. And I think often the scale of Fire Emblem, battles is a really nice thing. You know, they want to throw a lot of enemies at you and they want to throw a lot of your units on the field, but there’s no sort of skimping on that. And it meshing that with the kind of relationship building aspects and Awakening had a really nice sort of mid-game twist where you would build relationships between fighters on the battlefield by having them fight next to each other, which would give them stat boosts as they became friends. And eventually in some cases, they became lovers. And- Lovers? Yeah, and then, but then your characters halfway through the game, some of them would have children that used the traits of their two parent characters. So you have this idea of like, not just manipulating, like it’s not just a kind of dating game interest, but there’s a certain amount of eugenics to it, where you’re like, you’re breeding the greatest fighters you can after a certain point. It’s quite weird. But just a really strong, really beautifully presented Fire Emblem game that takes like the classic ideas, they have this weapon triangle, which is essentially rock, paper, scissors, but throws in a lot of extra stuff, you know, magic, and there are characters who transform into dragons and like weird classes to play with. And then just like some really fun writing and some really fun ideas about how to use characters in a tactical RPG. So, you know, it’s none of the XCOM stuff, of like building faceless people, or, you know, building personalities into otherwise faceless characters. These are fully formed characters with stories. So there’s one, there’s a character called Donald, I think he is, who is like a farm boy with a pot on his head. And he’s rubbish. Like when you get him, he’s awful. And the first mission is literally keeping him alive because he’s so crap that you have to like force your entire army to surround him, to get him through this battle. And then he’s just awful. So when you get him, you’re like, well, what’s the point in him? And the idea is he’s essentially the game’s magic up. He levels up faster or stats up faster than almost any other character in the game. So if you put the time in, he’ll become basically the greatest fighter the world has ever known. And his story arc reflects that as he gets more confident. And it’s just a really nice mesh of storytelling and stats and really kind of interesting tactical thinking. There’s some great stuff in there. And, you know, Permadeath also was becoming, again, I think because of XCOM, was becoming quite faddy in a way. And it really worked here. Like the characters of those people that you’re playing with, when they die, they die. They die, or in some cases, if story needs it, they retire, which is weird. But like, just even just some of the death lines stick with me. There’s a guy, that’s a giant man. I can’t remember his name. Huge guy and huge armour that makes him look like a horse. And he, when he dies, he’s like, I hope someone remembers me because his whole character is that he’s sort of invisible to people. And it’s just, I don’t know, that’s still in my head. That’s what I’m going to have written on my game. Someone remembers me. It’s brilliant. It’s just a brilliant game. Would you say though, Joe, this is better than Fire Emblem Fates, which came later and seemed to be like this, you know, Fates very much released when Fire Emblem had become a big deal again. How do the two compare to you? The games themselves always felt very similar to me. I must say I didn’t put as much time into Fates and there were two of them, right? There was… Birthright and Conquest. Yeah, they did like the strange sort of Pokemon approach to it. And it felt a little to me like they were cashing in somewhat. Like it came out very quickly. And yeah, it never, it didn’t, something about it didn’t have the kind of love of Awakening to it. Awakening felt like a passion project where everything had gone right. Whereas Fates to me felt a bit like it’s just, you know, we’re making these games now. If you read, I think it’s the Iwata asks for Fire Emblem Awakening, there’s a lot about, you know, this is it. This is the, this is your last go at Fire Emblem. If we can’t make it work this time, we’re not going to make any more Fire Emblems. And there’s this sense of like, what happens when you hold things on the line and throwing everything at it. And, you know, as I was saying earlier, I just, you can really feel it in this game and like the start, you know, the art style really comes alive. And it just takes a lot of stuff, which was always there and was always good about Fire Emblem, but just really made it accessible and fun for everyone. And just a brilliant example. I wish they’d do the same for Advanced Wars. But there we go. Yeah. Advanced Wars, which just bypassed the 3DS entirely, right? Like, yeah, I know it’s only the one on, on that was that last one that was on DS, which was quite grim. Yeah, it was like, it was the Wars really sad and you’re like, oh, and it is on Agree. But it’s not necessarily like the vibe I want for my Nintendo games. I really want them to dismiss War. What’s the directory take on this one, Matthew? This one is, this is definitely a Joe one. Fighting begets friendship, begets love, begets children, begets fighting. Imagine Circle of Life playing while humans punch each other on top of an atlas. That’s this game. Yeah, that’s definitely me. Oh, yeah, there’s so much promise in there that this guy’s going to have a great career. That’s what I think. I think this would be on my, if I’d done the episode of review scores, we got wrong. This would be the one I did, because I think I marked it. I think I gave it a nine or something, you know, something like that, or a 19. You gave it a straight 19, yeah. Looking back on it, I don’t know what I was marking it down for, really. This should be up there in the top, the top for me. It does so much right. I think I just said it was like, I don’t even remember what I thought was wrong with it. It really bothers me that I gave it a nine. Damn, you’re making me want to do episodes of game review scores we got wrong with, like guess, when they come in and like talk about the ones they were down on. Get really sad. That’s what we do on this podcast. Yeah, so I will now look out for mentions of maps in every single piece you write, Joe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cool. So number six is Animal Crossing New Leaf. This is one that I have played and can finally talk about in a bit more detail. So this, I think Matthew, you alluded to this earlier, but like the Wii version City Folk, was it? The Animal Crossing, wasn’t it? Let’s go to, yeah, one was maybe Let’s Go to the City. Right, that’s it. So that was considered a very like also ran Animal Crossing that released not too long after the DS version did, which was like an enormous hit. The DS version of Animal Crossing was like, was really good for the hardware for the time, but quite limited in what you could do. And New Leaf, as you mentioned earlier, like casts you as the mayor in this town and then then you can kind of like customize the town and the simulation for a bit more detailed. And there was also like a nice island you could go to and catch some sort of tropical fish. And it’s like very, all the Animal Crossing games kind of use the same base, but with the series, it’s more about what did they build on top of it that wasn’t there before to kind of give you more sort of stimulating things to do when playing them. And this, you know, we have seen that the Switch version is like the apex of that. It’s like basically the most complete version of this game. And obviously it’s captured, you know, tens of millions of people’s imaginations. But New Leaf is a very important step towards that in like fidelity and the amount going on in the town. I really like the way that the high street was slowly unlock in this as you kind of like kept playing. And the overall vibe of it was really nice. It’s a beautiful looking game. Joe, you rated this one quite highly. I know, Matthew, you’re not as massive an Animal Crossing. What did you make of this one at the time? I remember just thinking, so I had a really odd journey with New Leaf because we got, I don’t remember how it came about, but we got a really early Japanese version. And so I remember Matthew giving me the job of playing Animal Crossing in Japanese and trying to write about what I thought was happening. And so it’s this really weird diary feature of like a lion keeps coming to my house and shouting at me and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. But so I ended up playing this. I think I had, I think I started this game three different times. I think there was Japanese preview because we did like an odd like video series on it and then the final version. And it worked. I really didn’t mind starting over every time because like you say, the level of stuff it gave you to do compared to other Animal Crossings made it feel more, I guess more game like than the previous ones and particularly more mobile game like. I remember being really struck by how much of it felt like a game on a mobile that would charge you to do these things or at least like want you to kind of come back again and again to do this stuff. But the kind of the price of admission here was time. It’s this idea of like you come back every day and you put in a shift and you’ll get more and more stuff. And like you say, the high street unlocking, I think is is the biggest example of that. That’s all down to just engaging and it wants you to engage more and more and talk to people every day and build relationships with them and like it’s quite it kind of manipulates you into wanting to spend more time in your town and be the best mayor of that town. And I just I was just really impressed with how it took that basic animal crossing structure and turned it into something way more compulsive. And I think, am I right in thinking this? New Leaf had a new director and I think she came in and put in like, I think it was a lot of different thought. It was kind of a pair of them and she, I’m so bad on names, she then went on to direct the Switch one, I think, by herself, but yeah, we definitely, I think Chandra interviewed them at some point. I remember us having an interview. Aya Kyogoku, that’s her name, I’ve just had a look. And yeah, and I think there’s, I think there was quite a lot, again, kind of like Fire Emblem, it feels, I don’t think Animal Crossing was in any way in trouble for Nintendo in the same way that maybe Fire Emblem was, but I think there was an element of, we’re going to roll the dice and try something different with this, this time, and it really paid off. Yeah, I think again, if you read the interviews, I think there’s a lot of chat about, we want to make this like a big universal, like international experience, like they really thought about what people reacted to, you know, outside of the Japanese audience, and a lot of the kind of tweaks came from that. I remember there being talk on that at the time. I did, this is the most I’ve played Animal Crossing, I thought it was wonderfully made. Problem is, we did a diary feature in the magazine where the four of us would update, it was me, Joe, Gav and Chandra had like a diary of our four towns, and the kind of running bit on mine was that I made a floor tile that was textured like tarmac, and then I tarmac’d my entire town, and so it was just this like black hellscape. And it was funny for screenshots in the magazine, but just made it absolutely miserable to play, so then I just gave up. I can’t believe you used user generated content to destroy the game for yourself. Yeah, basically. I think I used some other custom tiles to do it, it took me ages, I did a set of six custom tiles that when you put them together, it was a chalk outline of a body. Oh yeah, I do remember that. It’s funny, Matthew, sometimes I think when things are like deliberately heartwarming, they kind of catch you on the wrong day and you really respond to it badly. And this feels like an example of that. So what did the director say about this one, Matthew? Let’s see, I was just seeing if the diary was in this issue I had, but it’s not. It says, you’ll live here, you’ll holiday here, you’ll make friends, get obsessed, cut down trees, and cut down anywhere in your way, squid. You’ll rule here, you might just die here. Wow, are we sure this wasn’t the one for Fire Emblem? That’s definitely one of the more bizarre. That’s someone getting really bored halfway through writing the directory. That’s like a bit of 8pm deadline madness there. I recognise the same kind of approach in my own captions in older She’s A PC Gamer. That’s the second highest rated game in ONA. So number 5 is Kid Icarus Uprising. A shooter that made… I kind of remember thinking this is hand cramp the game, but also being extremely impressive for a 3DS game. So a game directed by Masahiro Sakurai and a comeback for this relatively obscure, at least in the West, character. But a proper, big budget Nintendo experience. Matthew, you had this one highly too. Fat, is this your number 1? Yeah, this is my number 1. So what was your thinking there? For me it’s a definitive 3DS, like 3D experience. The action is kind of a bit like Space Harrier. Kind of flying into the screen and you fly around in the foreground, shooting into the background. It’s so obviously made for 3D, the sense of perspective. They had lots of really fun enemies and set pieces where giant lasers would come out of the screen and fire out at you. It’s a very arcade-y game, which is quite true to Sakurai and Nintendo mechanically. But it’s also weirdly cinematic in a way that Nintendo games very rarely are. Has a lot of in-game story events where bosses appear and there are twists and turns in the level, there’s a really strange level where basically your soul gets transported into this tiny ring and then the ring gets eaten by a dog and you basically control different things as they touch this possessed ring. And it just felt like a set piece from an entirely different kind of game. I think Sakurai, he’s one of the Nintendo kind of creators who does talk more openly about his gaming habits. He’s a column in Fumitsu and he plays a lot of Western action games or whatever and this felt like someone kind of bringing in a bit of that kind of pizzazz which was quite interesting. I think it’s really interesting in that it’s a Sakurai game that isn’t a Smash Bros. I mean, it gives you a better idea of what his values are, because Smash Bros. are all quite similar. When you put this next to him and you see what does carry over and what doesn’t, the arcade sensibility, just visually, the menus and things, and this made an odd point to make, but the user interface has got a very distinct bubbly style. He clearly has a vibe that he’s going for, and it’s interesting to see that outside of Smash Bros. It has one of the craziest difficulty systems of all time in that it has 99 difficulty modes. You literally scale it up by point increments from 0.0 to 10. And you basically gamble on the difficulty of the level. The higher it is, the better the rewards you get, but then the more enemies there are, and it really scales up and swarms you, so you’re trying to push it as high as you can to get loot drops. It’s got this huge loot system where there are hundreds of different weapons you can get, and then there’s different stats attached to them based on the difficulty you collect. It’s a really deep, massive game. Surprisingly huge campaign as well, with a quite good early twist that takes it in quite a different direction. And also very funny, it was localized by a stand-up comedian who you might know on Twitter, Mike Drucker, who writes for the late night chat shows in America. It’s got great jokes, really poppy, it’s going for that Saturday morning kind of wisecracking vibe, but it’s genuinely laugh out loud funny. Some amazing voice performances, particularly from the big villains of it, they’re really satisfying things to go after, the way they goad you, and his preppy kind of pits, preppy deliveries, really fun as well. I just thought this was spectacular. Visually, so much replayability, I just really got into it. There’s several levels in this that give me absolute chills, just from production values wise, like the action and the camera work and the music is phenomenally good. It’s such a love letter to something relatively obscure, I’d say, in the grander Nintendo kind of hierarchy. I’m not a big Kid Icarus person at all. I like the older game, but yeah, this was just… I think it just proves that what Sakurai’s approach to games is, it’s just he goes all out. Like, the madness of Smash Brothers, the scale of Smash Brothers, isn’t just because it’s Smash Brothers, it’s just that is how Sakurai will tackle anything. Please let him make something that isn’t Smash Brothers. And it doesn’t have to be Kid Icarus 2, it can be anything. Give him anything and he’ll do something interesting with it. Yeah, I absolutely adore this game. Hand cramps and all. Yeah. Well, Joe, did you have any thoughts on this one? It didn’t make your list, but I was, I imagine it kind of, you crossed paths with it at some point. I’m not gonna lie. I don’t think I’ve played a minute of it. It’s one of the, it’s a massive blind spot for me. I think it came, it came out before I joined the mag. Yeah, definitely. I was on Endgamer when this happened. So it was never something, it was never something I had to cover. And I think I just never got around to it. And despite, this is not to say that I don’t think it sounds good. Like I’ve heard Matthew talk about it at length for years. But yeah, it’s just one of those things that I never got to. And it does feel like something I would enjoy. But yeah, it’s a massive blind spot for me, I’m afraid. That’s a boring answer for this. Get a pre-owned copy. It holds up. I was playing some of it this week. It’s brilliant. This did really make me want to do it. I forgot about the kind of loot element to it, and that really sells that concept for me. The kind of gambling with the game idea is really cool. Yeah, I’d actually forgotten about it. I haven’t played this for nine years, obviously. But I had forgotten about that system until you mentioned it, Matthew. And that feels like something that’s quite similar to how you scale the AI and Smash Bros as well, like you say, that kind of commonality between the two. Yeah, I feel like this game just maybe just came out slightly too early to get the attention it deserved on 3DS. It was as the 3DS was getting like a momentum, but I don’t know, I’m sort of, I still feel like it sold over a million copies, but I don’t think it was like a mega seller. So yeah. Yeah, and it came with that weird stand as well, which didn’t help it. It sells itself as like, I’m going to be a pain in the ass, when actually it isn’t really. It’s relatively sleek in terms of, you know, it’s controlled entirely with a shoulder button, the analogue stick and the stylus, which is why you have to hold the console in one hand and why they put in the stand. But like, I’ve played this loads and got around it. You just, I don’t know, it works eventually. Okay, what was the directory verdict on this one? Mr. Smash Brothers Sakurai excavates Nez’s Greek ruin, reinventing the series as a blistering action spectacle, factor in a millennium’s worth of content, and this is a true angel delight. That’s a Matthew right up. I don’t know if I would have said content. Oh, that’s fair. But then a true angel delight sounds so much like you. That does sound like something Nuff that I’d write. I like that. That’s good mag writing. It is. Yeah, top stuff. For those that don’t know, he’s an angel. We’re not saying he’s a weird sort of… You can laugh at it now. He’s not a powdered custard man. Yeah. Okay, so number four is Mario Kart 7. I’m not going to preface this one, because I’m really curious to know what you two make of this. Matthew, kick off. How does this fit into the Mario Kart canon? Yeah, I think this is a very, very, very solid entry. I think the reason I responded so well to this was because I’d had that very bad experience with Mario Kart Wii, which I really don’t rate, despite rating it in the magazine, as talked about on our reviews from Hell. I won’t go into that again. This to me just felt like they’d kind of fixed all the problems there. They’d scaled it back down. They’d lost incredibly wide tracks that made Wii such a bust. I think the little things they added, like the hang glider sections, they’re not massively game changing, but when they happen in the tracks, they feel really nice. Mechanically, that hang glider is a very nice thing. The physics of it, the sense that you can dive bomb down to the track, or that you can try and swoop down and use the physics to help you. I will always take that over the… I much preferred that to the transforming vehicles of the Sega game, which was quite similar, where the car could turn into a plane. But then it was like a plane section, it felt quite different. This was more like it had little things that could happen, which were mechanically interesting for a few seconds, which is all I really need, because Mario Kart’s pretty solid the rest of the time. It feels much more like Mario Kart DS, I guess, in terms of its style of track, and the visual style of it. Maybe a little lightweight as a package, like around the game. It’s pretty slimmed down. It’s pretty much just these good tracks, and a few bits of customisable stuff going on. But yeah, I don’t know. A return to form, I guess. A return to the form with the DS game is probably my line on it. How about you, Joe? It didn’t make my list, and I think partly that’s due to Mario Kart 8 just being so good. But it always felt kind of competent to me. Like it did a really good job. It wasn’t too flashy about it. And it kind of, it just, like Matthew says, I think it brought back a really nice sense to Mario Kart. But yeah, it never kind of, it never blew my mind, I’d say. My abiding memory of Mario Kart 7 is that one of the first things I ever did on the magazine, for reasons I cannot remember, was played Mario Kart 7 in a giant bootleg Luigi head we had in the office, with two, like, sort of, like racing babes who had come into our office for some reason. Was that an official Nintendo thing? I think it was. And like, so there’s this one picture of me in a big Luigi head at a crappy table in future London with these two bored-looking women standing either side of me. I think you wanted to wear the head because you didn’t want to have your… I think you just didn’t want to be in the photo with the babes. I genuinely think that was it because it just felt… I don’t know what we were doing it for. I certainly didn’t suggest being a part of it. That is very much… That’s like the dark side of the staff writer life, where someone, like, if no one wants to do it, you fucking do it. I thought that it was like, look, oh no, there are babes, quick, get the disguise. I just didn’t want to be in it. It was so strange and the smiles on their faces in this picture haunt me because you can see they’re just so angry to be there in their eyes. It’s awful. So maybe that’s why it’s not on my list. Wow, yeah. That is not where I expected your opinion on this game to go. No, it’s very strange. I’m not going to make Matthew dig up evidence because I don’t want people to have to see this photo circulated on the internet. It’s somewhere on my Facebook. I’m sure I can put it up. I just want to see what the Luigi head looks like. It’s the worst. We used it all the time in the magazine. I’m surprised Nintendo let us because I don’t know why it was there. It stank inside it as well. I think Chris owns it. Does he own it? I think it was a birthday present that he bought for Chris Sculley. It was very weird. I’ll see if I can find it. I’ll send it over. I like that in a certain era, every O&M photo you had a bootleg Luigi head and Cesc Fabregas mask. That’s quite an iconography. My only thought on Mario Kart 7 is that I was so into the DS one. By virtue of the 3DS not being as successful as the DS, it never just caught on culturally in the same way. That’s why I was a bit cooler on it, I think, because I just didn’t have a circle of friends who were playing this and have that lunchtime session thing, or you meet a mate and go to a mate’s house and just play it for a while. That was very much part of the culture of the DS to me. I knew enough people who had a DS with Animal Crossing and Mario Kart to have a good two or three hour session locally. That just didn’t really happen with this one. What does the directory make of this one, Matthew? The directory says, It drops the Wii’s blasted bikes for Ace Aerial and Aquatic Hijinks, all playing out on courses from the clever chaps at Retro. Retro? Yeah, they co-developed it. I don’t even remember that. Adding private online lobbies makes this Mario Kart’s tastiest online offering to date, Vroom. Nice. Oh, that Vroom. That’s a weak ending to that. That was basically filling a line. Oh yeah, I can picture the blank space in my head where that goes. Yeah, that’s InDesign and one cursor flashing and you’re just going, oh for god’s sake. What about thinking about Vrooms? You can put as many O’s in it as you want. I think Retro Studios co-developed this because this is one game where I think Nintendo rushed to get this out for that Christmas, just to get it out because they needed this and Mario 3D Land, which we’ll get to in this list. Those two I think were very key in the turning around of the console generally in terms of people buying it. So that’s my theory of why Retro worked on this, but I don’t know. Number three is Monster Hunter for Ultimate. So Joe, this is number one on your list. It’s pretty well known that you’re a big Monster Hunter guy. Talk us through what this meant to you on the 3DS. For a long time, this was what I considered to be the best game ever made. And it was the game that really got me into Monster Hunter. I just, something about it clicked with me so perfectly. And I’ve talked extensively before, but not, you know, I’m not expecting people to have followed my thoughts on Monster Hunter across the internet. But there’s the loop and like the design loop of Monster Hunter just, I think is near perfect. And this game did it so well, which is this idea that you have a series of bosses that you fight in a series of different ways with a series of different like instruments to do that that do that in like wild, you know, they affect how you play wildly. But it’s all built on this idea of fight something, get materials from it, build something new to fight something else to get materials from it to build something new. And like the way it ties all of its stuff together is just seamless. And it carries you through that game on like a constant search for the next thing. And it really emphasizes like putting the time in, you know, it tries. I think this game actually in retrospect, you know, less so than the newer games, makes it a bit harder to kind of get interested in like the farming aspect of it. But there is a really, I spent a very long time in this game doing very mundane things and having a lovely time about it. It’s one of those kind of two tone games where you can sit down and want to go and beat one boss, and it will take ages and you’ll feel amazing when you’ve done it, especially if you do it with other people. But you can also sit down and kind of have the TV on and do, you know, go and find all your herbs or go and fish for a while. And it just accommodates those two states really well. And 4 Ultimate in particular is just, it’s just gigantic. For a 3DS game, it is absolutely enormous. There is so much stuff in it. Like, I certainly never finished it and I played hundreds of hours because you’re just, you’re constantly given the next big challenge, the next big, you know, these games always go into G-rank, which is like super hard versions of monsters you fought with new abilities and new looks and new equipment you can make out of them. And it’s just, oh, it’s just wonderful. I just absolutely love these games. And this was the one for me where I finally got it. I tried Monster Hunter 3 and kind of started to like it, but Monster Hunter’s always had a problem with onboarding people and you kind of need someone to walk you through it. And I had that with this with another friend. And we just, it was just fantastic. I agree with that. I like this. Didn’t this introduce the thing that you could pole vault into people’s backs? Yeah, this was the first one where you could ride monsters. They’ve changed that system about three times since. But this was the first one where if you were a normal weapon user, you could like jump off a ledge and land on a monster and just stab it in the back for a while before it threw you off. Yeah, I think this is probably the Monster Hunter I played the most of as well. I just think it fits handheld best. And I know World’s amazing, but it’ll always be a handheld game. High hopes for the upcoming Switch one, too. The demos of that are very promising, but it’s also just… I think it’s always more impressive to see Monster Hunter in a handheld context just because of how lushly made it is. The animations in these games, the number of ways that these monsters can react, and the number of ways you have to react to them. There’s 14 different weapon types that turn it into fundamentally different action games. You know, it’s just… There’s so much love put into these that I think is often hidden behind quite an imposing face. But they are, and are beautifully localised as well. The jokes really sing. There’s so many cat puns. It’s just… They’re a labour of love, you can tell on every element of it. I think, and this one in particular, just felt… This, to me, was the moment at which Monster Hunter, the Monster Hunter team, I think, started to realise how they could leverage a Western audience as well. And they really started pushing how much stuff kind of… felt kind of… They started to make it feel a bit more accommodating to people who hadn’t followed the series forever. It’s just an absolute masterpiece. Did you two play this together at all? I think we must have done. But I had a group of people that I played with who were like all Monster Hunter people already. And they were the ones who kind of carried me through it to a certain extent. This didn’t come out after O&M. Oh, it might have done actually, because I think I reviewed this possibly for… I think I reviewed this for Games Master or… I think I freelanced this one. I’ve got a feeling this was just after O&M. So it’s not in the directory. But Monster Hunter 3 is. Do you want to go with that? I just like hearing these little bits of tech. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, obviously a different game, but they’re vibe-similar. Big monsters, big world, big bagpipe mallets, tiny little console. Monster Hunter’s always felt at home on a handheld, and it’s just taken out a fun mortgage on our favourite one. Yeah, we didn’t even mention the fact that one of the weapons is a big bagpipe hammer. It’s the best. Wow, to think I was almost going to consider not having you read out that directory entry, Matthew. What an error that would have been. What’s a fun mortgage? That’s a very confusing metaphor. That sounds like me, I’m afraid to say. Alright then, so we’re on to number two, which is Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon. I actually replayed the original Luigi’s Mansion on 3DS. The port they did of that is really nice, actually, a little while ago. You get to the end of Luigi’s Mansion, it feels like they’ve done everything they can with that concept. It’s not a very long game, but they max out all the ideas they have. I think what I remember being surprising about this much longer sequel is how many cool new ideas they build on top of it. Matthew, you’re very fond of this one. Why don’t you kick us off? Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s the way they grew the formula out, made the regular action of the thing a bit more interesting. It was less about the signature ghosts which Luigi’s Mansion is about, and just the general minute-to-minute of this is a bit more interesting. A bit more focused on puzzle solving. There’s multiple mansions, almost. I can’t quite remember how it’s structured, but you go to different worlds which are contained. Again, I think a lot of this is the wow factor of just how amazing it looked in 3D. This was a great 3D showcase. Anything where you’re peering into a little room, the little 3D dioramas, and there were so many interactive elements and site gags and weird little animation quirks. I think having played the third one on Switch, I still think this is the best one. For me, it just felt like a more natural fit. Like the size of the game, the kind of complexity of what you can actually do, sort of suits a little handheld adventure where you dip in and do a couple of rooms and then jump out again. Where I think it felt, it couldn’t really sustain it as well on Switch. It didn’t feel like something I necessarily wanted to sit down and play in front of the TV. Huge amount of character. A really nice little success story for Next Level Games as well who made this as an external studio. Just really pulling out all the stops and really delivering. Just a lot of happy memories of playing this one. How about you, Joe? You’ve got this quite high on your list too. Yeah, I loved it. Matthew’s summed it up for me there. The Doll’s House feel of it on 3DS is so appealing. As you say, kind of peering in. Again, it’s that tunnel effect of this feeling of these tiny little bits of world. Again, yeah, there’s so much to them that can be manipulated. It does more than any other game to make Luigi feel like there’s a point to him. You know? He feels so different to Mario in this. And he really… He’s got this sort of… Not Morkaman-wise, what are they called? Buster Keaton type feel to him. He’s this lovely little ball of mistakes that you kind of mess around with. The way it kind of hands you a lot of control over him. But then it will take it away in a moment to just be like, here’s a joke, here’s something really interesting or really funny to watch that you’re kind of out of control of. But never too cutsceney. It just feels like you’re kind of guiding him around rather than controlling him. And yeah, the puzzles were really fun. I think the multiple worlds really worked. I agree, the Switch one, it tried to do that by having the different floors, but there was something about having distinct mansions to go to. And learning how each one worked was really satisfying. And it kind of more steadily built up the mechanics that way. It’s just a really lovely game. Beautiful and just, yeah, I like how Next Level have kind of made it their own, to the point where Nintendo have now officially bought them. It feels like this was kind of their, this and the Switch one were sort of their tests to be like, do you have what it takes? And they absolutely do. It’s really nice. Yeah, I was curious, Matthew, what the directory made of this one. What was the score for this one in O&M? It’s got 92. I think I reviewed this. Yeah, you did. Yeah. Luigi wouldn’t be the first person we’d call for exorcism assistance, but judging by his second solo outing, we’d have an absolutely brilliant time watching him try to do the job. Straightforward. Nice and happy, rather than weird and creepy like the New Leaf one. No, like we’re all gonna die. Even though it’s about half these entries. Yep, no fun mortgages this time. Okay, so we’ve finally reached our number one, and it is Super Mario 3D Land. Joe, I want to start with you on this one, because it’s actually slightly lower down in your list than me and Matthew have it. What do you make of this, the first major Mario game to launch on 3DS, and maybe the only one, actually. I know there’s the 2D ones as well, but the only, like, 3D one. So, talk us through it. I have to say, this is kind of my link between worlds one, where, to me, less of Mario is better than most things, and that’s why it’s on my top 10 list, but it’s not one that sort of, that ever kind of really captured me in the same way. I think it’s an amazing utilization of what the 3DS can do, and I think there’s obviously brilliant Mario 3D thinking in there, but it never, to me, never quite hit the levels of, and again, comparing to Galaxy or anything like that is absolutely absurd, but it never quite hit the levels of invention to me that makes me think of it regularly in the way that I do the greatest Mario games, but it is just, I’m so glad that they tried and did this and that they succeeded with it, because it proves that 3D Mario isn’t bound by being powerful or open-world in that way. I love the thinking of kind of, let’s extrude how 2D works into a 3D context and use those setups. It’s a really, really cool game. But yeah, it would be better to probably hear either of you two talk about it given that you rate it a little higher than me. How about you, Matthew? We’ve kind of talked a bit about how you feel about this sort of subsection of Mario games. And you know, you like Joe echo the thinking of how Galaxy is like the, you know, the top of the pile. But then what this does is still, it’s still good. It’s just, you know, you’re comparing amazing things here. Yeah, definitely. I have a bit of that vibe about this. I’d say I feel this format works better on 3DS than it ever did on like Wii U or Switch for me. Like the sort of single player format of it. The just the kind of self contained levels, you know, the power of the obvious like power limitations of the 3DS. I don’t know. It just it feels like a more sensible fit. I think this game suffers a little bit in that its best stuff is in the latter half of the game. I think it takes a little while to get going. You know, it’s almost a little gentle. It goes back to that thing I’ve talked to you before where Nintendo had this real kind of chip on their shoulder that people didn’t know or couldn’t handle 3D Mario, which felt like a really strange concern considering like some of the most critically acclaimed games they’ve ever made had been 3D Marios and had been making them for quite a long time. And then all of a sudden they suddenly got really worried that they were too difficult or too confusing. And that’s why they kind of took this approach. That’s massively paraphrasing it. But that’s that’s the general vibe. Doesn’t have like the total explosion of ideas of a galaxy. But it feels really nice. I just it’s a strange one. It’s very much like a nine out of ten for me this one. But, you know, I remember thinking particularly with the 3D ramped up, it just all feels so incredibly sort of solid and like very well realised. And that sort of sense of like physicality is so like vital to Mario. And I think that 3D does definitely adds add something to it. I wish there was less stuff about it. I really I was looking back over this and it made me think how little I care about Mario costumes. There was so much stuff because this they were quite big on the Tanooki suit in this one. It was like back and they made like a big thing like the Tanooki suits back. And it’s like this. I mean, when Mario puts a costume on, he becomes interesting. I totally know what you mean. I agree like he’s, you know, it’s like, you know, those moves he can do. We can’t do them anymore because he’s got this suit, which means he behaves in a different way. And it means he can do less. So, yeah, but that’s I mean, that’s, you know, that isn’t just on 3D land. That’s on lots of them. But I just remember the the raccoon suit being quite a big element of this. Yeah, it’s just I don’t know. It’s just very chunky, very solid, like beautifully made. I mean, you can’t kind of criticize it on that level. As I’ve said many times before, you know, a kind of lesser Mario is still a stunning game. But what did you make of this? Because I think I think you like this a little more than I do. Yeah, I’m very fond of these these sort of this 3D subseries. I think that the 3D effect of the console actually works perfectly with this game in a way that I feel like it. It didn’t for quite a lot of Nintendo’s catalogue. Ultimately, that might be because they changed direction a bit. But for example, I didn’t actually get much out of using the 3D in Ocarina of Time when that came to 3DS. But this with its kind of like almost isometric camera just just kind of kind of like the sort of blocky nature of some of the levels. It just feels they feel like quite chunky levels like it’s like a duplo kind of sort of like approach to the art design. And those kind of like shapes and stuff just popped on the with the 3DS slider right up. And I thought that was great. And also the fact that like the kind of second set of like hidden levels in this are just terrific as well and do finally like you say it takes a while to get going. But it does finally reach that kind of like frantic difficulty of like you know that you expect from Mario and its latter stages. I would argue it’s probably the nicest looking. I think it’s the nicest looking game on the system as well. It was a proper like I bought a 3DS around the time that about three months after launch when it was discounted. And it was that thing of there was a long wait for like, you know, big interesting games to come out. But I remember just I played this that Christmas. Again, I’m kind of rating Christmas here a bit. But just OK. This is a podcast that likes Christmas. Yeah. I like you. I understand why it doesn’t have the same sort of it doesn’t have the same ambition as a galaxy. But it’s a really nice compromise between 2D Mario and Galaxy, I think, particularly, like you say, for a handheld like this. Also, this was the first time, apart from the Mario 64 port on DS, that they had done a 3D Mario game on handheld, right? And so as a first kind of pun to that, I thought it was incredibly impressive. So, yeah, I love it. Yeah, absolutely. I had a very weird time reviewing this one because I had the car. And I was on a weirdly I was on a Call of Duty 3 review trip because this was in a little period where I was in the writers hub at Future. So I occasionally got drafted in to do stuff for Xbox World and PSM3. And so I was reviewing this in the evenings. I was playing this like while I was on that trip, staying in this quite strange motel. And so the daytime was just full of Call of Duty, you know, absolute extreme violence. It’s the one with the bombings in London and all that jazz. And to go from that to this was just so jarring. A very, very strange experience. Which I don’t know if that kind of my feelings on the game. Was there some Nintendo embargo weirdness with this one as well, where you couldn’t talk about the second half of the game, the secret levels? Definitely. That’s why all the reviews are like… It’s quite funny going back to the reviews, seeing people try to talk around that. There’s a lot of this chat of like… Because the good stuff was in the second half, basically, where they wanted you to think it only had like eight, whatever, six worlds, and then there were always secret worlds where all the good stuff was. Which is kind of the same with the Switch one, really. Actually, that’s unfair. That gets better faster. Yeah. And you can see lots of people who are like, yeah, but stick around after the credits, kind of. Wink, wink. And you’re like, oh, I wonder what that could be. Could it be more levels like every Mario game? I do like that 3D Land and 3D World have that. I can’t remember. I think it was Brian Altano at IGN put it. They’re both quite welcoming games in the early stages, particularly 3D World in co-op. And they both kind of have this moment of kind of going, all right, are the kids in bed? Because we’re going to kick your arse now. It’s a really… I like that they have their cake and eat it that way with the early worlds kind of accommodating you. And then by the end, you’re just having a terrible time trying to get through it. It’s really… It’s great. Yeah. Or like mechanics, what you think. Oh, that’s such a good idea. I wish they’d pushed it a bit further. And then you get to the end and there’s like the nightmare version of that. And you end up thinking, be careful what you wish for, I guess. I think they really… They should be commended on that level. I’m a much bigger fan of 3D World, certainly, than Matthew. But I think this obviously lays a lot of that path. And I think there is something really nice about them. Yeah, testing the limits of where they can go with their stuff. At the same time as trying to invoke some of those 2D games, like more hidden elements, the stuff that people really get excited about when they get into Mario. It feels like a nice harking back to that stuff. Absolutely. So Matthew, to close us out, what does the directory say about this one? Half of this entry, I think, is really spot on. The other half I don’t really understand. Good, good. It says, is Mario’s 3DS debut a truncated galaxy or a fattened new Super Mario Brothers? A good observation. Either way, it’s gloriously athletic stuff, especially when approached with a time-trialers mentality. Oh, okay. What does that mean? I don’t remember that. Get through the level fast? I mean, like you do in all Mario games? Well, like all Mario games, the clock counts down, doesn’t it? Or most of them. Yeah. Yeah, bizarre. Not the first thing that comes to mind for me with that game. Take that, whoever wrote that blurb, ten years ago. Honestly, probably me. I don’t know, I think that, you know, is it like a limited version of Galaxy or is it like a hyper version of the kind of older games? I think that’s quite fair for those, those Marios. They sit, that’s where they sit, between the two. Yeah, I certainly don’t remember having a thought that it should be played really quickly. So I don’t know if it was me necessarily, but you know, the odds are a lot of that directory was me. So we have to, we have to go by the stats. It’s nice that we’ve ended on a note of totally confusing books. Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s exactly what, you know, that’s what I’d hope to invoke. Great stuff. Well, yeah, we’ve reached the end of the top 10. Thank you so much for coming on, Joe. It’s been a really good episode, our longest one yet, but lovely to get your insight, you know, it’s, it’s good. I had a lovely time. I hope people are still here. I hope they haven’t been upset. And yeah, it was just really nice to talk through all this again, because you don’t often don’t get a chance to look back like this. So it’s been really cool. Yeah, a really comprehensive look at the software library, I think covered by this episode. So yeah, great to have your expertise. So to close out, where can people find you on Twitter, Joe? I’m at 2 plus 2 is Joe, the twos are numbers and the rest is words is not a useful thing to try and communicate to anyone. But yeah, it’s probably easier to just phone me on IGN and then click the link to my Twitter at the bottom of the bottom of your story. Yeah, that’s where I am. Yep, that’s right. You can read Joe’s writing on obscure website, ign.com. And yeah, it’s been great to have you on. Matthew, where can people find you on Twitter? I’m Mr. Basil underscore Peste. Cool. Well, look, Joe, we’ll look, we’ll find an excuse to have you on down the line to tell more stories about Matthew. I’d love that. Yeah, that’s what the listeners want to hear. You can follow the podcast The Back Page Pod. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. We’ll be back next week with an episode about Capcom, I believe. We may or may not have a guest on that one. I forgot to ask Matthew about that. But either way, some good Capcom chatter. Yes. Thank you very much for listening and we’ll be back next week. Bye bye!