It's handy enough. It's more complicated if you had softmodded before and are updating. The method depends on what type of 3DS you have. The site that covers this gives you a handy step by step guide to doing it and I was fine following it for my already softmodded 3DS and my then non soft modded 3DS XL.
It's probably a good thing to do it as you'll back up your 3DS and nand as part of the process. Also it's the only way to get DLC for many games now.
With regards to DLC if you install it through the softmod just trust it's there. If you go into the in game store to see if it's installed the game will uninstall the DLC. Just something to be aware of.
Is there much to softmodding a 3DS these days actually? Never did give it a go, kind of tempted to now if this has an English translation available.
There was a lot of buzz around it and the 3DS was crying out for good games at the time. I was baffled as well that it didn't get a release.
I remember that was one of th 3DS games I was super excited to play years back, was really disappointed and baffled that it never had a western release.
Started Beyond the Labyrinth on 3DS. It's a Japanese only rpg from Konami and TriAce which strangely never made it to the west and it's a shame as it's really great. There was a fan translation thankfully but it's a little weird to set up. You need to turn subtitles on and also need to change the language of the game to Japanese so the character name text can appear. It's a bit fiddly, I got it to work on my old 3DS but my XL won't work with the character names which are kind of important.
The game starts off looking like a PC98 dungeon crawler and you are joined by 3 other players as it's a fake online game. Shortly into the game you are transported into a much more realistic looking world with a strange girl who is asking for your help.
The game looks incredible, there's a real Ico feel to the game and the girl you escort and protect is very well animated. The music is absolutely incredible. It's composed by Motio sakurabe who composed the likes of dark souls and the Xenoblade games. It's seriously incredible with some stunning tracks, Profusion of Flowers being a standout.
The game plays like a dungeon crawler but there's no random battles, enemies are visible at all times. The battle system is very unique. You can attack and can change the power of attacks with more powerful attacks increasing the time in the turn order until you can attack again, the timeline is always visible. That's the only thing you can do, there's no magic or even a way to heal.
What makes the battle system interesting is that there is a rock paper scissors weakness system. Attacking an enemy with their weakness fills up a pool of HP which is then given to the next player or enemy that has the weakness that was exploited. This is the only way to heal in the game. It makes the game very interesting as you cant just exploit an enemies weakness as if they attack next turn they will just gain all their hp back. You have to set up your turn order so you can steal this HP from the enemy before they attack and often times it's better to whiff a weak attack than exploit a weakness. It sounds complex but it's very intuitive. There are items to use but they aren't traditional items, they allow you to change affinity or skip turns.
I'm really enjoying the game although there's a bit too much of a gap between save points being my only caveat. What surprised me as well is how funny the game is. There's great banter between the characters with each being a different gamer archetype. Prof is a nerd that loves rpgs, lily is a girl that loves cute things while edge is a really cynical guy that balks at all of the girls friendship speeches.
Dragon Quest 9 - Have yet to come across a Dragon Quest that isn’t the coziest thing to play save for maybe 2. The customisation is a welcome spin on the tried-and-true formula and the episodic nature of its plot makes it ideal to dip in and out of on the fly.
the 20 year old save is 6 hours in on a pretty early difficulty spike alright! I remember thinking “screw that” and at the time my interest in games was waning anyway
The 21 hour save is a bit longer than average according to HLTB, but part of that was that I’d play it with month long gaps in between and be lost.
Overall it’s a bit harder than Prime 1 due to a few bosses that have a knack to them.
Still have to get my hands on the Switch port of the first game to play through it for the 3rd or 4th time!
I've never actually played the second game. I take it the difficulty spike is true given the 20 years and 21 hours completion time?
Glad to hear it holds up. Was worried it didn't as I inhaled anything Metroid Prime since I loved the first game so much.
Finally finished Metroid Prime 2 last night. Put it on at lunch for a quick go and beat Ing, and was happy to see a checkpoint right after!
Had to get back to work and put the boy to bed so left the GC on, CRT off for hours and hours like the old days!
21 hours (and 20 years) later and I have to say, it was a brilliant experience. I was such an inpatient gamer back then!!
Mental deals, a log of the NTSC-J stuff was for pittens, and also so often in amazing condition too.
Very interesting that romhack, will be sure to check it out, cheers!
Had a look back through my emails - $27 from Hitjapan on the 21st of November 2012. They really were great for the deals back then weren't they?
Have you see this hack by the way? Might be interesting to give it a go if you fancy another Earthbound playthrough.
Changelog here:
https://github.com/ShadowOne333/MaternalBound-Redux#changelog
Sweeeet. Yep they went for peanuts, something like 20 or 30 euro CiB I think.
It's a lot better. I played a few hours and got to chapter 5. I think it's best to kind of play it like that and come back to older stages with your new skills.
Think I'll fire that up for a bit of Sunday gaming. Love the first game but haven't much play time with the sequel at all
Id forgotten how lovely this was, all absolutely mint. If I remember correctly they could be had for peanuts at the time.
Original ROM chip was still in the box too!
Tried it out and it still works perfectly.
My old save file is still there too
Forgot to mention I played a few hours of ninja gaiden 2. I loved the first ninja gaiden but 2 is just so much better. It's got the same amazing controls but fixes the big problem with the first game, enemies respawning if their spawn point aligns with the edge of the screen. The game is still tough but enemy placement is way better. Levels also throw in some new mechanics to keep things fresh.
The biggest change to the game is you can have two clones follow you which can be used in interesting ways. The bosses are really great.
Yeah I'd be interested to hear if it still works. I imagine there's a question over the longevity of the cheap flash chips on those types of mods, especially back in that era of modding.
Same here! I think a few of us played through it for the first time about ten years ago. I must see if that Mother 2 cart you TSOP modded for me still works as a matter of interest actually.
Don't think it's been fired up since and if I remember correctly there was a bit of a question as to what would happen to them long term.
When I was doing the NAND replacement on my Wii U there a while back, I noticed that my Earthbound save is 10 years old in October. Hard to believe it was a decade ago playing it! I think it's only fair I go through it again this year at some stage. I can still remember a lot of the tunes from the game, despite playing it once, ten years back....truly memorable stuff.
So I kind of beat Astroboy, got the bad ending but it opens up a whole new time paradox new game plus where you can unlock new areas, remixed stages and bosses. The story changes up as well. Fantastic little game.
Anyway I'm in Greece for the next few days so probably won't be playing much games.
That is a ridiculously good game and, together with Tearaway on the Vita, came as close as Sony ever did to Nintendo heights in platforming, at least until the Astrobot titles, which are all too often locked away as tacit tech demos for Sony hardware.
I got Puppeteer for a reasonable (ish) price off eBay, it's really good although I do feel like I'm missing out as it would benefit quite a lot with 3d with a lot of the switching between planes and the design of the game. As much as I love the PS3, I never actually tried anything in 3d on it. The TVs and glasses were always prohibitively expensive.
I have the original GBA cart here somewhere, I must go dig it out
It's very different from the saturn game. It's a strange game that will absolutely murder you if you haven't got the block mechanics down.
Astroboy is worth checking out. It's highly praised and I can see why.
Always appreciated Gamecentral (maybe still teletext back then?) going bit on their promotion of Astro Boy: Omega Factor back in the day, would have overlooked it otherwise. As well as feeling great to play and having some spectacular sprite work, it's also a surprisingly dense game, with lots of interesting design in terms of the secrets to find and the robust post-game / NG+ stuff.
Beyond Gunstar Heroes I never really looked into their GBA games, must check that Astroboy game out too.
I see they released a GBA Guardian Heroes game! didn't know about that at all.
So I beat Super Mario 3D Land. It was an absolute joy.
Next on my handheld list is Astroboy: Omega Factor. I'm not all that fond of Treasure's GBA games, Gunstar Super Heroes was a massive let down and I'm not sure what Advance Guardian Heroes was although I want to go back to it. I won't even comment on the Tiny Toons game although it actually feels very much like a prototype for Astroboy.
Anyway this game is already my favourite of Treasure's GBA games. The controls are both complex and intuitive, there's a lot of strategy needed and the boss fights so far have been incredible. It looks gorgeous as well and it a real love letter to the astroboy franchise.
That game gets a huge amount of **** and I never understood why. I really enjoyed it and it's one of the few games my dad really liked, although he gravitated towards lightgun games a lot.
It's only recently that I figured out why it's regarded as terrible, the usual case of the American's rewriting history. Survivor released in the US with the Guncon support disabled because of Columbine. So therefore the narrative has to be that it's crap.
Super Mario 3D Land is absolutely brilliant. I don't even want to look up how old it is as it still only feels like it was released yesterday...
Started Resident Evil:Survivor this evening using the PSX MiSTer core and a guncon. Thought the controls would work with a combination between the Guncon and Dualshock but it's 100% one or the other.
Very clunky until you get your head around it but once it clicks it's very interesting. Tank controls with a Guncon. One button turns left, one turns right, pull trigger and shoot off screen goes forward. Double tap off screen and you step backwards. Actually had quite a bit of fun with it.
