Nintendo Direct – the much loved online video show for all Ninty news, is well and truly back and this week’s highlight was the exciting announcement that classic Super Nintendo games will be coming to the New 3DS and New 3DS XL.
The great news is that favourite 16-bit titles from yesteryear including Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid will be available through the Nintendo eShop and Virtual Console, appearing true to the originals and ‘pixel perfect’ – just as you remember them from back in the day.
But you may have noticed that we only said New 3DS and New 3DS XL. This is because Nintendo has chosen to make these SNES titles exclusive to the two most recent versions of its handheld system which were released in late 2014. You will sadly not be able to get them if you are still playing with the 3DS systems that were launched prior to this, which is a bit of a bummer for early buyers hoping for a bit of nostalgic Nintendo gaming.
Nintendo’s reasoning for this has not officially been made clear but it’s been suggested in a handful of sources that only the newer 3DS portable system’s enhanced processing can handle the true-to-original porting of the 16-bit SNES games. This is also the reason why Game Boy Advanced games are yet to appear on the handheld platform despite fans requesting them for some time now.For those who do own a New Nintendo 3DS or its bigger sibling there is a weekly schedule planned for Virtual Console updates throughout March which include 2 SNES classics per deployment:
Week A – 3rd March: Super Mario World and EarthBound
Week B – 10th March: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid
Week X – 17th March: F-Zero and Super Mario Kart
Week Y – 24th March: Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
Since there are two games released each week, Nintendo is offering them up for $7.99 each or if bought during the week of release the second can be purchased at half the price meaning you could build up quite a nice library of retro games for your New 3DS. Our eyes are on pairing of The Legend of Zelda and Super Metroid!
Source: Nintendo