I’d actually like to see him tackle some really absurd aspect of gaming. Like, yeah, the innovation of the shoulder buttons or the elimination of the reset button.
I was a 3DS Ambassador, except I didn't even know about it until 12 years later when i was checking the eShop before closure. I HAD ALL THESE GAMES ALL THIS TIME!?
@@TexasHollowEarth I really wish they would rerelease that version since it had some extra maps that never followed later rereleases, like the latest NSO release...
"Its almost like the 3DS has a DS inside of it" - from what i understand this is exactly what is happening. The 3DS has 3 separate CPUs - a 2 or 4 core ARM 11 chip for 3DS software, and the ATM9 & ARM7 chips from a dsi. The suspend & OS features when playing a 3DS game are ran on the DS chips. The ARM7 chip is basically what was in the GBA (the same reason why the DS was able to play GBA games), which is why this works at all. But when running a DS or GBA game, those chips are no longer available to do things like handle the home menu.
For the exact same reason, the Wii U is fully capable of running Gamecube games - because the Wii U has a Wii stuffed inside it which has a Gamecube stuffed inside it. Homebrew like Nintendont can natively run gamecube games on a Wii U.
@@TownDarlingthis is honestly one of my favorite things about this generation of Nintendo consoles and Homebrew. i don’t have a WiiU but i do have a homebrewed 3DS and Wii and i just love the idea that both of these console can just play games from previous generations and in some official capacity because they were designed to do this lol
I'm unsure on the specifics of it, but at least on the DS I know that to enter GBA compatability mode the only difference needed to account for is that the ARM7 CPU runs at twice the speed of the GBA's, so they force it to run in half speed and then flash the ROM in
Considering how the 3DS basically sustained Nintendo through the Wii U era and where we are now, it's crazy to think that there was a short period where nintendo released two consoles near to each other that massively underperformed at launch. The fact they've survived through that is pretty remarkable.
@@Crafty_boy70they stockpile cash instead of immediately using it to expand. That reserve helped get them through the WiiU era. And with the Switch era, they’ve gotten so much success that they’ve used it for expansions and even attempting to go multimedia
@@paperluigi6132tbf all that money they were sitting on could have been used to expand the company or make the 3DS and Wii U more attractive, it's a gamble but it could have made those years turn out way better than they did
@@Crafty_boy70 merch flow definitely helps too, Mario sells waaay more merchandise than most any other game franchise. Not to mention the percentage they get from Pokemon.
I knew the Ambassador program was ending and a price cut was coming. I took advantage of Best Buy’s price match policy and bought my 3DS the day before the Ambassador ended. Went back to Best Buy and price matched the day after the price drop went live. Best of both worlds.
you can read Best Buy’s Price Match Guarantee on their website - if they lower their own price within the return / exchange window, they will refund you the difference without requiring you to return the original item. it may have changed in the last decade but back in 2011 I was able to do it all in store.
9:08 "These released a couple months later. I believe the NES games came out in December 2011, the GBA games came out in DECEMBER 2011" That's quite the gap
Sadly will never happen unless they radically change the music in Mother 3, as Moon Channel's video shows. From Beat It, to Down on the USSR, there are many parodies and almost direct references, and licensing all of that for a GBA game would be extremely expensive. Vs Japan where the Law is more ambiguous and musical inspirations aren't as risky, hence them uploading the game to the Japanese side of things regularly.
@@SuperSSSSooonniiccccit has been directly stated by Reggie Fils Aime that Mother 3 not being localized had nothing to do with legal issues for any of the games contents. The point about music is moot and simply a theory concocted by fans who want some reason **any** reason for why they keep the art that is Mother 3 from the west. I would love to know the real reasons but unfortunately I can’t imagine Nintendo will be telling us any time soon
I was a 3DS Ambassador. Made damn sure to never get rid of the GBA games, or the certificate, they got moved onto the newer versions of the device and everything. To this day I have all the 3DS Ambassador stuff legit on my New 2DS XL.
The X button on the 3DS is actually set up to function as a second B button while in GBA mode, basically letting you use a SNES-like control layout for these games. Weirdly obscure feature that as far as I can tell is exclusive to the 3DS line of systems.
0:01 If you’re seeing this comment appear, it’s a bug with TH-cam where it shows the comment with earliest time stamp as one of the previews. Just a theory I have but I’m testing to see if that’s the case.
@@quoph1666 I noticed it after watching a few videos where the top comment was always a time stamp of the first second. No likes, no replies, didn’t matter whether it was sorted by most liked or most recent either. Thank you for letting me know it works!
As a modded 3DS user, kinda trips me out seeing Scott so excited about the GBA games. It’s been a staple part of my 3DS libraries for like a decade now haha
One cool thing about the GBA games on 3DS is that despite how rudimentary the features are you can still do the same "hold start and select while the game is booting up to display in its original resolution" trick that works for DS and other VC games.
The Ambassador Program was my introduction to Zelda, Metroid, WarioWare, and Fire Emblem and I went on to buy new entries in all of them. Truly Nintendo's most genius marketing strategy.
I was an ambassador! I was genuinely obsessed with my 3DS back when it first came out. I rocked that original aqua blue until they finally released the “new” version with the swappable faceplates.
I bought a used ambassador 3ds off of mercari one time for the same price as a 3ds at launch, and I thought that would make me happy and content with myself for years to come. I got through 5 worlds in Mario vs Donkey Kong and have depression.
I owe the ambassador program a lot. Got a 3DS as a gift at the time and realized that there weren’t many games at launch… it got me to play games I hadn’t at the time like minish cap and introduced me to one of my favorite franchises ever; Fire Emblem. Sacred Stones was my entry into the series and I wouldn’t have gotten into it (or at least not as early as I did) if it wasn’t for the ambassador program!
Do you still have the original Ambassador NES titles, or did you update? They originally released WITHOUT the option to create a savestate. But were updated with the feature. (The original Ambassador titles might be considered "lost media)
what's great about that program is if you managed to get it, you can still transfer it over to a newer 3ds and still be able to have access to the free games
I had the ambassador program on my original 3DS but I got robbed and had it stolen. I tried getting it again with Nintendo support but they said I needed to give them a police report (which I asked for and never got). Fun times.
What? I also had my ambassador 3DS stolen, and years later when I finally bought a replacement, Nintendo support only needed my Nintendo Network information and for me to list at least 3 games I had on the account in order to transfer my account. That sucks they gave you a hard time.
I had the Ambassador Program on my OG 3DS that I eventually sold. About a year later, I bought the 3DS XL and was expecting my digital purchases to transfer over from my Nintendo account. When that didn’t happen, I contacted support and they explained that their products didn’t work the same way as their competitors do and that those purchases were tied to my old 3DS. They ended up giving me a one time exception and also added my 3DS XL into the Ambassador Program so I could redownload those titles too.
I bought my 3DS from Walmart 1 week before the price cut and just went back to Walmart when the price dropped and had them match the new price and refund the difference. I felt like I was a genius for that. Played ocarina of time 3DS as my first game on it. I actually got it because ocarina of time was my favorite game at the time. I still have it though I’ve upgraded to a “new” 3DS XL since. I even got to migrate my ambassador games to the 3DS XL. I went from gameboy color to GBA to GBA SP to PSP and then back to Nintendo with the 3DS. Used an R4 cart to make up for missing the DS generation. I still have a real heart gold game with the box and pokewalker and everything.
I remember Walmart dropped the price earlier in the week than every other retailer. So I bought a 3DS for the reduced price and got all 20 of the games for free. That's right, I'm the proud owner of Balloon Fight on the 3DS.
imagine paying the original price and then realizing its like, half the price after a week and they just give you some retro games. kinda sucks but i guess you got a cool icon on yo home menu
it did kinda suck but it was cool to feel so special. at least the system ended up having a ton of banger games to really make up for it, and i genuinely did play most of the ambassador games quite a lot. first time i played warioware and wario land 4, not to mention yoshi and zelda 2. plus i really enjoyed having fusion to play through at least once a year
I had one of these, still have it, but I was around 7 and you could only imagine when I got home from school to these 20 games on my 3DS in awe. It was magical.
I was sure that Scott had already experienced Hombrew 3DS before 💀 meanwhile millions of us have all been playing these for years without this specific 3DS console :P
While I don't have my original launch 3DS I still have my Ambassador certifricate and content on my current 3DS which I transferred over years ago. It's now on my limited edition Metroid Samus Returns New 3DS XL.
I remember rushing to get a 3DS or so for the Ambassador Program and was super excited for everything that would come with it. The 3DS beginning era was a magical time for me. Loved the AR cards especially, even fell for the hoax of AR Shot 3 existing with Bowser as the boss fight.
I got my 3DS at launch with no regrets; I loved the 3D effect (and still do), and I put a ton of time into Samurai Warriors. The ambassador games were a nice bonus, but I didn't mind the price cut.
I’ll never forget the Ambassador’s Program, I was even part of it when I originally got the 3DS. Granted, I traded in my DSi XL to get a massive discount on it. I was stoked when I got my 20 free games, including my favorite GBA game, Mario vs. Donkey Kong. It was also how I got to play my first Metroid game after hearing about the launch of Metroid Dread, Metroid Fusion, which lead me to buying the other main Metroid games.
The GBA on 3DS is a hardware mode like for playing the DS as explained, but there is a key difference in the hardware GBA mode for 3DS: Not only it allows to play ROMs, but embedded in the hardware it actually includes a hardware emulation of the GBA save formats, so the games can actually work and save! Nintendo actually designed the hardware to do more with GBA games, but they clearly wanted the features of Virtual Console on them, so they had the developer of the NES and GBC emulators (iQue) to make a GBA emulator for 3DS, and that emulator is actually included inside NES and GBC Virtual Console games, but they couldn't work it out as they wanted. As part of the gigaleak, the source code of that NES,GBC and GBA emulator for 3DS ended up leaking, too. They also made the N64 emulator for Wii U and Switch and uh... that's another topic.
GBA on the 3DS is 100% accurate to playing those games on a real GBA. And you could have had suspend, AT LEAST if Nintendo tried, even without forgoing that perfect hardware-level emulation, but it was just too much effort for them to bother. If you're a purist, the GBA games on 3ds are perhaps the most accurate way to play them on a modern, multifunctional system. My OG 3ds from when I was a kid was an ambassador model, those older GBA games really kicked my ass sometimes because they didn't hold your hand at all. My first introduction to metroid, fire emblem, and WarioWare. It's by no means a pristine console anymore (flaking d-pad, scratches everywhere, couple of gouges in the shell from drops) but I recently replaced the disintegrating circle pad and have been enjoying it for hours. It's absolutely the most life I've ever gotten out of a system.
the issue is that the 3ds os ran on the ds hardware, and the gba games were basically just ds games (which is why the bottom screen even works). it would have required rewriting the ds bios just to add suspend, and that seems like a lot of work when you still don’t have additional features
@@genderender No, GBA games aren't "just DS games." And suspension would never work in the way the games run, as the GBA CPU just didn't support it. In an Iwata Asks interview they said that they wanted to add standy mode suspension to the GBA SP already, but on a hardware level it wasn't possible without drastic changes.
@@Kniffel101 they functionally are considering it renders in the same washed out tone and the touch screen renders and works and i meant drastic changes. there is no theoretical reason why it can’t, but nintendo isn’t about to rewrite the gba bios just to add the feature. much like gba games on the dsi made by fans
I got in on that ambasidor program and have treasured having those games available, especially the GBA selection. That's how I finally played Metroid Fusion, the 2nd best Metroid (behind Dread). I've moved the certificate and games up to newer 3DSes, but still got it and keeping it on lock.
I have transferred my Ambassador Certificate to my Zelda LBW 3DSXL and to my transparent red 2DS. Feels wrong to take it off the OG 3DS but the battery became a spicy pillow on my original launch 3DS
8 of the GBA games from the 3DS Ambassador are playable on Nintendo Switch, 7 via the NSO + Expansion Pack and 1 being a remake. The only two games from this that have yet to reach the Switch are Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and Wario Land 4, of which I'd love for Wario Land 4 to release on.
A pretty fun quirk about this effectively running in DS mode is that GBA games with sleep mode support (Minish Cap is the only one I can think of that is actually part of the Ambassador Program) actually work as they did when playing them on a DS.
I've had the Ambassador Certificate set up as my favourite title most of the time since 2011 just to show it off for other Street Pass users. It's also fun to see how many people still bring their 3DS to anime conventions and other such events.
I had an Ambassador 3DS and I sunk SO much time into the GBA games. All my first experiences with Warioware, Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion and Minish Cap were on my 3DS. Great memories
Your explanation of the GBA games on 3DS is very spot on. The reason its simulation (or the other term i have in my mind, virtualization) is because the GBA, DS, and 3DS have similar architecture with all three having different power in regards to what they can put out graphically
I remember in 2011 that I was in a really bad situation where I was forced to live in a rural zone far from any kind of internet and my 3DS was my only entertainment. I was too late to redeem the games from the Ambassador program and I was so sad about it because I loved the GBA era. Nowadays, I have a modded New 2ds XL with the ambassador certificate and all the GBA games I could not fetch and much, much more. It may be a silly thing, but it has made me so much happier.
Back in high school, I had two friends who bought their 3DS during its day one release. They both ended up getting the Ambassador Program, and it was pretty cool playing GBA games on the 3DS. I was a bit jealous!
I remember getting this for my 3ds. I had no idea about the price cut for the 3ds so when I randomly got the ambassador program, I felt like I was in an elite group of 3ds owners. Then I went to Los Vegas and constantly street passed people who where playing thous games. Felt less special.
I was a Nintendo Ambassador as I got my 3DS on launch day. Maybe it was different in the UK, but I also got Excitebike 3D and Kid Icarus 3D for free too. I registered those 2 games with my MyNintendo account and won a free 3DS from Nintendo Europe and I got to choose between Mario, Peach or Toadstool designs. So not only did I get 10 free NES, GBA and some 3D games, but I also got an additional, totally bespoke original 3DS console! I chose the toadstool design. Was a big win for me as ambassador 😅
The ambassador program may have been a way to not piss off launch buyers but I ended up worse off cause playing the Sacred Stones made me a Fire Emblem fan. GG nintendo, ya got me
Having an ambassador 3ds felt like a cool little badge of honor for me growing up. I was lucky that the 3ds came out on my birthday so my parents used any birthday money they normally would have used that year towards funds I had already raised. Was a great way to play tons of GBA games I had missed out on because they weren’t Pokémon. Later on I transferred all my data and stuff to a new 3DS XL which also included the ambassador stuff, but a year or two later the top screen died and I haven’t been able to fix it since. Luckily I still had my old day one 3DS but had no way to transfer anything back over. Just funny to me that my OG ambassador one lasts to this day just minus the actual ambassador stuff.
I was always proud to have my embassador 3DS, no longer have it but with mods and just collecting older systems I don't miss it. This finally gave me the chance to play a few games I never payed attention to, tho!
As someone with a modded 3DS with all these games and emulators on it even, even pseudoGBA home screen games running on it, kinda funny to see. I bought the 3DS on launch so wasn't bothered about the price cut. I needed a new system anyway. You can also mod in the 3DS ambassador certificate too so...
As much as I found the 3DS super charming, not even the Ambassador Program got me to stay; sold my 3DS that same year. Now I've got a red New 3DS XL with ALL the games, such an awesome console.
I do love the ambassador program. My birthday was shortly after thr system released and this was how I first got to play Metroid and Fire Emblem. It's even how I got into 2D Mario playing the original Super Mario Bros
I bought a 3DS at launch and it has the Ambassador certificate and the GBA games. That was my first time experiencing The Minish Cap and man, what a game. It's irrelevant though because CFW exists, and you can install whatever you want now
I had no idea about the Ambassador Program as a kid, even though I had a launch 3DS. I just remember that sometimes when new NES games went into the shop, they'd randomly be free... Since I didn't know why, I thought it was a bug for the longest time. It took me a couple years(!) to find the GBA games, since I wanted to redownload something and randomly found them in there. Finding out that I had all of those games was like, the most exciting moment of my career as a 10 year old. Honestly just thinking about the Program just makes me feel so nice... It was my first real exposure to a ton of NES games, and a handful of GBA games that I didn't think I'd ever be able to play, since buying the cartridges was out of the question for me at the time. (Minish Cap specifically was something that I wanted to play SO bad as a kid, I'd stare at the Amazon page fantasizing about it...) It was just such an uncharacteristically cool thing for Nintendo to do. It really meant so much to me.
I remember the very first console i saved up for to get at launch was an aqua blue 3ds when i was 14. Was so hyped when we got the ambassador program too! Played it so much both the L and R buttons broke and then it got stolen on a school trip to Chzechia. I hope there’s a kid out there who got to enjoy those gba games…
I bought a 3DS before they announced the Ambassador Program, and I've managed to use the Data Transfer to keep those ambassador games all the way up onto my New 3DS. That damn cert spent time on every model of 3DS, yes, including the 2DS.
I had the opposite experience as Scott, I bought it at 170 and was able to get ambassador games. Thats how I got into Sacred Stones out of curiosity and made me a fan of Fire Emblem since then.
I’ll never forget when my friend, who had already purchased a 3DS, told me about the price cut, the ambassador program, and the stores that were dropping the price early. Easily the best gaming deal I ever lucked into.
I got my 3DS used in 2012, and a few weeks before the whole Eshop went down I thought about this programm. Cause in my head my 3DS was always 2012 and so to late for the programm. But apparently the previous user connected during that time frame and even with a reset those things were still downloadable for me. Made me so happy that day
I remember my friend and I going to gamestop and picking up our 3ds preorders. I thought after the 1st day I didn't have much to play. I felt like I wasted my money when I heard they were doing a price cut a couple months later, but was happy when I was getting all those games. My brother was always jealous of me.
Yeah I just played the hell out of Super Street Fighter IV 3D on it, a game I already owned on PS3. Since I wasn't interested in the other launch games I was probably still playing some DS stuff like Pokemon Black/White 2 and Final Fantasy IV remake.
I have a Midnight Purple 3DS with the Ambassador Program certificate and all of the associated games that came along with it. I transferred it all over from the Cosmo Black edition. I can't imagine there's very many people out there with a purple Ambassador 3DS out there.
I got my 3DS early so it became an Ambassador model, which I really liked. I still have it, and I got a New 3DS to play Majora's Mask 3D and experience the extra features. That was also when I decided to install custom firmware, so I hacked both, transferred my stuff to the New 3DS (which wipes the original) and then restored the backup of the original back to it, so now I have two Ambassador models and one of them is a New model.
As someone who grew up with an ambassador 3DS and viewed these GBA games on 3DS as normal, it’s funny to see Scott cream over them. I bought my 3DS used and it just happened to be an ambassador system
5:50 i genuinely didn't knew those were hours I just got a 3ds recently and I thought those were minutes idk why No wonder the bottom touch pad was scratched so much my man played kid icarus uprising for 460 hours
Okay, as a person who's more familiar with the technical aspects of the 3DS playing GBA games your explanation made me tense but I think it's serviceable for others who are unfamiliar with it. I don't think it was a "weird workaround", it wasn't a workaround at all, it was a matter of convenience, in some ways the most optimal solution. Why develop some software level solution for emulating GBA games (which would probably run like dogwater) when you could just use the existent hardware already present in the machine that can run it natively. The 3DS is capable of "going into GBA mode", so it takes significantly less development time to implement it that way. With this in mind, the fact they didn't capitalize on this and release more GBA games and publicly is a missed opportunity. Maybe they thought that rereleasing GBA games less than a decade after they were released was too soon. Who knows. I personally inject GBA games directly to the 3DS so I can play my legally acquired roms onto my 3DS to play it there, because it is the most authentic and accurate way to play GBA games outside of playing them on a GBA or DS. Even the screens are fairly comparable, at least to a GBA SP. I'd encourage others who are willing and able to try doing the same and playing some GBA games on their 3DS, if they're interested in that sort of pseudo-authenticity (god forbid trying to get actual cartridges for your GBA nowadays, or play imports or romhacks, it's a marriage of authenticity and convenience) I'm confused why you treat it like it's an unfortunate or bad thing, or speculating that Nintendo was embarrassed by the prospect of releasing GBA games publicly. Maybe to the uninitiated the lack of additional features is disappointing but on a technical level it's near perfect. I think Nintendo could have spun that to their favor, but I suppose in attempting to say the GBA games were running natively it'd imply other VC games do not, and Nintendo likes to avoid implying VC is emulation. Anyways, point being is that I'm not convinced it was technical or feature limitations that was the reason why Nintendo didn't release GBA games on VC. We like to think of consumer-facing reasons, when the actual reasons are likely a lot more boring and businessy.
Got a 3DS close to launch by trading in my DSi because I felt what the 3DS was and promising was more than what the DSi promised and didn't deliver on. Got the Ambassador program when it launch. Eventually also picked up a New 3DS XL and was so happy to see that it all transferred over as some of those games never were made available outside that program.
I was one of the 3DS ambassadors and also know a bit about the technical side of the 3DS. I can confirm that what Scott says is correct here. The 3DS basically has a GBA's hardware inside of it. This was the only time that feature was used for anything officially. But it's bug-accurate. There's a Homebrew project called Open_AGB_firm that basically does the same thing as the Ambassador games, but you can load any GBA game through it. Every game that doesn't use some custom chip like Warioware Twisted will work. It even bypasses the 3DS menu system, allowing you to boot it up very quickly. The biggest thing you lose from this IMHO is the lack of link cable support, which means you'll be playing all of these by yourself even if you can find someone else with the Ambassador games.
Something funny about Nintendogs is that sometime after the eShop and the theme shop were both open, they made the download version of the game pretty cheap and with a free matching theme too. Probably because as a launch title, they felt the lower price could give them extra sales. Well, later, when they began doing the Nintendo selects collection thing as a way to offer popular games for cheaper…. They added Nintendogs to that line and _raised the price_ of the digital version to match the new retail price. So Nintendogs became more expensive after being added to the discount line.
Fun fact: like the 3DS with DS and GBA Games, since the Wii U basically has a Wii inside it the Wii U can natively play GameCube games, but it's only accessible by modding your system.
I think most who became “3DS Ambassador” are hardcore fans and won’t abandoned their system unless an extreme circumstance happened. Not to mention I remember there were some registrations BS you had to go through, so I can imagine some did not bother or completely missed the train. No wonder it’s quite hard to find one especially a decade after the fact.
I had an ambassador 3DS but didn't really follow any gaming news as a kid. I just got a message on the thing one day and saw I had metroid fusion and fire emblem and enjoyed the hell out of those games :)
From Ohioan to Virgin to Senator to 3DS Ambassador. Truly this is the evolution of all time.
I love how being from Ohio is lower than being a virgin
He needs to evole into an "L button video do-er"
Could have been funny before the last sentence.
The only thing I know for real
I like the idea that he BECAME a virgin, lol
if he can get 20 minutes out of the ambassador program he can talk about the L button
That's a good video to talk about: Shoulder Buttons in controllers as well as L3 and R3.
Obviously the z button on the gamecube is more important
I recommend Christendo's L button video then. Then the meme videos others make instead.
I’d actually like to see him tackle some really absurd aspect of gaming. Like, yeah, the innovation of the shoulder buttons or the elimination of the reset button.
we need a entire 20 minute video on R3 and L3 from the ps2.
I was a 3DS Ambassador, except I didn't even know about it until 12 years later when i was checking the eShop before closure. I HAD ALL THESE GAMES ALL THIS TIME!?
Bruh that’s actually wild
same i was a 3ds ambassador but i didn't know because i was 7 years old and i broke it in like 2years
Yeah same. Not even a spot pass notification.
Yeah. They later released Zelda: 4 Swords GBA for 3DS and I missed it 👎👎
@@TexasHollowEarth I really wish they would rerelease that version since it had some extra maps that never followed later rereleases, like the latest NSO release...
"Its almost like the 3DS has a DS inside of it" - from what i understand this is exactly what is happening. The 3DS has 3 separate CPUs - a 2 or 4 core ARM 11 chip for 3DS software, and the ATM9 & ARM7 chips from a dsi. The suspend & OS features when playing a 3DS game are ran on the DS chips. The ARM7 chip is basically what was in the GBA (the same reason why the DS was able to play GBA games), which is why this works at all. But when running a DS or GBA game, those chips are no longer available to do things like handle the home menu.
With homebrew, you can get any GBA game to run using this compatibility mode.
For the exact same reason, the Wii U is fully capable of running Gamecube games - because the Wii U has a Wii stuffed inside it which has a Gamecube stuffed inside it. Homebrew like Nintendont can natively run gamecube games on a Wii U.
@@TownDarlingthis is honestly one of my favorite things about this generation of Nintendo consoles and Homebrew. i don’t have a WiiU but i do have a homebrewed 3DS and Wii and i just love the idea that both of these console can just play games from previous generations and in some official capacity because they were designed to do this lol
@@dmeagher101 I actually like it's pure GBA mode, you can run all of the GBA roms with flawless compatibility.
I'm unsure on the specifics of it, but at least on the DS I know that to enter GBA compatability mode the only difference needed to account for is that the ARM7 CPU runs at twice the speed of the GBA's, so they force it to run in half speed and then flash the ROM in
Considering how the 3DS basically sustained Nintendo through the Wii U era and where we are now, it's crazy to think that there was a short period where nintendo released two consoles near to each other that massively underperformed at launch. The fact they've survived through that is pretty remarkable.
Nintendo is just really good with their financial decisions
@@Crafty_boy70they stockpile cash instead of immediately using it to expand. That reserve helped get them through the WiiU era. And with the Switch era, they’ve gotten so much success that they’ve used it for expansions and even attempting to go multimedia
@@paperluigi6132 I'm pretty sure it goes deeper than that, but yeah that's the main reason
@@paperluigi6132tbf all that money they were sitting on could have been used to expand the company or make the 3DS and Wii U more attractive, it's a gamble but it could have made those years turn out way better than they did
@@Crafty_boy70 merch flow definitely helps too, Mario sells waaay more merchandise than most any other game franchise. Not to mention the percentage they get from Pokemon.
Imagine selling your ambassador 3DS on eBay and the minute you start to regret selling it Scott the Woz fucking posts a video reviewing it
I knew the Ambassador program was ending and a price cut was coming. I took advantage of Best Buy’s price match policy and bought my 3DS the day before the Ambassador ended. Went back to Best Buy and price matched the day after the price drop went live. Best of both worlds.
How did you keep the 3DS after price matching it? So you bought it then bought another one the next day?
you can read Best Buy’s Price Match Guarantee on their website - if they lower their own price within the return / exchange window, they will refund you the difference without requiring you to return the original item. it may have changed in the last decade but back in 2011 I was able to do it all in store.
Yea I don't understand did they price match it after purchase? Life hack?
@@Eragonfrostsome stores instead of returning it and getting a new item, they’ll just refund you the difference in price
9:08 "These released a couple months later. I believe the NES games came out in December 2011, the GBA games came out in DECEMBER 2011"
That's quite the gap
Damn, that could be anywhere from 31 days to... less than 31 days.
@@KaleBennett30 days at most really.
odme
@@SuperM789i listened to this part 3 times i thought i was having a stroke XD
@@leonroAnd as few as 0
Imagine if THIS is where they decided to localize mother 3
Lol IMAGINE :(
Sadly will never happen unless they radically change the music in Mother 3, as Moon Channel's video shows. From Beat It, to Down on the USSR, there are many parodies and almost direct references, and licensing all of that for a GBA game would be extremely expensive. Vs Japan where the Law is more ambiguous and musical inspirations aren't as risky, hence them uploading the game to the Japanese side of things regularly.
Earthbound also had a lot of sampled music but it still released just fine@@SuperSSSSooonniicccc
Only those who supported Nintendo's rough starts or willing to pay more for little at the time would get to enjoy GBA gems or w.e.
@@SuperSSSSooonniiccccit has been directly stated by Reggie Fils Aime that Mother 3 not being localized had nothing to do with legal issues for any of the games contents. The point about music is moot and simply a theory concocted by fans who want some reason **any** reason for why they keep the art that is Mother 3 from the west. I would love to know the real reasons but unfortunately I can’t imagine Nintendo will be telling us any time soon
Best part of HomeBrew is downloading the ambassador games and pretending I wasn’t 4 years old
Lmao agreed
true ww
soooooo true brother
It ain't stealing if they were given out for free, just sayin
When I hacked my 3DS, I only downloaded the GBA games.
I was a 3DS Ambassador. Made damn sure to never get rid of the GBA games, or the certificate, they got moved onto the newer versions of the device and everything. To this day I have all the 3DS Ambassador stuff legit on my New 2DS XL.
Yep I transferred my ambassador certificate and everything to my New 3DS XL with the IPS screen and everything
I got mine transferred to a limited edition Metroid Samus Returns New 3DS XL.
the reason the gba games act strange is because they aren't emulated. they're just gba games running on the 3ds
Thats cause a real ds is inside the console
So they actually don't act strange
that one line of text explained it better than scotts 5 minute description lol
Yeah, they are playing natively. All the more reason it was crazy Nintendo didn’t do it officially for general sale.
@@leeartlee915 probably cause it’s different to how vc games work which is the same reason why the wii u didn’t have gc games for sale
The X button on the 3DS is actually set up to function as a second B button while in GBA mode, basically letting you use a SNES-like control layout for these games. Weirdly obscure feature that as far as I can tell is exclusive to the 3DS line of systems.
This is present in the NSO collections on Switch as well, actually. For NES, GB, and GBA
0:01 If you’re seeing this comment appear, it’s a bug with TH-cam where it shows the comment with earliest time stamp as one of the previews. Just a theory I have but I’m testing to see if that’s the case.
It changed from a different comment to yours so you may be right, nice discovery
@@quoph1666 I noticed it after watching a few videos where the top comment was always a time stamp of the first second. No likes, no replies, didn’t matter whether it was sorted by most liked or most recent either. Thank you for letting me know it works!
oh that's why, dude i was so confused lol
I think that’s because youtube shows comments with a timestamp that your currently at
@@super-tianJust tried that, you’re absolutely right! Guess it’s not really a bug. Still feels like it can be exploited though.
As a modded 3DS user, kinda trips me out seeing Scott so excited about the GBA games. It’s been a staple part of my 3DS libraries for like a decade now haha
And with a modded 3DS closing the handheld actually pauses the game and puts it in sleep mode 😂
Lmao I’m a 2ds ambassador 🧀
One cool thing about the GBA games on 3DS is that despite how rudimentary the features are you can still do the same "hold start and select while the game is booting up to display in its original resolution" trick that works for DS and other VC games.
Kid named modded 3ds:
The Ambassador Program was my introduction to Zelda, Metroid, WarioWare, and Fire Emblem and I went on to buy new entries in all of them. Truly Nintendo's most genius marketing strategy.
I was an ambassador! I was genuinely obsessed with my 3DS back when it first came out.
I rocked that original aqua blue until they finally released the “new” version with the swappable faceplates.
Same here, but I had the cosmic black. I loved that fingerprint magnet, I'm disappointed in myself for selling it
I bought a used ambassador 3ds off of mercari one time for the same price as a 3ds at launch, and I thought that would make me happy and content with myself for years to come. I got through 5 worlds in Mario vs Donkey Kong and have depression.
I owe the ambassador program a lot. Got a 3DS as a gift at the time and realized that there weren’t many games at launch… it got me to play games I hadn’t at the time like minish cap and introduced me to one of my favorite franchises ever; Fire Emblem. Sacred Stones was my entry into the series and I wouldn’t have gotten into it (or at least not as early as I did) if it wasn’t for the ambassador program!
I have the same story, but also add WarioWare and Metroid Fusion I enjoyed on top of Fire Emblem and Minish Cap.
Who's your favourite sacred Stones character? :o
Ah Homebrew.
9:35 the cute little chuckle he made 😭❤
AMBASSADORS RISE UP
I don't have my OG 3DS with my certificate anymore but I did transfer everything to a used New 3DS XL I got to play Persona Q on
Do you still have the original Ambassador NES titles, or did you update?
They originally released WITHOUT the option to create a savestate. But were updated with the feature. (The original Ambassador titles might be considered "lost media)
Have you played PQ2 its great
@@MrPibATF honestly not sure
@@nocturne353 no, i have it but I've not gotten around to it yet. Didn't actually finish tbe original yet lol
what's great about that program is if you managed to get it, you can still transfer it over to a newer 3ds and still be able to have access to the free games
I had the ambassador program on my original 3DS but I got robbed and had it stolen. I tried getting it again with Nintendo support but they said I needed to give them a police report (which I asked for and never got). Fun times.
What? I also had my ambassador 3DS stolen, and years later when I finally bought a replacement, Nintendo support only needed my Nintendo Network information and for me to list at least 3 games I had on the account in order to transfer my account. That sucks they gave you a hard time.
I had the Ambassador Program on my OG 3DS that I eventually sold. About a year later, I bought the 3DS XL and was expecting my digital purchases to transfer over from my Nintendo account. When that didn’t happen, I contacted support and they explained that their products didn’t work the same way as their competitors do and that those purchases were tied to my old 3DS. They ended up giving me a one time exception and also added my 3DS XL into the Ambassador Program so I could redownload those titles too.
The ambassador system was how I first tried Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, which led to it becoming my fav series.
Can't believe I have an Ambassador 3DS and Scott didn't.
same here
Shoutout to the ambassador program for making it really easy to run gba games on a hacked 3ds
And for anyone that’s modded their 3DS, we’ve seen all this and then some.
I bought my 3DS from Walmart 1 week before the price cut and just went back to Walmart when the price dropped and had them match the new price and refund the difference. I felt like I was a genius for that. Played ocarina of time 3DS as my first game on it. I actually got it because ocarina of time was my favorite game at the time. I still have it though I’ve upgraded to a “new” 3DS XL since. I even got to migrate my ambassador games to the 3DS XL.
I went from gameboy color to GBA to GBA SP to PSP and then back to Nintendo with the 3DS. Used an R4 cart to make up for missing the DS generation. I still have a real heart gold game with the box and pokewalker and everything.
I remember Walmart dropped the price earlier in the week than every other retailer. So I bought a 3DS for the reduced price and got all 20 of the games for free. That's right, I'm the proud owner of Balloon Fight on the 3DS.
imagine paying the original price and then realizing its like, half the price after a week and they just give you some retro games. kinda sucks but i guess you got a cool icon on yo home menu
it did kinda suck but it was cool to feel so special. at least the system ended up having a ton of banger games to really make up for it, and i genuinely did play most of the ambassador games quite a lot. first time i played warioware and wario land 4, not to mention yoshi and zelda 2. plus i really enjoyed having fusion to play through at least once a year
I paid the original price. 13 years after the original launch. Not new. Used
To be fair those GBA games NEVER came to 3DS eshop. They kept their word.
@@RobertBrocchinithat sucks man, i got a new 3ds xl a couple days ago for around MSRP
😂 you would have to imagine since that never happened, th price only dropped 30% (not 50%) and it happened MONTHS later (not weeks)
I had one of these, still have it, but I was around 7 and you could only imagine when I got home from school to these 20 games on my 3DS in awe. It was magical.
I was sure that Scott had already experienced Hombrew 3DS before 💀 meanwhile millions of us have all been playing these for years without this specific 3DS console :P
Imagine selling your Ambassador 3ds and seeing that you sold it to Scott the Woz
While I don't have my original launch 3DS I still have my Ambassador certifricate and content on my current 3DS which I transferred over years ago. It's now on my limited edition Metroid Samus Returns New 3DS XL.
I remember rushing to get a 3DS or so for the Ambassador Program and was super excited for everything that would come with it. The 3DS beginning era was a magical time for me. Loved the AR cards especially, even fell for the hoax of AR Shot 3 existing with Bowser as the boss fight.
9:09 ah yea quite a difference in time 😂
Kirby and the amazing mirror was such an odd choice since it was designed for multi-player first. Something gba games couldn't do on 3ds
7:03 very strange, i just opened my ambassador 3ds and every NES game had the menu select with the actual model of the console
I got my 3DS at launch with no regrets; I loved the 3D effect (and still do), and I put a ton of time into Samurai Warriors. The ambassador games were a nice bonus, but I didn't mind the price cut.
MK Super Circuit is still an amazing game on the go. I play it on my Micro whenever I get to use subways and trains
The fact that this exists allows for fully native GBA compatibility in modded 3DS's. Pretty awesome.
I’ll never forget the Ambassador’s Program, I was even part of it when I originally got the 3DS. Granted, I traded in my DSi XL to get a massive discount on it. I was stoked when I got my 20 free games, including my favorite GBA game, Mario vs. Donkey Kong. It was also how I got to play my first Metroid game after hearing about the launch of Metroid Dread, Metroid Fusion, which lead me to buying the other main Metroid games.
The GBA on 3DS is a hardware mode like for playing the DS as explained, but there is a key difference in the hardware GBA mode for 3DS: Not only it allows to play ROMs, but embedded in the hardware it actually includes a hardware emulation of the GBA save formats, so the games can actually work and save!
Nintendo actually designed the hardware to do more with GBA games, but they clearly wanted the features of Virtual Console on them, so they had the developer of the NES and GBC emulators (iQue) to make a GBA emulator for 3DS, and that emulator is actually included inside NES and GBC Virtual Console games, but they couldn't work it out as they wanted.
As part of the gigaleak, the source code of that NES,GBC and GBA emulator for 3DS ended up leaking, too.
They also made the N64 emulator for Wii U and Switch and uh... that's another topic.
The compatibility modes of the 3ds are so fascinating to me. I hope MVG or someone technically knowledged will make a deep dive on its details
9:34 I think that little laugh is one of the most genuine moments we've ever gotten from Scott
This video helped me remember that I was a 3DS Ambassador and I immediately went to me New 3DS and redownloaded all those games! Thank you
GBA on the 3DS is 100% accurate to playing those games on a real GBA. And you could have had suspend, AT LEAST if Nintendo tried, even without forgoing that perfect hardware-level emulation, but it was just too much effort for them to bother. If you're a purist, the GBA games on 3ds are perhaps the most accurate way to play them on a modern, multifunctional system. My OG 3ds from when I was a kid was an ambassador model, those older GBA games really kicked my ass sometimes because they didn't hold your hand at all. My first introduction to metroid, fire emblem, and WarioWare. It's by no means a pristine console anymore (flaking d-pad, scratches everywhere, couple of gouges in the shell from drops) but I recently replaced the disintegrating circle pad and have been enjoying it for hours. It's absolutely the most life I've ever gotten out of a system.
the issue is that the 3ds os ran on the ds hardware, and the gba games were basically just ds games (which is why the bottom screen even works). it would have required rewriting the ds bios just to add suspend, and that seems like a lot of work when you still don’t have additional features
Let's say it's 99.99999% accurate. Sound isn't perfect, but nearly.
@@genderender No, GBA games aren't "just DS games."
And suspension would never work in the way the games run, as the GBA CPU just didn't support it. In an Iwata Asks interview they said that they wanted to add standy mode suspension to the GBA SP already, but on a hardware level it wasn't possible without drastic changes.
@@Kniffel101 they functionally are considering it renders in the same washed out tone and the touch screen renders and works
and i meant drastic changes. there is no theoretical reason why it can’t, but nintendo isn’t about to rewrite the gba bios just to add the feature. much like gba games on the dsi made by fans
Those 3DS games are running natively on the hardware - that's why it's a little weird
I got in on that ambasidor program and have treasured having those games available, especially the GBA selection. That's how I finally played Metroid Fusion, the 2nd best Metroid (behind Dread).
I've moved the certificate and games up to newer 3DSes, but still got it and keeping it on lock.
I have transferred my Ambassador Certificate to my Zelda LBW 3DSXL and to my transparent red 2DS. Feels wrong to take it off the OG 3DS but the battery became a spicy pillow on my original launch 3DS
I hope you see this, Michael
Who is Michael?
5:38 nvm xD
I'd be so happy if I saw that Scott bought my old console 😂😂 maybe I can sell him my wii u, he does need an extra just in case one gets lasagna on it
Yuh
@@CalDiscsI'd like to sell him my steam deck loaded with 1TB of porn games.
scott’s face in the reflection of the 3DS screen at around 11:59 is a jumpscare
My launch 3DS was traded in ages ago, but my New 3DS XL still maintains my ambassador status. Transferred it twice!
8 of the GBA games from the 3DS Ambassador are playable on Nintendo Switch, 7 via the NSO + Expansion Pack and 1 being a remake.
The only two games from this that have yet to reach the Switch are Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and Wario Land 4, of which I'd love for Wario Land 4 to release on.
Wario Land 5 for New Nintendo Switch
A pretty fun quirk about this effectively running in DS mode is that GBA games with sleep mode support (Minish Cap is the only one I can think of that is actually part of the Ambassador Program) actually work as they did when playing them on a DS.
I've had the Ambassador Certificate set up as my favourite title most of the time since 2011 just to show it off for other Street Pass users. It's also fun to see how many people still bring their 3DS to anime conventions and other such events.
I had an Ambassador 3DS and I sunk SO much time into the GBA games. All my first experiences with Warioware, Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion and Minish Cap were on my 3DS. Great memories
Your explanation of the GBA games on 3DS is very spot on. The reason its simulation (or the other term i have in my mind, virtualization) is because the GBA, DS, and 3DS have similar architecture with all three having different power in regards to what they can put out graphically
I remember in 2011 that I was in a really bad situation where I was forced to live in a rural zone far from any kind of internet and my 3DS was my only entertainment. I was too late to redeem the games from the Ambassador program and I was so sad about it because I loved the GBA era. Nowadays, I have a modded New 2ds XL with the ambassador certificate and all the GBA games I could not fetch and much, much more. It may be a silly thing, but it has made me so much happier.
Back in high school, I had two friends who bought their 3DS during its day one release. They both ended up getting the Ambassador Program, and it was pretty cool playing GBA games on the 3DS. I was a bit jealous!
I was an ambassador and still have my original 3ds. I loved playing those GBA games when I was a kid!
3:12 that was no joke, my first 3ds game I got
I remember getting this for my 3ds. I had no idea about the price cut for the 3ds so when I randomly got the ambassador program, I felt like I was in an elite group of 3ds owners. Then I went to Los Vegas and constantly street passed people who where playing thous games. Felt less special.
Can’t believe the guy you went on dates with that owns Sonic Jam now owns a Nintendo 3DS Ambassador
The ambassador program was amazing for the loyal ones who supported this amazing system from day 1. No regrets back then!
I was a Nintendo Ambassador as I got my 3DS on launch day.
Maybe it was different in the UK, but I also got Excitebike 3D and Kid Icarus 3D for free too.
I registered those 2 games with my MyNintendo account and won a free 3DS from Nintendo Europe and I got to choose between Mario, Peach or Toadstool designs.
So not only did I get 10 free NES, GBA and some 3D games, but I also got an additional, totally bespoke original 3DS console!
I chose the toadstool design.
Was a big win for me as ambassador 😅
I was unbelievably furious when I learned that Metroid fusion was ambassador exclusive
The ambassador program may have been a way to not piss off launch buyers but I ended up worse off cause playing the Sacred Stones made me a Fire Emblem fan. GG nintendo, ya got me
Having an ambassador 3ds felt like a cool little badge of honor for me growing up. I was lucky that the 3ds came out on my birthday so my parents used any birthday money they normally would have used that year towards funds I had already raised. Was a great way to play tons of GBA games I had missed out on because they weren’t Pokémon.
Later on I transferred all my data and stuff to a new 3DS XL which also included the ambassador stuff, but a year or two later the top screen died and I haven’t been able to fix it since. Luckily I still had my old day one 3DS but had no way to transfer anything back over. Just funny to me that my OG ambassador one lasts to this day just minus the actual ambassador stuff.
The amount of 3ds content you've been able to make amazes me till this day
I was always proud to have my embassador 3DS, no longer have it but with mods and just collecting older systems I don't miss it.
This finally gave me the chance to play a few games I never payed attention to, tho!
As someone with a modded 3DS with all these games and emulators on it even, even pseudoGBA home screen games running on it, kinda funny to see.
I bought the 3DS on launch so wasn't bothered about the price cut. I needed a new system anyway.
You can also mod in the 3DS ambassador certificate too so...
As much as I found the 3DS super charming, not even the Ambassador Program got me to stay; sold my 3DS that same year. Now I've got a red New 3DS XL with ALL the games, such an awesome console.
I do love the ambassador program. My birthday was shortly after thr system released and this was how I first got to play Metroid and Fire Emblem. It's even how I got into 2D Mario playing the original Super Mario Bros
I remember when I got those NES games. They came out before they were listed for sale. When they did go on sale they updated them to add save states
I bought a 3DS at launch and it has the Ambassador certificate and the GBA games. That was my first time experiencing The Minish Cap and man, what a game. It's irrelevant though because CFW exists, and you can install whatever you want now
Ah yes.
December of 2011 is a couple of months before December of 2011.
I had no idea about the Ambassador Program as a kid, even though I had a launch 3DS. I just remember that sometimes when new NES games went into the shop, they'd randomly be free... Since I didn't know why, I thought it was a bug for the longest time. It took me a couple years(!) to find the GBA games, since I wanted to redownload something and randomly found them in there. Finding out that I had all of those games was like, the most exciting moment of my career as a 10 year old.
Honestly just thinking about the Program just makes me feel so nice... It was my first real exposure to a ton of NES games, and a handful of GBA games that I didn't think I'd ever be able to play, since buying the cartridges was out of the question for me at the time. (Minish Cap specifically was something that I wanted to play SO bad as a kid, I'd stare at the Amazon page fantasizing about it...) It was just such an uncharacteristically cool thing for Nintendo to do. It really meant so much to me.
I remember the very first console i saved up for to get at launch was an aqua blue 3ds when i was 14. Was so hyped when we got the ambassador program too! Played it so much both the L and R buttons broke and then it got stolen on a school trip to Chzechia. I hope there’s a kid out there who got to enjoy those gba games…
It can be modded into the 3ds really easily. Plus snes, sega and gbc
I bought a 3DS before they announced the Ambassador Program, and I've managed to use the Data Transfer to keep those ambassador games all the way up onto my New 3DS. That damn cert spent time on every model of 3DS, yes, including the 2DS.
I had the opposite experience as Scott, I bought it at 170 and was able to get ambassador games. Thats how I got into Sacred Stones out of curiosity and made me a fan of Fire Emblem since then.
I’ll never forget when my friend, who had already purchased a 3DS, told me about the price cut, the ambassador program, and the stores that were dropping the price early. Easily the best gaming deal I ever lucked into.
9:34
I wish things brought me as much joy as Scott hearing the GBA startup sound from a 3DS
I got my 3DS used in 2012, and a few weeks before the whole Eshop went down I thought about this programm. Cause in my head my 3DS was always 2012 and so to late for the programm. But apparently the previous user connected during that time frame and even with a reset those things were still downloadable for me. Made me so happy that day
I remember my friend and I going to gamestop and picking up our 3ds preorders. I thought after the 1st day I didn't have much to play. I felt like I wasted my money when I heard they were doing a price cut a couple months later, but was happy when I was getting all those games. My brother was always jealous of me.
Yeah I just played the hell out of Super Street Fighter IV 3D on it, a game I already owned on PS3. Since I wasn't interested in the other launch games I was probably still playing some DS stuff like Pokemon Black/White 2 and Final Fantasy IV remake.
I have a Midnight Purple 3DS with the Ambassador Program certificate and all of the associated games that came along with it. I transferred it all over from the Cosmo Black edition. I can't imagine there's very many people out there with a purple Ambassador 3DS out there.
I got my 3DS early so it became an Ambassador model, which I really liked. I still have it, and I got a New 3DS to play Majora's Mask 3D and experience the extra features. That was also when I decided to install custom firmware, so I hacked both, transferred my stuff to the New 3DS (which wipes the original) and then restored the backup of the original back to it, so now I have two Ambassador models and one of them is a New model.
As someone who grew up with an ambassador 3DS and viewed these GBA games on 3DS as normal, it’s funny to see Scott cream over them.
I bought my 3DS used and it just happened to be an ambassador system
5:50 i genuinely didn't knew those were hours I just got a 3ds recently and I thought those were minutes idk why
No wonder the bottom touch pad was scratched so much my man played kid icarus uprising for 460 hours
Okay, as a person who's more familiar with the technical aspects of the 3DS playing GBA games your explanation made me tense but I think it's serviceable for others who are unfamiliar with it.
I don't think it was a "weird workaround", it wasn't a workaround at all, it was a matter of convenience, in some ways the most optimal solution. Why develop some software level solution for emulating GBA games (which would probably run like dogwater) when you could just use the existent hardware already present in the machine that can run it natively. The 3DS is capable of "going into GBA mode", so it takes significantly less development time to implement it that way. With this in mind, the fact they didn't capitalize on this and release more GBA games and publicly is a missed opportunity. Maybe they thought that rereleasing GBA games less than a decade after they were released was too soon. Who knows.
I personally inject GBA games directly to the 3DS so I can play my legally acquired roms onto my 3DS to play it there, because it is the most authentic and accurate way to play GBA games outside of playing them on a GBA or DS. Even the screens are fairly comparable, at least to a GBA SP. I'd encourage others who are willing and able to try doing the same and playing some GBA games on their 3DS, if they're interested in that sort of pseudo-authenticity (god forbid trying to get actual cartridges for your GBA nowadays, or play imports or romhacks, it's a marriage of authenticity and convenience)
I'm confused why you treat it like it's an unfortunate or bad thing, or speculating that Nintendo was embarrassed by the prospect of releasing GBA games publicly. Maybe to the uninitiated the lack of additional features is disappointing but on a technical level it's near perfect. I think Nintendo could have spun that to their favor, but I suppose in attempting to say the GBA games were running natively it'd imply other VC games do not, and Nintendo likes to avoid implying VC is emulation. Anyways, point being is that I'm not convinced it was technical or feature limitations that was the reason why Nintendo didn't release GBA games on VC. We like to think of consumer-facing reasons, when the actual reasons are likely a lot more boring and businessy.
Omg that super circuit intro song 😭 now I have to go back and finally 3 star all of the tracks
Got a 3DS close to launch by trading in my DSi because I felt what the 3DS was and promising was more than what the DSi promised and didn't deliver on. Got the Ambassador program when it launch. Eventually also picked up a New 3DS XL and was so happy to see that it all transferred over as some of those games never were made available outside that program.
I've since upgraded to a N3DSXL but my account still has an ambassador badge. The GBA exclusives are still on it too lol
I was one of the 3DS ambassadors and also know a bit about the technical side of the 3DS.
I can confirm that what Scott says is correct here. The 3DS basically has a GBA's hardware inside of it. This was the only time that feature was used for anything officially. But it's bug-accurate. There's a Homebrew project called Open_AGB_firm that basically does the same thing as the Ambassador games, but you can load any GBA game through it. Every game that doesn't use some custom chip like Warioware Twisted will work. It even bypasses the 3DS menu system, allowing you to boot it up very quickly.
The biggest thing you lose from this IMHO is the lack of link cable support, which means you'll be playing all of these by yourself even if you can find someone else with the Ambassador games.
But the ds original and lite also never had link cable support but emulation could resolve this in terms of pokemon
Something funny about Nintendogs is that sometime after the eShop and the theme shop were both open, they made the download version of the game pretty cheap and with a free matching theme too. Probably because as a launch title, they felt the lower price could give them extra sales.
Well, later, when they began doing the Nintendo selects collection thing as a way to offer popular games for cheaper…. They added Nintendogs to that line and _raised the price_ of the digital version to match the new retail price.
So Nintendogs became more expensive after being added to the discount line.
Fun fact: like the 3DS with DS and GBA Games, since the Wii U basically has a Wii inside it the Wii U can natively play GameCube games, but it's only accessible by modding your system.
I think most who became “3DS Ambassador” are hardcore fans and won’t abandoned their system unless an extreme circumstance happened. Not to mention I remember there were some registrations BS you had to go through, so I can imagine some did not bother or completely missed the train.
No wonder it’s quite hard to find one especially a decade after the fact.
I had an ambassador 3DS but didn't really follow any gaming news as a kid. I just got a message on the thing one day and saw I had metroid fusion and fire emblem and enjoyed the hell out of those games :)