10 Best Nintendo 3DS Games (That Nobody Played)

Ten cult classics worth dusting off your 3DS for.

shinobi 3ds
Sega

The 3DS has a curious reputation amongst Nintendo consoles. Sandwiched between the colossal success of the original DS (the originator of the "IT PRINTS MONEY!" meme) and the stonkingly popular Switch, the 3DS is seen as a minor disappointment in the annals of Nintendo history.

Don't get us wrong - the 3DS' lifetime sales of over 75 million are nothing to sneeze at. But when the original DS managed to shift a staggering 151 million units, it's clear the Dual Screen bandwagon hit a few speedbumps during the 3DS years.

Which is something of a shame, as the console provided some of the best cult hits of the past ten years.

Each game on this list is terrifically entertaining in its own way, and they all deserved to reach a wider audience. From dungeon crawlers to dancing thieves, these ten games are a great excuse to to dig out your 3DS/New 3DS/New 3DS XL/2DS/32XDS Jaguar Edition (one of those may have been made up), fire it up once more, and turn the 3D slider all the way to zero to ensure a stable frame-rate.

Huh. Maybe that's why the 3D gimmick never took off...

10. Persona Q/Q2

shinobi 3ds
Atlus

After starting life as an offshoot of the Shin Megami Tensei series, Persona has metamorphosed into a gaming behemoth. The past decade has seen a bevy of spin-offs, from dancing games to beat-em-ups, but the undisputed king of the offshoots is the Persona Q duology.

Persona Q got the ball rolling by uniting the lovable misfits from Personas 3 & 4 in an incredibly addictive dungeon-crawling adventure, but it was Q2 that knocked the ball out of the park.

As well as offering tighter level design and massively improved sidequests, Q2 had Persona 5's iconic Phantom Thieves rub shoulders with their P3 and P4 counterparts. Watching all 23 party members from Personas 3-5 interact with each other was peak fan-service, and hugely entertaining for long-time Persona fans.

Unfortunately for ATLUS, there wasn't a big a crossover market between Persona die-hards and 3DS owners. That meant that sales for the Q series were disappointingly low, to the point that Q2 never received an English dub as ATLUS didn't think it would sell enough copies to cover the costs of the voice actors.

Oh well. For those lucky few who fell into the middle of the Persona fan-3DS Ven Diagram, the Q games were one of the 3DS' undisputed highlights.

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Hello! My name's Iain Tayor. I write about video games, wrestling and comic books, and I apparently can't figure out how to set my profile picture correctly.