From the beautiful gloss finish of the launch models to the smooth, curvy-edged casing of the XL follow-up and onward into the ‘New’ branch and the 2DS variants, the 3DS family of portables is a sizeable one and over the years we found ourselves falling for Nintendo’s clever ploys and happily upgrading from trusty system to a slightly-better trusty system. Before we knew it, we’d become intimately acquainted with multiple 3DS consoles. Yep, Nintendo saw us coming a mile away.
Thinking back and counting on fingers, this writer has owned a grand total of… seven? Yes, technically, seven, although two of those came in an eBay bundle with games, one of which was gifted to a colleague. My OG Aqua got traded in when I upgraded to an XL, and I eventually gave that XL to a friend after I jumped again to a New 3DS with faceplates. Add in a New XL (the SNES one) and a ‘backup’ New XL I snapped up relatively recently, and we arrive at a totally normal and rational seven 3DSes for me. What?
A quick survey of the NL team reveals similar multiple-system stories. Alana had “one 2DS, one standard 3DS, and then an XL,” while Jim had two standards before upgrading to a very tidy Poké Ball New 2DS XL. Across the entire team — including both the sensible people who only owned one or two consoles and the more, ahem, prolific amongst us– around three 3DSes seems to be the average number.
However, we do all work for a website called Nintendo Life; perhaps it’s to be expected that we’ve got more systems to our names than someone who works for, say, Horse & Hound. We’ve got family members who have gone through multiple systems too, though, so ‘oh, I absolutely positively need another one for work’ can’t be the only excuse people use.
We’re curious to know what the average number of 3DSes owned is amongst Nintendo Life readers, so feel free to let us know in the poll below exactly how many consoles in the 2DS and 3DS family of systems you’ve owned since 2011, and then head to the comments to give us more details.
Do you still own all your past 3DS consoles? Did you trade in each previous one to get the next? If so, how did you go about transferring your games? Is it the Special Editions that got you? Those gorgeous 2DS variants with the moulded cases? How many 3DSes is too many 3DSes?!?!
(Seven, Gavin. Seven 3DSes is a tad excessive.)