Introduction
So, I didn’t worked on this series at all for months. That’s not good when the time limit until 3DS eshop purchases are shut down at the end of next month in late March, so I had three choices: give up on it, make like one more and continue the series after the shutdown, or try to make shorter and less comprehensive summaries in order to try to get this done. The last is unfortunate because there is more that could be said about the games, but… well, I really want to publish SOMETHING about these games while they can still be bought, so I’m going to try to do that. It’s likely I won’t finish before the shutdown, since it’s under a month away and finishing the last four parts of the original list before then will take a lot of effort… and even if I somehow do get that done, there are a lot more games to cover beyond that because I’ve bought a lot more digital 3DS games since starting this list, many of which I haven’t played yet and did not add to the list. Ah well. I’ll probably continue this after the shutdown, since there are other ways of playing 3DS games if you have a modded system, something I do not have. Anyway, here is the next update, for M-N-O games. Expect more soon.
This article is not really finished yet — as you will notice, I have not yet polished it with adding the publishers and release years for the games, other platforms the games are on, a working table of contents (yes I know, I’ve been slacking off on those for a long time now…), and such. I will do that later, getting it posted is the most important part.
Table of Contents
Mario and Donkey Kong; Minis on the Move
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars
Mega Man IV (Game Boy Virtual Console)
Mercenaries Saga 2
Mercenaries Saga 3
Mia’s Picnic
Mighty Gunvolt
Mighty Gunvolt Burst
Mighty Switch Force
Mighty Switch Force 2
Miles & Kilo
Mini Golf Resort
Mini Sports Collection
Mom Hid My Game!
Mutant Mudds Deluxe
Mutant Mudds Super Challenge
My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess
Nano Assault EX
Ninja Battle Heroes
Noah’s Cradle
Of Mice and Sand
Ohno Odyssey
M-N-O – 22 games
Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move – This title is basically a Mario take on the classic puzzle game Pipe Dream. This game is good, if you like Pipe Dream. You place tiles of various shapes to get the mini toy Marios along a path from start to finish, much as in Pipe Dream and the many titles it inspired. The challenge is that each tile type moves the minis in a specific direction, and you lose if they go off the track or walk into a spike block. The problem is, as I said I’m not exactly the biggest Pipe Dream fan around. It’s alright, but I’ve always found that game very frustrating. This title is no exception. This game is played with the stylus, as you would expect, so the controls are great. Each level plays on a grid, and some tiles start out filled in with spikes or curved road pieces. You need to get your mini from a start square to the end square without going off course. As you play, random pieces slowly fall in in a hopper on the right. You need to put down the correct tiles to fill in a continuous path from start to finish, preferably while also grabbing the three M-logo icons along the way in order to get a star on the level. You cannot remove any piece that has been placed in the level unless a Bomb item drops which can do that for you. You can always throw away pieces in a block dedicated to that in the corner of the level, though. You can only have five pieces in your queue at a time, so this will be needed. Touching the next piece icon will cause it to drop in more quickly.
So yes, it’s basically Mario’s Pipe Dream. The game is mostly good, but it’s got that usual Pipe Dream gameplay frustration of being stuck waiting for that one piece you need but the RNG will not give you it and … oops, that took too long, your mini walked off the edge. Game over, try the puzzle again. It’s a good game, but that stuff is always annoying and will happen often in Pipe Dream games. Of course, the better you get the better you will do, but still I’ve always had some issues with the concept. Overall, this game is a good, fine puzzle game with nice graphics and solid puzzle gameplay, but whether you stick with it or not will depend on how much you like this style of puzzle game. I only kind of like this kind of game, so I’d say that Minis on the Move is good, but not great. I’d recommend it to puzzle and Pipe Dream fans for sure, at least.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars – from Nintendo. This title is also a puzzle game. The game was released on both 3DS and Wii U, and is pretty much the same on both platforms. This game builds off of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games for GBA and DS, as they moved from platform-puzzle games to puzzle only. Very much like the last DS game, MvDK: Mini-Land Mayhem or Nintendo’s oddly Japan-only SNES title Mario vs. Wario, this game is a puzzler where you place objects on a 2d stage, trying to get your auto-moving characters from the start to the end safely. Think Lemmings, except instead of putting abilities on characters you connect points to build platforms and walls in order to get the minis to go the way you want them to. The game is controlled with the stylus, which is perfect for this kind of game. While I found the first two MvDK games disappointing, I loved Mini-Land Mayhem! It’s a fantastic game and one of the better puzzle games on that system. I found this game a small step back from that classic, but it’s still great. It’s just less original than that one and its online is shut down.
As with Lemmings or the other Nintendo games I mentioned above, the genius here is that the game is a puzzle game, but there still is an action component. You don’t just set up your stuff and watch, but you need to build floors, move pipes, and such as the minis are moving around, with the right timing, in order to get them where you need. You can only interact in certain pre-selected spots, which is quite limiting and makes the game simpler, but stages still can get plenty tricky until you figure out the solutions to the puzzles. Figuring out what items to place where to get Mini-Mario and friends to each stages’ goal is great fun, and the challenge level is just right. This game has a great difficulty curve from easy to hard, it’s balanced well. There are 96 puzzles, a good number, and there is some replay value if you want to go back and get better ratings in the stages. This game is an must-buy game for any logic puzzle game fan, buy it while you can!
However, there is one catch, and it’s a big one: when this game was released it had online level trading. You see, this game isn’t just a fantastic pre-designed puzzle game, it also has a level editor… and online level trading. However, the online level trading servers were taken down years ago. If you want to play the hundreds of levels people uploaded, from easy to hard, good to bad… you can’t. I have no idea why Nintendo took these servers down so quickly but it was a real tragedy, this game is amazing and should have stayed up long-term. As it is this game is great and I certainly recommend getting it, even just for what you do get this is a top-tier A-grade hit. However, the major missing feature of the removed online play is incredibly unfortunate and holds it back a lot for anyone who didn’t play it back when they were up. I am very glad I did get this game before the servers were taken down, there are a decent amount of levels in this game but after not all that long I finished them and wanted more. And they had that… until they took it down. Jerks. Sadly, Nintendo hasn’t made another game quite like this one. I hope they do soon, it’s fantastic and needs to come back. Also available, also digital-only, on the Wii U.
Mega Man IV (Game Boy Virtual Console) – from Capcom. I only own a few Virtual Console games on the 3DS, mostly because I own so many original games, but even though I’ve got my boxed original copy of this game, I had to buy at least this one on virtual console because Mega Man IV is the first Mega Man console game I owned and is a game I deeply love. This fantastic action-platformer is one of the all-time greats, and is every bit as great as Mega Man’s best NES games. This title may reuse bosses and level settings from the fourth and fifth NES games, but the level layouts and stage orders are all-new. This game also introduced a shop to the Mega Man series. Many enemies drop P items, and from the stage select screen you can go to a store and spend your earnings on powerups and such. With some of the best stage designs and gameplay in the series and a solid balance between stage difficulty and boss difficulty, Mega Man IV is one of the all-time great 8-bit platform games. These outstanding games have not been re-released again yet, so unless you want to buy the expensive original carts, I highly recommend buying this release while you can! Make sure to also get the third and fifth Game Boy Mega Man games too, they are also fantastic. The first game is alright and the second poor, but the series got a lot better after that and ended with two of the better 8-bit action/platformers around. This is a fantastic game that probably is a bit under-rated, just because the level themes are reused from the NES series does not mean that it isn’t original, or top tier! It is both. The Mega Man series doesn’t get much better than this. And Mega Man V is just as great.
Mercenaries Saga 2: Order of the Silver Eagle – This is a tactical strategy game. For some reason the first game in this series wasn’t brought to the 3DS, it was left on cellphones, but the second and third ones were. This is a simple and straightforward little tactical strategy game with a fantasy anime war theme. You play as a group of mercenaries who get involved in greater events. The story is fine but fairly standard stuff, and the same goes for the gameplay. This is your standard tactics game, with an isometric grid, decent sprite-art graphics, and average gameplay. Each character is slightly different, some are melee warriors, thieves, have ranged weapons, magic, and such. You start out with three guys but will slowly get more as you go along. Between missions there are story scenes, and you also can manage your team from a menu. Here you can buy items, use points you earned in the battles to upgrade your characters’ skills, and choose who you are bringing to the next mission, though at first you’ll just be using everyone. It’s all conventional, standard stuff, and no element of this game really stands out, but nothing about it is bad either. Overall this game is a competently made average tactical strategy game. Fans of the genre might want to check it out. It is somewhat generic-feeling all around, but plays well enough. There is a Nintendo Switch collection which includes both of these games plus the previously cellphone-only original title. I’m glad I have them on 3DS though. This series has several more entries on the Switch past that.
Mercenaries Saga 3: Gray Wolves of War – Very similar to its predecessor but with a new story and new characters, Mercenaries Saga 3 has a slightly strange plot. You see, you start out controlling a group of four mercenaries working for a powerful nation that is invading another continent and trying to take it over. They question their mission, but the locals are religious zealots so their side doesn’t seem like a great option either. The story this time seems a bit more interesting than the quite generic second one, but the gameplay is the same as before, with the same loop of generic story scene, then battle, then camp where you can spend your skill points and buy items and such. So, this is still a very standard tactical strategy game with alright sprite art graphics and an isometric perspective. It’s clearly running in the same engine as the last game and looks extremely similar graphically. Expect more okay but not particularly thrilling tactical gameplay. It’s fun enough but is still quite average. There is a Nintendo Switch collection which includes both of these games plus the previously cellphone-only original title. I’m glad I have them on 3DS though. This series has several more entries on the Switch past that.
Mia’s Picnic – Released in 2020 by Nellyvision. This is an indie puzzle game. This developer made two puzzle games on 3DS. Both released late in its life and both are partially fun and partially very annoying. This is a tile-matching game played on the lower screen. The tiles are all different kinds of fruits in this game — red and green apples, cherries, strawberries, lemons, and more. The graphics are nice and large and well-drawn, though there is no use of stereoscopic 3d on the upper screen unfortunately. You use touch or the dpad to select contiguous (left/right/up/down only) matching-icon tiles the tiles that you want to collect and add to your tiles. You can also double-tap a tile, or highlight it and hit a button, to remove a tile from the field without collecting it.
This all may sound reasonably standard and it is, but the game does a couple of somewhat unique things. This game isn’t just about staying alive as long as you can, it’s a mission-based game. In each stage you have an objective, and a VERY tight time limit to complete that objective in. Objectives either are ‘collect X amount of these specific types of fruits to complete the stage’ or ‘collect X number of specific fruit lineups to complete the stage’. As an example of the second type, you may need to match ten green apple – red apple – green apple combinations. The objectives give this game a different feel from standard tile-matching games, but the extremely strict timers make Mia’s Picnic very frustrating. Can you beat it with enough retries, yes. But luck will matter as much as skill, sometimes, since what tiles drop in after you make a match is the luck of the draw. Get too many of the wrong tiles, or have too many rotten green apples drop in and corrupt your regular green apples, and you’ll run out of time and have to try again. Fortunately the game saves after each stage so you can keep trying from where you are, but of the tile-matching games on 3DS this one is probably the most frustrating due to the timer. Still, it is fun when you do well and the RNG cooperates, so it may well be worth a look if you like puzzle games. Also available on Switch and PS4. I’d rather play it on 3DS if I had to pla ythi sgame though due to how well stylus-based touch works for this kind of game.
Mighty Gunvolt – This Inti Creates game is a NES-style platformer. This spinoff crossover of the not exactly popular Mighty No. 9, the pervy shooter series Gal Gun, and the slightly more popular Gunvolt series goes back to the roots of both series and makes something inspired by the series that both of those franchises are based on, Mega Man. This is no Mega Man game in quality, though, not even close. More in keeping with the often-lacking quality of Inti Creates titles, this game is a very short and basic little title. There are only maybe five or six stages here, and they are all very short and basic. For the most part you just walk to the right and sometimes jump over things, while shooting the enemies. This game has decent NES-ish graphics, but with such a limited amount of very basic gameplay this game will not keep anyone interested for long. Some people liked this game more than Mighty No. 9, and with how flawed that game is I get it, but I’d rather play that game than this one; it has SOME good points, more interesting stage layouts, and at least it won’t be done in half an hour. I don’t know that this game is really worth playing. It’s alright but a bit below average.
Mighty Gunvolt Burst – This sequel is improved over its predecessor. You have several characters to play as and better levels than that last game. Once again, Mighty Gunvolt Burst is a NES-inspired platformer. This game still isn’t as good a Mega Man game as the NES-style Bloodstained games are Castlevania games, but it’s a decent time while it lasts. As with most of Inti Creates titles this game is a whole lot easier than the NES games that inspired it and I would call it a short and easy game, but at least this time the stages are more interesting than they were in the first game and the game is a bit less short. This game might be worth playing, at least for Mega Man fans. Go in with low expectations and you might have fun for a little while. I think some people overstated how good this game was back when it came out, it’s no match for Mega Man games in level design or challenge, but it’s still a decent time and is above average to good.
Mighty Switch Force – This WayForward game has their typical good art design. The game is a 2d platformer, as with many WayForward titles, with a twist. In this quite puzzley platformer, you play as a police girl, and need to find and capture five criminal girls in each level, who are all blondes. The criminal girls don’t move, so the challenge is finding where they are hiding and touching all of them to capture them. The game is certainly sexualized, but it is pretty good. The controls are also spot-on, control of your character is responsive.
The main gimmick is hinted at in the title, switching. You have the standard jump and shoot buttons, but your third action button switches certain blocks on and off. Each time you hit it some blocks, launchers, and more will switch between being present active objects, or being shadowed out backround items you can’t interact with. You will need to switch in midair in order to flip types to make it through walls of blocks, switch with precise timing to get either you or a bomb enemy into a specific launcher to shoot it off in the direction you need to go in, and such. Beyond the nice sprite art graphics this is a fairly simple game, but it gets challenging eventually and beating all of the levels will take skill. Because levels end not when you reach the end but when you find all of the criminals, exploration is key here. Fortunately levels are relatively small, so the challenge here is not inordinate amounts of exploration but instead is in trying to figure out how to get past the obstacles in front of you. This is a good game well worth playing, the frustration of the later stages is well worth it to experience this WayForward classic.
Mighty Switch Force 2 – This game is similar to its predecessor, except you’re a firefighter girl now. As with before the plot is very minimal. You need to rescue five people in each level from fires that have broken out all over town. As with before, all of the people are beautiful blonde women. Because you are a firefighter now, and this is a new character and not the same person as the sprite art and voice acting are different, you have a water cannon instead of a regular gun, and there are fires and mud blocks and such in the levels that you will need to break down with that water cannon. You don’t need to worry about water or anything, your water gun has infinite water somehow. There isn’t even a hose. So yeah, this is not exactly a firefighting simulator, but it is a good platform-puzzle game with plenty of good to great levels to figure out. As with the first one this game isn’t especially long, and is well worth playing while it lasts because of the great controls and very good gameplay. This game has a bit more going on in terms of stage objects than the first one, which is great. The mud blocks, pipes, and more add some welcome depth to this game. I like trying to figure out the puzzles here. And as with before, if you want to get some more out of this game you can try to finish all of the stages faster, since both games save your best times, and also can try to find an optional baby who is hidden in each level. Some of the ways you get to a level’s baby are pretty tricky, it’s good stuff. Overall, this game is great. Buy it while you can. It takes everything the original did and improves on it.
Miles & Kilo – This is a 2d platformer game with decently nice sprite art. I mentioned this game previously. The previous game was an endless runner, but this time you get full control of your character, thankfully. The game has some auto-runner sections, as you get pulled along behind your out of control dog, but most of the time you you control your movement. The game is much, much better for it! I’m not much of a fan of autorunners, but even so it is kind of amazing how much better this game is than the last one just because you aren’t always moving anymore. This game has nice visuals, solid controls, and mostly good levels. This game is fairly standard stuff as you walk, jump, and attack enemies along straightforward linear levels. The game doesn’t have the most variety, but it does have some, with the autorunner sections to mix things up from the regular platforming. Overall it’s a decently fun little game and I do think platformer fans should want to check it out. This is far better than any autorunner, it really is amazing how much this genre is improved by having control over your character.
Mini Golf Resort – Mini Golf Resort is a mini-golf game with nice stereoscopic 3d graphics. That’s great, I like minigolf. However, this game is not great. There is a huge amount of content here, with a character creator to create your golfer and a lot of quite lengthy holes to play through, but the controls are extremely weird and hard to get used to and the hole designs are heavy on things like very annoying ramps and bridges you need to hit perfectly to get over. You’d think that a 3DS minigolf game would have a stylus-based system where you have an on-screen indicator showing how hard you’re hitting the ball, but this game isn’t simple like that, oh no. Instead, this game has a weird hybrid system where you can use either the buttons or the stylus, but neither works well. You can rotate your club and turn the camera up and down with either the stylus, analog stick, or ABXY buttons. You hit the ball by touching a ball indicator in the lower right corner of the touchscreen. This makes a power level slider appear on screen. Now you select the power you want to hit the ball with. Yes, it’s just a selection slider, not a power meter. How odd, for a golf game. Then you touch the screen and move the stylus down and then up in order to mimic a hitting motion. The ball will only go straight if you move the stylus straight up and down, vary and you’ll go off course. There are no indicators on screen showing how your shot will go, you’ll just need to hope that it goes the right way. It’s odd, but you do get used to it.
Once you get the controls down, though, those incredibly annoying level designs, and the often extremely long holes, are there to ruin any fun you might have been having. If you can aim your shots just right, sure, you can get through holes in just a few shots. But a minigolf game where extreme precision is required on many of the MANY MANY holes in the game or else you’ll take dozens of shots to complete a hole? That’s no fun. And you can’t just play a single hole, either; instead you need to play a full course in a single sitting. Each is made up of multiple holes, and you can’t save a game in progress and will need to start it over if you quit. For a handheld game that’s not good design at all. After completing some of these holes I never want to play them again, but might have to. Overall, Mini Golf Resort is disappointing and critically flawed. While there may be a huge amount of content here, with odd controls, no saving of a course in progress, and very irritating course designs, it’s a poor game with major problems. I can’t recommend it at all.
Mini Sports Collection – This is an olympic-style sports minigame collection. The game has nice stylized graphics, with graphics which have flat sprites in 3d worlds with some solid-color outlines for people. It is in stereoscopic 3d and I like the look. Once you get into the game, though, it has issues. This title has twelve minigames. You can either play each one independently, play some four-minigames challenges, or play all twelve one after the other. Whatever the mode, the only challenge is you against yourself: there is no AI opponent, only a high score counter with letter grades based on hitting certain required scores in that minigame and some achievement-style objectives for each of the mnigames. The addition of the achievements and grades is nice, because otherwise this game would be over in ten minutes. It still can be if you don’t care about grades, score, or achievements, but it is nice that the game gives you multiple things to work for beyond just finishing the minigames. As for those minigames, they use the d-pad or analog stick and not more than one button. There is a helpful control screen before each one telling you what the controls are. Most of the minigames are either about well-timed reactions or focused inputs. They can be pretty frustrating, getting good scores in this game is not easy. Some learning will be required if you want to master this game. Is it worth it I’m not sure, the timings required can be tight and I get frustrated. But for a title with this little an amount of content there is a decent amount here to do if you get into it. This game is average at best but some might want to give it a look. I’m glad I picked it up.
Mom Hid My Game! – This indie adventure game started out on cellphones and became fairly popular after its release. The game got several sequels and is still alive today. Unfortunately only the first game got a 3DS port, but it is a good port well worth playing if for some reason you haven’t played this title. This is a short and simple little game, but it’s great fun for the few hours it lasts. You play as a young boy, probably Japanese, and in each stage your goal is to find the handheld game console that your mother hid. You play with the stylus on the lower screen, touching things you want to interact with. When you touch things something happens. Most stages are just a single screen or only a few screens, so there usually are only a few things to interact with, but it does get moderately tricky eventually. Still, this game is pretty easy and won’t last all that long, but it’s quite fun while it lasts so that’s fine. I definitely recommend this game, and its sequels as well. It’s too bad the sequels didn’t get 3DS releases, anything with touch controls like this is significantly better with a stylus on a reactive screen like the 3DS’s.
Mutant Mudds Deluxe – From Renegade Kid. Mutant Mudds is an indie 2d platformer from the same developer as Chicken Wiggle, though this title released before that one. You play as a boy going on a great adventure, in that classic platformer fashion. You have a regular jump, a shot that doesn’t go all the way across the screen, and a jetpack with a fuel meter that refills when you land. From these simple basics come some pretty good challenges. This game was somewhat popular and has multiple ports, and indeed I covered the original PC version of the game some years ago, but this improved 3DS version is perhaps the best because this game makes great use of stereoscopic 3d effects. This game feels somewhat inspired by early ’90s PC shareware platformers, which is fantastic since I love those games, but it also takes visual inspiration from Virtual Boy Wario Land, since as with that game it has multi-plane stages with plenty of obstacles that move around in and out of the screen and plane-switching jump pads. The 3DS Kirby games would similarly use these VBWL-inspired design elements, but this game did it first. Naturally, while it is also on PC and Switch and such, the best way to play this game is on the system where it’s in stereoscopic 3d, the 3DS. And this is definitely a good game, for its gameplay is very bit as good as its visual effects, or better. This is a challenging but fun platformer with great controls and large levels that are a lot of fun to explore. This game is fairly simple and easy to understand, but with classic design inspired by games I love, good controls, good graphics, and good level designs, this is a good to great game without question. I might like Chicken Wiggle even more, but Mutant Mudds is an almost-classic and shows off stereoscopic 3d quite well. This game is good and is absolutely recommended.
Mutant Mudds Super Challenge – From Renegade Kid. This sequel to the original Mutant Mudds is pretty much the same as the original in visuals and gameplay, but, as the name suggests, it is harder. The all-new levels feel aimed at players who have beaten the first game, so this feels kind of like an expansion pack sold on its own. That’s fine, just know what the game is. The question is, do you want a much more challenging Mutant Mudds game? I think that the first game got its difficulty balance just about right and was plenty challenging, so as much as I like it I’ve never cared quite as much for this one; it’s perhaps a bit too hard. Of course you have very good controls and nice 3d stereoscopic visuals, and you can keep trying levels as many times as you want, but I’ve never stuck with this one all that long. It starts out well, but after dying a lot I eventually stop. Even so, this game is good and is worth a try for sure. Just be warned, it IS hard.
My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess – This title is only available as a My Nintendo reward. Spend enough coins and you get a code for this game. I hope that it is still available as a reward, at least until the eshop shutdown, but aren’t sure. Anyway, despite costing quite a few points, this title is not a full game. Instead, it is a mini-game with 25 Picross puzzles of various characters and objects from the Gamecube classic, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I love Picross, and this title is great with all of the fantastic touch or button-based controls and classic puzzle gameplay of Picross, it just won’t last long because of how few puzzles are included. For those who do not know, picross is a picture crossword logic puzzle game series from Nintendo and Jupiter. From sets of numbers along the right and top sides of the screen, you need to figure out which blocks need to be cut out from the grid of blocks on the lower screen. The upper screen, meanwhile, shows the current image. As a big Twilight Princess and Picross fan I love this title, and that it’s kind of free more than makes up for the limited amount of content. If you can still get this, definitely pick it up.
Nano Assault EX – This is a shmup from Shin’en, a small German game developer behind games such as Nanostray on the DS. Shin’en games consistently have great graphics with very good use of hardware, but whether the gameplay is as good as the graphics are is highly variable. This game is a rail shooter, sort of like Shin’en’s first console game for the GBA, Iridion 3D, but better. You control a miniature nano-sized craft, flying through living beings to defeat the dangerous invading cells. This game gives you no control over the camera or your movement speed, you just move your ship around the screen to avoid obstacles and shoot at foes. That makes this game conceptually a lot like the ’90s game Microcosm. I like rail shooters, but I do think they are better when you can move around more, as opposed to this very strict ‘it plays a video and you move your cursor-like ship’ style. It also can be hard to tell when you’re going to be hit, since you see the ship dead-on so judging distance is tricky. The visuals here are great, but the gameplay isn’t quite on that level. As for the controls, you have analog control of the ship, but the change from slow to fast motion is abrupt. You are either barely moving or zooming across the screen. I’ve found myself getting killed by this more times than I’d like.
And as you play you will need to focus, because the game has long levels. You get limited lives per level and die in one hit. You do respawn where you died so long as you have lives left, but once you run out you’ll need to restart that level again from the beginning. This is a challenging game that you will not easily get more than a few levels into. This game can be fun as you look at the cool visuals and shoot at dangerous cells and the like, but with the too-railed design and sometiems iffy controls, while there is plenty to like here with the interesting enemies and obstacles and challenging stages, this style of rail shooter, the ‘it’s kind of a FMV cursor’ style, has never been my favorite. So, this game has issues, but even so it is good overall and certainly is worth playing if you like shooters. This game is probably good overall, but barely. It’s in between above average and good really.
Ninja Battle Heroes – Released in 2012 by Tom Create. This is a 2.5d platform/action game. It’s alright. You play as an anthropomorphic ninja animal guy on a mission to save fantasy ancient Japan. There is a plot told by short cutscenes between stages. You move with the analog stick and can attack both melee and ranged, jump, block use special abilities, and, by pressing down on the stick while not moving, draw in souls. The combat has a little depth as you do have to use some strategy with bosses, but it is still mostly simple. It’s alright, but it’s perhaps a bit too much of a sidescrolling beat ’em up for my tastes, combat-wise. That’s just not my favorite kind of combat.
The analog-only movement works, and you do have proportional speed control, but sometimes I did wished that you could use the d-pad as well. It’s fine though. As for the gameplay, this game is decent but a bit generic in feel, somehow. It does feel nice when you run through the levels slashing enemies, but the visuals and stage designs aren’t anything too special. The controls, menus, and interface are all extremely similar to those of the other Tom Create games for 3DS, several of which I have covered. You can buy special abilities with the souls you can collect, though at first you can only equip one at a time so you will need to choose what you want. Fortunately, eventually you do get to equip more specials. This game is alright to good. Tom Create’s games all have a decent sense of style, with higher production values than many download-only 3DS games. The graphics are good and it is in stereoscopic polygonal 3d. People who like sidescrolling beat ’em up combat, with blocking and such, should get this. As for me, I’ve gone back to it here and there but don’t love it despite recognizing its above-average quality. It’s fine.
Noah’s Cradle – This game supports the added buttons of the 3DS controller addon unit or the New 3DS. This is a 3d flight combat game with modern aircraft. It’s technically a sci-fi game, but doesn’t really look like it. This title is no hardcore sim, it’s pretty simple, but while I do like some sci-fi flight games, ones like this have never interested me much at all. This game makes an okay first impression, but I rapidly lose interest. That may just be me, though. The game has decent graphics with stereoscopic 3d, and it makes good use of the added buttons of the New 3DS or 3DS controller addon — LZ and RZ control your throttle. Otherwise you need to adjust it on the touchscreen. The button option is nice. Otherwise, face buttons control your bullets and missiles, use an afterburner, and lock on to a target in front of you. Oddly enough, you can also strafe with L or R. Yes, strafe sideways, in a plane. I am not sure how a plane can strafe by seemingly adjusting its flaps, but okay. You fly around with the left analog stick. In addition to the throttle, the lower screen has a map and shows your weapons. You can enable or disable weapons by touching them.
In each mission, you fly a plane around in empty space and have to accomplish missions. Most missions are basic ‘kill all the enemy fighters’ stuff. This is an indie title, so there isn’t full ground here, you are higher up. The graphics are alright and the plane controls are okay, so it’s a decent game I guess. The way the plane tilts around as you move the stick is odd, but it is realistic I believe. Basically left and right rotate your ship and up and down tilt it, so you need to turn by angling in the correct direction while holding down L or R to activate those flaps. Once you’ve got that down, though, figuring out where those enemies ARE can be difficult. If enemies are close they will appear on your radar and you can lock on to them, but there isn’t a larger map you can bring up to tell you where enemies are. Sure, the game may start you near your foes, but they’re in planes, they fly around. Lose track of them and they’re just gone, good luck finding them again. And this is where the game completely loses me. Other than this problem Noah’s Cradle is a decent game which can be fun for its genre, but sorry, I have no interest in aimlessly flying around looking for missing enemies.
If you do stick with it, the game has various different weapons and several planes to buy, and you can replay missions and they won’t be the same every time. Or rather, you will NEED to replay missions, because I don’t think there are all that many in this game and if you don’t lose track of the enemies they are pretty short, and they pad it out by not unlocking the next level right away. Instead you need to play the same stages over and over and buy better stuff and such. They very slowly get harder the more times you play them. And… yeah, no thanks. If this sounds like your kind of game by all means pick it up while you can, but it’s not mine. It’s too aimless and repetitive. Not recommended.
Of Mice and Sand – This is an interesting, but flawed, indie strategy/simulation game. You control a large tracked vehicle full of sentient mice travelling through a post-apocalyptic desert. This game has nice 2d sprite art graphics. It doesn’t make much use of stereoscopic 3d, but still the visuals are good. This game has mostly touch-based controls. You manage your mouse tank-colony by placing rooms and giving the mice tasks. This game is both really interesting, and quite boring. I like the post-apocalyptic theme, and the graphics are nice. The concept of managing a colony is also a good one, and I love strategy games and like building sims as well. However, a lot of the time there just isn’t enough to do to keep me interested. As you play, you travel around between locations in the desert. You watch your vehicle move, and as you go you automatically pick up some items on the ground that you will need, such as scrap metal. Then, you tell one of your mice to turn that scrap metal into refined products such as pipes and the like in the Workshop room in your colony. Once you reach a location, you can buy and sell items, of which the game only has a relatively small number of types, get quests which generally amount to ‘bring me X amount of some item type’, and pay people for information. You will need to buy pretty much all information options in order to proceed, as you can’t get to new locations until you learn from people where new places of interest are in the desert.
A lot of this kind of game are rogue-lite titles with a lot of danger, games where you are always on the edge of failure and might get something if you lose. This game is not like that. Instead, most of the time you are not in much danger to anything other than quitting out of boredom. You absolutely can fail this game, as if you take too long to proceed to new areas monsters will destroy your colony and it can take a while to get enough resources to be able to build enough items to both be able to sell stuff to make money for food, fuel, and the information you need. However, most of the time you are just going back and forth between locations, slowly picking stuff up, while next to nothing happens. There are a few events here and there and the towns and writing are charming, but it’s just a bit too slow-paced and tedious. I like the concept of this game, but the tedium of the core gameplay loop is flawed. It doesn’t have enough building simulation elements to keep you interested like a dedicated building sim does, but also doesn’t have enough threat to hold your interest like a rogue-lite colony sim does. Of Mice and Sand does its own thing, and I kind of like it, but it just doesn’t have varied or interesting enough gameplay to keep me coming back. Raw material collection, particularly, is too dull. This game is above average but could have been better. There is also an enhanced Nintendo Switch version of this game which adds more content. The controls here are better, as the game is perfect for control with a stylus, but the added content would be nice.
Ohno Odyssey – This is a 2.5d puzzle/platformer game. No, not that kind of puzzle-platformer. This game is one part endless runner and one part level editor. The game has a great concept, but fairly average implementation. Each level is made up of curving platforms floating in the air. You start out in an editor. When you press go your orblike alien character will move forward along it. Your objective is to place objects along this track with the stylus in the simple stage editor so that you will be able to reach the goal. Once you hit go, you only have limited control of your character. Some powerups give you a jump you control and such, and you will need to time uses of the jump powerup in some levels so some platformer ability is required, but the puzzle element is the main game here.
You just need to set up the level so that the Ohno alien will complete the stage. As such, the main challenge here is in the puzzle solving.
It’s a good idea, and a really good implementation of this could have been some cross of The Incredible Machine and a platformer, but unfortunately this game isn’t that title. Ohno Odyssey is a very easy and simple game. The puzzles do slowly get a bit more complex, but with how few items you get in each stage, most of the time the puzzles are far too easy to figure out. Put ramps over pits, blocks to keep you from hitting bombs, and such. Sometimes you can do neat stuff, but only infrequently. The platformer isn’t enough to keep me interested either, since it’s mostly an automatic game which you don’t interact with at all most of the time. Many levels don’t have any interaction at all, you just hit go and watch. If the puzzle setups were trickier this would be fine, but they aren’t. This game is a mildly amusing little thing, as you place items and then watch your orb-guy zip along the course, but there isn’t enough substance here to keep me interested for long. It’s probably slightly below average.
