Topic: 3DS Franchises on Switch

One of the original promises of the Switch was one platform to receive the majority of Nintendo - and third party - support instead of splitting in two. And we have gotten some bangers! But I can’t help but feel like we are missing games that we might have gotten if the 3DS were still around. We have gotten a mainline Pokemon and are getting a new Monster Hunter, maybe a Detective Pikachu - so there’s some good news. I’d personally like to see Mario and Luigi rpgs stick around and don’t know why we haven’t heard anything about Phoenix Wright (outside of the the port). What franchises would you like to see jump from 3DS to switch?

Tomodachi Life...maybe. Yo-kai Watch 4 has been available in Japan for a while now, but Level-5 is really slow when it comes to their localization process (it took them two years just for Snack World). Also, I think I'm not alone in wanting Sakurai to work on a Kid Icarus Uprising sequel we he's done with Smash DLC characters? I believe the Switch has most of everything else that the 3DS offered, first party wise.

Well third parties likely don't see that much of a difference (aside from cost increase). Many studios that made 3ds games focused on that platform as opposed to the home consoles, so it's the same situation (as in focus on one piece of hardware) except now they have to take the dock mode into account. Also many of those companies are not doing the best internally or financially. For smaller studios like grezzo I think they have the harder time unless they are hired to work on a Nintendo side project as they have to learn the hardware. Also some franchises will need to be retooled (from a game design standpoint, not a technical one) to accommodate the loss of the second screen. Etrian odyssey for instance may take some time to come back...if it does.

Mario and Luigi RPG is dead right now with alphadream kicking the bucket. So if that comes back it will be some time, I think.

I feel like a number of the 3ds game makers have jumped in on switch but gamers forget HD dev work takes time. Atlus is churning out two SMT games, Capcom has monster hunter, level 5 has Yokai watch 4 out and megaton musashi on the way and the yokai academy game is out...it's just they take forever to localize. I don't think its a fair call when gamers dismiss a company's output just because it is locked in one region. Games are coming out...it just takes some time to hit other shores. Nintendo streamlining their hardware doesn't make localization any easier (or cheaper).

I feel like switch has gotten good output from the devs that survived (the past decade has been hard on some companies and I think gamers forget that) and we are seeing more games come as the Switch breaks records. I don't know if that will change as the ps5 and series x come out to eat up console sales, as that may drive smaller studios to mobile (which has also become a haven for some of the smaller studios).

My only concern about the cost of console gaming dev work is that it means some devs won't take chances. I know most people want sequel number 347 of a series, but I really liked that the 3ds got fresh ips. Ever Oasis for instance even if it was sent out to die.

I'd love to see a sequel to Ever Oasis.

I'd like to see follow-ups to Codename STEAM and Project X Zone, although I expect Intelligent Systems and Monolith have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

I don't think 3DS games will be ported to Switch. 3DS was a successful console, on the other hand, Wii U wasn't, so I guess that why we are getting a lot of ports of games released initially for the Wii U.

BUT, If there's a franchise I want on Switch it's Mario & Luigi RPG but I doubt it since Alphadream broke

@Slowdive like that you had 3D land twice. It is that good!

@Ryu_Niiyama well put. It’s fair that dev for Switch can cost more with more configurations and higher resolution, though I don’t think it necessarily has to. There are plenty of games that are great on Switch (eg Shovel Knight) that aren’t really hd or taking full advantage of the hardware.

I do agree with you on supporting new IPs and devs taking chances. If they’re good, I’ll pay full price for them any day (Astral Chain was a day 1 purchase for me).

@Chimera_Police I gotta agree on wanting a good Mario RPG on Switch. I'd want them to make use of the wealth of loved Characters in that franchise, not just Mario and a bunch of throwaway one game never see again Characters.

I would like to see some kind of spiritual successor to the 3DS street pass games. Maybe make them based on Amiibo or something like that.

I know this isn't about ports but slap a coat of HD paint on Fire Emblem Awakening and there goes another 300+ hours of my life.

How about Advance Wars? Dormant since the DS.

That's what I have off the top of my head.

@Heavyarms55 Could you see them doing a remake in the FE3H engine? Woo, I wouldn't be able to click buy fast enough. Although I suppose they would start working on the gba games next.

@Chimera_Police Not a bad point, but many devs that didn't do retro styled games, likely aren't going to try to do them now. If you went from 3d based visuals on the 3ds to 16 bit inspired visuals that is still a new engine to learn. My point was more about over all costs, which come up whenever you change hardware or engines even if the game doesn't make a huge leap in graphics. We have all heard the ps3 horror stories to know that and 3ds to switch isn't nearly as much of a pretzel hardware wise as ps2 to ps3 was. I think some devs could coast on a port or two for now, like Marvelous and rune factory; putting out 4 gets more sales out of that game, and gives the team something to learn the switch without having to cut their teeth on new assets or reworking the engine. They can take that experience over to the next game. However some studios are really too small/too broke for even that. The thing is a lot of smaller studios or smaller scale games thrived on the 3ds and its going to be a weird shake up for some of those devs now. Either some will have moved on to mobile, will need time to figure out how to make franchises fit on switch (again talking gameplay and audience), or they went broke.

I will be curious how Covid19 impacts smaller studios by this time next year once the dust and finances have settled. A lot of people and companies haven't so much as gotten the rug pulled out from under them so much as a slow bleed out of finances. We have yet to see the full impact.

I don't think there's much we're really missing that a next gen handheld would've gotten. The libraries have been inflated a bit because of duplicate entries that would need to be on both platforms: i.e. both devices would need a Mario game, both devices would have a Zelda game, etc. Combining them has allowed us to get a wider variety of games and IPs that we normally wouldn't have. For example do you really think we would've seen games like ARMS if we had a console and handheld? Probably not, that team would probably be busy working on an entry for an existing IP on the handheld. We have seen some duplicate entries for certain IPs, yes, but most of them have been different styles of games in those IPs, such as Odyssey vs. NSMBU Deluxe vs. Super Mario Maker 2 or BotW vs. Link's Awakening Switch. About the only IP we got on 3DS that I want on Switch is 2D Metroid (and I strongly suspect that's coming in 2021, there's already been rumors about it), other than that I'd say the larger issue is that some IPs got ports/remakes whereas I'd like to see entirely new entries in those IPs (Mario Kart, 2D Zelda, DK, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and I'm probably going to add Pikmin to that list since 3 Deluxe is starting to get me into that series).

Like a more robust version.... play golf. Bowl, pool etc..... I liked the game but thought it could have done more....

Would love a Kid Icarus Uprising port on the Switch. Would be ideal for the console. You'd think several 3DS games could make it to the Switch.

Next year for the Zelda Anniversary will we get the 3DS ports of Zelda Majora's Mask and Ocarina? (they'll probably just give us the N64 versions)

Others: Radiant Historia, Mario & Luigi, Persona Q (would love the mainline ones too), "Extreme Escape" series (remember Zero Escape and "999"?), new Pheonix Wright, new Prof Layton,

Would love to see a new advance wars on the Switch (not a rerelease, I’ve had enough of them).

A new Tomogatchi life please. This was one of Nintendo's most unique games, and it would be awesome to see it return. (with same-sex marriage)

Tomodachi Life is probably the one game I'd actually really like to see a port for. I was considering the Persona Q duology to capitalize on Joker in Smash at one point but those games seemed practically tailor made for the 3DS and porting it to a single screen device would require a crap ton of retooling and overhauling.

There's also that Japan-exclusive 3DS port of the PSP remake of Final Fantasy I which was available as a bonus for first print buyers of FF Explorers in Japan and that NEVER got localized. Considering the version they used was originally made for a single screen handheld and then ported to a dual screen one, any of the 20th Anniversary FF remakes getting a Switch port would be great now that virtually all of the PS1/PS2 era games are on Switch sans FFXI

Not a port, but a more sophisticated improvement....

Ever Oasis and Fantasy Life.

Kid Icarus and Chibi Robo (although chibi robo hasn't gotten a REAL game since the first ds). The original Kid Icarus was an absolute gem, and I've heard uprising was real fantastic, while I've heard the original Chibi robos were quite special

@Matt_Barber Yeahhh, Monolith although working on some secret IP apparently, has definitely found their big selling franchise in Xenoblade. With 2, Torna, and Definitive Edition, It seems as though the franchise might become like zelda where new titles get released almost annually even if it's sometimes a spinoff or a remaster. This isn't even when you take into account the fact that they get pulled to assist in the development of a lot of Nintendo games, most notably the terrain in BOTW although they also helped on stuff you'd expect them to be involved with less, like New Horizons. I've heard both the games you mentioned are great, but honestly looking at Monolith's rise among Nintendo's branches/companies, if those games get sequels i'd bet they'd get outsourced to be honest. Whatever Monolith does going forward though, I think we can expect it to be extremely quality (holy crap that paragraph was long, sorry)