Weirdness: BAFTA Appears To Have Clean Forgotten That The Nintendo 3DS Even Exists

facepalm

I have never heard of 80 Days, Hitman Go, Monument Valley or Threes... lol

BAFTA is blinkered and only believes that Tablets and Smartphones bring relevant entertainment to the travelling masses!

But 3DS isn't produced by Apple. Steve Jobs told me that means it can't be good.

The British really don't care about Nintendo huh?

@ikki5 think of 2048. 2048 derives from threes.

bet the BAFTA's are rigged

They did the same thing last year if you remember. The BAFTA's seem to be very anti-Nintendo. Not really sure why...

I threw up a little when I read this. The fact that Smash Bros isn't on here is a complete tragedy.

Correct. Last year's BAFTAs were for 2013, when Fire Emblem: Awakening, Luigi's Mansion 2, Pokemon X & Y, and Animal Crossing all launched on 3ds. But there were no 3ds games in the handheld category. That was the year I dismissed the BAFTAs entirely and stopped recognising them as any kind of legitimate award. This year's continued idiocy does not surprise me at all.

2014 wasn't 3DS' best year... and some of the titles on the other side of the fence sounded pretty good (80 days particularly). Still, think this boils down to a lack of due diligence on the judge's panel. Just aren't enough 3DS owners on it.

...

@nostalgianinja that doesn't help much either. lol

Nobody outside of a crummy island cares about BAFTA anyway, so no loss

The BAFTAs have done to 3DS what Third Parties & Sony have done to Vita...

Shunned it from public eyes, well this is the UK, Nintendo's weakest market so thats why.

"BAFTA Appears To Have Clean Forgotten That The Nintendo 3DS Even Exists" Clean or clearly?

People actually take the BAFTA game awards seriously?

BAFTA -
Blind
Artists
Forgetting
Talented
A-rated-games

BAFTA - otherwise known as British Academy of Film and Television Arts

I think that says it all. Maybe if 3DS had a Downtown Abbey game

No Bayonetta 2 or Smash, both are brilliant games that should get some recognition.

Oh well, whatever, NEVERMIND. (It's just another pointless award show that people shouldn't care about)

@Damo, you sound soooo angry, man XD

It's obviously decided by a certain panel of people. Most groups that have any kind of community about them end up with clear biases. So anyone who started playing Nintendo games started to get criticised or something like that. It happens all the time.

yeah well when their film awards gives most awards to the same film, you know it's a load of rubbish

the whole thing is a waste of time because they only award what is popular and not what is actually the best

I wonder if any DS games won any BAFTA awards?

Make no sense to call that an "handheld" category if they gonna ignore the releases on any handheld console. They're free to award the games they consider worthy, but what I'm seeing is a "mobile only" category then (and no, a game also on Vita can't count for handhelds, especially when the Vita version is not the main one, but just a port).

Shocking. Then again BAFTA seem to have ignored Nintendo for a good few years so its no surprise. Quality of games is 10 times more important than awards anyway. I'd rather play a game which is engaging and unawarded than a game which has multiple awards and is poor all round. That also goes for games on other consoles i have too.
I'm also confused- why have they not got a seperate mobile catagory? It's now clear that both need their own catagory. There are some quality games on tablets and mobiles which go unsung because these games are lumped together. Hoping they'll be separated next year but not holding my breath...

The BAFTAs seem to ignore Nintendo, and have been for years now. How is Threes on this list, like seriously? It's a puzzle game. SSB deserved it much more

What the article did not say is that Sega's Alien Isolation is leading for award nomination in BAFTA.

They put Mario Kart 8 in audio achievement but totally ignored Tropical Freeze.

Wut.

Well, it is British. There's like 20 people in UK who like Nintendo and they all have NintendoLife accounts.

They must still be angry about the delayed release for Kirby.

Games are all a matter of opinion, the only thing this shows is that the BAFTA awards are just basically rigged because they don't have a large variety of people to judge the games within a year effectively.
Opinions are a reason I don't think games should have awards like these, same with movies.
Example 1.
Every one and the grandma likes Call of Duty, I fucking despise the series, and have so sense black ops 1 it's just gone from great to nothing special and gets worse.
Example 2.
Every one loves Avatar, that movie bores the crap out of me and honestly is terrible in my opinion.

Take the same into effect here, everyone here on this website and on game trailers, ign, kotaku, all love nintendo 3ds games of sorts, but these guys just don't.
Not saying they are right or that our opinion matters more, it's just how games have gotten so big opinions are just too diverse to be able to truly say what game deserves a "award" status.

@Damo it must be a UK thing mate, don't worry I understood! Ridiculous BTW, they must be literally pretending the 3DS doesn't exist. Idiots, lost all credibility right there, for me

Well, I'm not one to hold it against them, if the jury didn't deem any 3DS games worthy. Hell, I wouldn't have nominated a single one of them, either, but that'S besides the point.
The point is, nobody needs to worry. It's not the awards that make a game successful, it's the gamers. And I, for one, cannot deny the listed mobile games being good (except for Hearthstone), so it's not a completely washed-up farce, just a very limited viewpoint on mobile and handheld gaming.

@XCWarrior Amazing decryption skills!

@MasterBlaster hey, what's with the crummy island remark? Are you normally this rude?

Wat is BAFTA?

@ikki5 Monument Valley is basically captain toad on your phone, but older. It's actually really really good for a phone game and the DLC is meant to be even better.

On the awards, pity Nintendo are being ignored but is it the same for Xbox and ps?

@Damo Nope, it is proper in American English as well.

@Kaze_Memaryu

Fantasy Life is the only 3DS game of 2014 I would even have considered, I think.

It is puzzling that Bayonetta 2 was overlooked. But Mario Kart 8? That game is well polished, but it really did nothing new in any regard.

@Damo
Oh that phrase.

They could have nominated one 3DS exclusive and one Vita exclusive just because they are "handheld gaming consoles". Seems wrong to skip the 3DS and pretty much Vita too in favour of mobile devices and tablets...

Bafta has no clue when it comes to video games. They never do. Just stick to films.

Welcome to the UK, folks. Nintendo is quickly losing relevance, due in no small part to their dire marketing.

I don't know what a BAFTA is, but it doesn't really matter to me. Award ceremonies are a big joke, though this takes the cake for biggest joke. What smartphone user even cares?

My moneys on hitman GO. I think to the mainstream public mobile games are the most relevant.

Thanks to everyone who is judging an entire nation by an irrelevant award show!

Racism against Japan by the looks of it. (From what I can tell it is not anything like they all have to be made in the UK).

@Quorthon In situations like these, I'd really like to see the argumentation behind nominations and all.
But of course you're right: whether one likes it or not, Nintendo had strong titles in 2014, and the lack of their mention does come off as uninformed.

So much disdain & attention in the comment section for an apparently irrelevant awards show (ha yeah right).

Bob Hoskins, Rik Mayall, Mel Smith, Gerladine McEwan... not bad company!

I'm almost surprised they didn't list tomodachi life.

BAFTA is the new BETA

@ikki5 Heard of 80 Days, but the rest just sound like your average mobile game. BAFTA run by IGN confirmed

I've never watched the BAFTA and I've lived in the UK for over 25 years. But to not nominate Nintendo is criminal.

@Kaze_Memaryu

I think too much of this stuff is just a popularity contest. The Grammy's, for instance, has historically seemed to go in the the "who sold the most" direction and creativity, artistic merit, originality, and the like are not used as metrics.

Mario Kart, super popular. Bayonetta? Not popular, despite that game being far and wide a superior experience in pretty much every aspect.

The high number of mobile games on here, aside from the Walking Dead, seems to back up the "reward popularity" sentiment.

Any awards show that does not recognize dedicated handhelds should rightfully be considered a complete joke. The fact they don't consider Smash Bros one of the best handheld games of 2014 not GOTY material is an absolute travesty

@ikki5 There's a 3DS version of 2048 out for 12 ZAR (South African Rand, I suppose it translates to 1 pound or something), that proves the minimal aspect of the game. It's a squeeze-in-time type of game, doesn't really have much use om my 3DS.

This doesn't surprise me anymore, the BAFTAs are not worth giving a damn about. Never even watched it because I know I would be face palming all the way through them when I see the majority of awards go to the undeserving.

The BAFTAs have always been a load of shash anyway. Don't think I've trusted any opinion from them for years.

I guess they don't really understand the meaning of "great games"

@Liam_Doolan

Well, Rare's a British developer right? That might'be had something to do with it. Or a lot.

Uhh, why do we think the BAFTA are relevant, again?
Just because they're british (I'm guessing)?

Don't see anything wrong with this list at all. People complain if award comities give awards to games purely for high sales, but the article seems to suggest the 3DS should have been nominated for the install base it's accumulated over the last 4 years? It's crazy logic, but even if that WAS the criteria, then IOS has it beat?

2014 wasn't a great year for the 3DS and a lot of those games listed in the article reviewed pretty poorly. On the other hand, the stuff that was nominated got great reviews. 80 Days, Monument Valley, Threes and Hearthstone would quite rightly be considered by most unbiased gamers to be better than anything on 3DS last year.

Honestly the amount of people mentioning Fantasy Life as one of the great 3DS games of 2014 paints a poorer picture of this community's taste in games than BAFTA's. That game has a 72 rating on Metacritic, and people think that should be on a GOTY list? Too many people on here just play Nintendo games, which is fine, but don't then complain that a bunch of games you've never heard of get more recognition. Nintendo Pocket Football Club (65), Tomodachi Life (71), Sub Wars (70), Yumi's Odd Odyssey (74) being over looked in favour of Hearthstone (93), Monument Valley (89), Threes (92) and 80 Days (89) sounds like pretty sound logic to me. Smash Bros was the highest metacritic rated 3DS game last year with 85. I know metacritic is far from the be all and end all, but it's a good representation of what reviewers as a whole think of games, so I don't think the 'Weirdness' tag is really appropriate when a bunch of highly rated games got picked over games that were reviewed lower, and in some cases MUCH lower.

Pfffft... this isnt a game award, this is a half arsed attempt by bafta game award to try and validate its increasingly irrelevant existence by pandering to the high selling popular vote.... try http://thegameawards.com/jury-and-advisors/ I'm not sure of the exact judge panel of the bafta but I'll bet it pails in comparison. 3DS didn't have great year but no 3DS games nominated sine Super Mario 3D Land in 2011? With such gems as Super Monsters Ate My Condo getting the nod? Groovey...

They haven't forgotten the 3DS...but they definitely remember the fat paycheck they got from the other rival companies though for those awards, though. lol

@Peach64 Despite lower scores because "It's not the ideal set for smash", don't you agree that Smash 3DS is among the best fighting games on a portable device ever? Seriously, it's just that good. It has little less than it's Wii U brother.
And bravely default not making to the nominees proves that they don't like RPGs.

The BAFTAs are crap, IMO. I swear MK8 is the first time they have nominated something Nintendo-related in years. I bet MK8 won't win.

They don't play Nintendo games that's why

@ikki5
It's a shame there's no 3DS games on there, but the list of what I'd call mobile games is actually quite legit. Those are solid and genuinely innovative games for the most part. Some of them are pretty deep actually and would appeal to many core gamers.

Threes is the trickier, smarter predecessor to 2048, by the way. It's probably the most typical mobile game.
Monument Valley is slight on challenge and short, but is beautiful to unfold and probably the best of games inspired by M.C. Escher.
80 Days is genre-transcending gamebook adventure.
Hearthstone is the premiere card-collecting game from Blizzard and deep and really fun.
I have not played Hitman GO or The Walking Dead: Season 2 but Hitman GO is quite impressive looking and a creative choice for the franchise being a puzzler, while Walking Dead is part of the ongoing resurrection of the graphic adventure.

It's a good list if you are okay with ignoring the 3DS.

That, and maybe @peach64 is right, too. I don't play too many 3DS games my favorites being Kid Icarus, Zelda ALBW and now Project STEAM. None released in 2014. :/

Monument Valley is a pretty good game. Threes and Heartstone were pretty popular as well.

The only 3DS game that I can think of that would be eligible for this list would be Super Smash Bros., but let's face it, the Wii U version is the superior version. So I can understand why it's not included. Pokémon was just more of the same, and the other games, although probably good, were nothing really special.

If its any consolation, UK appears to have forgotten Nintendo as well.

One more note about those games. Yes, they are all mobile, but they are also best on a mobile device with a touch screen. They fit their platform well. For instance, high resolution is great for reading on 80 days, and Hearthstone and displaying the intricate and beautiful levels of Monument Valley and their visual tricks, the tactile feeling of Hearthstone works best on a touch screen with cards as well.

They're also, for the most part sold traditionally. Only Hearthstone has a free to play model, but it's very generous and rewards skilled, dedicated players.

Just saying that the reasons some gamers prefer dedicated gaming handhelds over mobile gaming in general don't apply too much in this set of games. In other words, the game play isn't compromised by the control methods and they don't rely on onerous pay models.

Good thing I don't know or care who BAFTA is.

Out of these games i hope Hitman Go wins. Its a very cool game.
But i assume Monument Valley will take the cake.

@CaviarMeths haha, it does feel like that here sometimes. I'm proud to be one of the 20.

No smash?

Pretty sad

BAFTA makes me barf.

What's a BAFTA?

BAFTA - Finally something more useless to the Gaming Community than the Spike TV video game awards.

I think all this means is that BAFTA is made of nothing but 100% certified poppycock.

I've played most of these games and they don't hold a candle to most 3ds games.

@vattodev Smash is great, but I don't see why it has to be included at the expense of better reviewed games. Bravely Default was a 2013 game in the UK so not eligible for these awards.

@Damo

nope, it's not.

ive never heard of them

Sorry I am English not British that title means nothing now ,I have been playing Nintendo titles long before the nes (arcade freak) and when I got my nes (turtles edition)non of my mates owned one ,and years later when got n64 still non of my mates had one,so yes I think the uk is a poor selling ground for Nintendo.all they want is FIFA or cod but that sums the mind set of a once proud nation(a least when my grandfather was fighting on the beaches) full of armhole rudeboys .