As you may be able to tell, Nintendo is my favourite gaming company. I grew up playing Super Smash Bros. 64 when I was four or five years old, since my older brothers would play the Nintendo 64 every night. My first console of my own, though, was the Nintendo DS Lite, and soon after that, the Nintendo 3DS. Recently I've been reflecting on that era of gaming.
🕹️ GROWING UP IN NINTENDO'S TOUGHEST ERA
I'd say that during the early 2010s, Nintendo had its usual gaming competitors in Microsoft and Sony, but it also had to face the growing smartphone market. It's genuinely impressive that they still sold so many consoles in such a competitive space. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the original Flame Red Nintendo 3DS, and I started playing Ocarina of Time soon after. A lot of other kids my age switched to short-form entertainment like Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, but I was thoroughly enjoying the slower, steady releases of excellent 3DS games.
📵 SIMPLER TIMES, FEWER DISTRACTIONS
I'm nostalgic for the 2010s era of gaming, not just because of the games — which I found genuinely captivating — but because gaming itself was a little simpler. There were fewer distractions. Nowadays I catch myself scrolling social media reading about upcoming releases, or watching YouTube videos reviewing devices or speculating on games, rather than actually dipping my toes into a new adventure. And that's before you even get to constant system updates, many of which are now mandatory just to play something like Mario Kart World online on the Switch 2. I think we can all admit those updates cause small distractions that pull our attention toward our phones or something else entirely. The 3DS had its own game and software updates too, but I could usually just click "do not update" and go straight back to my Pokémon Omega Ruby adventure without much issue.
The exact opposite of picking up a 3DS and just playing.
📱 THE DOOMSCROLLING PROBLEM
I don't think social media is the worst thing ever, but I do acknowledge it can distract us from things we truly like — playing a video game, talking to the people we love, or just going outside and exercising. This is such a common pain point for gamers that there are YouTube videos with millions of views titled things like "How X retro gaming device saved me hours of doomscrolling." Honestly, those videos are pretty accurate and can be a decent guide to cutting your screen time down, if that's something you want to do. Videos like that didn't really exist back in the 2010s, mostly because short-form video itself barely existed yet — Vine, maybe, and not much else.
💸 WHERE I STAND ON DLC
There are different schools of thought when it comes to DLC. Personally, I'm not a big fan of paying extra for content that I feel should've been in the original game. I get that there's a positive side — it lets studios ship a game earlier and release extra content later with smaller teams. But if development teams could make complete games for decades without that model, it's hard for me not to see a lot of modern DLC as a cash grab. On top of that, the price of DLC can run more than half the cost of the base game. Pokémon Sword and Shield's Expansion Pass, for example, costs around $45 AUD on top of an $80 AUD game. Buying it is a choice, sure, but it's hard not to feel like you're missing out if you skip it.
$45 AUD on top of an $80 AUD game — for DLC alone.
🎮 THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
I'll admit the 2010s probably weren't the peak of gaming, but I do think it was gaming's last stretch of just being simple. I try to stay positive about it — being a gamer today is great, because you can still choose to play the great retro games of the past, or dive into the modern scene, or both. The only real difference is that it can feel harder to actually focus on playing something. At RetroRevive we sell regular 3DS and modded 3DS consoles, plus preorders for home consoles like the Nintendo GameCube and Wii U — both with excellent libraries worth revisiting. Take a look if you're interested.