With the announcement of the 3DS price drop. Nintendo gave news of a consolation to those of us that picked up their hardware within the first months of its life. Initially announcing that anyone who has connected the system to the eShop channel before 11:59 pm August 11, 2011 would be receiving 20 free game downloads, 10 NES games available September 1st, and 10 Game Boy Advance games available by the end of 2011. This announcement made me feel a lot better about my early adoption of Nintendo’s new handheld. At first hearing the news i found myself livid at the $80 slap in the face Nintendo had just seemingly dished out. Once I heard how much free software they were sending my way, my tune definitely changed. The announcement of free GBA games brought forward a question that had not been answered, and had been brushed to the side by many gamers. Will there be GBA games in the virtual console market place? This question hasn’t been really answered with anything besides speculation, but an updated message sent to 3DS owners answered it pretty satisfactorily for now.
Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Program
To our loyal customers, we would like to offer you 20 downloadable games from the Nintendo eShop at no charge. These free games are available to Nintendo 3DS owners who connect* to the Nintendo eShop at least once before 11:59 p.m. Eastern/8:59 p.m. Pacific time on Aug. 11, 2011. You will be registered as a 3DS Ambassador.
Starting Sept. 1, Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES Virtual Console games at no charge and before they are available to the public. These games, including Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, and The Legend of Zelda, are slated to become paid downloadable games. but Ambassadors get them early for free. Later in the year, once the paid versions of the games are available in the Nintendo eShop, Ambassadors can download any of the remaining games or any of the updated versions at no cost.
By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games like Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.
More details about this program will be announced in the future.
*Wireless broadband connection required to access the Nintendo eShop.
Nintendo
This seems like a pretty straight forward message. I was hoping to see GBA games hit the 3DS eShop at some point in the systems life cycle. Nintendo’s statement does leave room for them to change their mind, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing our GBA favorites any time soon.