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Nintendo 3DS StreetPass roundup: A Ghostly Warrior's Flower Force
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Nintendo served up a collection of new StreetPass games for the Nintendo 3DS earlier this month, offering players new opportunities to exploit their 3DS-owning friends to earn new Mii hats and outfits. Like the existing StreetPass games, they're lightweight diversions that you'll either ignore after a few plays or delve into obsessively. You can count me among the obsessed. I've unlocked every Mii hat available through Find Mii, and I've completed Find Mii II's secret quest multiple times -- the Famicom hat I earned afterward was totally worth it. Despite their simplicity, Nintendo's StreetPass games have a undeniable charm that can keep you hooked for months. Unlike the StreetPass games that are bundled with the system, however, these new games aren't free. After putting a few dozen unsuspecting Mii Plaza visitors through the new StreetPass offerings over the last several days, I found that some games were more enjoyable and worthwhile than others. [Mii Force, Flower Town, Warrior's Way, and Monster Manor are priced at $4.99 each. All four can be purchased as a bundle for $14.99.]
New 3DS StreetPass games say hello to North America
North Americans can now welcome the quartet of new 3DS StreetPass games, which came to Europe and Japan last month, albeit with different monikers. The system update out now adds shoot-em-up Mii Force, gardening sim Flower Town, spooky puzzler Monster Manor, and strategy game Warrior's Way to a new shop in the Mii Plaza, where they're priced $5 each, or $15 in a four-in-one bundle. As per the Euro and Japanese versions, the new StreetPass games let players earn tickets that can be exchanged for Mii hats and outfits, including a full Luigi costume for those who find it easy being green. Four new panels for Puzzle Swap will also be released at the same time as the update. Each Nintendo 3DS user will receive one random new panel and will have to interact with other Nintendo 3DS owners via StreetPass to receive the other three. The four StreetPass additions are already off to a "good start," according to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who revealed 200,000 users bought at least one of them during their first week of sales.
New 3DS Mii Plaza games off to a 'good start', says Iwata
Over 200,000 3DS owners purchased one or more of the new Mii Plaza games in their first week out, a "good start" as far as Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's concerned. Iwata revealed the figure in Nintendo's recent shareholders Q&A, noting it had been achieved without major advertising, and saying he expects similar products to present business opportunities going forward. The four Mii Plaza newbies, currently available in Europe and Japan, feature shoot-em-up StreetPass Squad, horticulture sim StreetPass Garden, ghostly puzzler StreetPass Mansion, and territorial strategy offering StreetPass Battle. Priced at around $7 each, or $21 for the four-in-one bundle, the StreetPass extras seem to be providing the House of Mario with good returns already. They'd probably give even better returns if they were on North America's eShop, but Nintendo of America has yet to spill any beans on their arrival.
3DS update adds four purchasable Mii Plaza games, save data backup
3DS firmware update v6.0.0-11 should satiate the needs of those who have collected every single StreetPass puzzle piece and beaten StreetPass Quest twice (or more). The update, only available in Europe at the time of writing, adds four purchasable Mii Plaza games in addition to the original two. Those four are StreetPass Squad, Garden, Battle, and Mansion. We'd love to tell you about the games themselves, but StreetPass Mii Plaza has crashed on us every time we've loaded up the new Shop page - reports on NeoGAF indicate others are also struggling with crashes. One NeoGAF user reports each game costs £4.49 ($7), while all four can be obtained in a value bundle going at £13.49 ($21). There's no official word from Nintendo, perhaps indicating the patch went out earlier than scheduled. What we can confirm is another feature in the new update, and that's the ability to create save data backups. Accessible via 3DS Data Management in System Settings, the new feature lets you create or restore backup save data, but only for software downloaded to the 3DS. The new feature may not be compatible with every single game; we tried it for our freshly obtained Animal Crossing: New Leaf, only to be greeted with a message telling us "this software's save data cannot be backed up."
3DS firmware update will include new StreetPass game
Nintendo of Europe announced yesterday that the latest 3DS firmware update, which adds video recording functionality, would arrive on November 4. However, NWR's Daan Koopman later tweeted an update claiming that the date was "an internal confusion." He did (re-)confirm one detail about the update, now coming at a non-specific date in November: it will offer a new StreetPass game. Previously, we'd heard that additional content for StreetPass Mii Plaza was coming, but we assumed it would be limited to expansions of the two existing built-in games, Find Mii and Puzzle Swap. We'll likely see a full reveal of this new game at tomorrow's Japanese event.
