19 Best 3DS 3D Games

In Yo-kai Watch, a boy gets a special watch that lets him make friends with mischievous spirits and later call them into battle. The spirits are based on the Yōkai of Japanese folklore, the ghosts that are said to cause mischief in daily life. It came out in Japan on July 11, 2013, and had sold over a million copies there by November 2014. The rest of the world had to wait until 2015.

It is the most ordinary setting on this list, a town with houses and a riverside, and that is what makes the 3D work. Players who tried it with the slider up say it feels like a real miniature world in your hands. If you have never cared much for the 3D, this is a gentle place to try it.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask was Professor Layton's first adventure on the 3DS. It takes him to the colorful city of Monte d'Or, where a mysterious man is wreaking havoc with the Mask of Chaos. The game was first built in 2D and then made to look "pseudo-3D" for Nintendo's E3 2010 presentation. Instead of poking the scenery on the touch screen, you now move a magnifying glass around the top screen to search it. There were also 365 puzzles to download, seven a week for a year.

This is the 3D pick for people who like to sit still and look. Players single out its cut-scenes and say each location is beautifully done. You spend half the game staring at a street looking for clues, and here the street has depth.

Bravely Default started development as a sequel to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, and it kept a lot of Final Fantasy in its bones. It came out in Japan in 2012, and the expanded For the Sequel edition from 2013 is the version that reached the rest of the world in 2014. The battle system is the big idea. Brave lets a character take extra actions in a turn, and Default stores actions for later use.

Akihiko Yoshida was the art director, and the towns look hand-painted. Players say the 3D brings those environments to life, and that it feels like playing inside a very detailed pop-up book. The first-person cut-scenes are the other moment people bring up.

Pilotwings Resort is the sequel to the 1990 SNES game Pilotwings and the 1996 Nintendo 64 game Pilotwings 64. You fly over Wuhu Island, the island from Wii Sports Resort, and it was the first 3DS game with Mii characters. There is even a flying squirrel suit, though it only appears in one mission. Reviews liked how it played and wanted more of it. One verdict was "While this looks and feels amazing, there just isn't quite enough."

Players who love it say depth is the whole point. Being able to judge distance makes steering the aircraft around obstacles much easier, and it looked awesome even on a launch day 3DS. It is a short game, and a lovely one to show off the screen with.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D is a re-release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the first prequel in the series, which had come out on the PlayStation 2. It was released on February 21, 2012 in North America. It was also the first Metal Gear game on a Nintendo handheld since Metal Gear: Ghost Babel back in 2000. A patch fixed a glitch that could freeze the game and corrupt save data when you used the Circle Pad Pro.

Players who stuck with it, frame rate dips and all, say the 3D is gorgeous. Some of them spent most of the game with the slider up, and very few 3DS games get that kind of loyalty from people who usually play in 2D.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D is a remake of the Nintendo 64 game from 2000, with more detailed textures and a frame rate raised to 30 FPS from the original's 20 FPS. The team at Grezzo also smoothed out what annoyed people the first time around. The Song of Double Time now lets you skip ahead to any hour of the day, and the save system was completely revamped.

Players who rate its 3D highly talk about the little effects. Fairy dust pops out at you as you run forward, and the mask transformations look incredible with the slider up. It is still the creepiest moon in a Zelda game, and it is creepier when it hangs in the sky with real depth behind it.

Mario Kart 7 is the best-selling game on the 3DS, with nearly 19 million copies sold. It added hang gliding and driving underwater to the series, and you can race in first person with gyro controls. Development began as a port of Mario Kart Wii, and Retro Studios helped build the retro tracks.

Racing games and 3D get along well. Players say there is real depth to the track and your racer seems to float just outside the 3DS, and they love how much it improves the game. So many people owned it that plenty of them first saw what the slider could do right here.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star was the first Paper Mario released on a handheld. It came out in November 2012 in North America, and you collect stickers all over the world and use them up in battle. Critics liked its graphics and writing. They were less happy with the unbalanced difficulty in combat, and the partners from older games were cut because they did not work with the stickers.

Even players who do not like the game agree it looks excellent in 3D. A world made of paper is a good match for the screen, with flat characters standing in front of layered backgrounds. Whether the game itself is any good is a different argument, and a long one.

Development was crowdfunded, and the game came out on the 3DS, among other systems, in June 2014. Shovel Knight is an 8-bit style action game about a small knight who fights with a shovel blade, and critics consider it one of the greatest video games ever made. Jake Kaufman wrote the chiptune music, with two contributions by Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae.

The 3DS version is the only one with the 3D effect. The stages are drawn in layers, so the backgrounds fall far behind the knight and the old-school art looks like a shadow box. Players say the layered look works very well with the 8-bit designs and call the effect subtle. It is the only NES-style game here, and it makes a good case that pixels and depth belong together.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is a remake of Ocarina of Time with more detailed textures and a frame rate raised to 30 FPS from the original's 20 FPS. It came out in June 2011 and sold over 6.44 million units worldwide by December 2022. Reviewers liked the new Boss Challenge mode and the added 3D effects, and Eurogamer gave it a perfect score.

What players remember is the pop-out. When Link holds up a new item, it floats right out of the screen, and fans turned the slider all the way up just to see the hookshot hanging in front of their faces. Some players do see ghosting, a faint double image, and keep the slider low for it.

Fire Emblem Awakening came out in Japan in April 2012 and in North America and PAL regions in early 2013. The series had seen declining sales, so Intelligent Systems made Awakening as the possible last entry and put elements from all previous Fire Emblem games into it. Instead, its commercial success is credited with boosting sales for the 3DS and ensuring the continuation of the Fire Emblem series.

A strategy game is not where you expect great 3D, and yet players rate this one highly. Players say the cut-scenes look amazing in 3D, and the battle map and battle animations look better with the slider up too.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the fourth main game in the Animal Crossing series, and this time you can become the head of the village. It came out in Japan in 2012 and worldwide in 2013. Critics loved how much it improved on the older games, and a free update in November 2016 added amiibo support and new features.

The 3D here is the gentle kind. Players say the world rolls over the horizon as you walk up and down the town, and the effect looks really good. They also say it is smooth enough to keep on all the time without hurting your eyes. For a game you play a few minutes a day for years, that matters more than any big pop-out moment.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a side-scrolling Kirby built around the 3DS screen. It lets Kirby move from left to right and also from the foreground to the background. It came out in Japan in January 2014 and in other regions in May. The new Hypernova ability lets Kirby inhale almost everything, and it can be used in specific parts of each stage. Critics praised the level design and the use of 3D, though it got some criticism for its low difficulty.

Players put it right next to Super Mario 3D Land as a game where the 3D does real work. It helps with some of the boss fights, and players call it an impressive visual treat that changes how you play.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon was made by Next Level Games, a Canadian developer that had worked on Punch-Out!! for the Wii, with Shigeru Miyamoto back as supervisor and producer. Luigi gets multiple mansions to explore this time, armed with the Poltergust 5000 and a Strobulb that stuns ghosts with a burst of light. It sold 6.44 million copies by December 2020, one of the bestselling games on the system.

Players keep the 3D up high for this one. The haunted rooms are full of furniture and dust, and depth makes them feel like a dollhouse. A lot of people remember being blown away by it the first time they played. A haunted house is the ideal fit for a screen that makes things lunge toward you.

Star Fox 64 3D is a remake of Star Fox 64 with a complete graphical update. Europe and Australia knew the N64 original as Lylat Wars, but the 3DS remake uses the Star Fox 64 name in all regions. It came out on July 14, 2011, in Japan, and critics praised its attention to detail and full recreation of the original. Nintendo's own pitch was that the 3D gives you a clearer grasp of distance and position.

Players agree the ships jump right off the screen, starting with the hangar scene at the very beginning, where an Arwing's wing pops out a good few inches. Players who rarely use the 3D make an exception for this one, and they say it still looks great now.

Resident Evil: Revelations brings back the survival horror of the older games after the survival action of Resident Evil 5. Most of it happens on a cruise ship, picked for its claustrophobic corridors and its isolation in the middle of the ocean. It was the first game to support the Nintendo 3DS Circle Pad Pro outside Japan, and critics praised its spooky setting and its sound.

Players say it has some of the best 3D on the system. One player said it "honestly looked like there was a world behind the glass." It also has a trick few 3DS games bother with. A setting in the options menu doubles the 3D depth, and players who turned it up say the effect is incredible.

Kid Icarus: Uprising was the first Kid Icarus since Of Myths and Monsters in 1991. Masahiro Sakurai made it after Satoru Iwata asked him for a 3DS launch title, and it is the only video game Project Sora made before shutting down in mid-2012. Pit soars through the skies shooting down swarms of enemies, then lands for frantic ground battles. It sold over a million copies, and critics praised nearly everything except the controls, which were frequently criticized.

Players call the 3D nothing short of incredible, especially in the flying sections, where the scenery is gorgeous. Holding the system steady while you play is the hard part, and players say the New 3DS and its stable 3D make it much easier to enjoy. Your wrists may disagree with the fun, but your eyes will not.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is the first Zelda game made exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS. At Shigeru Miyamoto's request, its world is based on A Link to the Past. Many areas are open from the beginning, and you can visit the dungeons in any order. Some of the puzzles are built around the 3D visual effect. It sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide in its first five months.

A top-down Zelda sounds like a bad fit for 3D, and players say it is one of the best. Looking down from above, you get a great idea of how the platforms are leveled. Players also say the effect is subtle and not overwhelming, and some who get headaches from 3D say this is the only game they can play with it on the whole time.

Super Mario 3D Land was released worldwide in November 2011 as the first Mario game for the system. It combines elements from the traditional 2D Mario games and the free-roaming 3D ones. Critics praised its creative gameplay and its use of stereoscopic 3D, and it sold 12.88 million copies, the seventh best-selling game for the 3DS. A sequel, Super Mario 3D World, came out on the Wii U in November 2013.

Players picked it as the best use of 3D more than any other 3DS game. With the slider up, you can judge jumps much more accurately, and players say some levels are close to impossible with it off. A few courses are puzzles built on optical illusions, which only make sense once you see the depth. It is the game the 3D was made for.