The three most expensive Nintendo 3DS games are all Yo-kai Watch, a series that was a smash hit in Japan and arrived in the West late enough to miss its moment. Yo-kai Watch 3 reached North America in 2019, nearly three years after Japan, and it was a commercial failure there. Today a loose cartridge costs almost twice as much as any other game on the system.
Every price below is a real eBay sale made between September 2024 and August 2026, never an asking price. For each game we took the sales of loose cartridges (the cart alone, no case) from its latest year of sales, or its latest two years when it sold too seldom for one, and used the middle price, so one wild auction can't push a game up the list. You only need the cartridge to play, so the loose price sets the order. Boxed prices only show up where enough complete copies sold to mean something.
10. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (2017)
Loose carts of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King sold for a typical $70 across 30 sales between August and October 2025, and boxed copies went for a typical $85 across 30 sales. It is a portable version of the 2004 PlayStation 2 RPG, and it adds two new party members, Red, a bandit and old rival of Yangus, and Morrie, who runs an underground monster arena.
It also changes who you can marry. In the 3DS version the hero can choose a romance with Jessica instead of Princess Medea. There's a catch for music fans, though: the English 3DS version swaps the orchestral soundtrack of the PS2 release for the sequenced music. If you only want the adventure, the phone version came out worldwide in 2014.
9. Alien Chaos 3D (2013)
Loose carts of Alien Chaos 3D sold for a typical $73 across 17 sales between April 2025 and March 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $180 across 23 sales. A lowly janitor defends the planet from evil animal robots, from mechanical birds to armadillos, to rescue his beloved mama, and he has to clean up the mess he makes while saving the world.
Despite the 3D in the title, it is a two-dimensional arena shooter, a follow-up to Ludosity's Xbox Live Arcade game Mama & Son: Clean House. It was mostly an eShop release, with only a small physical print run, and it still looks like a nondescript budget game, which is how one lucky buyer found a copy on Facebook Marketplace for $1.50.
8. Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn (2019)
Loose carts of Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn sold for a typical $75 across 30 sales between September 2025 and January 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $85 across 30 sales. It brings every stage of the 2010 Wii game to the 3DS, plus new abilities and two new modes starring King Dedede and Meta Knight.
It came out on March 7, 2019, and it was the last game Nintendo released for the 3DS. It sold slowly, since it arrived near the tail end of the handheld's life, a port of a nine year old Wii game on a system everyone was leaving for the Switch. The original is easier to find: Kirby's Epic Yarn came to the Wii U eShop in North America on July 28, 2016.
7. Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2012)
Loose carts of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney sold for a typical $81 across 30 sales between February and August 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $94 across 30 sales. Level-5 and Capcom made it together, and it drops both heroes into Labyrinthia, a medieval town where people live in fear of witchcraft. Layton solves the puzzles, and Wright defends people put on trial as witches, cross-examining several witnesses at once, which sounds like a nightmare for everyone except Phoenix.
It came out in Japan on November 29, 2012, and only reached North America on August 29, 2014. It also gave Ace Attorney voice acting and animated cutscenes for the first time, which then became standard for the series.
6. Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (2013)
Loose carts of Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy sold for a typical $85 across 28 sales between October 2025 and February 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $105 across 30 sales. It is the sixth Professor Layton game and the final part of the prequel trilogy, and Layton and his assistants fly around the world aboard the airship Bostonius, solving puzzles themed to wherever they land.
Level-5's CEO Akihiro Hino meant it to be the last game starring Layton himself, which held until Professor Layton and the New World of Steam was announced in 2023. Layton even gets an Indiana Jones joke: shown a crystal skull, he says he has little interest in crystal skulls.
5. Style Savvy: Fashion Forward (2016)
Loose carts of Style Savvy: Fashion Forward sold for a typical $90 across 29 sales between September 2024 and April 2025, and boxed copies went for a typical $95 across 29 sales. It is the third Style Savvy game, and on top of running your own boutique, you also work as a hair stylist and a make-up artist, with 19,000 pieces of clothing to dress people in.
It reached North America on August 19, 2016, more than a year after Japan. It reviewed well, with a 78 on Metacritic, and went on to sell 1 million copies.
4. Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure (2012)
Loose carts of Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure sold for a typical $109 across 20 sales between June 2025 and May 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $132 across 30 sales. Raphael leads a double life in Paris as the art thief Phantom R, stealing famous works and returning them days later, while Napoleon Bonaparte, somehow resurrected, hunts for the same treasure.
You play it by tapping the touch screen to the beat, and some stages have you tilt the whole 3DS. Sega's director wanted a Wii U port and a 3DS sequel, but neither ever happened, and the game stayed an under-the-radar gem. A shorter version, Rhythm Thief & the Paris Caper, came out for iOS worldwide in January 2014.
3. Yo-kai Watch Blasters: Red Cat Corps (2018)
Loose carts of Yo-kai Watch Blasters: Red Cat Corps sold for a typical $215 across 14 sales between January 2025 and January 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $220 across 19 sales. It spins off the Blasters minigame from Yo-kai Watch 2 into a full action RPG where you play the Yo-kai themselves, and it spoofs Ghostbusters, so much so that it is simply called Busters in Japan.
Most of the Ghostbusters references were removed for the West because of copyright and licensing issues. Japan got it in July 2015, and North America waited until September 2018, by which time both the 3DS and the series were fading, so the release was fairly limited.
2. Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters (2014)
Loose carts of Yo-kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters sold for a typical $220 across 30 sales between April and August 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $240 across 30 sales. It is the third version of Yo-kai Watch 2, with every Yo-kai from Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls plus new quests and a new area.
In Japan the second game was one of the best selling games on the 3DS, and this third version alone sold over 2.6 million copies there by June 2015. The English version took until September 29, 2017. Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls now sell for a fraction of its price, and a remake, Yo-kai Watch 2: Haunted Domain, was announced on September 9, 2026.
1. Yo-kai Watch 3 (2018)
Loose carts of Yo-kai Watch 3 sold for a typical $409 across 22 sales between June 2025 and May 2026, and boxed copies went for a typical $514 across 30 sales. Nate moves to the fictional city of BBQ in the American South, while a new heroine, Hailey Anne Thomas, opens a detective agency back in Springdale, and you switch between their two stories.
The English version is based on Sukiyaki, the third and fullest Japanese version, so it holds all of the content from all three. It came out in PAL regions in December 2018 and in North America two months later, and despite good reviews it was a commercial failure in the United States. In the years since, it has become one of the most expensive games on the 3DS, and there's no cheap way around it.
