I’ve long touted the Nintendo 3DS as the perfect traveling companion. It’s solid, it’s compact, and it can play some of the best games Nintendo has ever made. It’s also got that nostalgia factor as the console I grew up with, which is the cherry red clamshell on the cake.
Do you remember what a Nintendo 3DS charger looks like? Me neither. I’m not sure anyone could recall it offhand. That’s because the battery life on this thing is so good that you only need to charge it once every couple of years or something.
Or so I thought.
I’ve taken my 3DS on multiple trips over the past 12 months, including to Seoul and Rome. I didn’t play the console the entire time on the various flights, but I had some good sessions of A Link Between Worlds and Majora’s Mask. Like I said, bangers only on this console.
This week, I took my 3DS on a third trip, to Ireland. The flight from the UK is only an hour, but I knew I’d have plenty of cosy evenings by the fire to either work through my to-be-read pile or play some retro games.
Yes, the 3DS is considered retro now.
However, I was just three hours into a new Pokémon SoulSilver nuzlocke when the dreaded red light came on. My heart sank. I haven’t experienced this for a decade at least. Low battery? What’s that? I struggled to remember such a thing. How long does a 3DS last on red battery? How many more battles could I take on? Would this be the end of my holiday nuzlocke?
As it happens, a 3DS lasts around an hour on red battery. So four hours and two gym badges into my nuzlocke, that piercing red light began to flash and I knew my time was up. I saved often and pushed onwards as far as I could, but I didn’t make it out of Ilex Forest. If only the guardian could have swooped down and sent me back in time to when I was foolishly packing my bags, bereft of charger, so I could change the course of history and play a little more Pokemon.
In Pokemon, is the Butterfree Effect a thing? Ash doesn’t seem to think so…
A sensible man would have charged his 3DS before he took it on holiday. Maybe he would have even packed his charger. But I was so confident in this little console’s seemingly infinite battery life that I flew too close to the sun. I pushed my 3DS to its limits and fell victim to my own hubris.
They say that pride comes before the fall. I don’t know if I was too proud of my 3DS’ decade-old battery, but I was certainly overconfident. And that was my downfall. Next time, no matter how recently I’ve charged my 3DS, I’ll be sure to pack my charger. Just in case.
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20 Years After Its Release, I’m Contemplating Buying Another Nintendo DS
I sold my original Nintendo DS, but 20 years on I’m contemplating buying another.