3DS Ambassador NES Games Now Available, Predictably Annoying to Download

this is so goddamn terrible, the things I do for 3ds content...

Why are people crying about no saves? I mean c'mon guys. Its coming. Calm down an appreciate something for nothing. Nintendo didnt have to do this to stop whining about it.

@MEATBALL: Not to rush to Sony's rescue, but the Welcome Back Program was virtually painless. It only have three steps, I think?

1. Click the huge "Welcome Back Program" box on the front page.

2. Download the Welcome Back unlock code.

3. Download your games, which were all in the Welcome Back category. You could just add them to the cart and download them all.

What they COULD have done is have you track down everything on your own (Nintendo style), making you hunt down the Welcome Back download through the normal PSN Store interface, then make you track down every single game on the list manually.

I'm guessing the UKers aren't getting it then.

Actually, I thought the date for this was tomorrow? Maybe it's different here.

Looks like a tedious process but I'm not so sure solutions from Microsoft or Sony would be much better. The welcome back program was problematic and I'm imagining a process akin to xbox live's licence migration were Microsoft in the same situation (of course they'd be the ones most likely to come up with a pain-free process, like when they gave gold members free Undertow years ago.)

Haha I probably would have never found them without this post, thanks Patrick.

Playing these on the 3DS' super small screen is useless.

Sweet thank you sir Patrick

@Alex_Carrillo said:

@yoshimitz707 said:

@dillinger said:

I don't considering having to click three times, or whatever, all that annoying. Sure it's not in obviously places, but are you really that lazy?

Except you have to do it 30 times to get all the games.

They're giving us 30 games for free?

Learn math, it's good for you.

@Larsa said:

Nothing in Norway yet :(

Thank go it's not just me. We'll have to wait then.

Even though it was clunky, the process was relatively easy and painless. I'll never say no to free games!

Downloaded it all.

I'd like my $70 dollars back. Better yet, give me $250 and take this gameless device away.

Thanks for the write up Patrick, it made getting the games ez as pie.

@Alex_Carrillo said:

@yoshimitz707 said:

@dillinger said:

I don't considering having to click three times, or whatever, all that annoying. Sure it's not in obviously places, but are you really that lazy?

Except you have to do it 30 times to get all the games.

They're giving us 30 games for free?

Learn math, it's good for you.

@yoshimitz707 said:

@dillinger said:

I don't considering having to click three times, or whatever, all that annoying. Sure it's not in obviously places, but are you really that lazy?

Except you have to do it 30 times to get all the games.

They're giving us 30 games for free?

Why are people crying about no saves? I mean c'mon guys. Its coming. Calm down an appreciate something for nothing. Nintendo didnt have to do this to stop whining about it.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

@RE_Player92 said:

Wait you can't save at all? Not even a save state?

@drowsap said:

@ds8k: yea u cant save any you have to play zelda in 1 sitting and with 3 hours or battery life lol hope the updates come soon

That's not quite right. The games act like the Wii VC where when you close out of it, it saves your game right at that point. The only thing that's missing is the ability to create restore points that you can load up at will.

An example: Play 30 minutes of Zelda. Close out of the game,l and it will save you at 30 minutes in. Go load up Ocarina of Time 3D. Once you got your fill of that, you can simply reopen Zelda OG and the game will start right where you left off.

You can even turn off your 3DS and the game will still resume where you quit out of it. So really the lack of a restore point feature isn't that huge of a deal unless you really suck at Mario.

Battery life also lasts a lot longer if you're playing NES games; especially since you're not using the 3D functionality. You'll probably get DS battery life with that.

Nintendo needs to get with the times. It's about time.

@Chavtheworld said:

@WinterSnowblind: All of the other regions have working Ambassador checkers, to make sure you are an Ambassador, whats up with the EU website being completely busted in that regard? Like, theres a link on the US site for "European" users, which takes you to ambassador.nintendo-europe.com - but it just redirects you to their homepage? I really want to make sure I am an Ambassador as I recieved no notification thingy they were on about on the bombcast, but I have had my 3DS since launch, and its up to date and connected several times to the eShopsince the eShop opened. Similarly the EU site only has a small FAQ and text page on the matter, no massive guide etc like the NA and other sites.

Yeah, NOE have really dropped the ball with this whole thing. I'll honestly be surprised if we even get the games tomorrow.

@dillinger said:

I don't considering having to click three times, or whatever, all that annoying. Sure it's not in obviously places, but are you really that lazy?

Except you have to do it 30 times to get all the games.

@dillinger: You have to do it 10 times though because it reboots you back to main screen. And the eShop keeps crashing because Nintendo apparently wasn't anticipating this...

I don't considering having to click three times, or whatever, all that annoying. Sure it's not in obviously places, but are you really that lazy?

Man, what a huge pain! It took me two extra taps to download! How unbelievably ridiculous this whole thing is!

Downloading them isn't as bad as people are making it out to be.

@49th said:

It appears that the European store hasn't got them yet. The store took like 2 minutes to load for me though.

well, we didn't even get a tool or a website to check our ambassador status ...so it's all going to be a surprise once the first europeans confirm they're available and your eShop doesn't display them although you should be an ambassador ...

I'm just waiting for this to get annoyingly complicated ...

@SSully said:

This is nintendo saying "fuck you" to those who bought a 3DS after they announced the ambassador program.

ummm, no, it isn't. Nintendo just sucks at the internet.

Nothing here in Europe yet.

What a tedious pain, oh well free

Funny...before they announced that it was part of the ambassador program I started playing through Zelda II on my computer using Nestopia (what? I already have bought the game like five times...) and I'm at the last dungeon now. I can respect it, even if it's really crusty and I don't love it.
 
@patrickklepek: You will definitely want to use this, unless you like screaming at your 3DS. http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda02-the-adventure-of-link.phpVery, very useful.

@Chavtheworld: The official website has been listed these as the instructions to get the games for a few days. Seems like it's going to be the only way.

Oh, and we're still waiting in Europe.

Didn't they say that these were the working early releases of these games and that they would be publishing updates in the future? I hope so, because not having a same for some of these games is ridiculous.

It's even clumsier for me. My 3DS doesn't play nice with my WiFi firewall and the router's been patched so that I can't disable it, so it's really hard to get my 3DS to download anything without going to someone else's house. I have to keep disconnecting my 3DS from my hotspot and then re-inputting the info so as to somehow kickstart it, which only works for one or two games until I have to do it all over again. 
 
But yeah, I guess it's still free video games.

It appears that the European store hasn't got them yet. The store took like 2 minutes to load for me though.

@dogman795 said:

Atleast they released them a day early. Didn't they say september 1st?

My thoughts exactly! Maybe the files got released early, but the menu options will hit tomorrow?

This is nintendo saying "fuck you" to those who bought a 3DS after they announced the ambassador program.

A clumsy process, but the games themselves download very fast, and all take up like 30 to 35 blocks at most on the SD card. Plenty of gift boxes to unwrap now!  I just wish we could rearrange the apps on our home screen so I can put all my Zeldas together.

Nothing in Norway yet :(

This is really no different than downloading delisted XBL content.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

@drowsap said:

@ds8k: yea u cant save any you have to play zelda in 1 sitting and with 3 hours or battery life lol hope the updates come soon

That's not quite right. The games act like the Wii VC where when you close out of it, it saves your game right at that point. The only thing that's missing is the ability to create restore points that you can load up at will.

An example: Play 30 minutes of Zelda. Close out of the game,l and it will save you at 30 minutes in. Go load up Ocarina of Time 3D. Once you got your fill of that, you can simply reopen Zelda OG and the game will start right where you left off.

You can even turn off your 3DS and the game will still resume where you quit out of it. So really the lack of a restore point feature isn't that huge of a deal unless you really suck at Mario.

I can confirm this. Which is great, because I thought that these versions were not going to have that. Restore points are nice, but as far as save functionality goes. This is just fine.

You can't "save" your games, but the suspend feature means it's not really a huge deal. Just don't tap "reset"!

@Wi@Witzig said:

@ds8k said:

So wait, how does saving work?

I assume that you can't save which is a total bummer but as Patrick said "free games"

Wait a minute. None of these games had in-game save functionality? Then they really should have waited until they had the save thing sorted out before they released these.

@Chavtheworld said:

@dogman795 said:

Atleast they released them a day early. Didn't they say september 1st?

Yeah, I'm not surprised this method is really hard as they don't release these till tomorrow Patrick! I bet if you go on tomorrow there might be a more obvious link to them.

Nope.

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/3ds/en_na/3dsambassador.jsp

I'm surprised you've never played Zelda II, Patrick. It's the creepiest of the Zelda games.

A clumsy process, but the games themselves download very fast, and all take up like 30 to 35 blocks at most on the SD card. Plenty of gift boxes to unwrap now! 
 
I just wish we could rearrange the apps on our home screen so I can put all my Zeldas together.

@RE_Player92 said:

Wait you can't save at all? Not even a save state?

@drowsap said:

@ds8k: yea u cant save any you have to play zelda in 1 sitting and with 3 hours or battery life lol hope the updates come soon

That's not quite right. The games act like the Wii VC where when you close out of it, it saves your game right at that point. The only thing that's missing is the ability to create restore points that you can load up at will.

An example: Play 30 minutes of Zelda. Close out of the game,l and it will save you at 30 minutes in. Go load up Ocarina of Time 3D. Once you got your fill of that, you can simply reopen Zelda OG and the game will start right where you left off.

You can even turn off your 3DS and the game will still resume where you quit out of it. So really the lack of a restore point feature isn't that huge of a deal unless you really suck at Mario.

Oh, Nintendo! Kiss your hardware goodbye.

@RE_Player92: I'm going to lean towards saying no.