So I was thinking that I'd buy myself a used DS this year to kill some time with, since they're dirt cheap now, but then I thought 'why not just get a 3DS and save money in the long run'. But I have a few questions I hope you guys could help me with:

Is the 3DS 100% backwards compatible with DS games? I pretty well missed the whole DS generation so part of this purchase would be catching up with a few games I missed out on.

Do the controls lend well to remake games like Orcarina of Time and Starfox 64? I've never played Orcarina of Time and would love to try it out but I don't want the experience ruined by crappy port controls.

And as a bonus: Anyone know if stores like EBGames/Gamestop are selling refurbished 3DS's yet? Or is it still all new?

@mazik765 said:

Is the 3DS 100% backwards compatible with DS games?

Yes; however, the 3DS' resolution is larger, so DS games either get resized to fit the screen or you can set them to their native resolution - but this means that the games physically take up less space on the screens.

The 3DS can play DS games just fine. I really enjoyed the controls with Ocarina of time, and Star Fox (which is a great showcase for 3D) controls great as well. Hell I even experimented with the gyro controls and they weren't terrible.
 
I'm sure if you shop around you can find a used 3DS that some huffy gamer traded in when they announced the price drop.

Thanks for the help :)

Its well worth it, its the main reason I bought it actually, to catch up on DS games and hopefully play the coming titles someday.
Especially now with the price cut its great to pick up on missed games.

I was pretty happy to find that I could even play my Japan imported DS games on my sadly region encoded 3DS, so yeah, it's all the way backwards portable.

I'm also currently playing catch up. I can't believe i never played Professor Layton. Now I can't stop!

3Ds are backwards compatible, i have bought more regular ds games than 3ds games. it was a great upgrade over my DS fat

if you are looking for used 3ds's i would say it wold be a store by store basis.