The 12 best 3DS games, and how to play them on iPhone

The 3DS library is deeper than its reputation. It had a run of Zelda games that can stand next to any in the series, the game that rescued Fire Emblem, and one of the best-loved Animal Crossings. Nintendo stopped selling 3DS games on its eShop in March 2023, so this is a good moment to look through what you own, or what's worth finding second-hand.

We make an emulator, so a word on how we chose: these are picks about the games, cross-checked against critics' lists and OpenCritic's 3DS chart. Every one came out on a cartridge. None of them is a promise about how a particular game runs on a phone; there's a section on that further down.

The short version

• Want the best game on the system? The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
• Want something for ten minutes at a time? Super Mario 3D Land or Mario Kart 7.
• Want a game to live in for months? Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
• Want a long RPG? Fire Emblem: Awakening for tactics, Bravely Default for classic turn-based battles.
• Want something built for a touchscreen? Etrian Odyssey IV or Professor Layton.

The 12 at a glance

Adventures: Zelda and Metroid

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is our number one. It returns to the world of A Link to the Past, then breaks the old formula: you rent your tools early and take on most dungeons in the order you like. Link can also turn into a painting and slide along walls, an idea the whole game is built around.

Ocarina of Time 3D is the 1998 N64 game rebuilt for 3DS, and the easiest way to see why people still talk about it. Items sit on the touch screen, which takes the pain out of the famous boots-swapping in the Water Temple.

Majora's Mask 3D is its strange sequel. The same three days repeat under a falling moon, and you learn a town's routines to change how they end. It isn't the place to start, but nothing else plays like it.

Metroid: Samus Returns remakes the Game Boy's Metroid II as a modern side-scroller, with a melee counter and free aiming. It's tense and demanding, and a good choice if you've finished everything else in the series.

Short sessions: Mario

Super Mario 3D Land shrinks 3D Mario into short levels you can finish in a few minutes, which suits a phone. Mario Kart 7 added gliders and underwater racing, and its solo cups still hold up, though its online and local multiplayer are out of reach on a single phone.

RPGs: long games, four ways

Fire Emblem: Awakening is widely credited with saving its series. It's a tactics game about moving a small army across grid maps, with a story carried by conversations between your units. Casual mode turns off permanent character death, so it's a friendly start to a famously harsh genre.

Bravely Default is a love letter to classic turn-based RPGs, with a job system and a clever twist: you can bank turns or spend several at once. You can also change the encounter rate, which helps with a long game. Its village side mode leaned on StreetPass and online friends, so expect less of it on one device.

Etrian Odyssey IV is a first-person dungeon crawler where you draw your own map on the lower screen as you go. It's the most touchscreen-minded RPG on the system, and on a phone you do the drawing with a finger.

Pokémon X and Y is the easiest way into any of this, and the first main series to go fully 3D. Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, Sun and Moon are all worth playing too; our 3DS Pokémon guide covers which ones suit a phone best.

Slower games: a town and some puzzles

Animal Crossing: New Leaf makes you the mayor of a small town that runs on a real-time clock. There's no ending and no rush, which is why people played it for years. Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is a globe-trotting mystery told through hundreds of brain-teasers, most of them solved on the lower screen.

Finding them today

Nintendo ended 3DS eShop purchases in March 2023, so new copies through Nintendo are gone. Cartridges still turn up in second-hand game shops and marketplaces, and all 12 games here were released on one, though prices for the best-known titles vary.

Playing them on an iPhone

If you already own these games, Haptic Emulator plays decrypted backups of 3DS games on iPhone and iPad, free, from the App Store. The setup takes about a minute:

1. Get Haptic Emulator from the App Store. Nothing to configure first.
2. Import a decrypted backup of your game from Files, a folder or the clipboard. Haptic checks at import and tells you if a file is still encrypted.
3. Press play. The top screen sits above the touch screen, with the controls underneath.

Four things are worth knowing first:

• Speed depends on the game and the phone. 2D and lighter 3D games play well on a recent iPhone. The heaviest 3D games can slow down in busy scenes, which is true of every App Store 3DS emulator. A newer iPhone helps more here than on any other system.
• You lose the 3D effect, but nothing that matters. It needed the 3DS's own screen. Every game on this list also played on the 2DS, which never had it.
• Motion, microphone and camera don't work. Moments that ask you to tilt, blow or take a photo can't be completed.
• Updates and DLC can't be added, since those come as .cia files. You play the game as it was on the cartridge, so Animal Crossing's later Welcome amiibo update isn't included.

File types and settings are in our 3DS on iPhone guide, and if you'd like to compare apps first, see the best 3DS emulators for iPhone.

Frequently asked questions

The 3DS, and 25 more.

Haptic Emulator runs 26 retro systems on iPhone and iPad — free to play, and it ships no games: it plays the ones you already have.

Free to play · all 26 systems · iPhone & iPad