Reasons to buy a Nintendo 3DS.

Mario Golf World Tour: In the 3DS entry of Mario Golf, you can play as your own mii character and as other iconic Nintendo characters across various golf courses. The key seller in this title is that you can play online with other users and participate in tournaments for prizes.

Bravely Default: A beautiful RPG that harkens back to the SNES era of RPGs. Featuring an excellent storyline, a twist on turn based gameplay where you can attack multiple times at once, or save your turns to attack more frequently later, and excellent music.

Kirby Triple Deluxe: A throwback to the classic Kirby games, Triple Deluxe has a spirit of it's own. With references to the previous Kirby games and characters, it also features a beautiful musical score, new abilities and some truly epic boss fights.

When Nintendo first released their Nintendo 3DS back in March 2011, there were only a handful of games that were available, such as Nintendogs 3DS and Pilotwings Resort. It was rather small at the time, what with it being a new handheld and all, but since then the Nintendo 3DS has an explosive library of games.

Are you into Pokémon? Pokemon X and Y will give you endless hours of Pokemon catching, battling and training fun. Want to flex your mental muscle? Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask(as well as the Azran Legacy)have numerous puzzles to keep you buy, plus the story in both games is well written. Ever wanted to live with animals, collect your own furniture and be mayor of your own town? Animal Crossing: New Leaf gives you a plethora of activities to do, ranging from fishing, bug hunting, fossil collecting, and visiting other towns either online or through Nintendo WI-Fi.

When you close the Nintendo 3DS and put it in Sleep Mode, it can receive updates and via a system called Spotpass. A blue light will flash at the top left corner of your Nintendo 3DS to let you know "hey, here's some new information just for you. Enjoy!". When you go to your notifications, it'll show information about a new game that's coming out, or perhaps a new feature that was added to your hardware. It's the little touches like these that make such a portable system feel unique.

Streetpass is another very cool feature. It works about the same, keeping your 3DS in sleep mode while you take it with you. When you walk by someone or near someone who also has a 3DS in sleep mode you'll get some data from them based on the game they're playing. A green light will show on the top right corner of you 3DS, informing you that "commander, you've received new data from another player". This will send you their mii to use in various games that are installed on the 3DS hardware, like Find Mii and Puzzle Swap. Most of the streetpasses you get will be used to get items in 3DS games. Some will even let you use characters in the game you're playing based on who you passed by. It does get a little addicting when you get to see someone's mii creation and the kind of games they like to play. Not only that, when you meet certain goals on you Nintendo 3DS you get accomplishments. There's things like streepassing with a certain amount of people, as well as other events too.

The Nintendo 3DS has quite a cavalcade of features in the little handheld that can. One of them being able to display games in full 3D using the slider on the side. Granted it might hurt your eyes for a little while, but it's still pretty cool. You can also use it to take 3D photos and save them on an sd card or the Nintendo 3DS itself.

Another really great feature is creating your own Mii character. Think of a Mii as a mini representation of yourself. You can adjust height, weight and favorite color. You'll also use your Mii in other games that are designed for the Nintendo 3DS, the main ones being Puzzle Swap and Find MII, which are both free. Find Mii is a RPG type game where you play as a hero tasked with saving the king from the clutches of evil. It works like your typical turn based RPG, with rules of attack and magic. You're able to hire other heroes using the play coins system, a system implemented for the 3DS as an incentive to promote fitness. For every 100 steps you take you earn 1 play coin. A max of 10 coins a day can be earned.

Puzzle Swap is a puzzle game where you can complete puzzles based on Nintendo 3DS Games. When you collect a puzzle piece with play coins or from streepassing with someone, you use that piece to unlock another part of the puzzle panel. The puzzles are really great, and it's a nice, fun charming game that can pass the time. These aren't all the games you can play though. You're able to download more games on there directly from the Mii plaza itself. At the Mii Plaza you can set your greeting, your dreams, change the accessories your Mii is wearing, and also show a list of other Miis that you have encountered.

There's been a recent update added to the NIntendo 3DS that allows you to select themes for the home screen of your 3DS. The first 5 are free since they're colors, but the other themes you can buy from the theme shop. Some of them are Mario themed, while others vary in other Nintendo titles as well.

In this day and age, it can be very difficult to find original game boy and game boy advance games. Even if you do, some of these titles can be incredibly expensive. Thankfully, the Nintendo 3DS has an Eshop where you can download original Game Boy, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color and NES games. The prices are pretty fair, and they play exactly like they did on their original systems. It saves me a great deal of time from having to search online for these games that may or may not work. Not only that, you can download original games made from other developers. Some of these titles even have price drops in them, depending on the title.

Not only that, you can download Nintendo 3DS games from the shop itself also. So, rather than driving to a retail store and picking up a copy of the game when I'm busy with a laundry list of things to get done I can download the full game from the comfort of my bed. Trust me, when I have one of my lazy days downloading a full game at home while cooking is the best of both worlds, in my opinion.