One of Nintendo's weirdest games might be already be broken with the 3DS eShop shutdown

gamesradar.com:

Loyal players of Nintendo Badge Arcade on the 3DS have been surprised to find that the game's been rendered unplayable, and while this may be a temporary technical issue, indications seem to suggest that the looming eShop shutdown will spell the end for this bizarre game.

Nintendo Badge Arcade launched in 2015, during an era where the company was experimenting with increasingly bizarre microtransaction models for downloadable 3DS games. The StreetPass Salesbunny (opens in new tab) would give you hard sales pitches on bonus Mii Plaza games, while Rusty's Real Deal Baseball (opens in new tab) had you listening to the sob story of a down-on-his-luck dog dad in an effort to get real-life discounts on bonus minigames.

With those kinds of efforts in mind, the concept for Nintendo Badge Arcade seems almost pedestrian. It's basically a 2D crane game with rotating machines to pull from and hundreds of badges to collect. The idea, of course, is that you'll pour real money into the game in order to get the badges you want - there's a reason we called this Nintendo at its most cynical back in 2015 - but daily free plays ensured that the game got an audience of people who enjoyed checking in to slowly chip away at their collection a day at a time.

But now, those free plays seem to be gone. There have been conflicting reports on how far-reaching this all is, but numerous (opens in new tab) players have (opens in new tab) been reporting (opens in new tab) that their daily free plays have suddenly disappeared. I was able to get some bonus free plays from the practice machine, though I'm not sure if that's just because I had some left over after not playing the game in years. None of the daily login bonuses popped for me, either way.

Dat