Retro Gaming Australia

One of the bright spots of the original Nintendo 3DS reveal was the revelation that Nintendo would be releasing classic 8 and 16-bit games remastered in 3D through its eShop service. The first of these, 3D Classics: Excitebike was given away free (until last week), and the next one, 3D Classics: Urban Champion is due this week.

However, according to a recent Iwata Asks segment on the 3DS eShop, Nintendo may be scaling back it’s plans for 3D Classics. 3DS software planner Takao Nakano revealed that the company is having far more trouble than expected converting games into 3D.

Xevious, a future game planned for the service, took more than 20 times the amount of development time Nintendo had scheduled. Adding 3D effects into the game had unintended consequences on gameplay, blowing out the conversion time.

Eighteen titles (Kirby’s Adventure, Castlevania, Tennis, Metroid, Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., The Mysterious Castle Muramase, Punch-Out!!, Excitebike, NES Open Tournament Golf, Twinbee (RainbowBell), Super Mario World, Smash Ping Pong, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Kid Icarus, Urban Champion, Mega Man 2) were announced for the 3D Classics line, but Nintendo has only worked on six titles to date. Tennis has already been cancelled, with Nakano commenting that 3D added nothing to the game visually, and made it more difficult to play.

Source: Nintendo, via IGN