Nintendo 3DS: One Year Later

It's been a year since I bought my Nintendo 3DS for a whopping $250 on the day it launched. At the time I felt as it wasn't the best purchase, since then some of my feelings have changed and I wanted to expand on them while I'm stuck at home sick.

How I Felt Then:
The system arrived with 1 good launch game and lacking an internet browser, eshop, a method to access more than 1 3D video and a terrible battery life. My first month or two of owning the 3DS were spent playing A LOT of Super Street Fighter IV Turbo 3D.

Now:
The retail games I own are Super Street Fighter IV Turbo 3D, BlazBlue 3D and Super Mario 3D Land. SSFIV is great, BlazBlue is underwhelming and Super Mario 3D Land is one of the greatest games I have played on any console ever, and quite possibly my favorite Mario game ever made. That last sentence says A LOT to why my impression changed.

The eStore games I own are Let's Gold 3D and Pushimo, both fantastic games that were well worth the $6.99 cost. Pushimo is actually an instant classic. There have also been a bunch of free games released such as Excitebike 3D Classics, Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition, a 3D Pokedex and some other stuff I will probably never use. They were free so no complaints here. I have also purchased Punch Out and Game Boy Tetris from the Virtual Console, which features a lackluster selection of ONLY Game Boy, Game Gear and original NES games.

Due to the price drop from $249.99 to $179.99 all of the buyers who overpaid were given 20 virtual console games, 10 from NES and 10 from GBA. The NES games feature classics like SMB, Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Adventures of Link along with average first party fare such as Ice Climber, Yoshi, Donkey Kong Jr. Baloon Fight and Wrecking Crew. The GBA games released I thought were overall much better as it included Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island (a 10/10 game), WarioWare Inc, Metroid Fusion, Mario Kart Super Circuit, F-Zero Maximum Velocity, Wario Land 4, Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, Mario vs. Donkey Kong and the only one of the bunch that definitely isn't for me: Fire Emblem.

Other applications that have found their way on my system and my opinions of them:
Netflix - Used once, I have much better options to watch Netflix content (8 minutes total use)
StreetPass Mii Plaza - Used once, seems stupid (8 minutes total use)
Mii Maker - Maybe a Mii for a certain game in the future, other than this useless (14 minutes total use)
Activity Log - Mostly using it for this, I don't travel with my 3DS so not for that (13 minutes total use)
Nintendo Video - Watched about 3 videos on it (total use unknown)
Nintendo Zone - What does this do? (3 minutes total use)
Swapnote - I haven't even finished setting up. (3 minutes total use)

I determined that there is one reason my opinion of the console has drastically improved: