Free games for 3DS owners

Nintendo has followed up its dramatic cut in the price of the 3DS handheld console with an announcement of 20 free games for those who already own the device.

Following the dramatic announcement by Nintendo last week that it would cut the price of the 3DS handheld console by a third from Friday, 12 August, Nintendo has also announced a major concession for existing owners of the device.

“There have been times in the past when we, Nintendo, have marked down the trade prices for our video game machines a certain amount of time after launch to further accelerate adoption of the hardware, but never in Nintendo’s history have we dropped a system’s trade price so significantly less than 6 months after launch,”” the company said in a statement issued yesterday.

“”We are aware this may cause you, the loyal fans who supported Nintendo 3DS from the beginning, to lose trust in us, and this is not our intention in any way.

“”All of you who have kindly supported Nintendo 3DS from the beginning are Nintendo’s most important customers. Although we may not be able to completely prevent you from regretting purchasing Nintendo 3DS early, we would like to express our gratitude to our special customers like you by offering 20 free downloadable games.””

The free games are available to anyone who owns a Nintendo 3DS system in South Africa, but owners must move fast to take advantage. To qualify for the free games, they must perform two system updates.

The first system update must be performed before 23:59pm (Central European Time) on August 11 (today), in order to make the owner eligible for the programme. The second system update, which needs to be conducted later in the year, will enable owners to download the 20 free titles.

In order to perform the system update you need have an active wireless Internet connection. Open the System Settings from the HOME Menu, Select OTHER SETTINGS, Scroll to the right and select SYSTEM UPDATE.

For information and a tutorial video on how to connect a Nintendo 3DS to the Internet, visit the Nintendo 3DS website at www.nintendo.co.za

Once you perform the second system update later in the year, you will be able to download 10 NES Virtual Console games at no charge, including Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and The Legend of Zelda. In addition you will be able to download for free 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania and Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

More details about this programme will be announced in the future.

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