I'm torn.
I'm torn because Nintendo is actually releasing this
Fire Emblem 3DS in the US:
Nintendo almost
never releases special edition hardware here, especially not for a series as obscure as
Fire Emblem. There have been
dozens of special 3DSes in Japan, and I've always wished Nintendo would bring them here, and the
Fire Emblem one is actually one of the cooler ones. (I like that the design works both rightside-up, when closed, and upside-down, when open.) I feel like I
should buy it, because I've always said that I'd buy these special things if they only sold them outside Japan, but...
...it's a regular 3DS. Not a 3DS XL.
That's sort of understandable, since it's an exact copy of the Japanese edition, and the Japanese one came out before the 3DS XL came out. But it's just
weird that Nintendo's trying to sell collector 3DSes now that the 3DS XL is out. It would be nice if Nintendo took the same design as this and put it on a 3DS XL, perhaps the silver/black one that is still inexplicably not sold in North America.
Even worse, the
Fire Emblem game is pre-installed, so it's not like I can just buy the bundle as a collectable and pop the game into the XL. I'd have to either muck around with system transfer bullshit or buy another copy, which I suppose wouldn't be so bad, since the box art (below) is so nice. But that just adds to the price of something I realistically don't need at all, and yet I've always said I would totally buy if Nintendo would only sell it to me. I just didn't count on them trying to sell it to me after a much superior hardware revision came out.
But I digress. It's nice that Nintendo is showing a willingness to bring special hardware to North America; perhaps they'll be nice enough to grace us with this über-cute 3DS XL in time for the March release of
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon:
