Nintendo 3DS owners in North America now have a new app to play with. The company recently introduced Nintendo Badge Arcade, a free-to-play way to decorate and customize 3DS home screens with stickers, or badges, featuring famous Nintendo characters.
Nintendo Badge Arcade is a 3DS eShop exclusive that players can download. The app lets users play a crane or claw style game to grab badges to use on their home screens.
The idea is similar to the stickers acquired in PlayStation's Little Big Planet that lets players of that game decorate their character's home base. However, Nintendo Badge Arcade comes with a catch: it also supports microtransactions, meaning that if you want certain stickers or want to grab more than one per day, you'll have to pay $1 to keep playing the crane game to collect more stickers.
So basically, the game is not really free-to-play if players decide they want to collect stickers at a faster rate than the game allows without paying. It's also likely that certain stickers are only available via paying for additional opportunities to collect.
Every user who downloads the app gets five plays on the crane style game for free in Badge Arcade, although these aren't for real badges. After that, players only get one play for every 10 badges grabbed during the tutorial, although there are some badges that give extra plays. You get guaranteed extra plays, though, by paying up.
"There are many different machines that contain badges from popular Nintendo series such as Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and more," writes Nintendo on its website. "The machines can be tricky, so use your skill along with gravity, slippery surfaces, and chain reactions to your advantage to nab as many badges as possible! Don't forget that practice makes perfect - use five free daily tries on the Practice Machine to gain experience, and trade in dummy badges for real credits."
Nintendo announced Badge Arcade several days ago on Twitter.
Badges! Crane games! Nintendo #BadgeArcade has it all! Grab it in the #eShop and customize your HOME Menu! pic.twitter.com/DmAjc4EoOj
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) November 11, 2015
Nintendo Badge Arcade is hardly new: Japan 3DS users have already tested it out. However, this is the first time that the app is available in the U.S.
North American 3DS users can download Badge Arcade now from the 3DS eShop.
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