Will not comment on the hoopla around the console this year, because i am that weirdo who thinks console are about games so my report is ALL about games.
I skipped most of the hot stuff 3DS was getting this year:
- passed on Fire Emblem
- skipped Animal Crossing
- shrugged at Pokemon
- picked Mario over Zelda: Link Between Worlds
- didn't get Luigi's Mansion 2 due to shipping shenanigans on Amazon's side (i eventually got it much, much later, but still haven't even started playing).
The biggest highlight on the 3DS for me this year was me starting to play Kid Icarus: Uprising again. Finished the story and dumped some serious hours into it. And still feel like playing it even more. Also played a few DS and GBA games. Otherwise, most of my Nintendo gaming time went on Wii U.
I haven't actually started gaming on consoles until three years ago so as you can guess i have decades old backlog worth of
series that are completely unknown to me. That's why i rarely play games that actually came this year and most of it is just me catching up to general western audience who grew up with this stuff i was missing by surviving through post USSR 90s.
This is more or less what i played on Wii U this year:
- New Super Mario Bros U -- alone and with friends
- La Mulana on WiiWare
- Majora's Mask
- A few random matches in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 with friends
- Toki Tori 2+ -- what a great game!
- DuckTales: Remastered
- Wonderful 101 -- one of the best
gaming experiences i ever had in my life. I was both laughing and crying during game's many finale climaxes. Easily best game across any platform. No, "we want cinematic audience" bullshit, just pure gaming in distilled form. As it should be.
- Assassin's Creed III -- this was my first AC on consoles (played through entirety of Ezio trilogy this year on PC and became an addict for this kind of game).
- Super Mario 3D World -- second best game i played this year after Wonderful 101. Third best game if you count Bayonetta which of course came out long time ago.
Lots of semi random Wii stuff:
- Punch-Out!!
- Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands
- both Super Mario Galaxy games
- both Pikmin games
- Rayman Origins (unfortunately Legends was somewhat a disappointment in terms of content compared to Origins)
- probably something else i forgot
So with my favorite top three games for this year all being on Wii U (W101, Mario, TT 2), i say it was a great year.