I'm dumb enough to buy these games again this way to have available at all times on my 3DS. I wonder if the saves would transfer, since they seem to be saving at least part of it to the SD card.

I'm almost completely done with my playthrough of Super Mario 3D Land, so I can easily resist that one, but... I never bought Mario Kart 7...

If I was Nintendo and therefore more evil, I'd make it create a new save file to punish you when you inevitably trade the physical game in.

I'm pretty sure the SD card data is just for streetpass stuff and not actual game save data. Just like how Theatrhythm stores all its dark note save data to the SD card but all other save data is on the cart.

I'm tempted to buy these, simply because of all the time I spend swapping carts at events where I get a ton of StreetPasses.

So happy to see more games coming digitally though I own both of these. I'd be tempted to rebuy Mario Kart but I think the save game thing will get me to resist....


I want Theatrhythm soooo badly digitally, but based on Square's track record for this, it will never happen. None of their retail games are available digitally on the PS3 for example. :(

I actually asked a Nintendo PR rep this during an interview at E3, and he couldn't fathom why I would want to buy a game twice. So I doubt Nintendo has put much thought into transferring save data between retail and digital titles.

MK7 is one of those ubiquitous games like Animal Crossing, Brain Age, and Picross 3D that I want on my system constantly because I go back to them for years.  If the saves actually do transfer over, I will be trading in my cart and rebuying this in digital form.

Gah! You just sold me on it!

That was a really sad moment. I really hope they figure something out for dealing with this soon.

My experiences with both versions of NSMB2 seem to show that save files certainly don't transfer over and the Street Pass data only works on the first copy you open.

I would buy them, I don't currently own either and I love that NSMB 2 is sitting on my 3DS at all times.

This can't be right. With how many times Nintendo re-release their games, do they honestly think it's totally new people buying them?

But that is on different systems, the number of people who would buy the same game twice on the same system is minuscule.

Probably true, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to allow save transfers, and you'd think Nintendo would want to encourage people paying them twice for the same game even if it's not that common.

I know part of the reasoning behind my NSMB experiments was the hope that they would re-release 3D Land this way and I wouldn't have to switch out the cartridge every time I streetpassed 3 people.

For those of you wondering if the save data will transfer, here's how to find the answer:

Does the card release of NSMB2 either save game data to the SD card, or allow you to transfer your game card's save data to it?

I have the downloaded version myself, so I can't say for certain... but I'm guessing it doesn't. How ever NSMB2 works, is how we should expect other download games to work as well.

True, they would benefit from people paying twice... but they wouldn't be benefiting from encouraging second-hand sales, which is exactly what allowing save transfers would do since there'd be no reason not to just sell the game card afterwards.

StreetPass data saves to the SD card regardless, so if someone is really willing to re-buy the game just so they won't have to change cards for easy StreetPass accessibility, it would work to Nintendo's benefit not to support game save data transfer, because those people would always be able to use the downloaded copy to access their StreetPass data, but would still have to keep their original card if they wanted to keep their saved game.

Nintendo would be getting the double sale regardless, but only if they let the save data transfer would they be more likely to lose another new sale entirely by making it easier to find used copies resold.