Pocket Card Jockey from Pokemon developer out now on 3DS eShop

By Danny Cowan Published May 5, 2016

Pocket Card Jockey - Trailer (Nintendo 3DS)

Pokemon series developer Game Freak returns to the Nintendo 3DS eShop this week with Pocket Card Jockey, an oddball hybrid title that mixes solitaire with professional horse racing.

Pocket Card Jockey joins a varied lineup of eShop releases for the Wii U and 3DS this week, including Virtual Console standouts like Super Punch-Out and Style Savvy.

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In Pocket Card Jockey, players rush to complete solitaire hands while simultaneously competing for top honors in a frantic horse race. Successfully stacking cards in the middle of the race powers up your horse, and consistent play results in better track positioning and boosted speed.

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In addition to its core card-shuffling gameplay, Pocket Card Jockey also allows players to upgrade their stable and breed horses in order to produce stronger steeds for future races. Pocket Card Jockey is available exclusively via the Nintendo 3DS eShop for $7. A free demo version is also up for download.

New Nintendo 3DS owners can also look forward to a Virtual Console version of the 1994 Super Nintendo boxing title Super Punch-Out. A sequel to the popular Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Super Punch-Out improves on its predecessor with bigger characters, refined gameplay, and a greater variety of pugilistic challenges.

Also arriving on the 3DS eShop this week is a collection of six new maps for Nintendo’s recently released strategy-RPGs Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright and Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest.

Over on the Wii U, Nintendo’s Style Savvy premieres as the latest Nintendo DS Virtual Console title. Released in 2009, Style Savvy puts players in charge of a fashion boutique, and gameplay revolves around color coordination, outfit assembly, and meeting the tastes of fickle customers.

Other Wii U eShop releases premiering this week include the retro-styled platformer Escape from Flare Industries, golf-like puzzle game Midnight 2, sprite design software PixelMaker, number puzzler compilation Sudoku and Permudoku, futuristic racer SpaceRoads, and puzzle-platformer The Beggar’s Ride.

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The Nintendo 3DS’ best (and weirdest) cult hit is coming to Apple Arcade

Horses race in Pocket Card Jockey.

Apple Arcade is kicking off 2023 by adding three new titles in January. Most notable among them is Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On!, a mobile port of one of the Nintendo 3DS cult hits set to launch on January 20.

The original Pocket Card Jockey, released in 2013 in Japan and 2016 in North America, is one of the 3DS' oddest titles. Developed by Pokémon studio Game Freak, it's a horse-racing RPG that revolves around solitaire. Players raise and breed horses and then race them by playing fast-paced rounds of solitaire. It's an extremely bizarre concept, but an incredibly fun one that made it one of the handheld's most charming hidden gems.

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Nintendo’s eShop closures are a necessary, but messy move

A Nintendo Wii U gamepad flat on a table.

Nintendo last week announced its intentions to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops, the systems' digital storefronts, in March 2023. This decision was disappointing for hardcore fans who stuck with Nintendo during that rocky era and extremely worrying as many of the games available on the platforms won't be preserved.
More significant Wii U games and a handful of 3DS titles were ported to Switch, but many titles are still stuck on those systems and can’t be ported. Once the digital storefront shutdowns, digital-only titles will be gone forever, and physical copies of these titles will get more expensive and harder to experience. Fans and game preservationists have not been pleased by this decision, with the Video Game History Foundation giving the most candid response.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
Following this announcement, Digital Trends spoke to an industry analyst and game preservationists to get a better idea of what exactly caused Nintendo to shut down these stores and to learn how it could do a better job at preserving its legacy.
Why is Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii eShops?
Officially, Nintendo’s FAQ on the eShop closures says “this is part of the natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." The answer doesn’t get into specifics and might confuse those still playing games on the system or fans of games only available on Wii U or 3DS. Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Bailey explains Nintendo’s user base argument in more detail, highlighting the massive gap between the number of people playing the Switch as opposed to the Wii U.
“While Omdia expects the number of Switch consoles in active use to exceed 90 million on a global basis this year, the Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022,” he explains. “Even when you include the more enduring 3DS family of consoles into the equation, the Switch still comfortably accounts for over 90% of Nintendo’s total active console install base.”
If one is going off just the numbers, it’s sensible that Nintendo would want to focus on the majority of its players. Bailey admits that “Switch users are already reaping the benefits of Nintendo’s singular first-party development focus on one platform.” Still, one might argue that Nintendo should just let the eShops remain up even if it isn’t actively updating or maintaining them.

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t see that as possible due to cost and security issues. Game Over Thrity, a Twitter user with over 20 years of experience working on IT projects and infrastructure, shed some light on what might have influenced Nintendo’s decision-making in a thread.
“As these systems age, they require patches, security, special contracts, updates, and personnel that know how they were built (and maintained),” his Twitter thread explains. “As time goes on, there are security holes, servers, code, infrastructure, etc., that can’t be brought up to modern standards. It becomes a constant struggle between maintaining legacy systems, paying people to do so, and trying to keep up with global regulations. It’s not cheap by any means. They can’t just ‘leave the lights on’ and stop supporting them. What if someone hacked the payment processor?”
With every passing year, the Wii U and 3DS eShops likely became more expensive to maintain and an increased security risk for the video game publisher. Instead of investing the time and resources into pleasing a smaller amount of players, the easier option is to turn everything off entirely. While he isn’t affiliated with Nintendo, Game Over Thirty’s assessment aligns with what we’ve heard from Nintendo and Omdia.
"The Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022."

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Nintendo is ending Wii U and 3DS eShop service

Photos of the 3DS eShops

Nintendo has announced the end of its eShop service for the Wii U console and 3DS handheld. The eShop will stay live on those devices until late March 2023, after which players will no longer be able to purchase games or download eShop apps and services for those devices.

After the closure, players will still be able to redownload games and DLC that they already own, use online play, and download software updates.