Recently I’ve been playing a lot of “Etrian Odyssey Remastered” on Switch. A lot of people compare this game with the DS originals regarding the mapping, which is the main charm of the series. I’ve been thinking a lot about the game’s street pass feature in the 3DS.

Street pass was a feature where a 3DS could see if another 3DS was nearby, and then exchange information if they had the same games in the memory. What information changed depended on the game. In Etrian Odyssey, you could mark one of your characters to send, which other people could add to their party. In Animal Crossing, other people’s villagers could come visit your island. In Rhythm Heaven, you could get statistics and ghosts of other players. Even if you didn’t have any games in common, the 3DS included a standard functionality where you could get the home country and region of people that you connected with, and you could do a kind of “scavenge hunt”, trying for example to street pass with people from all provinces in Japan, or all countries in Europe.

Street pass was a really fun feature of the 3DS. I loved to go for a walk with my DS in my back, and look forward to what the Street pass would bring me when I was back home. It gave an extra flavor to go on local trips. There were even a few places in Tokyo were people gathered just to street place with each other — I remember going to the little benches in front of Yodobashi Akihabara to get the Dragon Quest street pass from other people (I don’t even remember what the street pass was, though… maybe random dungeons?).

I’m a bit puzzled, and sad, about why the feature was not added to the Switch, though… I wonder if later games in the 3DS stopped using it, and Nintendo felt it did not made sense to add it to the Switch, or if it was a battery saving measure…