One of the best features of the Nintendo 3DS is its ability to StreetPass. You will find this feature in no other portable device that plays games. The Vita doesnât do it. The iPhone canât do it. Androidâs hopeless, too. And yet some 3DS owners donât StreetPass or do it minimally. Letâs change this! We have some tips for getting the most out of StreetPassing.
StreetPassing is, simply, the act of having one 3DS exchange data wirelessly with another while both machines are nearby, even if one or both machines is in sleep mode. Itâs a passive event, not something you manually trigger a la starting a multiplayer match. This is an opt-in feature. You control the data that you exchange. Much of that data can be used for a range of games on the 3DS, some of which are built into the system.
Having a 3DS is more fun if youâre StreetPassing, so please try these tips outâŠ.
Turn StreetPass On!
The first step is the most obvious step. Your Nintendo 3DS wonât StreetPass until you tell it to. And you canât just tell the system to StreetPass for everything. You have to tell it to StreetPass for each game or application you want to StreetPass with. This is not much of a hassle. Any game that supports StreetPass will give you the option to, usually from its front menu. The application you most want to use StreetPass with is your 3DSâ Mii Plaza, so go ahead and jump into the Mii Plaza and make sure itâs set to StreetPass.
Also: make sure that your systemâs wireless switch is always turned on. That will ensure you can StreetPass with other 3DS systems. Donât worry about battery drainâthe StreetPass-friendly wireless mode on 3DS barely uses any power.
Carry Your 3DS Everywhere.
If you live in or visit a big pedestrian-friendly city like New York, youâre going to have an easy time StreetPassing every day. Just chuck the 3DS in your bag, wireless mode turned on, system in sleep mode, and by the end of the day the light in the top right corner of your system will have turned green. You will have StreetPassed a whole bunch.
If you go to a big gaming convention like PAX, youâll have an easy time of it, too. You may even be StreetPassing with people from all over the world, because, at least for StreetPassing there is no region-locking. Civilized!
Folks who live in car-based communities will have a tougher time, but, happily, Nintendo recently introduced a StreetPass relay system that lets you snag StreetPass data from other people who have visited the relay point. To take advantage of this, just go to a Nintendo Zone. Nintendo says there are some 29,000 Nintendo Zones in the U.S. alone. Where in the world are they? Use the locator on this page to find one. According to Nintendo, you do not have to do anything special to StreetPass at a Nintendo Zone. The system can still be in sleep mode. You can still just walk on by.
Clean Out Your StreetPass Regularly.
For reasons only Nintendo knows, you can only hold up to 10 peopleâs StreetPass data for the 3DS Mii Plaza application before it stops accepting any more. Some other StreetPass-friendly games and apps, such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, can take more. If youâre enjoying StreetPassing, youâre going to be sad if you discover that youâve maxed out your StreetPass limit.
How do you know if youâre at the limit? The easiest thing to doâand the one we recommend (since it will let you cheat the systemâmore on that lower down)âis to tap the notifications icon at the top of the 3DSâ lower screen. You can access this even while youâre playing another game. Just hit the home button and then tap the Notifications icon. It looks like a speech bubble. Youâll get to a notifications page that lists the number of unchecked StreetPasses your system is holding. If the number is maxed outâsay, 10/10 in Mii Plaza or 50/50 in Fire Emblem: Awakeningâthen you wonât be able to pull in more StreetPass data for those games and apps.
Warning: if you are going to a big convention like a PAX or Tokyo Game Show, you will fill up your StreetPass within seconds of walking to the venue. So cleaning out that StreetPass is really important!
So if you hit that limit, folks, you need to use that data. You need to âcleanâ it out. And, of course, thatâs the whole point. This isnât about collecting other peopleâs gaming and Mii data for the hell of it. Itâs about then using it. Which brings us toâŠ
Use All That StreetPass Data To Have Fun.
The reason weâre telling you how to StreetPass is because we think youâll enjoy what you can get out of it. If you have StreetPass turned on for the Mii Plaza, youâll be able to pull in 10 Miis from other players and then do the following:
1) ⊠see which games other people are playing and add their Miis to a crowd of every Mii youâve ever encountered
2) âŠexchange puzzle pieces to fill out animated portraits featuring famous and obscure Nintendo characters and franchises (think of these as animated GIFs made really well by Nintendo; the newest ones, which are located to the right in the jigsaw game, are the best)
3) âŠplay the built-in role-playing game Find Mii, which kind of sucks and that youâll have to clear twice before getting to the much, much better Find Mii 2. In both games, youâre fighting through dungeons (mostly), using other peopleâs Miis as your warriors in a series of turn-based battles.
4) âŠplay any of four new $4.99 games purchasable through the plaza, all of which make great use of StreetPass (weâll have more about them in a future Kotaku post that weâll then link to here.)
Aside from StreetPassing in the Mii Plaza, you can StreetPass with a variety of 3DS games. You have to activate StreetPass through each game, but you donât need to have the game in your system to exchange data for the game. You can have up to 16 games and apps set to StreetPass on your system. If you hit your limit, youâll get a warning next time you try to turn on StreetPass for a new piece of software. Some of the games that have worthwhile StreetPass options include Fire Emblem: Awakening (it pulls in other playersâ armies and places them on your game map to battle), Animal Crossing: New Leaf (it grabs/updates copies of peopleâs entire AC homes and displays them in your gameâs Happy Home Showcase, allowing you to buy most of the non-Nintendo-themed furniture in their homes), Shin Megami Tensei IV (creates new demons fused from one of your gameâs demons and one of the person with whom youâve StreetPassed).
Once youâve used the StreetPass data thatâs been pulled in for any of the above apps and games, youâll be back to zero on your StreetPass count and will be able to grab more. Thatâs what we mean by âcleaning outâ StreetPass.
Trick Mii Plaza Into Carrying 20 StreetPasses Instead of 10.
This will help at PAX, will help if youâre in a big city and anywhere else where thereâs more StreetPass opportunities than you can keep up with.
Once youâve made 10 StreetPass connections for Mii Plaza, load Mii Plaza and go to the plaza gate. Select the option to welcome the 10 new Miis into your plaza. Hold down the R button to speed this up. Once you have those 10 Miis in the plaza, you can get puzzle pieces from them, play games with them⊠whatever. What you can also do, at that point, is StreetPass with up to 10 more people, whose Miis will be held at bay at the plaza gate. The app will keep asking you to go to the plaza gate, but you can ignore this and keep playing with the 10 Miis you already welcomed. In essence, youâre able to have 10 at the ready and 10 more at bay. Thatâs 20 Miis at once instead of 10. Thereâs your exploit.
If you go to a StreetPass-heavy area or event and are having trouble keeping up with all the connections youâre making, this trick should help you out. Itâs important to note that you donât have to immediately play with the 10 Miis that you welcome at the gate. You can welcome them in and then just leave them waiting. You can even close the Mii Plaza and play some other game and those Miis will still be waiting for you even as others line up at the gate.
(You may find yourself wondering how you can tell when youâve pulled in 10 more Miis at the gate. Donât go to the gate to find out! If you do, youâll have to welcome those Miis in and play with them. Since itâs less fun to play with fewer than 10 Miis at a time, you do want the full 10. How can you be sure there are 10? Go to that Notifications menu we mentioned higher up.)
Follow the above tips and your biggest problem might wind up being that StreetPassing is taking away from the rest of your 3DS gaming time. Well, you can always turn it off.
If you have StreetPass tips of your own or want to recommend some games that you think make great use of the feature, chime in below.
To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo. For more handy tips from Kotaku writers and editors, check our Howtu section
