Nintendo Badge Arcade is a free-to-download game on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. It takes place in an arcade where players can spend real money to play a crane game to obtain badges based on Nintendo franchises that can be used to decorate the Nintendo 3DS' home menu.
Nintendo Badge Arcade contains examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: If you intentionally answer wrong on one of the rabbit's quizzes, he often gets lost in thought about how whatever you answered would be pretty cool.
- Allegedly Free Game: The game is obviously meant for you to pay out loads of cash to try and get the most badges as possible. While you can try and get a boatload of badges by not spending a single buck, it requires a ton of luck and takes days, maybe even months to do so. Some days you could get 3+ tries, some days you could get absolutely nothing at all. Lady Luck just has to be on your side. After the release of the final new badges they offer two free plays a day, but getting all 8000+ badges for free is still a matter of luck with the machine updates also changing to being switched every day.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The Practice Catcher, a somewhat reliable way of earning free plays on a near-daily basis, is a fair compromise for the app's free-to-start nature. If you completely whiff the Practice Catcher, the bunny will allow you to try again. After the update that increased the amount of plays gotten from red jackpot practice badges from 2 to 3, you're almost guaranteed to get a blue practice badge as your last badge if you don't get enough practice badges to qualify for a free play.
- Every catcher is designed to be completable in five plays maximum — the minimum amount you can buy at once — with no exceptions. Granted, of course some are harder to pull this off with than others, but the principle is there regardless.
- If all the badges are removed except a hard-to-obtain badge, spending an entire 5-attempt on that badge will reward that badge as a Consolation Prize. The Prize is random from the current badges on screen and with only that one badge present guarantees its awarding.
- April Fools' Day: In Japan, badges were released on April 1st, 2017 for an "upcoming" game called Crazy Galaxy, starring an older version of Ashley from WarioWare. After describing it in detail, the bunny finally confessed that it was actually an April Fool's Day prank.
- Art Shift: The bunny can do some cartoony stretching and squashing when he wants to, appearing more animesque with Bishie Sparkle when he's enamored with something or bulking up with blocky muscles when talking about strength. The most drastic is when he's talking about REAL things like paying with REAL money, where he turns into a photorealistic (but still pink) rabbit.
- Ascended Meme:
- The "Ridley Confirmed" quote used by Super Smash Bros. players who speculate Ridley would be playable has been referenced at one point when badges for the original Metroid were available.Ridley badge confirmed!
- The NES Remix Metroid set also refers to the fact that "Ridley is too big."
- When Splatoon badges were first made available, the Arcade Bunny asked the player if he or she was a squid or a kid.
- When Pokémon pixel badges were first featured there were three slides on the bottom screen. One of them was an oddly specific set of Pidgeotto, Nidoking, Omanyte, and Venomoth. A later set introduction involved a PokéDex quiz with Omanyte as one of the subjects; Arcade Bunny directly says that it was an internet sensation.
- A Pokémon promotion that introduced several new catchers based on Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire included some trivia questions like a number of new catcher introductions do. The correct answer to one of them is Mudkip, and, if selected, the bunny will reference the famous meme involving how much people leik mudkipz.
- When Pokémon pixel badges from Pokémon Gold and Silver were introduced, you could mention Joey's Rattata to the bunny, causing him to laugh and reference Joey's famous "top percentage" quote. At the end of the introduction, the bunny goes off and answers the phone...Youngster Joey: Hey. How are your Pokemon doing? My Rattata is ready to- *CLICK*
- The "Ridley Confirmed" quote used by Super Smash Bros. players who speculate Ridley would be playable has been referenced at one point when badges for the original Metroid were available.
- Bad Boss: The arcade owner is implied to be one at times. While in terms of gameplay it makes sense, the poor bunny never gets a moment off even in-universe, to the point where he forgets whether it's currently night or day.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: The arcade is run by a pink, anthropomorphic rabbit.
- Cap:
- The badge box can hold up to 1000 unique (ie. non-duplicate) badges.
- The 3DS HOME Menu has a limit of 300 unique icons, including both games and badges (like with the badge box, duplicates don't count). Reaching this limit will prevent you from placing any more unique badges, and downloading games will cause badges to be removed from the menu, starting from the earliest placed.
- Ultimately, the game itself hit a cap for the amount of badges it could fit in the memory, resulting in the discontinuation of new badge releases.
- Console Cameo: There are badge sets portraying the Japanese Nintendo home consoles and handheld consoles, from Famicom and Game & Watch to Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.
- Consolation Prize:
- If you purchase a set of plays and somehow don't get a single badge from any of them, the bunny will get sincerely upset and give you a random badge from the catcher you're currently on.
- If you fail to get a single badge with the 5 plays in the practice catcher, the bunny will let you try again and give you another 5 plays. If your first few plays go badly, you can abuse this and purposefully miss the remaining attempts to get another 5 plays and potentially have the badges in positions where you'll have an easier time catching more of them in fewer plays the second time around, but since there's no way to force the catcher to move down until you've moved it far enough to the left, it's easy to grab some of the badges by accident and end up with less badges overall than you would have if you had just played normally.
- Continuing is Painful: Or expensive. Don't expect to get all badges from a catcher set with just one play every day. The catchers do not save the conditions you leave them in when shutting down the game, so the badges are restored to their initial positions when you boot the game up again, barring the path for badges blocked off by the badges you already got. If you want to make a dent or get everything, you must get more than one or two plays.
- Cool Old Lady: The Arcade Bunny says that Samus reminds him of his grandmother — not only because she's the one who got him the original Metroid, but also because she used to be an actual Bounty Hunter.
- Fan Boy: The rabbit. He loves his job because of how much he loves the games involved. He's also quite smitten with Isabelle.
- The Ghost: The rabbit's boss; frequently alluded to, never appears.
- Holiday Mode:
- Special badge sets were released for Christmas, New Year's, and Valentine's Day. The Nikki and Friends sets also reference other Japanese holidays like Children's Day and possibly Tanabata, but they're not identified for foreign audiences.
- For December 2015 and 2016 the Japanese version's HOME Menu splash title and central catch machine hub were updated with special "Merry X'mas" signs, and sleigh bells were added to the background music of the catch machines.
- The Japanese version got special New Year's HOME Menu splash titles and hub signs for the beginning of January 2016 and 2017.
- Large Ham: The rabbit is not subtle when it comes to his emotions.
- Moon Rabbit: Referenced in the intro for Pokémon Sun and Moon badges, where the rabbit states that he prefers Pokémon Moon over Sun because it "seems to be calling for him".
-
Nintendo Hard: Let's just say that nearly every catcher requires a high amount of skill to be able to get every badge in one set of plays, or even just the badge(s) you want. (And even more so if you rely on plays you can get for free instead of paying for a set of plays.) An unskilled player will likely get very frustrated. - No Name Given:
- The owner of the arcade. The rabbit just refers to them as his boss.
- Disputed with the rabbit. He suggests that his name could possibly be "Badgegrab"
◊ during a Pokémon promotionnote , but official sources, such as 3DS system notifications, Super Mario Maker, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate refer to him as "Arcade Bunny". Plus he identifies himself as Arcade Bunny when cross-promoting his Mario Maker appearance and when promoting the badges based on Nintendo Badge Arcade itself. He actually has a name in the Japanese version though - Baito (from the Japanese word arubaito meaning "part-time work" which itself is a German loanword arbeit meaning "work").
- Product Placement: Each time the arcade stocks up on new badges, the rabbit will talk about the game the badges come from and quiz players about it.
- Shout-Out:
- When talking about "care instructions" for Yarn Yoshi amiibo, the bunny first says to not get them wet and not expose them to bright sunlight, then the player can guess "don't feed it after midnight" as the third instruction. Another option was "don't say its name three times".
- When turned 8-bit to tie in with Mario Maker, his Robo Speak includes a reference to Zero Wing's "all your base are belong to us" meme.
- During the Valentine's Day season, the rabbit wanted to create a game show: The Badge-lor or the Badge-lorette.
- When talking about the child character badges from Fire Emblem Fates upon them being released in North America, the bunny added a "fake spoiler" about Kana giving a thumbs up as she sunk into the molten metal at the end.
- One of the bunny's comments on the lower screen in regards to an Animal Crossing cake badge is "The cake is a truth!"
- When the bunny is introducing Super Mario Bros. 3 badges, you can guess that the Super Leaf turns Mario into Vegan Mario, "Mario's soy-based alter ego", which can be seen as a Take That! to PETA's campaigns against Super Mario regarding his alleged use of suits made from endangered animal fur.
- Show Within a Show: The game takes place in a world between ours and the world of video games where the arcade bases its badges from.
- Speaking Simlish: The rabbit's voice is a few nonsense syllables mixed around.
- Stalker with a Crush: Arcade Bunny is very much infatuated with Isabelle. Too bad she's not real in his world.
- Too Long; Didn't Dub:
- Each badge set in a theme has a title (though some are generic like "WarioWare Set 1") and each badge has its own name in the Japanese version. In other languages, the titles are absent and each badge is just referred to by the theme they're a part of. For example, instead of two badges being called "Winter Nikki" and "Summer Nikki", they'll both be called "Nikki and Friends Badge".
- The occasional badge set is specifically Japanese with no attempt to translate for foreign equivalents. For starters:
- A set of pixel-art badges features the Famicom and not the NES. In January 2017 during a promotion for the Nintendo Switch, a badge set featuring the redesigned Famicom released later in the system's lifetime was added. In the latter instance the Arcade Bunny got away not mentioning it (while specifically mentioning the lack of a SNES badge set due to his boss preferring the Super Famicom) due to the redesign getting released in North America looking virtually the same.
- Badges for the original The Legend of Zelda include text of the Japanese equivalents for "It's dangerous to go alone" and "It's a secret to everybody", but in the international versions, they remain in Japanese kana and weren't translated into English or other languages.
- The New Year's badges were specifically based on how Japan celebrates the New Year and not changed to other cultural equivalents.
- The "new school year" styled Super Mario Bros. badges and matching menu theme were referred to as generic "spring season" badges when they were released alongside other spring and Easter badges internationally.
- The Ice Climber badges feature the seal version of the Topi enemynote , rather than the Yeti-like creatures used internationally.
- The amiibo packaging and card badges are still in Japanese (most obvious on the box for Bowser and Toad, which say Koopa and Kinopio instead); the bunny says they're based off his boss' imports.
- Averted with the Nintendo Badge Arcade badge theme, as the Japanese version included badges of the English title and "special promotion" signs alongside the Japanese ones. However, they did opt to not include the set with Japanese New Year sign in the international releases.
- Trademark Favorite Food: The arcade bunny is a fan of curry, as he mentions from time to time.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Unlike every other cabinet in the game, the first cabinet is inaccessible after the tutorial, meaning the game cannot be 100%ed if any badges are missed.
- Voluntary Shapeshifter: While usually just comically exaggerated, such as briefly turning into a photorealistic rabbit during the intro, the rabbit is implied or joked to be one at times; during a The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask promotion, for example, he said that he uses his occasional Animesque feminine pose to disguise himself from his boss.
- Wolverine Publicity: Isabelle from Animal Crossing, Ashley from WarioWare, and Nikki from Swapnote appear in a large number of badge sets in a variety of different costumes.
- Writing Around Trademarks: When a featured HOME Menu uses a HOME Theme based on and/or has badges arranged in a clear tribute to a work that Nintendo does not own and did not release badges in collaboration with, the bunny's comments will not specifically mention its name; instead it will say things like "those games," "classic arcade," or "looks very familiar".
