The Nintendo 3DS eshop went live today in Europe, and with it came two free items: 3D Classics Excitebike and Pokédex 3D. Unfortunately there are no other 3DSWare titles yet, lets hope they start arriving soon. Meanwhile there are some new GameBoy Virtual Console titles available and a whole heap of old DSiWare games to choose from.

To get the eShop on your 3DS system you will need to download the latest system update. This enables the shop as well as the Internet browser for the system. I tried connecting to the shop with my region set to South Africa, but it gave me an error saying the shop was not available in my region yet. I changed my country to the UK and it connected without a problem. There is a bit of a questionaire to answer before you can get to the shop - things like disclaimers and the usual end user license agreements and giving Nintendo and their partners permission to store all your activities.

A lot like the Nintendo Channel

The store resembles a mix between the Wii Shop and the Nintendo Channel. The main menu shows some of the new content, and also has a bunch of icons to access further content. You can select News to see new messages from the eShop team. You can also select a Recent Arrivals icon to look at what’s new. This allows you to see new software as well as the most recent videos added to the store. Currently the UK store only has a trailer for Dead or Alive Dimensions and some of the Virtual Console games out. I would imagine this will be similar to the Nintendo Channel’s selection of interviews, news roundups and trailers soon.

Another menu item allows you to browse around what’s new in the shops on 3DS. Here you can see how others have rated games, and who the title might appeal to based on user opinions (ie, intense/casual, gamers/everyone), again, similar to the Nintendo Channel. You can also see a few screenshots and read a short synopsis of the game. They also have a link to the publishers web site which you can go to in the 3DS browser without exiting the eShop.

Another menu item is called Nintendo DSiWare Highlights. This showcases a few of the more popular or more recent DSiWare titles available. Almost all the DSiWare games are available on the 3DS eShop, but you’ll have to search for them using the search function: select a bunch of filters on genre, publisher, etc, to find software you want. This works, although it’s a little cumbersome because the interface is not designed to show lots of content at once and there’s no way of just browsing around. Another menu option is the Virtual Console section, which currently has 3 GameBoy games: Super Mario Land for 3.60GBP and Tennis and Alleyway for 2.70GBP each. For each Virtual Console game you can watch a short (21 second) video, see a few screenshots and read a short description.

The eShop also allows you to rate games, but for some reason only 3 of the games I’ve played are showing up in the rating section. The rating questionaire is very similar to the Nintendo Channel’s one.

You can put money in your eShop wallet using Visa and Mastercard credit cards or by using an eshop voucher, which Nintendo says will only be available at retail from the end of June. It doesn’t seem like Wii Points are transferrable at all. I was able to easily use my South African credit card to add funds to my wallet. You can fund the wallet with 10, 20, or 30 GBP at a time. Once you’ve done this you buy a game by selecting it, chosing to purchase it, confirming that you’ve seen the age rating and finally confirming the deduction of the money from your wallet. Once you’ve started downloading a cute animation shows fruit filling up a box, giving you an indication of how far along the download is. Games are downloaded directly to the SD card. It seems games are tied to the 3DS system that bought them, and although you can link a 3DS to a Club Nintendo account, there doesn’t seem to be a way to redownload games to a new system. (I’m sure Nintendo will do a transfer for you if you need it, but this is still a bit draconian in terms of DRM).

The eShop is an exciting feature of the 3DS with a lot of great-looking featuers. It’s also great that there are some free things to download and try out. At Nintendo’s E3 conference today we heard that Link’s Awakening DX was coming to the Virtual Console soon, and I’m looking forward to what else is in the pipeline for the platform. Unfortunately, right now there is not a lot of new content to choose from - 3 GameBoy games, a 3D update to a classic NES game and a 3D Pokédex. Let’s hope for lots more content soon.