3DS Circle Pad and Pokémon Games... Plus My Experience

I haven't been able to get back to playing Sun lately, and there's an important reason why: I broke my Circle Pad. The fragility of the 3DS Circle Pad has been well-known since Super Smash Bros. 3DS was released - which coincidentally also does feature Pokémon in part - and has claimed many victims. For me, however, it seems the story played out in a different way. That leads me to think about and consider how the Circle Pad is used in the various Pokémon games that I've played.

One Pokémon game in particular that I've most played recently does not use the Circle Pad, and that is Shuffle. That is because Shuffle is completely touch-based, and as a matter of fact does not use buttons either. This makes sense since Shuffle has a mobile counterpart which started later than its 3DS counterpart, so it can be said that Nintendo was "testing the waters" on the 3DS by making Shuffle completely touch-based so that the controls translate perfectly when it went mobile, which it did. This is somewhat of an unexpected paradigm by Nintendo but is also reasonable given the rise of mobile games; perhaps it may happen again with a future game.

For a good number of other games, the Circle Pad is optional; it can be used but it is not necessary for progress. The sixth-generation games, Rumble, and Picross fall into this category. For Picross, the Circle Pad may be used in puzzle play to switch marking modes, which is necessary to manage progress. For the other games, movement in the overworld is aided with the Circle Pad... perhaps too easy, in the case of Rumble. When I explained my conundrum to my fellow Poké-friend, he noted that I played Rumble a lot, which might explain how I put stress on the Circle Pad until it broke, much in the same way as players of Super Smash Bros. did. If I knew this, perhaps I might have eased up on Rumble to focus on other games and saved the Circle Pad usage intensity for those games instead that benefit from its use, however optional it may be. It's still a good thing to have.

And then there are the games for which the Circle Pad is necessary, and this includes the seventh-generation games, Sun and Moon. I discovered this fact startlingly back when I played the SM Demo, that I thought I could simply use the D-Pad to move my character, when I couldn't. Back then I had already detected signs that my Circle Pad was falling apart, so I was concerned what would happen with the actual game. Now that the game has been long in the pipeline and my Circle Pad finally fully gave in, I'm somewhat concerned about making further progress, and especially for later when Ultra SM are released, which may as well be Circle Pad-necessary and would mean nearly impossible to make progress with a broken Circle Pad.

So for some Pokémon games, the Circle Pad is sufficiently usable for movement or control aid or even not needed. For others, the Circle Pad is absolutely needed to progress. Whatever the case, a working Circle Pad is a good asset to have for Pokémon games or otherwise. Thus my next step is clear: I'm setting out to repair my Circle Pad so that I can have this asset for SM and its Ultra relative due out later this year. I'm hoping for the best.