The Louvre on 3DS gave me the chance to visit the museum for the first time.

When I was a kid, living in my small hometown, we didn’t have an art museum nearby. My dad and I, however, still got a museum-like experience through some video games. One weekend in particular, we rented a Philips CD-i (the machine that played those awful Zelda games) and a copy of the version of Tetris with the most cozy soundtrack. More importantly, we also rented Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia for it. We messed around with that thing all weekend, watching the videos, and learning a lot together. So yeah, Dad, you’re responsible for me getting into history. I hope you’re happy (I know you are).

I was in love with the software. Younger me was blown away by the videos on the planets, as well as the historical footage. My 9-year-old self wasn’t as appreciative of it back then, but I think that experience made me think more about how video games can teach us when I got to college. That’s when I came across a pretty cool piece of software, a little like that Encyclopedia from when I was a kid.

Fast-forward to 2013, while I’m pursuing my graduate degree in history. Nintendo surprised many of us with a 12-minute Direct, focused exclusively on a new piece of software it had cooked up. However, it wasn’t a game. It was an interactive tour guide program for the famous Parisian museum: the Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre.

It was stranger than usual for a Nintendo Direct of this era, which was already pretty wacky. The presentation began with Satoru Iwata standing in front of the Mona Lisa, the iconic painting of Leonardo da Vinci. Then he and Shigeru Miyamoto surprised me by saying that 3DS consoles were already being used as the official audio guides for the Louvre, and had been since 2012. This was already incredible, but they also announced that this guide was going to be available on the 3DS eShop and the Louvre gift shop. They took viewers on a mini tour of the Louvre to show what the application was capable of. And honestly, it was so cool to see this marriage of game console and museum. It was a novel and innovative way to take a museum tour. I was totally blown away by how content-rich it was.

Earlier this year, the Louvre recently announced that it would be retiring this tour guide program by September. Thirteen years is remarkable for a program like this to last in place like one of the world’s foremost art galleries. I’m saddened by the Guide’s retirement, but it’s not unexpected. It’s more than ten years old, and replacement parts for the 3DS are getting harder to come by. More importantly, keeping it risks the software becoming rote and boring, and that’s something that can push people away from history. I don’t want to see that happen. I want to see people constantly engaged with history, because it’s our story. This stuff actually happened. This artwork is a milestone in our journey as a species.

By using a rented 3DS (or your own, if you bought the software), visitors could take a guided audio tour, led by a digital tour guide. Most pieces of art or exhibit features a digital version (particularly sculptures) or a scan of a painting, along with a few pieces of commentary on each stop on the tour. Some of the stops also discuss the history of the Louvre itself, alongside the art.

These tours were the best part of the program. They’re all quite in-depth, and not just for the history of a particular work, but also that of a particular region or time period. In some parts of the guided tour, there are also short videos that explain how various regions have changed throughout history, or about the people that lived in those areas. These were fascinating, because I could learn about a particular art style that I didn’t know about, or a pretty cool piece of historical trivia about the artist or the time period.

The part of the tour leading up to the Mona Lisa was particularly phenomenal. There were a few audio commentaries from numerous curators that gave visitors more context as to the painting’s history, about da Vinci himself, and about why the painting became so popular in modern times. Generally, there’s a long line to see the painting, so it gave people something else to do while they wait.

The 3D models of some statues within the museum, such as the Venus de Milo, gave me a way to look at the statue from a larger number of angles, including aerial views I’d normally not get a chance to see. It also gave me a greater amount of respect for the craft and work that went into it. If the 3D slider on the console was switched on, I even got a better sense of depth and visual clarity.

That was the beauty of this guide: versatility. There were numerous ways someone could experience the museum, even if they couldn’t make it out to Paris, thanks to this 3DS application: take the tours, view the artwork a la carte, or even “wander” virtually and listen to commentary while viewing a given piece. The amount of love and care that went into this program was astonishing. It was like having a series of mini art and history documentaries in the palm of my hand.

Even out in the middle of the United States, I found myself getting lost in the audio commentaries and enjoying the artwork on my little 3DS. It was a rare opportunity for me (as I’ve never left the US) to visit one of the world’s largest and well-known art museums, and experience it in a way for myself. I could use the Guide to easily search for a specific piece of art from a list of more than one thousand pieces of art and photos of rooms to view or learn about them via audio commentary. Anyone benefited from having access to this 3DS application because it provided a professionally curated experience for everyone that was educational, informative, and entertaining.

I specialized in public history, which focuses on providing historical context for the public, as well as archiving. My perspective on this software is a bit unique (and biased) as a result. The application was an incredible experience, and it gave people like me a really neat and unique way to experience the museum. I’m truly sad to see the 3DS tour program ending its time in the Louvre. The guides were smart and professional. The audio commentaries, while brief, contained a great deal of information about the paintings, sculptures, and various objets d’art. The 3D models even provided me with new ways to view these pieces. While the objects on the 3DS could be a bit pixelated, the Guide still offered a great way for in-person and virtual “tourists” alike a chance to experience the various gallery wings.

Why am I gushing about a soon-to-be-retired tour guide application? It’s because the Guide provided a new way to experience the artwork in a way we’ve not really seen before.

In their book, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen write about the various aspects of historical interpretation. Toward the end of the book, they discuss a need to keep the public engaged with history, by presenting it in novel and meaningful ways. This can, for example, be carried out by creating new ways to teach visitors about history at museums.

Unfortunately, with the 3DS application being retired in the Louvre, the last existence of the program will most likely vanish. From a software preservation perspective, this is tragic. The Guide was an incredibly helpful tool in learning about the Louvre. The software is no longer available for purchase digitally, and the physical version goes for a premium online. It’s a huge loss. 

While we may not be able to use this specific application anymore, there are still many game developers that are still working to make experiences that are somewhat like the Louvre guide. Though not as robust, applications such as the Assassin’s Creed: Discovery Tour programs, offer a wonderfully curated experience for users, all while giving “players” insight into the histories of the areas they’re set in the care they deserve. I believe we need more experiences like these, since they help people like me carry out a critical mission: telling our stories, our history, in ways that inspire new generations of kids to become interested in history, much like I was when I was their age.

As years pass, it becomes important to revitalize how historical information is presented to the public. While I may be sad to see the 3DS Guide: Louvre go, it’ll most likely seem antiquated to kids and teens. Newer technology is necessary to keep the public interested and engaged. Such is the march of time. However, this is a good thing for the museum.

The Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre was a novel way to carry out an important mission near and dear to my heart: giving new generations a love and respect for our collective history and culture, while also making it fresh and engaging. The most important thing, though, is to inspire the next generation to keep creating. We need to keep the acts of creation and inspiration alive. That’s part of why I went into history. It’s harder to do that than ever when we have financially invested tech bros that heavily and disgustingly push for large language models (LLM) that steal others’ creative ideas instead.

Technology and art can co-exist. Programs like the 3DS Guide proved that. They can inspire awe in the fantastic power of art. They can move people and be a jumping off point for people like me to create art of our own. Art can be a great way to vent and express joy, and it gives me hope for the future. So long as we keep creating art, anything’s possible. Don’t just rely on LLMs to churn out regurgitated garbage. Don’t lose your creative spirit to an algorithm that can’t feel a damn thing, experience sorrow, and doesn’t understand the joy and frustration inherent in the act of creation. Please.

While the Louvre tour program on the 3DS may be on its way out, I’m glad Nintendo did its part to help foster a love of art through the Guide. It delivered art history into the hands of anyone in a way only Nintendo could do: in a game cartridge. It was an easier way for anyone to view these beautiful pieces of history. And it proved that edutainment games don’t have to be boring. They can be cool and weird and inspiring, much like that Philips CD-i version of Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia I played back in the day.

The strange, but sincere, partnership between the Louvre and Nintendo may only ever exist through this one application, but I’m glad it happened. Even if it was just for a little over a decade. It made me love and appreciate art even more than I already did. It moved me to pick up another Nintendo art program, Art Academy, and start creating my own little Louvre of masterpieces. I may never be a Picasso, or a Rembrandt, or any other famous artist, but that doesn’t matter. My art is for me. The same for all our art. In some small way, the masters of old gave me that spark of inspiration I needed to create my own works through this weird and glorious 3DS application. And that’s part of history, too.