Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem - Nintendo Switch Game | Fun Puzzle Adventure for Kids & Adults | Perfect for Family Game Nights & Party Entertainment

Before buying this game, obviously note the cover and the seller. It's in Japanese and and is sold by a Japanese branch. This means the game is region locked for Japan. What does that mean? For starters, the Nintendo 3DS and New 3DS have what is called 'Ragion Locked', which means depending on where you get the system will affect where you buy the games: For example, I have a North American 3DS, so it works with games released here in the states and only for those specific games. How can you tell? The actual game cartridge says so on the bottom with its serial number (The group of letters on the front of the cartridge) and on the lower right corner on the back of the game case next to the bar code. The last three letters tell you what region it's for. All my 3DS games have the last 3 numbers as 'USA', which means they are North American released games (for Europe, it's EUR, and, in the case of this game here, for Japan, it's JPN). So, if you want to be able to play the game, you will literally need a Japanese Nintendo 3DS or New 3DS since it is locked for that specific region. Why does Region Locking exist? It's a small layer of protection so that if for any reason the developers don't want to release the game outside of Japan, they have a way to keep it from the general market of other countries. Although it won't stop people from getting the systems from different nationalities to play region locked games. So, for the two reviewers before me, that is why this game doesn't work on your 3DS, since the game hasn't come out where you live and this is exclusive to Japan for now. I know a lot of people know what Region Locking is, but note that a large fraction of the people who buy games are parents who don't know everything about video games. I bet a lot don't even know what 'reverse compatible' means. This review is just to inform those who are not informed and buy something they can't even use.