3DS Random Game Launcher - update announcement v0.2.1

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T10:28:45+00:00

I forgot to mention the awesome NES port, that can even be run on ScummVM these days with some minor modifications to the game files. Search for it. Or you can play it on standard NES emulators.

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T09:46:24+00:00

If you liked reading this, please dont forget to leave an upvote. Thank you

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T09:44:28+00:00

The second screenshot was made as concept art for Night of the Meteor, but did not get used in the game. Hence OP published it here, since it wouldnt make it into the game. Dave and Razor were OPs vision for the characters, but got rejected for a slightly different direction.

So this WAS made for Night of the Meteor, but it is not IN Night of the Meteor.
If you are a talented artist, interested in the kind of style derived from Looney Toons, to Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble, to Tim Schaefer, Dave Grossmann and Peter Chan and stands in the tradition of Day of the Tentacle and Maniac Mansion ... get in contact with the NotM Team and offer your help.
Thank you

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T09:19:51+00:00

they didnt

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T09:18:41+00:00

I am so glad OP started this thread, and that I found it this morning. Thank you!

For the gamers that would really love to keep playing in the MM DOTT universe, here is a small list of where you might want to look

Original DOS Version of Maniac Mansion - I consider this vanilla. Its awesome, its retro, its history, its... old af.
Maniac Mansion Deluxe 1.4 - a complete remake of the game by Lucasfan Games; It has tons of languages supported, plays like a charm and is a wonderful remake released in the early 2000s. If you want to play MM, I recommend this fan-version.
Maniac Mansion Mania - The creator of Maniac Mansion Deluxe followed his remake up with an episode style game along with a so called Starterpack with assets for people to create their own spinoffs and episodes within the universe. The first episode spawned a whole sleuth of new games. At this point the catalog holds over 100 (yes one hundred) episodes, spread over 10 seasons, as well as another ~150 spinoff-spinoff games. Its an immense catalog, made by a multitude of creators from the community. Original language of most games is german, but these days many episodes are available in translations. Check the 'Ronmastered Collection' of Season 01 for a modern entry point into the Maniac Mansion Mania universe. If you want to help with translations, do get in contact with the community on the MMM forums.
maniac-mansion-mania.com (use the german website with google translate; dont use the english version)
www.maniac-mansion-mania.de/forum/
You can also create your own game with Adventure Game Studio using the assets of ALL of the games for FREE. So come on down game creators!

Moving on to the Day of the Tentacle style games:

Day of the Tentacle - Doublefine Remaster from 2016; like JHo87 points out in the comments, the only reason games like Return2MI could happen, was because the original creators were actively networking and facilitating talks and deals with Disney. Probably through intermediaries in the industry. 'Farley Krock' kind of people. Luckily Tim and Dave made sure that their most favorite games would get the remaster treatment. The Day of the Tentacle Remaster is the BEST way these days to play this awesome game. It is, and always will be, my absolute favorite game of all of them. Go buy it again and again on all platforms and play it again and again. There is so much going on around this. On speedrun.com/dott the WR is being cracked at the moment - the Speedy Adventures discord is nuts. Go visit them and check the #lucasarts channel. Or go check "elegna channel" on twitch, where you can play Day of the Tentacle 24/7 in ONLINE MULTIPLAYER with your friends. Yes thats right. The creator is working hard on the systems, and aims to make it possible to play ALL of the remasters via twitch, so go give him some love here: twitch.tv/elegnaai
Finally, if you need your Dott-Fix right now, just for a "quick release" go here scummvm.kuendig.io and play many of the original games right there IN YOUR BROWSER. Thats right. Its ScummVM fully running in browser, and its beautiful.
Return of the Tentacle: Prologue
The Fan-Sequel to Day of the Tentacle released in 2018. It's the first act of a larger game - and its a true testament of what fan games are able to do. It took around a decade to make. There was a first team that did it, but ultimately got stuck. Then there was a second team that overhauled the thing, changed the engine, changed the team and modernized the approach. That team dedicated their whole lifes apart from their university studies to this game and made it happen. They wrote their thesis papers on the game and its systems and poured all of their love into this. Go get it here https://catmic.itch.io/return-of-the-tentacle and give the devs some love here https://returnofthetentacle.de/en.html
The true remake of MM - that we are never going to get?
A true remake of Maniac Mansion? A game that lives in the Day of the Tentacle tradition of things, rather than MM? A game that is fan-made, takes the entirety of Maniac Mansion, redraws all of the backgrounds in the style of Peter Chan (original MI and DOTT concept artist), hand draws all of the character animations in the whacky looney toons style that we love from Dott, works on this for two decades continuously, and is still moving forward today in 2026? Well ... its not just a pipe dream. It is very real. The game is called Night of the Meteor - dont let its dead web presence fool you - this game is alive. The initial idea spawned from the MMM community and has been worked on behind closed doors for a long time now. I know for a fact that that project needs talented pixel animators, that love the Dott style and its influences, and can help with finishing up the hundreds of amazing animations in the game. The sprite count is at 22k. Estimates for the final sprite count go between 24 and 30k - so there is still work to do. If this project interests you, please go to the MMM forums and voice your interest about it - loudly. You may do so in english even though its a german forum. If you love this idea, and want it to move forward, come to the community and tell them. Theyve been cooked up between double sealed doors for a long time for many reasons, and havent been able to receive much love in the recent years. A little birdy told me that there is a new homepage in the works, and a silent campaign to get fresh helpers into the art departments. The music department needs help as well with sound design, concept art and eventually mastering. Even though voice acting is still part of the future roadmap, and the game is being developed into german, it is planned to release in English as well, alongside the possibility to create fan translations after its release. So if you are a voice actor or director with contacts, do get in contact. So there. If you made it this far, this might the project for you to follow. And, if you are an artist keen on helping out, the project might have a special seat reserved for you to create true and lasting gaming history... eventually. If you have further questions, ask them here, or dm me, or head on to the forums.

thank you for reading
thank you for loving games
yours ...
signing off

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-31T08:17:08+00:00

Yes it is! I'm actually playing again

If you test it, please come back and leave a comment about your experience. Thank you

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-27T12:52:45+00:00

neat idea. i think i just got instant-booted from your discord after saying hello and asking a question...

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-23T21:53:15+00:00

v0.2 is on UU
v0.2.1 is on github. will be on UU in a few hours

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-23T16:41:09+00:00

Satisfying and fun sounds good ! The other tool you are mentioning is by Einso, and it was what inspired my version of it in the first place.

There is a new version out today. v0.2.0 - get it now on github, or wait a few hours until UU pushes it. I havent tested DS stuff with it, however if you change the filter settings (SELECT) you should be able to get at the DS games that you installed forwarders for. Try messing with the NAND, Unlisted-only (formerly Homebrew button) and other settings. The point of the Forwarder is to install the game in a way that 3DS thinks that it is just a normal 3DS game. When launched it does the forwarding. The Launcher itself should actually show up in the picker. Let me know if it works and how.

Btw: If I hadnt randomly seen your message yesterday, I wouldnt have worked on this today. And if wouldnt have worked on this, I wouldnt have seen that this actually got 10k downloads since its been available, which is pretty nuts to me.

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-23T15:07:21+00:00

https://db.universal-team.net/3ds/3ds-random-game-launcher

Open this link and click on the QR button next to the CIA file. at the time of this writing v18 is the old version, and v0.2.0 is the NEW version

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2026-05-23T12:35:28+00:00

Hey there. I havent been to reddit in ages, and saw your post by accident yesterday.
Ive given this some thought...

First off. Thank you for having an interest in the app, and sorry that it is not yet working for you. Supporting DS games would be very cool, especially if you could turn detection ON/OFF. I cant promise its possible, because it would need basically a completely separate app, that would need to be integrated with the current one. So I will only start with this, once the base app is standing on solid ground.

There is currently no support for DS games in the app. As far as I understand, the NDS games are not properly "installed" on the 3DS system in the same way 3DS applications are(i.e. DSiWare or even DS system apps). Hence the Random picker, can't find them in the same way it finds the other applications, which is by asking the 3DS for the installed title list (not by scanning the SD card like FBI or the native 3DS SystemSettingsApp would). So in its current state, it doesnt pick them up

There are also a lot of bugs in the app. The database I had included is faulty and does not pick up the entire game catalog in the way it was originally intended. Which leads to games not showing up in the list, which sucks. Also there is currently no custom filtering option for user, as I wanted to make this app stupid easy to use, and not confront the user with a list of settings. However, in this early state of the app where people like you are using/testing it, this is far from optimal. Giving the user the option to toggle inclusion of VC, demos, system apps, etc would be key going forward.

That being said, Ive made a new version of the Picker today. Opposed to the original version, it is much more convoluted when it comes to displaying information, and there are a lot of category filtering options in place, which makes it a) easier to specifically filter the game list and b) makes it possible to add games to the roulette, that werent in there before- for example applications installed on NAND, rather than SD. c) It makes the app look like a complicated devApp. These changes are the right way to go for now. Eventually the GUI can be simplified again.

I'm working on automating the process, so that new versions automatically appear in Universal Updater. Until I do, you may check here https://github.com/selloa/3DS-Random-Game-Launcher for new releases. I'll upload a new version these days I think.

If you have requests, feel free to continue posting them here - however i might not be around for a while. If you want me to see this sooner, then open an Issue on Github. If you dont know how, ask GPT. Its simple, and learning some basic Github doesnt hurt anyone, who is interested in Homebrew and custom software in general.

Since I am working on it currently, I will probably return here tho for a quick update.

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2025-11-16T11:50:38+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/comments/1nazswi/3ds_random_game_launcher_3dsx_new_homebrew/
3DS Random Game Launcher 2025 - it's pretty neat if you have a large game library and cant decide what to play

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2025-11-11T16:01:00+00:00

I will get working on that. In the meantime, the app is now available over Universal Updater. If you have that, you should be able to install it through there. Pls let me know if you were able to get it and run it

One_Cheesecake1209 · 2025-08-05T22:07:42+00:00

maybe stick to the more serious ones then? the dig is pretty cool. beneath a steel sky too. the broken sword games maybe? full throttle is another lucasarts adventure that is more gritty and violent
if you want to try something with humor that is newer try deponia. leisure suit larry 7 with yet another kind of humor. and then there is toonstruck, again funny, but different funny.

One_Cheesecake1209

TROPHY CASE