Flame Red Nintendo 3DS Coming September 9

By Hector Cortez Aug 11, 2011, 3:56 GMT

The Flame Red Nintendo 3DS launches September 9.

Nintendo today announced that a Flame Red Nintendo 3DS is set to launch September 9 alongside the new Star Fox 64 3D game. Flame Red joins Cosmo Black and Aqua Blue and will be priced at $169.99.

Also, Nintendo is planning the release of two upcoming games starring Mario this holiday season. Super Mario 3D Land will launch in November, while Mario Kart 7 becomes available in December.

Since Nintendo 3DS launched in the United States on March 27, more than 830,000 units have been sold. Nintendo is rewarding early adopters with 20 free downloadable games from the Nintendo eShop.

These free games are available to anyone who owns a Nintendo 3DS system and uses a wireless broadband Internet signal to connect to the Nintendo eShop at least once or performs a system update before 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 11. These users will automatically be registered in the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador program. The program contains two elements:

Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES Virtual Console games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and The Legend of Zelda, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost.

By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.