It’s bad enough that sometimes, awesome Japanese games never make it to the West. But, the worst of it might be that Japan always snags the most awesome Nintendo merch, and that’s definitely true this week. In one of their semi-regular Nintendo Direct news announcements, Nintendo showed off one of the best 3DS case designs we’ve seen yet (and there are a lot of them) — one that takes after the classic Super Nintendo console.

Those well-versed in their Nintendo history will have already noticed a problem. Yes, we know that this isn’t exactly based on the Super Nintendo — the console we got in the United States had a purple color scheme, and that’s definitely not what’s going on with this New 3DS XL design. The multi-colored buttons were on the Super Famicom controller, the version of the console that was sold first in Japan and later in Europe and Australia.

So, it’s a bummer all around for us in the United States. Not only will we likely never see the Super Famicom New 3DS XL over here, it also exists to remind any non-purple fans of how much better the console looked in its native Japan. Sad times, unless you have a friend in Japan that can hook you up with one. Or, you can check eBay and hope the price won’t be jacked up too much (it will be).

There is some good news, though. The Super Famicom-inspired design is to help promote a slate of SNES games that will soon be available on the 3DS Virtual Console for $8 each, although they’ll only work on the newest version of the 3DS released last year.

Via Kotaku