I remember the 3DS having a rough launch with almost no major games at first.
Nintendo released the "Ambassador" games for early adopters, which included Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. After playing that, I gave Awakening a chance when it came out. I was not a Fire Emblem fan before, but I always heard that this game saved the franchise and was critically acclaimed for a while. I never saw Fire Emblem stuff being advertised as much as this one.

Pokemon XY came out, and I remember way more people carrying a 3DS at community college or cons. You could literally see the player base interacting in real time on the 2nd screen, and it was amazing. Trading on message boards and Wi-Fi Battles blew up everywhere, especially Youtube. It was the first international Pokemon game too, so everybody was mining the game together instead of Japan getting it first. It was a fun time.

N64 Zelda getting remade for the 3DS was great, but a bit surprising that they were handheld instead of WiiU games.