I've got and enjoy both systems. My preference leans more toward the Vita, as I've owned it for much longer, and therefore have a larger library of games for it (including downloadable PSP and PS1 games that I carried over from PSP). I got the 3DS relatively late (2016) and didn't have DS previously.
There are a lot of good posts highlighting the good and bad points of both systems, but there are a few people are just tossing out drive-by posts with broad generalizations. For example, I get that some people never cared for some of the "big" console-style games that were marketed heavily on the Vita early on, but there are a lot of excellent small-scale "pick up and play" games if you know where to look for them--mainly as downloads on the PS Store.
Vita:
- barely any BC, just a selection of PSX and PSP games
The only backward compatibility was with downloadable PSP games, and sadly there were some notable titles that were incompatible. Despite this, there were
hundreds of great PSP games available. While not technically "backward compatibility", there were over a hundred downloadable PS1 games as well.
3DS:
- probably the best VC collection next to the Wii U including Megadrive and SNES games
Nah, I'd say the Wii had a much better collection of Virtual Console games than the 3DS.
The 3DS has the advantage of portability, but the Wii had a wider selection of games, derived from a wider range of systems as well, including lots of non-Nintendo systems like Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, NeoGeo, and even Commodore 64. By contrast, the only non-Nintendo system represented on 3DS Virtual Console was Game Gear.
Believe me, I would've loved to see more other systems' games. I might've thrown down some serious cash if they offered Lynx games.
There were no Mega Drive (Genesis) games on 3DS Virtual Console...unless you're referring to the Sega 3D classics, which were very well done.
On that note, though, if you're going to venture outside the realm of the strict "Virtual Console" label and looking at the overall library, then I'd say Vita is
vastly better for retro gaming. This is one category where it's not even
close...the Vita utterly dominates here, with more games, more platform representation, better emulation, and just flat-out overall higher quality from head to toe.
I think Vita's library is massively underrated. Sure a lot of the games could also be found on PS3, but having them handheld was special.
I think Nintendo had the super highs with games such as Mario 3D Land, Zelda and Fire Emblem, but overall I would actually say the Vita line up was more consistent thanks to a bunch of indie games, the few Sony titles and of course the better multiplatform ports and retro HD collections.
I agree, the Vita library is very underrated in most gaming circles. Most people just look at the retail games, which dried up after three years. It's the downloadable space where the Vita really shines. It's still gotten some quality downloads even during the last year.
I'm not sure if the "retro HD collections" you're referring to are things from PS2/PS3 era like the God of War and Metal Gear Solid collections, or the compilations of games from the 8-bit/16-bit era. I haven't really played much of the former category on the Vita, but for the latter category (8-bit/16-bit stuff), the Vita is an absolute treasure. A lot of these are carryovers from the PSP like Sega Genesis Collection and the two Capcom Classics Collections, but there's also the native Vita release of Atari Flashback Classics which is simply incredible.