Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology wasn't originally intended for release on 3DS

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is coming to the 3DS, and was just recently announced for localization in Europe and North America. It's great to see the title heading to the 3DS around the world, but it turns out the title almost didn't come to 3DS at all.

According to the "Perfect Edition" art book in Japan, the game was originally intended to release on “another handheld device”.
The article doesn't say what platform was the original plan, but I think we can all guess what it was. I mean, the image above, which is from the book, pretty much says all you need to know.

So why did it end up on 3DS? Turns out director Mitsuru Hirata became too busy working on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and the Perfect Chronology was put on the shelf for awhile. Once Hirata had time to return to the project, the market ratio between 3DS and the other unnamed device was simply too big. This caused the dev team to switch over to the 3DS.