Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 are getting all the praise for providing the 3DS with a holiday season resurrection, but there are a lot of great third-party titles out there that aren’t getting near the recognition they deserve. Two are Sonic Generations and Shinobi. Both are from Sega, and both are in heavy circulation on my 3DS right now. (Reviews are coming, but here’s a hint: go buy ’em!)

Quietly, Sega is building a strong stable of games for Nintendo’s quickly-on-the-rise portable gaming machine, and two more potential sleepers are coming your way soon after the crystal-encrusted ball drops in Times Square.

Those two games are Crush 3D (top) and Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure (bottom). One is an ingenious puzzle game previously released to sleeper classic status on PSP. The other is a quirky rhythm game staring an honorable, sharply dressed thief named Raphael and his canine companion, Fondue. These should make for excellent compliments to the ‘big three’ franchise games hitting 3DS during 2012’s opening act.

Crush 3D will be out on January 10th and Rhythm Thief toe-taps its way onto store shelves at an undisclosed date sometime early in the year.