I was just wondering the logic behind this...  I'd like Mario Golf: Advance Tour on my 3DS but I'm probably going to try and buy the GBA cart again. I received a store demo copy with the demo portion blacked out with erasable marker (because I rubbed it right off) the first time I tried to buy it online.  So yea I have a demo copy...

Cause reasons

they don't want portability feature on old GBA games. :)

Because Nintendo has never planned to have GBA games on the 3DS eShop. That's all there is too it. They probably couldn't support their standard VC features with the GBA games, and decided it just wasn't worth dealing with them in general.

Well, there is no reason. The Ambassadors got 10 GBA games didn't they? So what's the friggin' issue!? And, and there should be a whole thread about why Pokemon Red/Blue & Gold/Silver aren't on the eShop. I mean like...come on Nintendo. People are pirating these games on Android and iOS like it's nobody's business. It's not because we want to, it's because you choose not to put a Gameboy Color game on the eShop. Thanks Nintendo. :D

Well they did have the ambassador program which gave 3DS early adopters GBA games.

Yea, no old Pokemon on eshop.  It is like they don't want to make money.

Pokemon, it's real easy answer. What is the 1 feature everyone would need working in those games. The trading function. They have to reprogram the games to accept the 3DS hardware. And virtual connections. Now people have to figure out how to do that. Then deal with bugs. All for how many games, 6. Then people would want to internally trade between the emulated games. Another thing they have to figure out. Can the system access the save file from another game. While running another. You can release them and ignore the trading. But then the games would be incomplete. And all the bitching happens.

Then you gotta make sure the US versions work too. Remeber the US ones where reporgramed from Blue version. So more issues and bugs would have to be dealt with. In addition to the team working with the japanese versions. Nintendo orphaned R/G/B/Y G/S/C from the rest of the series. Because they didn't want to get a link system working between the GB line to GBA. Now you're asking them to do it all virtually. Yes. The series makes money. But if they don't do it when R/S was coming out. Would they bother when it's a just a VC release. And their was more money in it for them. They could of sold another 4 million special Link cables/adapters.

With zero fluff. It is literally just the games running with zero extra features. I don't even think you can put the 3DS to sleep while playing them, much less use save states or otherwise. It is as straight forward as emulators get, and not Nintendo's style with their VC releases.

Well their VC releases have been pretty bad this generation.  I used to complain about Wii VC releases but that was heaven compared to the shit we got this generation.  They really dropped the ball on the VC releases and should have expanded their VC team.  They have only themselves to blame for some easy cash of porting old games to the eshop.  Should have been crossbuy with Wii U and 3DS at start also.