gaming simplified

Nintendo’s second attempt at 3D gaming has finally arrived in North America. The Nintendo Virtual Boy was a complete failure – Nintendo’s first and, so far, only unsuccessful gaming console. Is the Nintendo 3DS another hit or will it be just another consumer electronic with a 3D gimmick?

The Nintendo 3DS isn’t as sleek as the Nintendo DSi, it feels very much like a mix of the original Nintendo DS and the Nintendo DSi. It feels sort of bulky, like the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite, which makes the system easier to handle and much more comfortable to hold than the Nintendo DSi. The new circle pad is very responsive and offers very nice control. It’s much better than the PlayStation Portable’s analog nub, in comparison. Lastly, both of the new higher resolution LCD screens are very bright and offer crisp details.

Unfortunately, with every release of a revised Nintendo DS design, the L and R buttons have gotten smaller and smaller and for the Nintendo 3DS, the L and R buttons are even smaller. The positioning of the d-pad makes it somewhat uncomfortable to use for long periods, though your level of comfort will vary depending on how big your hands are. I also wish Nintendo would go back to using the d-pad they used for the Nintendo DS Lite. I prefer the “mushy” d-pad feeling over the “clicky” one – it just feels better in my opinion.

But what about the 3D? Unlike what the above video will have you believe, the 3D imagery does not pop out of the screen but goes into the screen to create depth. If you’ve ever watched a movie in 3D, you know how the movie extends outside of the screen? Try to imagine that instead of, let’s say, snow falling inside the theatre, you see that snow falling within the movie character’s world. That’s the kind of 3D that the Nintendo 3DS is capable of. Yes, the 3D effect is much less pronounced, but it is there.

On a side note, in my opinion, the 3D effect that the Nintendo 3DS is capable of is best in short bursts. During my play time, I could only stand to play 10 minutes tops with the 3D effects turned on before I started to have eye strain and headache. Your mileage may vary, but Nintendo advises that you rest your eyes every 30 minutes.

Nintendo has spent a lot of time designing the user interface, as well as the online integration (more on that later), for the Nintendo 3DS. The user interface is clean and very easy to navigate – a huge improvement over the Nintendo DSi. A real neat trick that the Nintendo 3DS does is instant suspension/resume of the current Nintendo 3DS game when you press the Home button. This allows you to access the Friends list, Notifications screen, and, in my opinion one of the best features, a Game Notes app which lets you jot down info that you need to remember for the given game you’re currently playing.

The Nintendo 3DS feels like it is meant to be an always online device. It has a friend list (which still uses Friend Codes, but this time around there’s only one code per device rather than a unique code per game), a web browser (coming May 2011), and an Nintendo 3DS e-store (coming May 2011) which will sell Virtual Console games as well as downloadable Nintendo 3DS games. I’m impressed with how well the Nintendo 3DS keeps a connection to my wireless router, as I can be outside the house and be online. My experience with the Nintendo DSi would result in frequent connection drops – even if I was standing right next to the wireless router!

My only complaint right now would be that the Nintendo 3DS has no sort of messaging system built in to send messages to your friends. Instead, you can write a very short message as a status update for all your friends to see. I found this to be disappointing and hope that a messaging feature will be added in a future update down the line.

3D is all the electronics industry talks about these days. They want to sell you their latest 3D TVs, 3D glasses for their 3D TVs, digital cameras that can take 3D photos, etc. What makes 3D so great? I don’t know about you, but I would have gotten the same experience watching James Cameron’s Avatar in good old reliable 2D, if not a better one, than I did watching it in 3D. Some say 3D enhances the user’s experience and draws them further into the movie (or game). I say, however, a well made movie (or game) can do the same, if not better.

The Nintendo 3DS is one of the best handhelds Nintendo has ever made. It’s rich with useful and fun features, as well as seemingly being future-proof for a good while. The biggest hurdles it has to face are the high cost ($250 is expensive for a handheld console), 3D not being a proven long-lasting or beneficial technology for gaming/entertainment, and most importantly a lack of AAA games being available within the first couple of months after launch.

And that’s what bugs me the most about the Nintendo 3DS. Where are the games? Sure there are a handful of decent games available, but where’s Mario? Where is the single game that says to the gamer that they NEED a Nintendo 3DS? Right now, I don’t see one.

I really do think that the Nintendo 3DS has the potential to be a great gaming system, but it’s held back by Nintendo’s seemingly need to rush the system to market without any AAA title to help it sell. Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition is the best game that’s currently out that successfully shows off all of the available features of the hardware, but in my opinion Street Fighter is best played with an arcade stick. That just leaves me with using my fancy new Nintendo 3DS to play Pokemon Black/White instead.