3DS

Qui-Gon Joe wrote:

Is the touch screen on the 3DS the same size as the Lite's was?

More or less.  The 3DS is 3.02 inches, while the Lite's is 3.00 -- a negligible enough difference so that you shouldn't have a problem.

I've been using it but have only had I think four in total so far. My usual routes wouldn't be great for that sort of thing. It's fun though - I actually think that's going to be a bigger and bigger draw. It's a nice surprise bringing someones Mii in and then there's a game where you use them to fight battles for you.

Having played with the 3DS for what must be about 10 days now, I love it. It's hard on my eyes and it's easy to see why - effectively the system simulates bad eyesight. The 3D fools you into focusing beyond the screen but, because that's still where the actual content is, you're then out of focus and your eyes try to pull focus back in. The two can't happen at the same time and so the system renders proper focus impossible.

But the 3D does look great and I love it. It's just another layer on top.

SFIV is very polished. I wasn't impressed with SFIV when it came out and many of my reservations still stand but I have played more of it on this, having only got it because there wasn't all that many games at launch. I started with the d-pad and the d-pad itself isn't bad but that it's much lower than the buttons started to get uncomfortable so I moved to the circle pad. It's not ideal, as I often end up missing jump directions and find it hard to judge diagonals but, for the most part, it works. Loads of characters to play with and some great battles. I think SFIV FINALLY won me over with a Dudley vs Balrog match, with SF3 music remix playing. I do still feel that, visually, the SFIV style doesn't do many characters justice though and two of my Alpha favourites, Guy and Cody, just don't seem as cool.

The port is great but the static background characters are really odd. Especially the big hippos. I really don't understand what restriction would have led to that. And isn't the Secret Lab background supposed to be in Arcade mode? It goes straight to Crumbling Lab. Or is that the way it's meant to be?


Ridge Racer is good and the few new courses are really excellent. Which makes it more of a shame that there are so few new tracks here. With so many classics I have already overplayed and really long tournaments, it feels like a grind at times.

And Pilotwings is nice.

What I really need is a meaty experience type game. The three games I have are kind of surface games if that makes any sense, not immersive. I'd like something I can get stuck into. Tempted to get the Lego Star Wars game but I'm not sure.

Overall, I'm really liking my 3DS.

Angela wrote:

More or less.  The 3DS is 3.02 inches, while the Lite's is 3.00 -- a negligible enough difference so that you shouldn't have a problem.

Sweet; thanks for the info!  I'm sure google search would get me my answer eventually to this next question, but for the sake of simplicity I'll just ask if anybody knows - even though the 3DS is region locked, can you street pass with people from another region?  Like if I took an American 3DS to Tokyo and wandered around with it, would I still pick up a bunch of Japanese Miis?

Yeah, the big part of why I play arcade mode is to hear the remixed themes during the rival battle. Some of them are excellent.

So I went ahead and downloaded my first couple of games from the 3DS e-shop - and up till now, I had plum forgotten that Nintendo included a 2GB SD card with the system.  Reason being is that the card was already in the 3DS's slot right out of the box.  Needless to say, I felt pleasantly surprised.  And just a little stupid. 

The new 3D effect in Excitebike NES is very cool looking, by the way.

I decided to preemptively replace the 2GB card with a 16GB card.  SD cards are so cheap these days I figured this might prevent me from having to do card to card transfers later on.  I downloaded the 10 3D E3 trailers which are a lot cooler than I was expecting -- I don't know if I could actually play these games in 3D, but they sure do look nifty in 3D in the trailers.  I also picked up the free throwaways (Excitebike 3D and Pokedex 3D) and three DSi games: Shantae, X-Scape, and Dark Void Zero.  Haven't played any of those yet, so impressions on those will have to come later.

As for the store itself, Nintendo is disorganized as usual.  Instead of be able to search the DSi shop by sensible things like the alphabet, publisher, genre, etc., everything's broken down into random categories, and I had to find most games by actually searching for them by name using the search function.  I would imagine the third parties aren't too thrilled about this since it really limits the exposure of their titles.  It's also painfully slow.  Why is that my Xbox 360 can download 2GB demos in less than an hour, but these dinky little Nintendo shop things take forever (both over WiFi, btw)?  Is it too much to ask for a little infrastructure investment?

Last edited by XLord007 (Jun 10, 2011)

avatar! wrote:

3D is getting slapped in the face!

1)amazon suspends 3DS sales
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gad … l?iref=NS1

2)3D hurts your eyes
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation … l?iref=NS1

Did you actually read the first article?
There was an inventory issue that was almost immediately resolved.
It's completely unrelated to the quality of the product.

It also says only 28 out of 359 reviews gave it one star. I would hardly call that "a slap in the face".

As for the eye-hurt thing, I guess it's highly personal.
I have used the device for as long as 2 hours straight and never had a single moment of discomfort.

If you can watch a feature-length movie in 3D, you can play on the 3DS, no problem.

Qui-Gon Joe wrote:

I was wary of using the 3D mode much at all (drains battery power much faster)

Yeah, I don't use it much either because of this. Also I tend to play handhelds most leaning on my side at bedtime, making the system jostle more and the 3D less useful. If I do find myself in a situation where I want 3D and I'm able to sit just so, the effect works very well. But I'd just as soon not have to worry about posture and battery life, so I usually do without.

"Out of 359 reviews on the page, 28 rated the 3DS with one star. Complaints range from technical problems with the handheld device to a lack of games to the now-familiar issue of headaches after playing."

Typically people who give 1 star ratings on Amazon are as likely to do so because their girlfriend looked at them the wrong way in the morning as for any legitimate reason.  Half of them simply do it because of some particular aspect of the product they dislike without having even owned it.

That an article would reference that as any sort of statistic is pretty pathetic.

You aren't interested in any of the other 3DS games which have been announced but which we have essentially no details about? Just Contra?

New development!  The 3DS is dropping to $169.99 in August (in Japan it's dropping to 15,000 yen from 25,000).

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 … 9-Great-3D

Current 3DS owners get 20 free downloadable games including 10 GBA games that *won't be available to anyone else.*

That is a MASSIVE price cut and a really weird idea for a reward (seriously as a current owner I would not be unhappy if they allowed anyone to pay for those games we're getting free - why make them unavailable at all?)

It's so nice to see that there is a limit to the strength of Nintendo's reality distortion field.  For a time, I worried that Nintendo would be able to coast forever on the backs of its loyal fans and undiscriminating casuals.

rein wrote:

It's so nice to see that there is a limit to the strength of Nintendo's reality distortion field.  For a time, I worried that Nintendo would be able to coast forever on the backs of its loyal fans and undiscriminating casuals.

Heh, funny. Well, I think the issue is that Nintendo really has not had any competition with regards to a handheld. However, maybe the next generation PSP will be something to watch... if Sony doesn't screw up once again!