So, 3DS anyone? It's out at the end of this week.



Despite being against some of Nintendo's descisions with this handheld, I eventually jumped on this when Amazon (UK) were doing pre-orders at 20% off! Considering the Nintendo DS didn't get a price drop for like 4-5 years, it seemed like a good idea to grab it now for 20% off than doing it 6 months later when the bigger must-have games start to hit.

Apparently a lot of "mom and pop stores" are breaking the street date, so rumor is that retailers are starting to ship early for fear of people cancelling their pre-orders to go find street broken ones. My Amazon order despite being placed only a couple of days ago has already changed to "Shipping Soon".

Unfortunately, I think the launch line-up for the 3DS is extremely poor. Where is the first-party Nintendo stuff? Their big franchises, from Mario to Zelda to even Starfox all have impending releases, so why didn't they make sure at least one of them were available at launch? Instead it's all ports of other games I've either played or not interested in, blah.

I traded my DS in for FFXIV haha no joke. I hardly played it anymore.

I want a 3DS for handheld Zelda oot and the virtual console mostly. I'm in no rush to buy one since neither of those are available at release. Seriously I agree they should have made an appealing Nintendo game like Mario, Zelda, or Metroid at launch. It appears I have a few months before I need to buy one.

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Kinda surprised at the launch selection too. 2 ports, 2 recycled ds games...

I'm not that interested, to be honest. I'm so sick of 3D. I'd be more interested in getting a PSP at this point, but even that's iffy. FF14 just needs to come back, so I can forget all of this.

As long as I'm happy with an MMO, I tend to not spend money on other games. Actually ends up being cheaper, I think. 4 months of MMO = 1 new game. Less for handhelds, I guess.

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Can you play Virtual Console games on the 3DS? I haven't been keeping up with it

I'm going to be watching Amazon to see if they offer any discounts. If not, I can hold off on one for a little while, but my DS is starting to show it's age from wear.

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[In Yarr we trust.]

Yeah they are adding virtual console in a May update. I found no list of games, aside from the promise of Sega Gamegear and turbographix handheld games. I still have a sega game gear somewhere....

A big selling point for me would be to add NES and SNES games as virtual console downloads. I swear I enjoy playing PS1 games on my PSP, more than any PSP game.

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what ever happen to Virtual Boy, I know it died and it only had red 3D colors lol

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yeah...virtual boy..........

Durring that period our closest Blockbuster would rent game systems for spans of 1 week. They had a virtual boy that was always set up as a display but no one ever took it home. Rather, anyone who walked in the store as a group would bet one another to see who can last playing the display the longest without becoming ill. No one ever lasted more than a few minutes. It became some sort of known rule somehow that if you lost you had to pay for the group's rentals. The store even got wise and put it next to the bathroom enterance.

I was thinking about the poor 3DS launch selection and wonder if they're holding their big titles for one of the major game conventions to compete with psp2.

You know, I have 3 PSP games and more PS1/Minis downloaded on my PS3 than I could play. I really hope they add something where you can take VC games you've downloaded on your Wii and put them on the 3DS. I would love nothing more than to be able to play the games I have downloaded on the go, without having to buy them a 3rd time.

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[In Yarr we trust.]

This isn't going to happen as long as Nintendo refuse to let people create "accounts" instead of tying all purchases to the exact machine it was bought from. It's the same as the whole friend-code nonsense, we're stuck with terrible online services (no usernames, no accounts, no ability to message friends, etc) with Nintendo stuff as long as they fear a day where the media says a pedophile contacted a child through a Nintendo device.

I've heard at least that the shop for the 3DS is supposed to be using actual money instead of silly wiipoints, so maybe they're turning it around for once. You'll still have to rebuy them though.

What I have heard though is that the 3DS now gives you one friend code that's shared across the device, instead of getting a different friend code for every game you play. It's a step forward at least.

I cancelled my preorder a few weeks ago when my car broke down and my deadbeat roommate dropped a large unpaid internet bill on me before leaving. Launch lineup is weak. I can wait.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

It's not just weak, it's downright terrible.

I can't think of another system launch in recent memory without at least one decent new game somewhere in there. The PS2 had an awesome launch lineup, with SSX, DoA, Tekken, Timesplitters, Smuggler's Run and a ton of other things. Wii had WiiSports and Zelda, PS3 had Resistance and a bunch of sports stuff, 360 had Perfect Dark, bunch of sports games, and Call of Duty, the GBA had Castlevania and Mario Advance, the DS had Mario64 and Metroid Prime Hunters. And heck, even the PSP had Wipeout, Twisted Metal, and Metal Gear Acid.

The 3DS has um, a bunch of supposedly quick rushed and terrible Ubisoft ports, and Nintendogs...

I'd have waited too but I wanted to jump on the 20% off thing. Hope we don't have to wait long for the first party Nintendo stuff.

I remember asking for a N64 back in the day. I didn't realize the lengths that my mom would go through to get me the Super Mario game for it, though. hahaha. She got the system, but it was a nightmare for her to find super Mario 64. All the stores had were waveracer 64.

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I wont get the 3ds i have nightmares of giving me a giant headache whenever i try to play it.

plus it seems like i never play any portable devices i do own.

I have a gameboy, gameboy advance, gameboy sp and gameboy DS never really play them. I should probably play the DS try my hand at some harvest moon.

oh I also have a neo geo color. best analog pad on a portable IMHO.

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I had hands on time with the 3DS at Pax. I'm passing on this one. it should also be noted that the 3D effect disappears if you close one eye so it discriminates against pirates and cyclopes.

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My attempt at making funny gaming related videos.

Lol
Kinda the sad point is that the 3d effect has to be made optional, so no games truly will ever benefit from it.

Ill probably still end up with one down the line, as psp doesn't offer girly shovalware which I enjoy. But its still a shame of all the nintendo gimmicks, this is the only oen which game makers can't do anything innovative or creative with.

I like how the 3D is optional lol (but I see your point). I have a 3D TV and I can't sit through a 3D blu ray without my eyes popping out of my head. That technology is not for me. I got the TV for it's other specs/features and the glasses came with a bundle, otherwise I wouldn't have bought them.

It would be nice if the DS was like the PSP/PS3 and let you download the virtual console games already purchased from the Wii. When my house got robbed my 360, Wii, and PS3 were all stolen. I eventually replaced all 3. Luckily xbox live and PSN allow you to re-download your games to another console. Wii...doesn't allow that. I lost 10-ish virtual console games. That doesn't seem like much, but some of them were games I love playing (like zelda series, mario bros series, metroid series) and I refuse to re-purchase them on my new Wii console.

Nintendo needs to get with the times and get rid of friend codes.

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Man, I never knew the things you bought for the wii didn't persist with you nomatter what. I'll never purchase downloadable WII/DS content, now that I know there's a chance I could lose it and be forced to buy it again.

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Apparently if you cause a huge stink about it with their customer service they'll transfer your stuff from one Wii to another, once, maybe, only if it's because the original is broken, and only if you send it in.

But yeah, it's extremely shitty, you can't transfer or otherwise share between multiple units you own. The shop system doesn't even share points which is even shittier, lol. If you buy 1000 points, buy something for 800 points (because nothing ever evenly costs as much as you can buy points for -- another really shitty tactic) you can't use those 200 left over points towards buying something on your DSi, those 200 points are forever locked to that one specific Wii.

Nintendo's online services in general are shocking.

EDIT: Oh by the way, Amazon just shipped my 3DS with next day delivery on it, should get it tomorrow. I'll post impressions.

I only heard of one exception to that rule Ketrebu. It was a poster on the neogaf forums and he had spent thousands. So they offered it to him once.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

Got my 3DS, impressions:

The 3D effect is hit and miss. It obviously works, but when using some things it adds a strange uneven dim that looks kind of like two smooth slightly barely visible gray bars are stuck down either side of the screen, that could just be my eyes I guess I dunno. Also you basically have to keep your head completely still for the effect to work, if you're talking to someone else at the same time and not paying 100% attention to the screen the effect will be messy. All that said, I've had no problems with eyestrain or headaches from it (yet).

Although I've got the unit a day early, I've had no games arrive today so I can't test the effect in-game. There's various built-in Mii stuff you can play with. The unit has a built-in pedometer that measures how many steps you've taken and awards you with coins for it, 1 coin for every 100 steps. However, you're capped at 10 coins per day, which took me about 10 minutes of walking to do. Seemed kind of pointless to cap it so low. The coins are used to buy things in the Mii games. No idea if other/future games can bank them for stuff, would be interesting.

It seems to have wireless turned on permanently unless you physically turn it off on the side of the unit, even when it's in "sleep" mode. This is used to find and exchange data with any other 3DS it finds, allowing games you own but aren't even playing right now to exchange data with other 3DS you walk past. Thats cool I guess, but the 3DS is also trying to automatically connect to any wifi hotspots it finds and I'm not entirely sure why. There's a button for a web browser but it basically tells you "nope, not yet, wait for a firmware update" if you try.

I'm not entirely sure without other games to try it with but the 3DS seems to be able to suspend your games save-state like so you can return to the 3DS menu and do other things and go back to your game later.

Oh, I don't like the material the 3DS is made of. I dunno about the other DS's but it's not the same gloss the DS Lite was made of. Basically, when I openned it, the first thing I did was try to peel the plastic off the front.... but, uh, there's no plastic on it to peel off. It's hard to explain but it feels weird.

So yeah, the 3D is hit and miss, the OS is kinda nice and it has a few neat features, but I can't comment on it's games because I don't have any yet that aren't the really basic "Mii" ones built-in. Hopefully the first-party Nintendo stuff rolls along sooner rather than later.

Yeah Im not sure. I kinda want to pick it up, but at the same time. I dont really think its worth the money.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh