The Nintendo 3DS: One Week Later

It's... LOOKING at me.

Well, North America has officially had the 3DS, Nintendo's next generation of handheld gaming, for one week. Most outlets have provided a review, or hands-on impressions (like those by my buddies Coffee With Games and My Little Gamer), or Day One Impressions (like my friend The Dread Pirate Guy, if you follow the link), or some other variation thereof. Because I like to be JUST a little different when I can, I opted instead to get my 3DS and spend a week with it before I wrote anything for you, the readers. This allows me to get to know the new system on a less superficial level, and hopefully, pass any wisdom/judgements I had to you. Like any house guest, if the 3DS had any dirty laundry to air, I wouldn't see it until a few days into the visit. 

We'll begin with a few quick photographs, courtesy of the beautiful Mrs. Bit, chronicling the blessed day the 3DS arrived:

Next to the box we see the charging dock, AC adapter, system
documentation, and just A LITTLE bit of a baby seat in the upper
right-hand corner (NOT INCLUDED).



Close-up of the documentation... Why? Because it's 3/4 of the total weight
of the box! There are pages, and handouts, and quick-start guides galore!
It's like Nintendo packed in a copy of Toadstoy's "War and Peach".

As a gamer, there is nothing quite like holding a new console or handheld gaming system in your hands. It is euphoric as you contemplate the hours of potential entertainment ahead of you (unless the only system you've purchased is a Nokia N-Gage... Then I don't know what to tell you). After the initial novelty was gone, though, then you get to know the system for both its strengths and its faults. The thoughts that follow are both un-jaded, and un-dazzled, and they are my honest thoughts on the Nintendo 3DS.

Bits I like:

-3D works for me. I have had no trouble finding the sweet spot.

-No headaches, blurred vision, eye-strain, seizures, nightmares invading reality, pestilences/poxes, aggressive hauntings, cases of "spontaneous-combustus-ocularis", or whatever other maladies some people are claiming to have gotten from the 3DS.

-Clean, friendly interface. It's kind of a "Wii Homescreen 2.0", as you can see below:

-AR Games (and accompanying unlockables... work that pedometer to save up your coins!)

-OK Go's dog video is a fun way to show people glasses-free 3D

-Those little Nintendo touches - I was getting ready to play "Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars" as I sat near a door in a public place, and was on the home screen with the "Ghost Recon" channel highlighted. This screen features 3 futuristic soldiers with a variety of weapons standing back to back in a circle as your view slowly rotates around them. As I was preparing to launch the software, the door was opened by a passerby, and a gust of wind blew across my 3DS. To my surprise, this caused the three characters and the "Ghost Recon" logo to spin furiously! Upon discovering this, I spent the next few minutes blowing on the screen of my 3DS just to see how fast I could get the three guys to spin, and hoping, just a little that the centrifugal force would cause one of them to fly off the screen. Upon further investigation, every logo on the home screen allows you to blow on the microphone to spin it progressively faster the harder you blow on the microphone! I undoubtedly looked like a complete fool whose handheld system must be bursting into flames as I blew furiously on the screen, but I also undoubtedly enjoyed doing it. (See video embedded below for reference!)

-Playable "Game and Watch" visualizer in the music player is a charming bit of light fun when you want to play something as you listen to music.

-StreetPass - It's fun the first time you find out that you just had a connection with a fellow gamer who was, like you, incognito. You are part of a larger community, and StreetPass lets you feel that.

-The Circle Pad - Precise, grippy, and just enough resistance. I can't wait for a game that truly puts this little beauty through its paces (Mercenaries 3D, anyone?)!

Bits I Don't Like:

-Also, the Circle Pad - There's a slight rubbing noise that sounds like plastic on plastic (a grating noise, rather than the expected sliding noise, if that makes sense) when I push it, and that unsettles me...

-Stylus location - WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?! I actively avoid doing things that need the stylus for precision just so I don't have to fight it out of the hole on the back, as you can see here:



The stylus is really tightly fit, and when the screen is open,
very difficult to extract.

-Amount of characters available for status messages - My last two status updates: "3D pics are cool", and, "Hurry, Netflix!" The first used every available character (16, in case you are curious), and the second one used every character but 1. This same limitation applies to both friend list status updates, and your personal Mii's StreetPass message. That's not even enough characters to input some individual words in the english language! Ex. "Industrialization" = 17 Characters! That's not enough characters to write, "Nintendogs + Cats". Really, Nintendo? A company known for its big imagination CAN'T POSSIBLY CONCEIVE of someone have something to say that is longer that 16 characters?

-Launch Lineup of Retail Release Games - It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with the games in the launch lineup (especially if you like Street Fighter), but there just wasn't anything that set my world on fire. I've been enjoying "Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars", and feel that it's a solid game, but it's not mind-blowing.

-One time as I was playing Ghost Recon, the both screens faded to black in the middle of a character move, and never returned. THEY JUST NEVER CAME BACK ON, ALTHOUGH THE SYSTEM WAS STILL ON, AND THE BACKLIGHTS ON BOTH SCREENS WERE STILL FUNCTIONING. The 3DS required a hard restart, and then, like a psychotic girlfriend, it acted like it hadn't just lost or ruined something important of mine (in this case, my progress in the mission I was currently engaged in in GR:SW), and that nothing at all had happened between us. YEAH... Tell that to the prisoners of war I was rescuing, you selfish skank!

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Well, there it is. This is, in my estimation, some of the good and the bad of the Nintendo 3DS hardware and built-in software.

Those who have handled or purchased the hardware: Do you agree? Disagree?

What things do you like and dislike about Nintendo's new handheld?

Let us know in the comments!

-BitNick