If Nintendo (or any other company) ever needs to real-world test the durability of an upcoming product, all they need to do is plant a few of them in one of Japan's many Yodobashi Cameras. Monolithic monuments to the triumph of modern men, Yodobashi Camera stores are eight-layer-plus concrete cakes stuffed to the gills with computers, computer parts, flashy lights, cell phones, plastic robot models, toys, games, Blu-ray players and clock radios, bicycles, and refigerators—and on the upper floors you can even get a nice bowl of ramen. My local store happens to be in Osaka, the Kansai capital of Japan and home to dozens of very relaxed, Kansai-dialect-speaking otaku and grannies alike.
Imagine my surprise when, after a day trip through hectic Shinsaibashi, I decided to pop into Yodobashi before catching the train back home, and found the "Nintendo 3DS Corner," two banks of 3DS systems set up for anyone to try. Visions of Nintendo 64 demo units at Toys "R" Us flashing through my head, I raced toward the only free system. Located near the main Umeda station in Osaka, this particular Yodobashi gets a lot of foot traffic, and it showed—these things were smeary and fingerprinty, caked with the mysterious grub of the masses.
Since Nintendo didn't show the systems at TGS and I wasn't able to get to their demo event in Tokyo this January, it was in Yodobashi that I finally got an in-person look at the device. And if we're talking initial impressions, the first place I rested the ol' peepers was definitely on that famous screen. Even though I often experience a somewhat extended period of adjustment with stuff like 3D movies in the theater, I was surprised at how quickly my eyes snapped together and really saw the effect.
One thing that kind of surprised me was that it didn't seem as though anything was actually "coming out of the screen" toward me—rather, the effect seemed more akin to a kind of virtual diorama, a little box extending into the screen and out the back of the system like a miniature playground. The most comfortable setting for me was to put the little slider about halfway. Higher up causes the images to diverge further, while moving it down slowly brings them together until you're looking at a plain, 2D image. The tiny "3D" light that flicks on next to the slider was even fetching, slowly pulsing on or off when there was a 3D image being output to the top screen.
The effect became less significant if I tilted the system to the side or watched over someone's shoulder—people aren't kidding when they say you need to be looking straight at the thing to notice the effect properly. But that is not at all to say that "finding the sweet spot" was in any way difficult. Are you used to looking at objects by placing them in front of you? You can operate the 3DS with no issues. Perhaps it is worth noting that I occasionally wished the screen was a little brighter. I was, however, playing the thing under a hundred florescent floodlights, so take that as you will.
The system itself looked and felt a lot smaller than I was expecting, and is actually quite attractive. The "three tier" sandwich-like body design is nothing if not different in this age of machined single-piece aluminum, and the d-pad and buttons seem to be the clickier, DSi-styled ones. The buttons below the screen also have a nice little pop at the bottom, not unlike the old numeric buttons on the Intellivision controllers (to draw a comparison that is of little use to nearly everyone). The slide pad is also generous in size, and puts the worthless PSP analog nub (with which I have plenty of practice) to utter shame. I occasionally felt myself reaching for the d-pad instinctively, but a thumb on the slide pad definitely felt more natural.
Should I mention the actual sheen of the lid, knowing you are unable to truly appreciate it without seeing real light glint off it? The black one is sleek and stylish, but the Aqua Blue is downright mesmerizing—dozens of shades of metallic blue sparkle off it like some sort of new, neon-lit material. I've never seen a finish like it on anything before.
Perhaps it is worth noting that while the systems seemed at first like final hardware, the SD card slots were either glued shut or non-existent, and there was no firmware loaded on them, so I couldn't get a glimpse at the menus, StreetPass, any of the 3D camera features, or other system functions. Instead, on boot the system just sat black-screened for a few seconds until loading into the demo. The units themselves were loaded with a big plastic housing locked into the cart slot, and attached to the bases with a spring-loaded plastic tether cable.
I tried five demos, which might have been all of them, though there seemed to be a Ridge Racer 3D unit set up too, which I didn't get a good look at. The list, in the order I tried them: Samurai Warriors: Chronicles, Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, Bust-A-Move 3D, Professor Layton, and Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike.
It's launch software, which should give you a decent indication of what exactly we're looking at here. The most impressive was probably Street Fighter, though it is definitely running at thirty frames a second, with Samurai Warriors coming in close behind it. Dinosaur Strike, a lazy, traipsing affair during which I slowly ran a dinosaur down a jungle hallway replete with framerate drops and screen-jitter, breaking logs, was the least impressive. Bust-A-Move was Bust-A-Move. The games themselves still suffered from the aliasing that is inevitable on a somewhat low-resolution screen, and dropping SFIV from 3D to 2D didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on performance.
Much like the original DS, the 3DS looks to be a promising piece of hardware with lots of potential but little in the way of competent launch software—it's too bad they couldn't have developed some kind of "Messin' with 3D Craps" application like they did with Wii Sports. I left Yodobashi satisfied with the hardware (the main aspect I had feared would be iffy) and supremely underwhelmed with the launch software (none of which, outside of Nintendogs 2: Dog Harder, is actually developed by Nintendo).
How long until the 3DS sees its killer app? Once I start seeing the hundreds of smudgy Monster Hunter Portable 3rd-running PSPs replaced with smudgy multi-dimensional wonders, I think I'll have my answer.
Imagine my surprise when, after a day trip through hectic Shinsaibashi, I decided to pop into Yodobashi before catching the train back home, and found the "Nintendo 3DS Corner," two banks of 3DS systems set up for anyone to try. Visions of Nintendo 64 demo units at Toys "R" Us flashing through my head, I raced toward the only free system. Located near the main Umeda station in Osaka, this particular Yodobashi gets a lot of foot traffic, and it showed—these things were smeary and fingerprinty, caked with the mysterious grub of the masses.
Since Nintendo didn't show the systems at TGS and I wasn't able to get to their demo event in Tokyo this January, it was in Yodobashi that I finally got an in-person look at the device. And if we're talking initial impressions, the first place I rested the ol' peepers was definitely on that famous screen. Even though I often experience a somewhat extended period of adjustment with stuff like 3D movies in the theater, I was surprised at how quickly my eyes snapped together and really saw the effect.
One thing that kind of surprised me was that it didn't seem as though anything was actually "coming out of the screen" toward me—rather, the effect seemed more akin to a kind of virtual diorama, a little box extending into the screen and out the back of the system like a miniature playground. The most comfortable setting for me was to put the little slider about halfway. Higher up causes the images to diverge further, while moving it down slowly brings them together until you're looking at a plain, 2D image. The tiny "3D" light that flicks on next to the slider was even fetching, slowly pulsing on or off when there was a 3D image being output to the top screen.
The effect became less significant if I tilted the system to the side or watched over someone's shoulder—people aren't kidding when they say you need to be looking straight at the thing to notice the effect properly. But that is not at all to say that "finding the sweet spot" was in any way difficult. Are you used to looking at objects by placing them in front of you? You can operate the 3DS with no issues. Perhaps it is worth noting that I occasionally wished the screen was a little brighter. I was, however, playing the thing under a hundred florescent floodlights, so take that as you will.
The system itself looked and felt a lot smaller than I was expecting, and is actually quite attractive. The "three tier" sandwich-like body design is nothing if not different in this age of machined single-piece aluminum, and the d-pad and buttons seem to be the clickier, DSi-styled ones. The buttons below the screen also have a nice little pop at the bottom, not unlike the old numeric buttons on the Intellivision controllers (to draw a comparison that is of little use to nearly everyone). The slide pad is also generous in size, and puts the worthless PSP analog nub (with which I have plenty of practice) to utter shame. I occasionally felt myself reaching for the d-pad instinctively, but a thumb on the slide pad definitely felt more natural.
Should I mention the actual sheen of the lid, knowing you are unable to truly appreciate it without seeing real light glint off it? The black one is sleek and stylish, but the Aqua Blue is downright mesmerizing—dozens of shades of metallic blue sparkle off it like some sort of new, neon-lit material. I've never seen a finish like it on anything before.
Perhaps it is worth noting that while the systems seemed at first like final hardware, the SD card slots were either glued shut or non-existent, and there was no firmware loaded on them, so I couldn't get a glimpse at the menus, StreetPass, any of the 3D camera features, or other system functions. Instead, on boot the system just sat black-screened for a few seconds until loading into the demo. The units themselves were loaded with a big plastic housing locked into the cart slot, and attached to the bases with a spring-loaded plastic tether cable.
I tried five demos, which might have been all of them, though there seemed to be a Ridge Racer 3D unit set up too, which I didn't get a good look at. The list, in the order I tried them: Samurai Warriors: Chronicles, Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, Bust-A-Move 3D, Professor Layton, and Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike.
It's launch software, which should give you a decent indication of what exactly we're looking at here. The most impressive was probably Street Fighter, though it is definitely running at thirty frames a second, with Samurai Warriors coming in close behind it. Dinosaur Strike, a lazy, traipsing affair during which I slowly ran a dinosaur down a jungle hallway replete with framerate drops and screen-jitter, breaking logs, was the least impressive. Bust-A-Move was Bust-A-Move. The games themselves still suffered from the aliasing that is inevitable on a somewhat low-resolution screen, and dropping SFIV from 3D to 2D didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on performance.
Much like the original DS, the 3DS looks to be a promising piece of hardware with lots of potential but little in the way of competent launch software—it's too bad they couldn't have developed some kind of "Messin' with 3D Craps" application like they did with Wii Sports. I left Yodobashi satisfied with the hardware (the main aspect I had feared would be iffy) and supremely underwhelmed with the launch software (none of which, outside of Nintendogs 2: Dog Harder, is actually developed by Nintendo).
How long until the 3DS sees its killer app? Once I start seeing the hundreds of smudgy Monster Hunter Portable 3rd-running PSPs replaced with smudgy multi-dimensional wonders, I think I'll have my answer.