There're no shortage of impressions clogging up the Inters when it comes to the as-of-yet unreleased 3DS XL, and though I haven't read all of them because my life will not continue for 328 years, it seems that most people have decided to focus on a few of the most obvious things, things that will be immediately apparent to any turd that picks one up and uses it for more than three seconds.

I got my own disgusting hands on a sample model in Osaka's monolithic Yodobashi Camera electronics store today, and can say confidently that yes, as you've already heard, the screens are so enormous that it makes the unit itself look small. The matte finish causes the thing to look clean even when being manhandled by tiny children, unlike the original 3DS, which, when I first saw a demonstration model, was absolutely filthy, caked with fingerprints and child waste. And it slaps closed nice and hard like an old GBA SP, replete with rubber bumpers.

Inline Image

But the one thing I wanted to mention, which maybe some other useless blogs have already mentioned if they are actually focusing on the hardware and not just reviewing "the 3DS again," is the tiniest little thing that I really love about the new hardware: the trio of buttons below the bottom screen, specifically Select, Home, and Start! On the original 3DS of course they find themselves nestled, somewhat recessed, below a layer of thin filmy plastic, which I find occasionally annoying to press on with my fingers but relatively convenient to hit with the stylus, if it's already in my hand. The XL offers a different solution though, and it's not as simple as them just "being normal buttons" this time.

In this iteration of the hardware, the buttons actually are connected through their tops, and push down only in the front, much more like small levers than regular buttons, which depress to hit a pad below them. Perhaps the closest gaming correlation I can come up with is that they're sort of like the L or R triggers, but mounted with the pivot on the upper horizontal axis of the piece instead of the inner vertical axis. They feel pretty satisfying to push actually, and aren't at all too mushy or too clicky. They are not "oh finally real buttons!!" as so many impressions seem to suggest, but something different entirely, and really feel well engineered. Maybe it is no surprise! After all, we heard as much in a recent issue of Iwata Asks!

Junichiro Miyatake said:
And for the Select, Start, and Home Buttons, I had the designers work hard so the keys sink in a seesawing action. They have a long and thin key top, and wherever you press them, they sink right in.

Kunpei Fujita said:
Miyatake-san already just mentioned a number of things that I was going to say, but I would like to point out that I made prototypes just for the Select, Start, and Home Buttons and really dedicated myself to them.

It's not at all a stretch to imagine poor Kunpei slavishly cranking out dozens of prototypes to get each detail perfect, which is just something Nintendo Does.

I spent lots of time pushing them. It made me feel real nice, in just the tiniest way.