Nintendo 3DS Impressions By a One-eyed Man

This month around the time I came back to Japan after visiting home, by some lucky chance Nintendo was holding their public exhibit for the Nintendo 3DS. Now this is an impression from a person that can't take advantage of the 3D abilities of the 3DS.

 Don't get me wrong. I know this article is one month behind and in a little less than a month the 3DS will be on sale in the land of the rising sun.

The first game I ran for when the show floor opened up, was the Ocarina of Time remake for the system. I could choose from three portions from the game: village, dungeon, and dungeon boss. I choose the dungeon because you can fight and explore in a dungeon. I thought that this would give me a general idea about the gameplay. The graphics have been reworked to take advantage of the 3DS. The game looks really good but feels very familiar. Some things they have added are the ability to use the 3DS' built in gyros to aim the sling shot and bow and arrow. Not something I would use often with in the game but it's a quirky little add on. The game still played like the original and the dungeon was not much different. The Zelda fan boy in me will probably still pick this game up even though it will show no major changes in story or gameplay.

The little slide pad on the 3DS feels rather good but reaching for the digital pad while playing games can feel a little awkward. It's not too awkward though. It's very possible to hit the D-pad while playing a game.. The other buttons  feel as good as they did on the DS. Slightly bigger and the L and R buttons feel better than the DS' for some reason. The included 3D camera will probably be a lot of fun for people with two eyes. The cooler part about the camera is being able to use it to make a Mii. But most of the Japanese people they took pictures of to make Mii's ended up looking more like westerners.

My favorite part of the whole 3DS exhibit were the AR, augmented reality, games. Basically the way it works is you face the 3DS' camera at an AR card, which has a picture of the coin block from Mario games, and then the 3DS makes images appear on the screen. In the demo there were these targets that you shot on your screen. With each stage there was more targets. The cool thing was the stages morphed around the area of the card. Sometimes you would have to shoot a jumping target which made the table warp and balloon up. One round a tree popped out of the table and you had to move around the card to find targets. *Spoiler alert* One target was actually hiding in a hole that the 3DS made with the AR card. It was really impressive. Last round you had to fight a dragon that pops out of the card. You have to shoot each part of the dragon until it turns black. When the dragon attacks, you physically move to avoid it's attack. Be careful not to lose sight of the card with the 3DS though, it momentarily interrupts the game. An awesome demo. By far the thing I look forward to the most with the 3DS. There are other AR games coming out for it and I hope some DLC stuff will be available down the road.

Sad thing is they announced the release date but not what games will come out with it on day one. I personally am going to wait until they release a system seller before I pick a 3DS up.