Be Excellent To Each Other

Looking at those pics I reckon a F-Zero GX 3D could kill someone. Also I would prefer a port of Wind Waker over Ocarina now. They could even spend some time and finish it. Or even better more cel shaded games.

Nintendo has really upped it's format support and haven't cheaped out like they normally do. The music player supports both acc and mp3 this time. And the picture viewer uses mpo which seems to be a standard for 3d pictures so no worries about not being able to view them in future. It also means viewing other 3d pictures on the 3DS. Here some from Disneyland and there are some pictures of a cheeky Japanese Lady doing the rounds. Ahem.

In other news, after about 4 times trying I finally got a StreetPass Mii Plaza hit today.

OK, so I have had the 3Ds for a few days now and as decided I would try and get used to it for a few days before trying to solidly form or give an opinion I now feel I am Ok to say:


So, I think it is great.

The 3D works really well, and I haven't experienced anything strange with my eyes, no headaches, etc. I've read a few reports of people saying that they feel a bit icky if sing it in a car, etc, but I can't read/play games/watch TV whilst travelling at all, so I'm not sure they don't just have motion sickness, 3D or not.

Anyway, the augmented reality things are just fantastic. I shall upload a couple of pics tomorrow, but I've had hours of fun with those toys and games.

I love Face Raiders, too. It just keeps throwing up surprises!

The 3DS really does sound like a games machine in the old-fashioned sense, as in unpretentious, back when games machines were games machines, and not a 'lifestyle accessory' that plays films and so on. Been reading a history of Nintendo book recently, and looking at all the gimmicky products Nintendo made before settling into its modern day role as a videogames leviathan, the 3DS fits in with those quite well. Pretty much. And I mean that in a positive sense.

It really is a great little console - I love mine to bits. And I was completely indifferent about the original DS.

What book is this?

Probably "Game Over"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-over-Ninte ... 376&sr=1-2

(I think I have that particular version - wonder if its really worth £40)

Crikey - it's out of print, but I wonder if it really sells at that price. Don't pay it - I have the abridged edition that was given away with Arcade. Anyone wants it, drop me a pm.

Edit: I mean - it's free to a good home

"Game Over" is a brilliant book, but the price seems to have shot up. I bought it last year "used - very good" on amazon.com, only paid $10 + postage.

Sorry, should have clarified that I was talking about The History of Nintendo Vol. 1 (link), by a French bloke then translated recently into English. The book is worth the price, and it details a whole pile of Nintendo products that no-one outside Japan would ever heard of before. (Game Over is damn good though, if unfortunately years out of date).

I'm getting an itch to buy a 3DS. I mainly want to play Pokemon Black/White but I have no idea where my DS is.

Try before you buy when it comes to the 3DS is my advice, and take time to see if you can properly get on with the 3D effect.

I had a little go of that Face Raiders game in the shop and thought it was all very clever, albeit found the 3D a bit 'off' but I put that down to the surroundings of the shop, bad lighting, not calibrated for me etc. (Not that there is any calibration it turned out, just the slider for the 3D effect.)

Dropped £270 on a 2 game + accessories bundle, got the thing home that evening, only to find that I couldn't see the 3D effect very well at all, particularly in 'proper' games (Face Raiders worked reasonably well for me though). I persisted with Ridge Racer most of the evening until it gave me a headache, but the 3D simply never clicked, and I went to bed convinced the unit was faulty.

Took it into work the next day, a few chums had a go of Pilotwings 3D and all pronounced the 3D effect to be fantastic, but I just couldn't bloody see it properly at all.

Turning the 3D effect down to about 25% and getting into exactly the right position gave me about 30 seconds of 3D at a time, until my eyes gave up, it all went out of focus, and my head felt funny.

Ended up taking it back for £240 of store credit (so £30 lost there), and a couple of days later went for a 64GB iPod Touch 4G (which cost £290, so I had to put an extra £50 towards it, so in effect I've paid £320 for an iPod Touch).

On the plus side I'm back into iOS gaming which I've really missed (I still prefer Android for phone, but as a games platform it sucks), and with the benefit of hindsight was I really going to go back to paying £40 per game for mobile gaming? Probably not....

So the moral of the story is definitely spend a decent amount of time playing on a 3DS in the shop first, or even better spend some proper time on someone else's first.

I should have just got a Touch to start with really, the combo of Android phone (running as a 3G wireless hotspot) with 4G Touch is the best of both worlds IMO, and the Touch is so light and thin it's no hassle to carry it around all the time as well as my Desire, whereas the 3DS was a bit too bulky on that score.

Needless to say YMMV, but the 3DS didn't work out for me at all.

I finally managed to see a 3DS in action today on a demo pod in Argos and it was truly like looking into some kind of magical world of the future.

I'd love one but having just dropped £500 odd on an iPad 2 I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. Expect announcement of purchase with spurious justification within 2 weeks then.

Yeah that's the feeling I got from my chums at work, they were all fairly cynical before I handed it over to them and then they spent a couple of minutes with it and were like 'Wow that's amazing' and 'It really does look 3D' (yes I know it's technically stereoscopy) and 'It's far better than I thought it would be' and I'm left crying and wailing like a baby and moaning 'But I just can't see it!'

Piltowings in particular seemed to impress them.

Ridge Racer, for the small chunks of time it 'clicked' with me was fab too, it's more a sense of 'depth' than of 'things coming flying at you', but none the less clever for it.

Face Raiders did all sorts of clever stuff too, picking up faces from around the place as far as I could tell and chucking them into the game. That game got quite a few genuine 'LOL' moments out of everyone who played it.

Then again, £39.99 per game, fucking ouch. I've had hours and hours out of Plants Vs Zombies on my Touch and it cost less than £2.

Err, my girlfriend surprised me by buying me a 3DS (that famous German characteristic of generosity, in action), which I immediately gave back to her, as a thank you present. She earned it. So, these friend codes right, act like the Wii ones, i.e. both users have to input them to work?

Yes, you enter each other's codes. It works very well.

Heh, check your inbox Meems.

(Looks like I'm commandeering a 3DS until my g.f. finds a game that she wants to play. Whenever that is.)

I don't appear to have any messages in my inbox I'm afraid. You do mean the inbox in the forums here? If so you message didn't come through properly, sorry

tough road ahead?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... road-ahead

I crumbled and bought one. I am weak. My friend code is 0087-2353-2221 if people would like to add me

edit: have added everyone I could see

So yeah I have one.

Spurious justification as follows; traded PS3 and associated peripherals so didn't actually 'cost' me anything.

Friend code is 5284 1468 8404

I've had it a few days now and played it a fair bit.

Pilotwings is probably the most 3d of the games I have got - so much so that I need to turn the slider down or it makes my eyes want to leap out of my skull. I'm not sure how much longevity there is but after a couple of hours play it's the favourite of the games I have bought so far. Don't like the jet pack though.

Nintendogs I have only played for about 20 minutes but it is unbearably cute. A 3d puppy coming up to front of the screen and craving attention will only be ignored by Satan, Hitler and The Mighty Boosh.

Ridge Racer 3d. This plays very well. The female announcer needs to mention "Slipstream" a bit more often as once every 1.6 seconds is clearly not enough. The 3d is more understated on this but you tend not to notice until a chopper comes flying at you or you are looking into the distance for the next bend. Usual RR problem of a large percentage of it being far too piss easy before you get to the actual challenge.

The other stuff that comes with it is quite substantial and a 3d picture of Government Yard looking scary is probably the best yet. Or maybe my Mii looking dead camp in the kitchen table. Either way it's dead clever, if decidedly low res.

One thing I do want to ask other owners though is about the sound. Playing both Nintendogs and RR last night I swear the sound seemed to be almost surround sound. I don't know if it's an ancillary effect of the 3d visuals but the sound genuinely seemed to be coming from behind me at certain points and certainly right next to me ear at other points. There's probably some psychological reason for your eyes associating the depth on the screen with depth of sound - or I'm mental. Anyone else notice it?

By default, it does output virtual surround sound, so yeah, your ears are not deceiving you.

Well, okay, technically they are deceiving you, but the 3DS is doing that deliberately.

I know what you mean about the 3D in Pilotwings - I've had to turn the effect completely off sometimes whilst playing that as it's made me feel a bit queasy.

Same for me with pilotwings. Not a problem really, since the 3D effect still looks great even with the slider right down.

I was trying to look sexy

If it helps I do masturbate furiously over that pic each night in my hotel. Those screen protectors are well handy.

The late May update which will bring the eShop and the internet browser has finally been given a firm date of June 7th.

Which is also the same day as their E3 presentation. Which of course must make this a marketing delay rather than a development delay which is slightly annoying.

Gamestation have an instore price of just under £150 for these things now.

Blatantly not selling. Odd.

I'm not interested at all. All my handheld gaming is done on my phone now - I sold my DS Lite to Wullie a while back as I had barely touched it. The only game I was playing was GTA: Chinatown Wars, and I bought that again on iOS anyway.

Not really. It's seen by many (albeit not entirely correctly) as an incremental upgrade to an existing system. Also, whereas the DS had naff-all competition last time round and snared the entire market of people who wanted casual games, this time Apple's waded in with its size twelves. Almost everyone I know with kids says they all want/use iPods for gaming now—and parents are happy with that, since 59p for a game a kid gets bored with after 0.5 seconds beats £30+ per game; most teens are the same (or they use iPhones), in part because they want internet access too; and quite a few occasional gamers are happier with iOS. What that's left Nintendo with is core gamers—the kind of people who MUST have that new device. This accounts for the massive pre-orders and the rather shocking short-tail sell. The fact Nintendo's putting out comments about poor sales shows how heavily affected the device has been at retail. (Additionally, they're launching in a depressed market; again, those in the know might consider iOS over the 3DS due to the low price of apps/games, or just not buy at all.)

This is of course a generalisation and exaggerated over reality; but the gist of is clearly what's happened and why the device isn't selling as much as planned.

(On the 3D effect, interesting how variable it is to people. I wonder if it's a bit like those Magic Eye things from years ago. I could never get those to work—I was like that guy in Mallrats, yelling "Why can't I see the goddamn sail-boat?", while friends were going "ooh" after approx. two seconds.)

It needs a 3d Mario Galaxy title. That's about the only other thing I would possibly buy for it right now.

You're/we're in luck, as Super Mario 3DS seems to fit that description and that's roughly penciled-in for this year.

It's pretty obvious to state, but the 3DS' dearth of games is pretty major. It's just scaled-down conversions so far, and a submarine game. Ridge Racer's lovely and Ridge Racery, but it's Ridge Racer so hardly Earth-shattering. Pilotwings Resort isn't worthy of the Pilotwings branding, it's just a segment of Wii Sports Resort tweaked about to show off the 3D display. Anything else... Well, it's a bit worrying that a Nintendo 64 conversion is the next big release, even if a pretty damn fantastic N64 game spruced up with a spiffy immersive 3D effect. Beyond the 3D display (which is admittedly wonderful),There's no fresh new concepts and execution so far, which is depressing as the DS seemed to offer a brand new bag o' tricks from day one.

E3 is weeks away. There's going to be a boatload of announcements then.

'ope so.

Beginning to wonder if the 3DS was rushed out before the killer software was ready, the opposite approach to how the Nintendo 64 (allegedly) kept back whilst Super Mario 64 was cooked up.

Almost certainly.

The initial announcement of the 3DS was leaked, which I don't think has ever happened with a previous console, they normally get announce them in their own time frame.

But I also think they wanted to let 3rd parties not get drowned out by a load of high quality Nintendo software at launch, so held back a bit.

Which is a bit of a stupid strategy, but I suppose they wanted to make sure they had EA, Ubisoft, Sega and Capcom on board.

You missed out easily the best game of the current lineup.

Ghost Recon : Shadow Wars

It's the only game i've bought for my 3DS, will most likely get Pilotwings when it gets super cheap, but other than that there is nothing current that i'm interested in.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/3ds-gam ... ned/945612



Ruh roh. That's not a good sign.

Oh it is, it really is.

They're catering for the Birkenhead micro-economy.

It's Birkenhead. Shops need to price low to tempt customers before all the thieves get the stock.

Isn't Birkenhead high street just one long row of Cash Convertors and another of Iceland on the other side?

No, I think there's a job centre there.

Amazon has some of the launch games for £20 at the moment (Pilotwings, Nintendogs, Streetfighter, Ridge Racer). And the black 3ds for £160. Linky

And no hype for the eshop launch next week anywhere. A week to go and there are no firm details of what will be on sale. Maybe there isn't anything to hype?

The 3DS shop thingy is available to download now - a couple of freebies!

Mine won't update. I think everyone is trying to update at once.

Should have tried at 3am

It's not too exciting unless you want to play the freebie excitebike, or pay 4 pounds to play Gameboy Mario...!

whoo, freebie excitebike. Yes, do want that. Just got it to work now, shall now have a look.

is the browser working yet? Don't worry to answer, I shall go look.

Yep, the browser is working, as that's what I'm using to post this!

Although I don't think it's in any danger of replacing my iPhone if I'm honest.

Browser's barely usable. Far, far slower than the iPod Touch browser, and much lower resolution too. First genuine disappointment with 3DS (semi-)ownership.

They had a couple of demo machines of this set up in Asda yesterday, so I thought, why not.

Have never been previously excited for this at all, and can barely remember the last time I properly used my DS, but that said, I found it (the 3DS) to be quite lovely. One of the demos was the dog/cat thing, and as has been said already in this thread, it's obviously massively cute and all those things.

I just... really liked the console. I was able to 'see' the 3D, and was very impressed with that.

I think I probably want one now! I may ask Santa (via my g/f) for one this Christmas.

I'm still not convinced it's necessary in a world where the iPod Touch makes an excellent (and cheap, especially the games) handheld console, and I understand it's not sold terribly well, but there you go.

Anyway, I liked it and enjoyed my brief time on it.

Scarily, the same thing happened to me today! I was in Toys R Us and they had a couple of demo machines. I played Nintendogs. The screen is really impressive. I think I want one as well. Zelda OOT had me tempted, but now that I've actually had a bash I'm 'more than tempted'. Might pick one up next pay day...