Hands On Nintendo 3DS

At the Nintendo press conference I got to spend a little time with the Nintendo 3DS. By little I mean a minute. No games were playable. Instead we saw moving screenshots, like 3d animated GIFs, you can toggle with the depth slider.

There were five quick demos: Pikmin, New Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Zelda. The Zelda screen was the most impressive. Particles that popped out of the screen were flying in the background and sparks flew off Link’s sword. In the New Super Mario Bros. demo the characters were in front of the background. When you turn the slider down the image becomes a regular 3D screenshot. In the Super Mario Galaxy 2 demo, I turned the depth to half which, as exepected, lowered 3D effect. The distance Yoshi leaped out of the screen was barely notciable at 3/4 down. I also tried tilting the 3DS and the image remained in 3D. It took a second to adjust, but it wasn’t laggy like Looksey’s Line Up. The slide pad was used to rotate the image.

The depth effect felt like a hologram and while I didn’t play anything the hardware makes a good first impression.