Nintendo 3DS

*Zeth Ryder* · April 26, 2011

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Developer: Nintendo

Manufacturer: Nintendo, Foxconn

Rating:

Review
The Nintendo 3DS is the Next handheld by Nintendo that is part of the DS family but an upgrade in hardware, software and more. For those who have never played a DSi+ system your looking a brand new interface on how this system works. The menu is very similar to the Wii allowing the user to create a Mii of their own and giving it access to the Mii Plaza for wandering around, however unlike the wii's Mii plaza, the game allows the user to participate in games which you can get puzzle pieces from the Miis of people you pass during the time you are wandering around with your 3DS. This can only occur if two things happen, The person you pass by has their Nintendo 3DS turned on, with streetpass enable and their Mii is set to share. One thing users may notice is that the game gives you options to adjust your 3D settings, now granted during the menu, the 3D can almost be turned up all the way with little concept since it doesn't like pop out in your face and isn't too stressful on the eyes, but when in a game, I suggest turning it down til your eyes are comfortable and not being stressed. For just a console by itself, it comes with quite a lot of features unlike its predecessor the Nintendo DS. I won't go into too much depth about the games cause this is something I strongly suggest you play yourself to experience. The AR games comes with 6 cards, 5 which are normal character cards, the other one being a question mark card which starts your options for the AR games. Upon playing with the character cards, you get to see these characters come to life before your very eyes and you can press the A button to not only change poses but use the circle pad to move the characters even off the card, Pressing the R or L button during play will allow you to take pictures of your newly 3D figurines. The AR game has several boxes, one you start off with is Target shooting, the other one is Star Pics which allows you to load up your figuring character cards and takes pictures. The other boxes do not unlock until you've beaten Target shooting and the next games afterwards. The last feature I will talk about is the Graffiti option with the AR cards, this is only unlocked after you've beaten the second game that unlocks after the Target shooting. Grafitti allows the user to draw with the stylus and see it come to life in 3D on the top screen and give you the option to take pictures. While Augmented Reality isn't new to the world, it has however been perfected in my opinion with the Nintendo 3Ds and allows users to do things that I have never seen done before, It truly is mind blowing and is something I highly suggest users to try out when they get their 3DS. There is another game on the menu called Face Raiders, while I haven't played it yet during the time of this review, I do suggest giving it a try though. The last features I will be talking about are the Nintendo 3DS Sound & Camera Applications, Gamers Notepad, the Friend List, Notifications and the Web Browser. The Nintendo 3DS Sound application can be started from the Home Menu, this software allows you to play music and sounds saved on an SD card or record with the microphone on the system itself. You can also play with and alter your music or recorded sounds with its neat features. The 3DS does support a number of commonly used audio formats for those who want to take their 3DS on the go with them, you just have to insert the 2GB SD card into your computer and download the music onto their card and pop it back in the system then launch the Sound app. Pretty simple and easy to use, just like the 3DS Camera app, this allows you to view images on your 3DS that you have taken yourself or put on the SD card. It also gives you the option to even swap faces with a friend via the Merge option, one from the inner camera(holder of the 3DS) and one from the outer camera that are captured at the same time. While I wont delve into all the details, there is neat effects you can add to your photos. Moving onto the last features, The Gamers Notepad allows the user to pause their game and write out a note. For those who played Majora's Mask, before getting the bombers notebook, do you remember scrambling to find a piece of paper to write down the code for their hideout? Not anymore, pressing the home button once puts the game in suspended mode allowing the user to access all the menu options and even the notepad, write what you want, save and continue the game as if nothing ever happened. The Friend List should be pretty straight forward, it is where your friend code is and for you to have access/add your friends while sharing what games you are playing and doing online. The Notification app allows users to view incoming information from Nintendo, about games, etc coming up as well things that have happened during streetpass. Your icon will show a indicator when you have new notifications on the home menu. Though I haven't had a chance to test out the web browser yet, it is currently unavailable until the May launch of the e-shop, so until then It will have to wait on this review. I have to say for such a small system, it is quite packed full with features that can keep a person busy for hours to come.

Overall
Now comes my overall assessment of the Nintendo 3DS. While I am a big fan of Nintendo, I have kept a very unbias standpoint for this review. While the 3DS is packed full of features, there a few things that do keep it from getting a perfect score, here are my following reasons why. First off, the Select, Home, and Start buttons are quite hard to push, you literally have to put some force on them, I think its cause you don't want to accidently bump them, but at the same time, it can become quite a nuisance trying to push it when you do need to access it. When I first got my 3DS in its box, I was like, whoa, this thing is heavier then the DSIXL, that's when I realized when I opened up the box, the Instruction Novel is 300+ pages, fully colour printed btw, and very detailed about the system and its features, so this is your tutorial for dummies! While the 3DS is about as light as the DSi, it has a shorter battery life of 2-3 hours compared to the previous DS's. This I do see as being a counter productive to wanting users to use streetpass with their system on if its going to die very soon. :<
When I first got it, I was expecting my Stylus to be as huge as the DSiXL's however, to my surprise, it was about the size of the DS/DS lite's but extendable, this I saw a pleasant surprise cause I did like the original DS's stylus over the other ones. The last thing I want to mention is I kind of wish the Web browser would of been available right away, so I think that kind of does bum out its score when you have a feature you can't access yet. But for my overal summary, the Nintendo 3DS gets 4.5 stars cause it is an amazing system and I do highly recommend gamers to get this, you really won't be disappointed! Just watch out for that hefty price of $249.99 cause plus tax it can almost run you up to about $265+. You can check out below my screenshots using the AR cards!

Screenshots
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