3DS Console Discussion

[david.dakota]

I went to the Manchester event - (after mush pleading) managed to get a great pic of myself and the 'hooded chainsaw man' from Resident Evil.

 

 

After having a brief play, I'm happy to report that this device will blow you away.

 

A few thoughts.

 

The 3D works - and works well. I found that as I approached the unit, it took just a blink for my eyes to adjust. The 'sweet spot' is quite tight, anything more than head tilt and you'll loose the effect - but in fairness I very quickly adjusted to moving myself rather than the 3DS. The 3D is affected by both horizontal and vertical movement. The 3D slider works - there is a slight delay in its effect; its not a gradual change, it seems to wait until you've stopped moving the slider and then flicks out to your setting. Personally, I didn't notice a huge difference in the gradients of the 3D - but that could be my own eyes.

 

Speakers Although a lot of background noise hindered an accurate assessment; my initial impressions are that the internal speakers will be comparable to the DS Lite.

 

Comfort and controls. The 3DS feels slightly chunkier than a DS Lite. Shoulder buttons are much improved over the DS Lite. The slider is a f*cking revelation (sorry, mods), although the octagonal directional support is missing. Found the D-pad a little difficult to use effectively - will probably end up being a quick menu in most games.

 

Games. I spent just a couple of minutes on Zelda, RE Mercenaries, Ridge Racer and Icarus.

 

Zelda looked pretty nice, but some blandness to it in places and some corner cutting (2D vines hanging over a ledge etc)

 

Ridge Racer was pretty impressive. The depth and distance is nice, some neat visuals (driving under the tail of a plane). Gameplay a bit shallow for my tastes.

 

RE Mercenaries looked exceptional. Couldn't maneuver as well as I would have liked (ie, I died) but thats a learning curve with the controls.

 

Kid Icarus Uprising was the standout title for me. It looked sublime, some nice depth and art. The stylus was not available, and finger control a bit loose. I suspect the way we'd hold the console with stylus might push the unit out of the sweet spot though - I think i'll dig out the original DS phat thumb shoe.

 

Rolling footage. Mario Kart, Star Fox - 3D works well. Animal Crossing had depth but just didn't stand out. Snake Eater looked nice, really nice. Sky 3D also looked impressive - but a comment did suggest you'd need their top-tier package to view content (not that we expected otherwise).

 

Built in software

Face Raider Phenomenally good fun. Some nice - and clever - animations going on. 3D effect apparent, but not that strong. Difficult to maneuver (the 3DS was tethered to the table!).

 

3D camera. For obvious reasons, these were not the most detailed of photos, but the 3D effect was obvious.

 

AR Games. An absolute highlight for me. The 3D effect was nice - I had the dragon game - moving around the table again not that easy, not only tethered but a table light in the way. I wasn't expecting much from AR games if I'm perfectly honest, but I was totally blown away. If you're going to an event, make sure you have a go.

 

I was expecting more

 

Apparently, the Manchester morning sessions were extremely busy with queues out of the door and down Portland Street. Later sessions, like mine, had around 20 too.

[Cube]

Kid Icarus Uprising was the standout title for me. It looked sublime, some nice depth and art. The stylus was not available, and finger control a bit loose. I suspect the way we'd hold the console with stylus might push the unit out of the sweet spot though - I think i'll dig out the original DS phat thumb shoe.

 

Kid Icarus was there?? The people there didn't mention it when I went, and as the stands aren't marked I didn't see it.

 

 

Built in software

Face Raider Phenomenally good fun. Some nice - and clever - animations going on. 3D effect apparent, but not that strong. Difficult to maneuver (the 3DS was tethered to the table!).

 

I thought it was going to be a rather dull game where you just shoot faces with the camera showing you the "real world" (similar to ones you find on DSiWare and mobile phones). I was and then one of the faces completely broke the walls of reality, creating a hole into another dimension! From that point it was utterly amazing. It's hard to describe just how brilliant it look at.

 

AR Games. An absolute highlight for me. The 3D effect was nice - I had the dragon game - moving around the table again not that easy, not only tethered but a table light in the way. I wasn't expecting much from AR games if I'm perfectly honest, but I was totally blown away. If you're going to an event, make sure you have a go.

 

The table was quite badly done, with the lamp and 3DS stand getting in the way. Even so, I had to look past the 3DS to convince myself that the stuff really wan't there.

[IAmMarti]

Sounds....alright...I have a bad feeling I will be disapointed =/

 

everythings going abit downhill for me tonight

[david.dakota]

it's just a big shame they over estimated the amount of people who were going - they could have easily gotten everyone into hour-long slots and given everyone 25 minutes in each room.

 

I'd agree with this. The sessions could have been hourly, with more play time. The set up they're using would've worked well with an open door policy.

[Link83]

I don't think I would go if it was a long journey, but luckily it is only about 20 minutes each way, so I don't have anything to lose.

Thats another sticking point for me - its a 1 hour bus journey each way Still kind of want to go though!

[Dyson]

I come bearing amazing news.

 

GAME Store Managers had their conference and Nintendo 3DS briefing by Nintendo on Wednesday. All the Store Managers are getting a free 3DS console. This is not what is awesome.

 

What is awesome is that they will arrive in store from the 14th of February (and arrive by the end of the month). Which means...that gives me a looong time to playtest this baby as it'll be sat out back and shown to customers Cannot wait! From what she said (and she's not much of a gamer at all) it was amazing, and she loved it.

 

Anyway this is relevant to you guys too because it means that the GAME stores in your area may well be doing something similar. It's not necessarily something that the Managers have to show customers, it'll be their own personal item, but I'm sure a lot of them will use it to drive sales/pre-orders.

[IAmMarti]

I come bearing amazing news.

 

GAME Store Managers had their conference and Nintendo 3DS briefing by Nintendo on Wednesday. All the Store Managers are getting a free 3DS console. This is not what is awesome.

 

What is awesome is that they will arrive in store from the 14th of February. Which means...that gives me a looong time to playtest this baby as it'll be sat out back and shown to customers Cannot wait! From what she said (and she's not much of a gamer at all) it was amazing, and she loved it.

 

Anyway this is relevant to you guys too because it means that the GAME stores in your area may well be doing something similar. It's not necessarily something that the Managers have to show customers, it'll be their own personal item, but I'm sure a lot of them will use it to drive sales/pre-orders.

 

Woah you work in a game too brah? greatings from 179!

 

¬_¬ great so my boss has a 3DS and I reckon he is going to be in my face about it, being the only one there that loves nintendo, and he will probably give it to staff for highest preorders or something........grr.

Edited February 5, 2011 by IAmMarti

[Dyson]

Woah you work in a game too brah? greatings from 179!

 

¬_¬ great so my boss has a 3DS and I reckon he is going to be in my face about it, being the only one there that loves nintendo, and he will probably give it to staff for highest preorders or something........grr.

 

 

Greets from 548

 

Yeah, see normally that would happen in our store too, but our manager really wants one so she's keeping it. I know I would!

[IAmMarti]

Greets from 548

 

Yeah, see normally that would happen in our store too, but our manager really wants one so she's keeping it. I know I would!

 

so your game isnt closing then? ....and do you actully have more then a 4 hour contract? Mine was cut last year from 8...and next week its 4 hours for me again, for only the 5th time scince the contract change.......

 

oh well I still have sainsburys.........

[Dyson]

I... kinda got lucky.

 

I was working two doors down at the newly opened HMV when the manager of the GAME store (who I was pretty friendly with anyway) and his regional manager came in and saw me selling a console bundle to a customer. The RM turned to the Store Manager and basically said he was really impressed and that he should try and get me to join. I was unaware of this until after I quit HMV due to the manager being a t**t, and applied for the job at GAME. I was told I'd be put on a 4 hour contract as that's all that was available, and I was happy to take that.

 

The interview came and went and I got the job, only to get a phone call asking if a 20 hour contract would be alright. I said of course - turns out he told the RM I was joining and he shuffled a few things around and magicked up a 20 hour contract for me because he was so eager to get me working there. I was chuffed. A bit of an ego boost to be honest! So I got a 20 hour contract, the highest available to a Sales Assistant.

 

And I found out a few weeks ago I'm being put up for MELP later in the year so by the end of the year I could well be Senior Sales.. which isn't bad for someone who started 7 months ago

 

Anyway, I do apologize, in a more direct answer to your question; no, we're not closing, and as far as I know the hours aren't being changed right now. We're also a CoE if that makes a difference? (I doubt it!)

[IAmMarti]

I... kinda got lucky.

 

I was working two doors down at the newly opened HMV when the manager of the GAME store (who I was pretty friendly with anyway) and his regional manager came in and saw me selling a console bundle to a customer. The RM turned to the Store Manager and basically said he was really impressed and that he should try and get me to join. I was unaware of this until after I quit HMV due to the manager being a t**t, and applied for the job at GAME. I was told I'd be put on a 4 hour contract as that's all that was available, and I was happy to take that.

 

The interview came and went and I got the job, only to get a phone call asking if a 20 hour contract would be alright. I said of course - turns out he told the RM I was joining and he shuffled a few things around and magicked up a 20 hour contract for me because he was so eager to get me working there. I was chuffed. A bit of an ego boost to be honest! So I got a 20 hour contract, the highest available to a Sales Assistant.

 

And I found out a few weeks ago I'm being put up for MELP later in the year so by the end of the year I could well be Senior Sales.. which isn't bad for someone who started 7 months ago

 

Anyway, I do apologize, in a more direct answer to your question; no, we're not closing, and as far as I know the hours aren't being changed right now. We're also a CoE if that makes a difference? (I doubt it!)

 

Haha we are a Center of Exelance too......

 

I got lucky. I walked in and got offered the job.

 

I wont be expressing my opinion on the company and how I feel about my job at this point.

 

Oh dear I'm really getting angry right now ¬_¬ going to say somthing stupid soon...

 

g'night all

[Dyson]

Haha we are a Center of Exelance too......

 

I got lucky. I walked in and got offered the job.

 

I wont be expressing my opinion on the company and how I feel about my job at this point.

 

Oh dear I'm really getting angry right now ¬_¬ going to say somthing stupid soon...

 

g'night all

 

Don't worry. We all know how messed up Head Office are. Some of the decisions they make are just plain bizarre

 

Don't get angryyyyy! Call me on the intercom next time you're in.

[Jamba]

Thanks d.d that was a really good hands on impression. I still think that I'm going to hang on a little bit before I buy it but my spirits are definitely lifted. Looking forward to hearing some hands on impressions with SF4 and Pilotwings.

 

I'm really happy that Capcom have an engine working so well on the system this early on. Having a 3rd party like them so heavily invested in the system reminds me of the good ol' days of the SNES. Let's hope that Konami stay in the game too.

 

Now all we need is Gargoyle's Quest and Battletoads to be back and I would official explode my pants.

[Dante]

From Yoshi Ono interview:

 

GamesRadar: Were you surprised when you first saw Super Street Fighter IV running on the 3DS? Did you think the machine was capable of such a visually accurate conversion?

 

Ono: The first time I had any kind of contact with the 3DS was shortly before E3 of last year. A couple of weeks before the show I got a call from [Capcom producer] Takeuchi-san, and he said he had something he wanted me to see. So I traveled to Osaka, and he whipped out a 3DS, and it was running a version of Resident Evil 5! And yes I was surprised we could get this kind of power in the palm of your hand, and 3D to boot.

 

Capcom are graphics gods by getting a working version of RE5 on the 3ds.

[Retro_Link]

Niiiiiiiice!!!

Not that I want to buy/play RE5 again, but I hope it gets a port.

 

Should mean that RE Revelations is set to blow us away!

[Cube]

Niiiiiiiice!!!

Not that I want to buy/play RE5 again, but I hope it gets a port.

 

A port of RE4 would be better. That played and looked better than RE5.

[Retro_Link]

A port of RE4 would be better. That played and looked better than RE5.

T'is true!

 

A port of REmake might be nice, or the RE2 REmake we're always asking for (and no Capcom, that lightgun game didn't count)... but tbh I'm really glad they went for an original title for the 3DS... Revelations looks great... I just hope it's more Resi 4 than 5!

 

Then a game staring Claire and Leon please!

[Cube]

I've got my thoughts all written up and posted them here.

[Alsnow]

Thought I would share my thoughts on the London 3DS event too.

 

I went the the 1pm time slot, I had my girlfriend and a friend with me and was planning to abandon them outside while I went in but was told that it should be ok if they could come in too. So surprisingly I had two guests with me in the event.

 

As with everyone else the event started off with the weird floor thing that lit up to explain spot pass, the cheesy speech, live street fighter fight and the resident evil dark room walk through. Then Jonathan Ross was on a tv introducing the event. After that the doors opened and it felt like being at Wonkas chocolate factory, there were more than enough 3DS's for everyone to play, around 20 people were at the event.

 

The first game I played was Resident Evil Mercs and when I got on the DS I went to press the start button but soon realised it was the power button and forgot that the start button had been moved, I then had to find my way back to the in game screen.

After all that I finally got to play the game and was bored pretty fast with it, the 3D was pretty good but not as good as I was expecting.

 

I then moved on and saw that my girlfriend was playing Lego Starwars which didn't look too bad. After watching the lego game for a min or so I had a walk around and saw Ridge Racer and Steel Diver but walked straight past to Dead or alive.

Dead or alive was good fun, at the start menu it have a level that could be looked around with the gyroscope and the graphics were on par with a gamecube game.

 

I then moved onto Kid Icarus which blew me away, I even had a stylus in a holder in front of me which made the controls feel really good. The 3D in this game were deficiently the best I saw all show. The on ground parts were a little odd requiring you to swipe the screen to look around but I soon got used to it.

 

I then played Pilot wings and had double vision when playing it and had to adjust the slider to remove it. I had to use the 3d slider quite often but the game was fun enough to ignore the annoyance.

 

I then got to play Zelda but not for long as we were soon shifted onto the next room. Zelda wasn't the prettiest of games at the event but the character models looked great.

In the next room I had a go on the camera which didn't work to well in the not very well lit room, The mii creator was funny but probably not the most accurate thing in the world.

Face raiders was fun and used the gyroscope well.

 

The next game I played was the augmented reality game which was very impressive and graphically looked much better than the videos I had seen online. This was one of the highlights of the event.

 

Other games I played were Monkey Ball, Raving Rabbids and Nintendogs. Surprisingly Raving Rabbids was quite fun and much better than what I was expecting, 3d looked good too!

 

They had some 3DS's with 3d trailers on which included: Sky tv, animal crossing, Mario kart and Paper Mario. Paper Mario looked great in 3d and was one of the best games along with kid Icarus to use the 3d.

 

I looked at the time and realised that I had been at the event for 55mins and decided to leave as I had tried everything in the second room. I was really surprised that we weren't shooed off but allowed to stay much longer than I thought.

 

Oh yeah, the colour blue 3ds isn't as bad in person compared to the pics online.

 

Over all I thought Nintendo put a lot of effort into the even and was one of the best events I had been to, mainly due to no queuing.

 

I am now even more excited to get my 3ds next month.

[Beverage]

I always thought the blue coloured 3DS looked fine. It looks quite interesting actually as it's a mixture of both blue and black - not just the boring ol' black.

 

Again, I was expecting that from TLoZ: OoT. Seriously, I've played that game so many times and if I'm ever going to play it again - let alone spend money to do so - then it's gonna have to be a truly 'New 'N' Improved' version (perhaps on Wii 2/HD? ).

 

But I'm impressed with all these amazing feedback, even if a little worried of the 3D

 

In any case though, I can't wait to hug my baby tightly in my heroic arms!

[ShadowV7]

I'm afraid another OoT, especially with the 3DS one, is excruciatingly low

 

"If I can think of how to do it, or any other inspiration comes to me, without destroying the emotional attachment people have to the past game, and I can make some great innovation or renovation on the remake, then I might be able to think about it further."

 

Aonuma.

[IAmMarti]

Im embaressed to say I started to play OoT on virtual console, its hard so I didnt get far please forgive me

[david.dakota]

even if a little worried of the 3D

 

How can you be worried of the 3D? It works so well - as Cube puts it, its like a window into a new world. Its fantastic, if you're thinking of the dull 3D cinemas and 3DTVs show, think again... its bright and natural - you really have nothing to be worried about. The 'sweet spot' is comfortable, its not like you're having to crane to see the 3D.

[Beverage]

How can you be worried of the 3D? It works so well - as Cube puts it, its like a window into a new world. Its fantastic, if you're thinking of the dull 3D cinemas and 3DTVs show, think again... its bright and natural - you really have nothing to be worried about. The 'sweet spot' is comfortable, its not like you're having to crane to see the 3D.

 

Consider me no longer worried

No seriously though, I guess then that you should gradually adjust the 3D slider (which briefly stalls - in order to slot you into the chosen setting) to help you focus on the 3D? And also the level of 3D which the slider is positioned may have different results depending on each software? And unintentionally slipping out of the "sweet spot" doesnt seem to be experienced much - if at all.

Edited February 6, 2011 by Beverage

[Will]

I'm not entirely sure on the exact reason but I think due to the way you actually kind of have to focus on an area behind the screen to see the 3d it's quite forgiving on a bit of movement outside of the zone.

 

I'm glad people have been enjoying this though. It's easy to forget just how cool it is when you don't have many fresh views on it's qualities.