Ooo 3DS

I have changed my view slightly on the Nintendo 3DS. I stopped by my local GAME store today to trade in some games for Fight Night Champion, I did say I was impatient, and was shown the stores recently arrived demo unit.

It was better than i thought it would be

I’m going to be honest, just looking at the 3DS I wasn’t immediately blown away. The 3DS seems a little bit smaller than the DSi, but the screen itself a little bigger. Still quite pretty comfy to hold though. And the gloss finish does make it look sexy (the stores was a nice shiny black one)

I was shown some of the built in software, first was the 3D camera, I'm surprised at just how well it worked and just how the sense of depth is shown on the top screen, I looked at a few of the pictures the staff had taken and played around with the 3D slider, it all looked amazing.

I didn’t take any pictures of it though as it wouldn’t of shown up on your screens, it needs to be seen live and in person.

Augmented Reality cards were interesting

Up next came the “Face Raiders” mini game, load it up and the 3DS camera takes a picture of you and wraps your face onto a series of floating heads that fly at you, you need to knock them back with what looked like tennis balls, or they could have been Pac-Man's power pills, these heads didn’t just appear in one place, they come at you from all sides which ends up with you twirling about on the spot looking like a demented spinning top.

Which I'm sure amused (or bemused) the customers who wandered in at the same time.

Finally I was shown the Augmented Reality Cards, these little cards turn areas in real life into a game on screen, as well as creating 3D models of classic Nintendo characters (Mario, Kirby, Link and Samus where among the ones shown to me)

I was shown two AR games firstly was a target shooting game a couple of targets appeared on the counter and I had to position myself to take shots (was fun trying to lean over a counter and aim, while keeping the screen central to keep the 3D working) until a boss appeared, a dragon which you had to shoot until its scales turned black.

The other game was mini golf (with bombs), deforming the counter where the AR Card was placed to create the courses, and yeah this also featured a dragon boss.

The thumb pad felt quite comfortable, but as there wasn’t any release games for it in-store yet I wasn’t able to test that. I liked what saw, I'm still not totally convinced I want to spend £229 on one though.

Pretty eventful day, off to play some Fight Night now though