Some kind of 3DS thread until we have games to talk about

3DS hits Europe on March 25th, and America on March 27th.
Price: $250

they aren't selling red ones lolololololol
If anyone finds more information, please post your sources here.
Well how bout that, there's a convenient Youtube channel boasting all its features, hooray. Discussion is open to anything 3DS until someone decides to make a Kid Icarus thread or something.

The first thing my friends raged against was the identical-to-a-Wii pricetag. I think it's fine for the technology and cool stuff it offers.

I'm hearing about half the people who played it in 3D mode in Japan get a headache after 10-30 minutes. This is troubling news indeed.

Considering I am prone to headaches I can expect likely the same result I think, unless something changes.

I'm buying the hell out of this.

For $250 I'd expect the graphic capability to be slightly more advanced than it is, the games don't even look PSP-quality visually. I don't want to pay this much for a system that looks and plays the same as a DS. Half of the games announced are ports already, and the rest don't seem like having 3D effects would benefit in any way.

I'd be more interested if DSWare was even remotely competent but it has a higher garbage to quality ratio than any download service on any system.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

There's a slider bar on the top screen to adjust 3D depth, and you can turn off its effects at will.
This newfangled 3D technology in general is a bit hard for me to put into memory and perspective, despite having witnessed a 3D TV in action. I don't know, the phenomenon is really a come-and-go sort of thing, it really sucked me in for a few minutes and now I can't remember a thing about it. I get the feeling this 3D screen will have a similar effect.
Back on the price subject, I suspect it's been severely jacked up due to the two-lens 3D camera on the back (which none-out-of-none gamers are going to use).
5 EDITS YEAH!: I can't say anything about the PSP, but Pit's model from Kid Icarus is copied from Brawl if that counts for anything. The graphics seem to float in and out of Gamecube-level quality.

I'm not going to run out and buy one, but I can't wait to run out and play a demonstration model in the store so I can be better informed about whether or not I want one :)

Going to have to disagree here, the best looking game on the 3DS so far is Snake Eater 3D and it looks worse than the PS2 version. The Gamecube produced better graphics than the PS2. I wouldn't care about this as much if the system wasn't so ridiculously expensive. A handheld should not cost more than $150, especially one that features such incremental increases in power. 60 million people will buy one anyway so it won't matter, but as happy as I've been with my original DS I won't be one of them until it's much cheaper.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I'll wait for the 3DS lite. Should be less ports by then.

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

I already disliked it enough when the DS didn't support GameBoy and GameBoy Color games. Lack of support for GBA games just pushes it outside of what I want, especially at its very high pricetag.

Shame, really, as I'd like to try out that Paper Mario game they're making for it.

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Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!

$250 is overpriced, yeah... but it doesn't really bother me too much because I'd never buy a video game system at full price anyway. By the time I actually consider buying one, the price will be lower, there'll be a lot more games available, and the games that came out early will be cheaper than they were to start out with. And plus, any major bugs in the system (and the early games) will have probably been worked out by then.

I've only seen screenshots of 3DS games, but from what I've seen, the 3DS does 3D graphics much, much better than the DS did. Pretty much every 3D game on the DS, especially those that didn't have the word "Mario" in the title, looked absolutely awful... usually somewhere in the PS1/N64 "oh god why did they have to make this game 3D" range, but with a little less awkward character models and obvious polygons sticking out everywhere (compare the original Super Mario 64 to the DS version. Of course, that one's probably more because they had time to go back and improve the graphics, rather than an actual more-graphical-power change, but still.) Most of the 3DS screenshots I've seen, on the other hand, looked at least as good as a PS2 or maybe Gamecube game. And since 3D games never translate very well to still screenshots, I'm guessing the games actually look even better than that in motion.

I really don't understand how anyone can say it's not a huge increase graphics-wise.

I just hope they don't stop making games with 2D, sprite-based graphics just because they have a system that can make not-completely-horrible 3D graphics now. One of the best things about the DS has always been the fact that companies actually still make 2D games for it...

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Because it's nothing compared to the difference in processing power we normally see between console generations, but it still costs just as much as a system with a big leap forward would. Kid Icarus himself looks decent, but the environments we've seen are pretty empty, the texturing is extremely simple (and not in artistic way) and the aliasing is really, really horrible. It most definitely does not look as good as a decent Gamecube or PS2 game.

That, and it doesn't look any better than a rival system that was released six years ago. Again, if it were $150 or less I wouldn't complain, but it's $250 and the games will likely all be $40 or 50. They're charging a huge premium because people are into the idea of 3D entertainment right now, but the fact that it's optional to even use kind of implies that we're going to see few if any games where the depth of field actually matters much. I really want to like this system, but it looks like a DS with an analog stick and slightly better graphics for almost twice what my DS cost me years ago.

Edit: I'm also really bitter about this system having regional lockouts, especially given how shitty Nintendo's been about bringing lower profile Wii games to the US.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

(Word on the wind has it that the price is even HIGHER in Europe and the UK.)
Game price is iffy from what I've read, in that it varies immensely based on the retailer. The prices have ranged from $35 to $50 for specific games, as in one retailer prices such-and-such-game at $40 while an online retailer prices the same one for $50 (plus S&H). This reminds me of what happened when they brought 3D movies into theatres, no one could decide what to charge for admission, leading to nebulous prices that changed with every location and every movie.
Also I desperately want to buy all of the port games

EDIT: Response to edit
I have not heard of this and want to know more.

New game prices almost never vary from their MSRP in North America or Japan (and when they do, it's usually not more than $5), I don't know how it works in Europe. Retailers just don't know what the official price is going to be for any of these games yet so they're using placeholders. As much as I'd like to play Star Fox 64 on a handheld, unless they're making massive additions to the game it's crazy to charge full price for it (and they will).

And yeah, it will be way more expensive in Europe, all games are.

Region locking for both cartridges and downloads was confirmed back when the system was announced. If you mean my complaint about Nintendo not bringing games to the US, I'm still waiting on Captain Rainbow, New Play Control Chibi Robo, the new DS Chibi Robo, Trace Memory 2, Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fatal Frame 4, Lost Window (I want this more than any of the others, Hotel Dusk ruled and I'm furious that we never got the sequel), and probably a few others. Those are the ones off the top of my head that I'm really disappointed we didn't get. The Last Story doesn't have a US confirmation yet either, and it's shaping up to be a really big release. Nintendo of America has been absolutely garbage this generation.

At least I can import Lost Story from Europe now that it's out in English. Won't be able to do that on the next system.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

£230... $365 I'd have to pay here :S
Yeah, this is the reason I don't bother with handhelds I wanted to get a PSP or a DS, but when I see the price tags even now (and even in second hand hardware outlets) they haven't really dropped by that much, a second hand PSP still costs £150 ($240ish), a second hand PS2 cost £15.
I'd stick with the PS2 tbh.