The Nintendo 3DS London Pre-launch Event – Brought to you by yours truly ;P

Dear All,

Today’s post is all about this:

GARFGHEHG HAGHDXFG H GASFD *dies*

*NOTE: ACTUAL REVIEW OF THE 3DS IS ABOUT HALFWAY DOWN. TO SKIP AND FIND IT, CTRL+F ” **NINTENDO”

So yeappp I got an invite from Nintendo to go to their London pre-launch event. My slot was at 12pm today, and I woke up at 10am thinking I had plenty of time before I TFL-ed it and realized it would take me a minimum  of 45 minutes to get over there (god damn the weekend maintenance). Yeah you guys out there are probably like ughh  watever *slap on t-shirt* *walk out door* but I’m a girl, okay? I have a legitimate excuse to take hours and hours to get myself ready.

Okay, two.

So at 10am I’m awake, at 10:02 I’m in the shower, at 10:55 I get out and start panicking and throw a dress on (in this freezing blustery winter weather, yeap) and a coat and my 1-up mushroom necklace. I pop mango juice and a chocolate bar and I’m out the door with my invite, my passport and the map of the location safely tucked in my brain. I’m on the DLR when I realize that even after all that I forgot to put any makeup on (this is relevant.. for later) and I have a monster zit on my nose. I decide to make like a proper nerd-girl and screw it because a pimple’s not worth missing this event over.

That decision would later come back to haunt me.

So, thanks to my amazing time-keeping capabilities ( ) I arrive at 91 Brick Lane, the address on the invite, only to find….. this.

 

The Door to Gamer's Hell.

It is 11:50 and I decide that’s good enough reason to freak out and panic because I must’ve mistaken the address. I whip the invite with the address out of my bag and STARE at it, blinking like a hummingbird’s wings, reading it between the lines, trying anything that might make a different address magically appear in front of me. I’m about to gouge my eyes out with my DS stylus in hopes of appeasing whatever Game-God is out there when a huge gorilla of a man in a suit, seeing the frenzied look on my face and probably flinching at my writhing convulsions and maniacal giggling, taps me on the shoulder and says as-a-matter-of-factly, ‘Yo here fer da N’tendos thing?’

 

I know how I can get you in...

Catching my breath just enough to breathe a ‘yes’ into his tie, he points over my shoulder and down a dark, twisty alley with pubs.. I’m not kidding. I start down it, turning around to make sure he’s not following me with the intention of jumping me or whatever and as I reach the end and turn the corner, I see this:

Abandon Sony, all ye who enter here.

So I’d finally made it! With THREE MINUTES TO SPARE!! I happily skipped over to the nice lady and they ticked off my name and gave me a wristband. I then joined the queue for the 12pm slot of people to get in. Just as they opened the door and we started filing in, a woman with a Nintendo tag and a somewhat tired smile stepped in front of me.

“Excuse me, miss, are you here for the Nintendo event?” she starts, and before I can tell her off those nice people in the photo guarding the door close it, and my jaw drops. I thought I’d just missed my slot. I am about to tell this woman that she owes it to me to sneak me in there when she says ” Would you be interested in taking part in a unique experience with Nintendo? It’ll only take an hour or so of your time and we’ll slot you right back into the event afterward.”

We want YOU!... to take part in our marketing ploy!!

Obviously the idea of being exclusively selected at random from a crowd of people by one of the biggest gaming companies in the world bore *so* deep into my skull that I would have happily signed my life away to this lady, even if I had absolutely no clue what was going on. So she took my details and then led me around the corner (of the back of this brewery yet). It was all very VIP/CIA-style (or so I think), and she was speaking into the mike-radio on her ear saying things like “This is Becky, approaching the door now, over”… it was all really, really exciting. Then we suddenly stopped in front of what looked like a service door or a door for the trash and a man in a huge coat with a Nintendo tag hustled us in, whereupon I was promptly shown up a flight of dogdy stairs and into a makeshift trailer within the building, with another guy named Bud and told to wait until we were called.

After about 15 minutes of awkward silence and almost-conversations Bud was called down out of the trailer by a disembodied voice, and I was left alone.

ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOONEEE

A little while later a lady came in. She took a look at my flushed, smiley round face and frowned.

Apparantly we were to test the 3DS, and do a tv interview. And I’d shown up fitting the demographic they were looking for but the problem was I’d brought a friend.

A large, red and white oily friend, tagging along on my protruding nasal implement.

It was completely embarrassing. The lady radio-ed someone and in two minutes a huge woman with a makeup chest the size of my law books burst through the door. She powdered my face, did my eyes and even put chapstick on my lips. However, no matter how she tried, the best she could do for that disaster on my nose was reduce it to a slightly darkish brown bump. God bless that woman and her overstretched mascara.

I was then hurriedly ushered down and told to wait outside a clean, white door. About two minutes later I am told to enter, and I peek carefully behind the door wondering what awaits when I am greeted by a scene from out of a Nintendo advert. I am in a pristinely clean, white room with a clean white table at the end, and two clean, white chairs on either side.

And Bud is sitting on one of them, and he gestures me over to the other chair to sit down.

I sit, but now for what must be the umpteenth time, my heart races and I start to panic. My imagination began to spasm. Was Bud working for Nintendo? Had he been spying on me all this time? Were they secretly recruiting for the company? Was I being filmed? How long have they been watching me???

The kind of face I apparantly make when I am trying to smile politely but my brain says I'm gonna die.

Then Bud smiles at me and nods me in the direction of the sole object sitting on the table. As I whip my brain back into logic-control-my-body mode my eyes flutter to the table and I see…

Well, I see almost exactly this, but I swear there was this holy light in like nine spectra of colour radiating from it.

I resist the urge to drop to my knees in praise of Fusajiro Yamauchi, and slowly, delicately, tenderly, pick up the console as if it were my own child.

**NINTENDO 3DS REVIEW STARTS HERE**

I should mention now that I was NOT allowed to take any photos. But I can certainly do my best to give you as vivid an account as I can.

THE CONSOLE ITSELF

The 3DS felt new and sturdy in my hands. It was slightly heavier than the DSi, but about the same as my DS Lite (i only know cos I brought them both with me to the event haha). One thing I was immediately pleased with was the reflective surface of the 3DS that didn’t seem to smudge easily. Granted it wasn’t metallic (and that itself is a plus point) but any reflective surface that doesn’t smudge immediately gets +3 Aesthetics in my book. How they managed to come up with that I have no idea, but if they sold souls to a devil to get that to work, Apple needs to cross check Nintendo’s call history and Hell’s Yellow Pages.

Seriously. How many of you iPod/iPhone owners have never seen THIS?

Some of the more immediate notable changes to the system hardware are as follows:

1. The top screen is definately bigger and brighter than the DSi.

2. There is a little 3D-slider on the side of the top half. It’s in a spot that’s very accessible with the index finger while playing but high up enough not to accidentally nudge while gaming. More on this later.

3. There is an analog stick where the directional keys used to be… It looks like a huge round button that’s nothing like an analog except for the raised edges and the fact that it can slide. That’s gonna take some getting used to. But it feels sturdy.. much more so than the PSP2000′s analog. I also prefer the raised edge around the round analog that’s meant to prevent your thumb slipping off of the analog, rather than the ridges like the PSP console has, because in a game marathon at that final boss level when my fingers start to sweat and tension is high, my thumb still tends to slip off the PSP’s analog.. and that is EXACTLY when you DON’T want it to slip.

4. The direction buttons have been moved below the analog stick. This.. felt awkward, but maybe again it could take some getting used to. In the games I’d tried they didn’t seem to have so much function as a ‘direction’ button anymore though, since the analog stick is readily and comfortably available and allows for better precision movement. For instance, in Resident Evil I used it to strafe). With games like Street Fighter 3D though it’s still good to mash those keys, even if only for old times’ sake.

5. The select, start and (new) home buttons are below the bottom screen. They’re lowered a little so it looks every bit like they’re part of the screen but they have a gray matte surface and need a little pressure to push. I guess that’s to avoid you pushing down on them accidentally since they’re right next to the frickin touchscreen.

6. The A, B, X, Y, L and R buttons are in exactly the same place they were before. No biggie there.

7. there are three cameras. One facing the player, and two facing outwards. The outward one allows 3D photo-taking. And it WORKS… you have my word.

8. What I didn’t like was the location of the power button. It is EXACTLY in the same spot, and for all intents and purposes feels exactly the same.. as the location of the START button in the previous DS. In the space of one hour of testing the games and functions on the 3DS I must’ve accidentally restarted the system like at least four times. I do NOT want that to happen when I actually start playing.

"Almost.. almost killed the boss.. crap i need to poop.. I should pause... *press* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Seriously, that should’ve been the home button instead, dudes. At least that puts my game on hold in the background rather than LOSING ALL MY DAMN PROGRESS.

THE 3D VISUALS – GAMES

GAME #1 – STREET FIGHTER 3D

The game itself is amazing. There was an option to play the game in Dynamic bird’s-eye view or the normal sideways version we’re all used to, but for the purposes of trying the 3D function out I chose the Dynamic mode. The demo version let me choose any and all Street FIghter characters (there seemed to be about 30-40 @@)  and granted the last Street Fighter I’d played was on the original PS, so I took Dhalsim, whom I vaguely remember to be my favourite when I was a kid.

I did NOT regret my choice. This guy’s limbs and fire were perfect for testing out the 3DS’s 3D function. I started the fight with the 3D slider on ‘Off’ and as the fight progressed I slowly slid it up. In the two seconds I slowly moved the slider up my eyes were treated to visual ecstasy and my brain OD-ed on adrenalin.

 

Imagine this guy's foot, like, heading straight for your face.

If you’re a skeptical person, like I am, then you will obviously be very careful if someone boasts that they’ve just invented some amazing new technology and then insist that they can’t show it to you because you can’t capture 3D images with a 2D lens. (I mean wait.. we’re 3D.. we work fine.. right?.. wait…. right?) But as Dhalsim rolled out Yoga Flame after Yoga Catastrophe and then his Ultra Combo, the cutscenes came to life in the palm of my hand. To explain the experience in lesser words would be a gross understatement.

At this point I should mention that there are TWO things about the 3D view worth noting.

1) The screen has to be a certain distance from your face and at a certain angle for the 3D vision to work properly, otherwise the images will blur and your eyes will hurt trying to adjust. So there is no way that you’re going to look over your friend’s shoulder to see how his game is doing, for instance. But the distance seems to vary for different people. I had to stretch my arms out a fair bit but Bud literally had his nose in the console.  This also means that I probably can’t really play with the 3D on while walking or in the car or train, when everything’s moving around and I can’t keep my vision steady. In relation to that…

2) the 3D slider was a smart option; without it I doubt Nintendo deserves its confidence in the success of the 3DS. The fact is, watching the 3D images zip around on the screen gets to you after a while. And with the problems mentioned above, you may just want to switch back to 2D every now and then. That’s not to say the graphics are crap… they look much more smooth and better than previous DS games. Pixels are not so obvious and ’round’ shapes definately look ’rounder’ than they would’ve in previous games for the DS consoles.

GAME #2 – NINTENDOGS AND CATS 3D

You know how on the back of the Nintendogs and Cats 3D box packaging it says that they look ‘cuter and furrier than ever’ you would just shake your head and go, ‘how much more furrier can they be?’ Well apparently thanks to the 3DS system, it really can. Every golden hair on my Retriever pup responded very well to my petting from the bottom screen, and the movement was magically natural. When you throw a ball into the room and they bring it back, or when they stand up against the screen so you can tickle them under their chin, I swear, it’s just as if they’re only on the other side of the Looking Glass. The only thing that made it all too obvious that it was a game of virtual pups and kitties was the fact that everything was soooo cleeeann. But the whole visual experience (and the pups and kits reactions to your call and touch) was meth for the eyes.

GAME #3 – ZELDA 3D

I’m not really a Zelda fangirl, but it was just sitting there so I tried it anyway. The 3D function worked absolutely swell on the attacks – the slingshot bit was fun, and Link’s fairy friend kept flitting right there on top of my screen. Oh, and I should probably take this opportunity to mention the 3DS’s ability to detect movement. Moving yourself around with the DS while in slingshot mode makes Link turn the same way you do, in HIS environment. Turning up makes him look up, turning left makes him turn left. The precision movement was beyond anything I’d ever seen.. at least, in that small a package.

GAME #4 – RESIDENT EVIL 3D

This was the last game I tried on the 3DS. Everything as mentioned above, but because it was only a demo version there were no cutscenes that really played on the 3D function. I hope they fix that =/ The shooting movement required the analog to move, directions to strafe, buttons to shoot and jump and aim and all that.. the bottom touchscreen showed weapons I could swap to and items I had picked up and could use. The sniper vision in 3D was nice, and knifing a ghoulie up close produced a really nice blood-spatter effect that worked great with the 3D function.

GAME #5 – ASPHALT

Asphalt is the first racing game for the Nintendo 3DS and I thought it would be the perfect game to test out how well the 3DS’s 3D functions and visual capabilities will hold in a fast-paced, constantly moving and changing environment. To my pleasant surprise, the answer was… quite well, actually. Granted it wasn’t perfect – the background, although much more detailed (I was very impressed by the realism of the falling snow and leaves with the 3D vision) was still pixelated at some points and there were still some ‘blocks’ of images.. – but this is all coming from someone who has spent the last couple of weeks beating up people on NFS Hot Pursuit. Also, there is some loading time, but I believe as a result the game is not choppy or laggy whatsover, as one would worry about. If you suddenly zip the 3D slider up halfway through a turbo or a corner, the game will continue as it should and only the change in 3D effect will lag, which means your race continues uninhibited. 3D effects are wow when you get into collisions ;P but more sparks would bring out the 3D effect more…

GAME #6 – AUGMENTED REALITY

The PSP was the first console to really make use of augmented reality in its game Invizimals. You place a card on a flat surface, detect it with the camera (for the PSP you had to attach a PSP-eye camera via the screws on the top, which looks and felt clumsy), and virtual images would appear on the screen with the real life backdrop in the background to give the impression that there were real, 3D things there that you couldn’t see without your camera lens (who other than me sees a fantastic oppotunity here for Nintendo to bring back the Fatal Frame series or similar horror games? ;D)… for a better explanation, search my blog’s previous posts or Youtube for an upcoming game called Ghostwire.With the 3D function the realism of augmented reality images are all the more… well, real. I shot a box, six boxes appeared, I shot a target in one of the boxes and my brain got another dose of high as the box unfolded to display a detailed, 3D popup training pit with hidden targets all over that I had to walk around the card to shoot.

Ladies and gents, Nintendo has taken augmented reality and made it not choppy, not slow, not glitchy and instead turned it into an experience that is for the first time truly believable.

There is so much more to discover about the 3DS – StreetPass, SpotPass, FaceRaiders, 3D photo-taking (which really works, I tried… although the 3D effect may be a bit off if the lighting is bad) but you can read about it all in their own news previews and prelaunch reports. The purpose of this review is to quell your fears and doubts and tell you that every word in Nintendo’s ads are REAL, and they MEAN that shit. It would not be an understatement, I think, to say that this console is a golden milestone in gaming history, and that if you can you should DEFINITELY get one for yourself. Nintendo has taken a screen and made it a bloody *window* into a different world, and it is something you have to experience if you possibly can. I would greatly recommend it. And when you DO get it, let me know, so we can walk each other’s dogs or battle it out in Street Fighter over WiFi or something ;P

All in all, a 9/10 experience,
0.5 off because of  the dizzy effect,
0.5 more for the location of that goddamn power button.

GirlGamers FTW!
ThEditor.

PS: If you see my face in Nintendo’s next ad, my 3DS just got £100 cheaper ;P