When I used to tell my students I had a Nintendo DS, they always seemed to enjoy guessing which type I had.
“3DS?”
“No, I have the old one.”
“DSi?”
“No, the old one.”
“DS Lite?”
“No! I have the old one!”
” … Game Boy Advance? Darlo-sensei that’s not a DS.”
Many of them I guess were a bit too young to remember what the original DS was like. It was big, it was bulky, it was like a tank, it was built to last. In fact it still works perfectly fine and this is what I use to whoop people at Mario Kart DS.
So when the 3DS came out in 2011, I pretty much scoffed at it and wrote it off as a DS with a fake 3D function. To me 3D has always been, and will always be, where things fly out of the screen. I don’t buy the “oh you can see it’s depth as if you’re really there” argument for many modern 3D products, since when I watch a video I have a pretty good idea of depth … since it’s a video! Anyway, this rant is for a differrent day.
Passing a demo unit in game shops I’d have a go but could never get the 3D part to work anyway, in a large part due to my lazy left eye … so lazy. Gameplay-wise it was the same as playing a DS, and since all the games many people liked were on, or were still coming out for, the DS anyway I pretty much considered the 3DS to be going the way of the Virtual Boy.
Of course it built up a nice little line up of games and seemed to be staying strong. So strong in fact that here in Japan a new version of the console has recently come out. The impressively named “New Nintendo 3DS” at first glance seems exactly the same as the not so-new Nintendo 3DS, only with an extra stick. Since I really don’t know much about it, have a gander at Nihongo Gamer‘s video which can explain much more than I can.
Huge thanks to Chris for that explanation and explaining what the Pancreas is.
In fact it was from watching this video that made me consider getting with the times and springing for a 3DS. After all, there were now quite a few games I was interested in playing that didn’t have DS releases such as 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ known in English as Super Smash Brothers. After asking the opinions of my Facebook buddies whether I should get the regular sized console or get the larger size (XL in English, LL in Japanese), I decided to go for the big one. Thanks to everyone who participated in that conversation by the way.
So here it is. My new New Nintendo 3DS console. Hopefully it won’t be new for too long, having two “new”s next to each other in a sentence is weird … then again an old new one would be weird too. The large console doesn’t have the changeable plates that were in Chris’s video, so I went for a themed model. Actually didn’t accessorising like this go out with the Nokia 3330? Oh well, I got the Smash Brothers themed console and think it’s pretty nice.
Of course the first game I got for it was Smash Brothers, and so far it’s the only game I have. Not that that’s a bad thing of course (two “that”s …ew). I’ve played it daily and enjoyed battling players from all over the world. Even if I do use the same character again and again.
The Animal Crossing villager is known as Murabito (literally Villager) in Japanese.
I’m still new to the 3DS so an still experimenting and getting to grips with a lot of it’s concepts, like Street Pass and the weird Mii King Ghost Face Smash thing. I even managed to get the 3D to work for me and my gammy eye to enjoy the 3D demo movie about flying paper planes. To quote what I wrote on twitter:
I finally got the 3D on the New 3DS to work. It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was … the reason I now feel sick. G'nite.
— ダーロ (Darlo) (@darlosworld) November 23, 2014
If you fancy a brawl sometime, drop me a line with your friend code … I think that’s the right terminology … right?
