The Nintendo DS has proven, through its multiple versions to be a solid product in terms of marketing and mass appeal. Nintendo was ready at this year’s E3 to let part of the public get their hands on the next iteration of their portable gaming system, the Nintendo 3DS.

I’ve had the chance to try it after waiting a relatively short time (about 25 minutes in line) and I’ve got good things and bad things to say about it.

Let’s start with the bad. I promise it’s going to be actually short.

We all know by now the 3DS’s new features. Larger top-screen, an analog stick and one 3D screen without the need of 3D dedicated glasses.

I’ve always been a camper on 3D, I don’t particularly enjoy it that much, but I’ve never been one to complain either about headaches, etc.  But here, the 3DS, after only a few minutes of playing in 3D, had my eyes and the image itself twitching and I was getting a bit of a headache after a while.  Now I can give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s a newer technology, and the 3DS itself is still in development. It could also be me not calibrating it well.

And that’s about it for the bad. Now for the good, there’s a lot more.

The 3DS is something every gamer out there should be excited for. Heck, even non-gamers will love it, I’m sure and here’s why.

The 3DS features tons of new things the DSi doesn’t have.

I’m going to start on the not game-related part.

It takes pictures… in 3D!

This might fall into gimmicks soon enough, or some brilliant people will make some neat art with it. But I was pretty surprised to see the result of seeing myself, in a picture, in 3D after one lady took a picture of me with a 3DS.  The depth of the picture of myself and what was in front of me and behind was clearly visible with the naked eye.

The other feature that will catch the attention of the non-gaming mass is the ability to watch movies in 3D on it. Just like with the GBA before it, Nintendo is going to try again to sell movies for the portable platform. But this time you’ll be able to watch Hollywood’s latest 3D movies without wearing those unfashionable glasses.

I’ve watched two different movie trailers in 3D on the 3DS and they looked fantastic, and well, not any different then I imagine they will do with the glasses.

Now, now, how about the games?

The first one I got to try was Pilotwing, which felt a bit dull compared to the original. And was kind of a bad introduction to they system for me, but the 3D did work well.

Next was a Star Fox 64 remake. The game controls didn’t feel as precise as they were on the N64 and the 3D didn’t work too much for me on this one. I must say I was a bit disappointed there too.

I’ve also seen some tech demos. They were of NES games rendered in 3D in terms of layers of foregrounds and backgrounds and it was a neat effect that would probably have me go ahead and try. It wasn’t playable on floor though.

The Kid Icarus trailer was awesome. I haven’t been one of the people clamouring for a new Kid Icarus game, simply because, while the original was a great (and very challenging) game, I didn’t see how it would fit to re-use the same gameplay in today’s standards.  And as a matter of fact, it doesn’t look like they did.  The game looks amazingly fun and looks like it’s going to be a huge experience to go through, with multiple types of gameplay types. There’s some stuff done through flying and other stuff on the ground.

One last game I want to mention, and probably the one that left its mark the most on me. I’m not sure if it had a name, but it looked more like a tech demo than a full game. It wasn’t particularly fun, but it was more of a big hint at the 3DS’s capabilities to re-invent how we play games.

It had me taking a picture of my face, and rounding it up in 3D to make some kind of balloon with my face drawn on it, wearing a helmet.

I was then moving the 3DS itself as the controller, to spot the balloons and to through balls at it to defend myself, until the boss showed up, which was a bigger version of the other balloons and took a lot of hits before going down.

It wasn’t particularly fun like I said, but it showed a lot of the 3DS’s potential.

I’m going to end this hands-on with the hardware itself.

The graphics are really great. They’re on the level of the Wii easily, and they look better as they’re on a smaller screen with a good resolution.

The top screen is quite big, but it’s weird now that they don’t have the lower screen as big as the top one.

The 3DS itself doesn’t weight too much so it shouldn’t tire your arms out too quick through those long play sessions, but it weights enough so that you won’t get cramps from feeling like you’re not holding anything.

The analog stick, one of the new features, feels ok, but it’s still no 360 or PS3 controllers thumb sticks, so don’t expect as much accuracy as those.

And that’s about it, I only had about 20 minutes to get around and try it out. So that’s as much as I can say from my experience.

David A. 3DS, Console, ds, e3, Games, impressions