Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

There’s a lot to like about the 3DS. I’ve had one for almost a week now, with the full slate of preinstalled software and a pleasantly fulfilling selection of five launch games. After beating up cars in Street Fighter, unlocking C-3PO (again) in LEGO Star Wars, and posing my cat with AR Pikmin, I’m ready to tell you about my 3DS.

The device itself reminds me of the original 2004 DS. A little clunky, full of seams. After coming off the beautifully refined contours of the DSi, the sandwich styled 3DS looks odd. Personally, I greatly prefer the DSi’s matte finish to the glossy, metallic 3DS. Compared to a DSi, the 3DS screens are a little smaller, which is a bullet point I don’t recall Reggie playing up. The top 3DS is widescreen, of course, but still noticeably shorter than the DSi. And the Select/Home/Start buttons are weird, subcutaneous mistakes. Do we even need Select and Start anymore, particularly on a touchscreen device?

The new analog circle pad is brilliant. The d-pad will always be a poor substitute in games that need analog controls… remember trying to wrestle through Mario 64DS? In LEGO Star Wars III – and yeah, that one is exactly what you’re thinking it is – you can run around just as you would in the big brother console version. Finally!

The charging cradle is a nice superfluous bonus. You can plop the 3DS in the cradle and tiny pins on the back charge up without actually plugging anything into the 3DS itself. If you prefer, you can charge the old fashioned way, without the cradle. Nintendo’s claim of three to five hours of battery life while playing seems valid to me. On a full charge, my 3DS has sat in sleep mode for an entire day and not dropped a single bar.

The 2GB SD card is already inserted into the system, which means you’ll forget it even exists. Games will save “extra data” to the SD card like it’s a hard drive. Screenshots and photographs – whether they are 3D or not – save to the SD card by default in jpeg format. Any program that opens jpegs will see them, although naturally they will not be in 3D in iPhoto. There is no standard size. Photos I saved using the AR cards came out 400×240, while photos I took with the camera were 640×480. Either way, not great resolution.

This is a screenshot from Nintendogs:

This is a 3D photo taken with the outer twin cameras:

This is a 2D photo taken with the inner camera:

I downsized the last two from 640×480 to fit inside the Aeropause site frame. Note that the inner cam photo is a reversed image.

The SD card slot is the same funky plastic hinge Nintendo used on the DSi, which has always bugged me.

But the reason you’re here is for the 3D. And the 3D is tops, daddy-o. Once your eyes adjust to the 3D, it is eerie how quickly you forget about MY GOD IT’S 3D and just settle in to that as the new status quo. Menus with depth, buttons that raise themselves up to indicate selection… the potential is here for designers to invent all new visual cues for boring old video game UI standards. Of course, most will likely just do what Street Fighter IV 3D does and have PRESS START appear with an embossed effect.

Nintendogs has a great 3D depth to it, as you walk your puppy down a street. And when your dog jumps on the screen border to lick you, drops of spittle fly out at you. The combatants in Street Fighter are like tiny puppets on a stage. AR Games makes 3D boxes unfold out of your kitchen table. Although I wouldn’t single out anything 3D has specifically enhancing gameplay, it certainly puts an exciting polish on the familiar… like having HUD elements resting virtual millimeters away from the game screen, for example.

I don’t know if you would normally move your head a lot while playing a portable game, but you can’t move much at all and maintain the 3D effect. Moving an inch to either side will break the illusion, although up-and-down is pretty bulletproof. I’m sure there’s some incredibly techhy reason why up-and-down works when left-or-right doesn’t. The upshot is, Nintendo is counting on your eyes and the 3DS being pretty much in the same place as you play. This is perfectly understandable for something calm like Nintendogs, but a frantic game of Street Fighter can bounce outside of that sweet spot if you’re not holding the device still and level.

What you don’t want is to be so jittery that you repeatedly bust the 3D, because that will bother you. If there’s a game that gets so crazy that you feel like the 3D is constantly going screwy, you can always turn off the 3D. That’s my main concern for the new Kid Icarus game, after playing it at Nintendo’s 3DS press event last January. That one seemed like a problem.

Conversely, thanks to the gyroscopic motion controls, you can wave the 3DS around like a fool for games like Face Raiders and have a great time… since you’re expected to keep the connection between screen and eye constant even while spinning around in circles trying to shoot AR faces of your office mates. Face Raiders and the AR Games cards are must-dos; they both offer an impressive knockout punch after the dazzling first smack of the 3D.

I have not noticed any eye strain or headaches after sustained periods of 3D play! Maybe that’s the f’real reason why the battery dies after four hours.

The UI builds on what Nintendo did with the DSi/Wii, which was always more than a little Apple-inspired in my opinion. Lots of little square icons. The only odd thing is that you have to dance through multiple clicks to actually quit something, as the 3DS always assumes you want to freeze the current app when you go back to the Home menu to do something else. It’s cool that the 3DS multitasks, sort of, but the overly simplified implementation just ends up getting in the way. There should probably be an option to “super quit” that bypasses the forced background pause.

Made your decision yet? If not, check back tomorrow when I discuss the software!