[Nintendo 3DS #2]

Eurogamer hands-on:

NIntendogs

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The addition of cats to Nintendo's wildly successful virtual pet simulator theoretically redeems it from being nothing more than a re-release, but sadly we're not allowed to play with kitties yet - only a beagle, a golden Lab and a terrier, gambolling around in a typically sparse Nintendo virtual living room.

I wonder, fleetingly, what on earth happened to my old Nintendog, Steven the black Labrador, in the several years since I last switched on his cartridge. Does he still sit in that virtual living room, flea-ridden, awaiting my return, or has he finally given up on me and run away? Thankfully the 3D effect in this update is breathtaking enough to distract my conscience.

The Nintendogs themselves always were profoundly adorable, but 3D multiplies the cute factor. Using a flat touch-screen to pet a 3D virtual animal feels strange at first, but you soon get used to it, and seeing a ball apparently disappear into the distance when you chuck it into the screen can't help but amaze. The doggies scamper in and out of the screen without screwing with your depth perception at all. When they're stood up on their hind legs with their paws up against the screen, the instinctive temptation is to reach out and try to touch their paws.

The 3D effect isn't the only addition. The camera allows for facial recognition, meaning that your puppy now recognises when you're holding the 3DS up to your face and leaps up for some enthusiastic licking. This didn't exactly delight me - I'm a cat person - but it reduced two grown men standing behind me to girlish giggling. It will be interesting to see how far the facial recognition goes: will Nintencats and dogs recognise their owners, or be able to tell the difference between new playmates and old ones?

Pilotwings

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At first it's difficult to decide which fact is most incredible: the eventual appearance of a brand-new Pilotwings years after most fans had given up the ghost, or the fact that it's magically in 3D in your hands. It feels made for this technology. A flying game is in many ways the ideal showcase for the 3DS - hillsides and buildings come gradually towards you and banking narrowly around corners feels absolutely instinctive when canyon walls come rearing out of the screen. The demo consists of two levels - a ring challenge in a biplane, and a jetpack challenge where the goal is to burst as many floating balloons as possible with your fast-zooming little form.

The demo appears to be set on the Wii Sports Resort Island. I spotted the swordfighting dais, the baseball stadium and a few other prominent landmarks from my hours spent doodling around in free flight mode in Island Flyover, wishing for a new Pilotwings. Gently guiding the biplane through hoops in Ring Challenge feels almost as natural with the sensitive, lovely-to-use 3DS analogue stick as it does with the MotionPlus. The quality of the hardware here is beyond question. The responsive stick is so far removed from the PSP's fiddly nub that it beggars belief.

The rocket challenge features a very Mii-like jetpack wearer, which raises the possibility that Miis might go cross-platform. It's simple to control - you press A to fire up the rockets and use the analogue stick to adjust the direction of the jets. The little pilot goes zooming and bouncing around the island at surprising speed, but the 3D effect and depth of field has no trouble adjusting. I found it worked a little better with the 3D effect turned down slightly with the slider on the side of the screen - otherwise my eyes would occasionally try to focus on my plane and the background at the same time and send me crashing into the side of a building.

Hollywood 61

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As a Ubisoft-developed title, Hollywood 61 is the only non-Nintendo game playable at the showcase, and unfortunately the difference is immediately apparent. The 3D isn't well-suited to the hand-drawn graphical style and all the characters and objects on-screen look like poorly stacked cardboard cut-outs. Turning the 3D effect down confuses the image, too. The cut-out effect might be intentional, though, and it's very much a work in progress, so there's no need to rush into the comments thread and proclaim that third-party developers can't make games for the 3DS just yet.

It's a puzzle-based murder mystery game, clearly aimed at the bewilderingly enormous Professor Layton-devoted portion of the DS-owning casual crowd. The demo opens with a car journey towards an old theatre, during which a comically animated cardboard man gives us a little badly lip-synched background information about the murderer on the loose, who has a dangerous obsession with the as-yet-unnamed protagonist.

The 3D makes parking up outside the theatre and getting out of the car far more visually interesting than it should be, and a lot more interesting than the first challenge, which is a light puzzle designed to turn on the floodlights in the theatre. I've mentioned before on Eurogamer that I have absolutely no capacity whatsoever for light puzzles. My brain just cannot understand how they work. Once the floodlight is eventually awakened through sheer trial and error, it reveals a body hanging above the stage with a written note inviting me to pan the camera around to find the hidden message. Panning all the way to the left and right of the stage reveals the words "YOU'RE NEXT!" daubed on the stage curtain in white paint, before the demo ended. To be honest I'm not enormously scared yet, Ubisoft, but the finished game does have the potential to be interesting.

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Op donderdag 29 juli 2010 09:48 schreef Nebo het volgende:

[..]


Nieuwegein valt nou ook wel weer mee, waar moet jij vandaan komen?

Het is in Zaandam toch dit keer?

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Nintendo will reveal the date and price of the 3DS in Japan on 29th September 2010.

The Mario maker poinpointed the date to Bloomberg Japan (via GamesIndustry.biz).

Nintendo revealed the 3DS at E3 in June. We were told the dazzling new handheld would be here in 2011.

Professional guessers (read: analysts) have predicted that the 3DS will cost between $249 and $299 (£159/£191). I'm putting my money on £159.99. What say you?

Ik ga nog steeds voor 25 maart en 199 euro. Ik hoop op 11 maart (symbolische datum) en 179 euro.

Stukje over Street Fighter en de 3DS

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We just interviewed Ono-san on the 3DS versions. He talked TONS of stuff, such a nice guy!

I'll have more details after reviewing the interview, but for now, he told us there will be a new, easier touch control mode aside from traditional controls, same 35 characters - version will be 'exactly the same' as in HD, and 3D effect is like if you put the characters in a box and you can feel the depth.

Moreover, he presented 'Street Fighter Fit' to Capcom. It was a Wii game, but then he was told about the 3DS. The 3DS D-Pad is not final, still changing and 'coming closer to what the SFIV team prefers'. Oh, SSFIV 3DS will have a 'surprise that can only be done on the 3DS'. He says we'll know more on a month an a half

Goichi Suda (Suda 51) – President & director, Grasshopper Manufacture:
“My first impressions of it was, ‘This is the toy of the future.” You can feel just how far and how fast games have evolved when you see the Nintendo 3DS. We’ve entered an era where we can bring worlds that we can almost touch and feel to life. Thus far, 3D has only been expressed with 2D. I think we’ve graduated from that and reached an age of expressing real depth through 3D with the 3DS.”

Matt Bozon – Creative director, WayForward
“I’ve stood in line for a lot of Nintendo unveils over the years, but even expecting to be amazed, seeing the Nintendo 3DS in person induced a sort of visual shell-shock. The system is as hypnotic as Turkish Delight and looks like a Hogwarts newspaper. The demos that showed games, movies, and photography in the third dimension had to be seen firsthand to be truly appreciated, with elements popping off the glass or dipping into the distance. When my play time was over and the friendly (but strong) Nintendo lady wrenched the system away, my phone, laptop, and other devices became flat, boring wastes of Z-space by comparison. But what excites me the most about this fancy pants is that it’s in the hands of Nintendo, so the games are going to be as brilliant as the machine itself. Can! Not! Wait!”

Cliff Bleszinski – Design director, Epic Games
“I dig it! It’s like having a crisp little 3D diorama in your hands. Also, send over a handful to me early, please.”

Shigeru Miyamoto – General Manager, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, Nintendo Co. LTD
“When playing in a fully rendered world with polygonal graphics, I think it’s been difficult for a lot of people to judge depth and space in those worlds. Sometimes you might see an object and not really be able to tell if it’s small and close by, or if it’s big but far away. Or, in a Mario game in particular, if you’re trying to hit a question-mark block from underneath, it can be hard to identify precisely where that black is in space; even trying to jump on top of a tree stump can be very difficult. But the 3D effect gives you that depth perception between objects, and it makes navigating those worlds much easier. So, games will change in ways that take advantage of that depth and height; that spatial relationship.”

Takashi Izuka – Producer, Sonic Team:
“At Sonic Team, we’re already studying the Nintendo 3DS. We’re very interested in the platform. We think the depth of 3D could really help the sense of speed, especially when you’re playing Sonic from behind-the-back perspective.”

Tyrone Rodriduez – Producer, Nicalis:
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a developer, a hardcore gamer, or don’t play games at all. The technology behind the 3DS, simply put, is incredible. Prior to seeing it in action, I was honestly a bit skeptical that the new console could pull of a believable 3D image sans glasses. But it works!”

Eiji Aonuma – Manager of Software Developer Group No. 3, EAD Software Development Department, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, Nintendo Co. LTD:
“Obviously it has so much potential. I really, really think that there’s a lot that can be done with it. I mean, we started working on Ocarina of Time for 3DS, and really got an idea of how we can treat the vast expanses of Hyrule and how we can show those in a different way using the technology at hand. That being said, there are some things being done with the Nintendo 3DS that have exceeded my expectations; some of the things where I thought ‘that would be really great in 3D’ – not so much. So it’s really a learning curve for all of us, trying to figure out what we can do with that to bring new elements into gameplay. But with Nintendo 3DS, it’s not just the 3D capabilities. We have that plus the touch screen; we have that plus the motion sense. And it’s a portable handheld system. You take all of those elements together and look at the potential that is inherent in all that – I think there’s just a lot of great things we’ll be able to do going forward.”

Warren Spector – VP & creative director, Junction Point:
“3DS rocks! I was backstage at the press conference and, like, every new feature was unbelievable! I knew it was 3D, but it’s got a 3D camera?! I can [potentially] watch 3D movies without glasses?! If he had said it had a phone in it, I would have stormed the stage and stolen the prototype. It’s unbelievable. I was telling some guys from Nintendo yesterday: I want the first one off the line. I’m not waiting for the second. I want the first one off the line. It’s unbelievable.”

Yuji Naka – President and CEO, Prope:
“My first impressions are very good. To be honest, I was really surprised. Nintendo kept this hidden for a long time; a lot of the creators I spoke to hadn’t seen it until [E3]. Everyone was surprised by how many featured are packed into the hardware – the two cameras, the motion sensor, the gyroscope, etc. I would love to create something using all of those tools. Before I went to E3, I was kind of skeptical. But now that I’ve held it and played it, I’m just blown away. The graphics performance is really impressive, as well. So I definitely want to be involved in making something for it.”

Masahiro Sakurai – Director of the Board Project Sora Co., LTD. Sora LTD.:
“It’s been a lot of fun working with 3D visuals and the Nintendo 3DS hardware. Up until now, when developers have compared game systems, the focus has been on whether the hardware’s graphics and AI are good or bad; it’s been this battle to squeeze power out of the hardware. It feels like this time, because of the 3D visuals, a lot of attention has moved away from those things and developers are freed up to just have fun with what 3D offers.”

Koji Igarashi – Producer, Konami:
“I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet! But I was able to see the dev kit, and I thought it was very interesting. I have many kinds of ideas [for Nintendo 3DS], but I don’t know if all those ideas are possible. I’ll have to test it and see what I can do.”

Jeremiah Slaczka – Cofounder & creative director, 5th Cell:
“I’ve been playing around with some concepts for the 3DS for awhile now. I’m really interested in not just the 3D screen, but also how to utilize new additions like the 3D camera and the new connectivity options. The 3D cam is pretty trippy. I could be wrong, but I think the 3DS offers the first consumer-grade 3D camera out there. Also, after doing five games on the DS we’ve pretty much tapped all of its potential in terms of sheer, raw power, so I’m glad to see the 3DS has a lot more horsepower than the previous system.”