The Nintendo 3DS and 3DS Games

Nintendo has always had a way of pushing the envelope when it’s come to gaming. When they revealed a system that used all motion controls, the idea was met with a little bit of opposition from gamers who preferred the traditional control schemes. Nintendo similarly turned a “gimmick” into a winning franchise with the touch screens on the DS systems. Now, Nintendo is planning on breaking the next big barrier in entertainment, one that has become tremendously popular lately: 3-D technology.

The Nintendo 3DS is a first in the handheld world, a 3-D game you can take with you. The stereoscopic screen displays in 3-D without the aid of glasses, and games are already seeking to take advantage of the technology. Besides the 3-D effects, the hardware itself is beefier than Nintendo’s DS counterpart. There’s more processing power, which means that a 3DS game is head and shoulders above the regular DS in the graphics department. There’s also neat little features like a 3-D slider, to adjust the depth of the graphics to your comfort, as well as the ability to turn the 3-D effects on or off entirely.

Nintendo has announced a lot of “maybes” as far as the titles for the 3DS games go, but the confirmed lineup of 3DS games at launch is getting a lot of people excited. Old school Nintendo fans are certainly getting many old favorites in the form of a 3DS game, like a 3-D remake of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Kid Icarus, and of course the eventual Mario releases on the new system. It wouldn’t be a Nintendo launch if we didn’t have some 3DS games for the kids, this time we’ve got Pilot Wings: Resort and Nintendogs. Easily the most anticipated 3DS game coming out though is the Resident Evil title from Capcom.

Some are complaining that Nintendo has attempted the 3-D thing before, both with the laughing stock that was the Virtual Boy, as well as several earlier enterprises that never caught on. Still others are claiming that a 3-D handheld sounds good but that many are complaining of headaches that will spawn from the stereoscopic display and the possibility of eye damage in small children. Nintendo responded to this by adding the aforementioned 3-D slider and the ability to turn the 3-D effect on and off.

With the launch of the system still a month off, it’s hard to speculate how successful this venture will be on the fickle gaming market, but most in the industry have learned, by now, that Nintendo has a way of taking what may seem to be a marketing gimmick and turning it into a pivotal point in that systems success. Despite grumbling about the motion controls on the Nintendo Wii, the system ended up the company’s most successful system to date. It’s likely that the company will parlay that same know-how into success with the Nintendo 3DS.