Greetings and salutations, all you anime crack addicts anonymously looking for your next fix of deliciously, deviant, and decadent animated narcotic. Today I’m going to return a topic I talked to about in a previous post way back in September of last year; the Nintendo 3DS. However, this time I’m going to add in another element, the Playstation Vita now that its out. I’m going to be a comparison of the two on certain levels, but also an update of somethings I addressed last time and some extreme claims about the Vita.
Last time I discussed how a lot of people on the internet where predicting the doom of Nintendo and the 3DS because of the massive drop in sales about 5 months after the launch which was mishandled(if anyone can point to a really solid launch for a game console please mention it the comments). So time has shown that either is true, of course although I’m aware that the Nintendo prediction is kind of open ended because a company’s future is always up in the air, however the 3DS one has proved to be very wrong. Over the Holiday Season the 3DS sold almost 1.6 million units and the weeks following have been strong as well. Add that to the fact the 3DS sold more units in the first 8 months in the U.S. than the DS. One thing I was wrong about in the last article was my prediction of a possible redesign of the system which didn’t come about(yet) maybe because the sales have rebounded. I around thing I predicted was if a bunch of quality first party games would come out they the sales would go up; and that’s what has happened with the Mario and Mario Kart games. There are also some great three party stuff like the Monster Hunter game and more coming.
Ok on to Vita, and with its recent release in Japan on Dec.17th out of the way it looked pretty impressive with first weekend sales of 320,000. However, after that the sales have dropped off a lot and have been below the PSP. So now people predicting the end of Vita already. I really wish people would not make such wild and unfounded predictions about the future of a product that just came out. I think I Vita will pick up in the coming months, it might take a price cut, but I’m sure it will in the end. The launch library was kinda underwhelming even though there was an Uncharted game, but I think was better then the 3DS’s launch line up. Just give Vita some time.
I have had a 3DS for roughly 2 weeks, and so far I have not been very disappointed, I figured I would let others know exactly how I felt about the system. First of all, I have found the 3D effect, and almost everything about it, to be completely useless. It took me half a week to even find exactly how to hold it for the 3D to work, and when it IS being held correctly, I must say the 3D does look pretty amazing, but it is almost impossible to use while actually playing. I end up tilting the 3DS a lot while playing, not to mention holding it out a bit makes it slightly harder to see easily and tired my arms out pretty quickly. So while not to say that the 3D isn’t good, it’s just completely impractical, even more so then wearing 3D glasses, at least to me. The graphics are definitely not bad, I’d say they are on par with the Wii’s, but they are not spectacular either, I would say the PSP’s graphics are equal, if not greater, and the PSV’s will be far better.
The battery life doesn’t seem too bad, if you are using it in sleep mode while listening to music or something, it seems like it can go hours before it even loses 25% of its battery life, while for when you are actually playing games I can’t really tell how long it would last, but I have had no problems with the battery so far.
It seems extremely easy to use and understand, although something that’s a little out of the way but rather important is the update button, it wasn’t until I explored the 3DS for a whole day that I discovered the update option hidden in the system settings, and after an update that took about an hour or so to finish, I had access to an internet browser (that I think sucks, compared to say the PSP’s anyway) and an online store. I explored the store for a bit, downloaded some free things, including a 3D pokedex, a Zelda game, and Netflix. The Netflix worked extremely well, although it seemed to have a couple of server issues at first, I was able to easily get in and watch some Inyuasha, there also appears to be no problems with closing the 3DS in the middle of a video and coming back later, although I can’t say if the same is true if you end up leaving your house with your 3DS. All in all, the thing is pretty simple.
The 3DS also has 2 cameras, I believe the camera on the back of the 3DS is capable of taking 3D pictures, and the front camera only can take normal ones. The pictures are not very high quality at all, and usually quite blurry. I couldn’t really notice too much 3D in the pictures I took, but you can edit them with stickers, as well as drawing on them and stuff. The 3DS comes with “AR Cards”, which include a mystery box card (by far the most important), as well as a small variety of popular Nintendo character cards, including Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, and Pikmin, which turn into characters that you can put in a small amount of different poses, as well as move around, and make small, medium, or large, and you can take pictures of these characters in the area you put them.
The games out for it at the time aren’t very good from what I have seen and read, I only have one at the moment, which is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I had never played the game before, and I must say I am enjoying it a lot, but I can’t say much about how different it is then the previous ports of the game, although from what I have heard the graphics have been slightly updated and any part of the game involving first person can be controlled using the 3DS’s built in gyroscope. There are very few good games released thus-far, it seems like the best at the moment are Mario games, Zelda, Dead or Alive, and Street Fighter. Also, using the mystery box AR card that comes with the 3DS, you can play a small hand full of games, including archery, fishing, and some sort of small golf/bowling type game. You can also unlock a few more levels for these games using 3DS coins, which are obtained by *dun dun dunnn*, WALKING! Yes, you must actually close your 3DS, and walk 100 steps to obtain a coin, with a maximum of 10 coins per day. Or, if you are lazy, like me, you can sit down and move your arm up and down for a few minutes to get a couple of coins, which is still exercise when you think about it. The things in the AR shop aren’t very pricey, and there’s not much to buy anyway, but you could probably purchase all of it with about 15 coins or less. There is also a game built into the 3DS where you take picture’s of your, and other people’s faces and aim the camera around to shoot them, it is a bit more fun then it sounds, but becomes quite boring after about 20 or 30 minutes, and you could probably even beat it in that time too. You can actually take pictures while you are playing, it seems like the 3DS was made to take crazy pictures actually.
The friend system is also improved from the DS, as the 3DS itself has a friend code that lets you register friends online, instead of every individual game having its own friend code. I might give more updates as I learn more things about the handheld, and as I get a few more games for it, but for now, I leave you with this.
