I know I’m being rude but have you gained some weight since we last met?
Coming at the end of the month is the Ninetndo 3DS XL. This is Nintendo’s four hundred and seventy fifth attempt at reviving the DS. Maybe that is an exaggeration, the DS didn’t need reviving until the over priced 3DS hit the shelves to a wave of public apathy and then, after playing the console in 3D mode, nausea.
I owned the first ever DS – the natural successor to my GameBoy Advance and when, a short time later the DS Lite was released, I choked out more cash in a costly exchange for the upgrade. So there was I with my new brighter, smaller more clever DS Lite, happy and content, when out came the DS Lite XL. Bigger, more screen for gaming goodness and suddenly I was cut adrift unable to keep up with Nintendo’s ludicrously short release schedules.
Unwilling to even try to play catch up I eventually traded in my DS and tried Nintendo’s console offering the Wii instead. Now once again I was initially impressed with Nintendo’s innovation…until the lack of decent quality games hit home (which it invariably does with Nintendo products – more Mario? Yes please.) of course and so my love affair with Nintendo perished and I moved on to Xbox and Playstation…until…
For my girlfriend I bought the 3DS – late last year. We were convinced that with new titles (mostly just Zelda) coming forward the 3DS looked a machine for the future, somehow failing to spot the inevitability of Nintendo blind siding us with the XL version now.
According to actual proper reviewers who don’t just hate Nintendo for some improper and inane reason like I seem to now, there is not much change from the 3DS. It’s bigger, but you can’t make the best use out of it because they haven’t upped the screen resolution and the console itself now too heavy to comfortably hold for long periods. Not that the latter will be a problem because the battery life although improved from the miserable excuse for a battery in the 3DS still only clocks between 3.5 and 6 hours at best, which is uselessly feeble for a portable gaming system. Oh and to top it all off, the basic control functions are still fairly shit, even though Nintendo knew that this was a complaint of the previous 3DS. These are issues that should have been addressed.
With the forthcoming Wii U and now this shambles, I have got to say that I am feeling more and more depressed by Nintendo. They haven’t been the major force in gaming since they tried to screw Sony with a little console called the Play something…grey thing, used cd’s…ah it’ll come to me when I’m trying to concentrate on killing George Lucas later. I’ll have the perfect shot lined up and then it’ll be “Playstation! That’s the one.” And in that eureka moment, he’ll move out of the cross hairs. What was I saying, oh yeah, Nintendo have been letting us down for time, but this DS rehashing seems to be getting out of hand.
Not to worry though, if this DS isn’t quite good enough, there will be a new one next week. And so the trade-in cycle continues…
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