June 16, 2010 – Ever since it was first announced several months ago, people have been buzzing about Nintendo’s newest handheld effort: the Nintendo 3DS. While the handheld’s overall look is reminiscent of the Nintendo DS, there are plenty of new changes that handheld gaming enthusiasts should definitely be excited about.
Of course, the feature on the minds of most gamers will probably be the 3D effect. We were able to watch a 3D optimized video during Nintendo’s exclusive round table at E3, and let me tell you, the 3D effect is amazing. The way it works is by using perception to create the 3D effect. When you watch a 3D movie, the 3D effect is created when two images are put together when viewed through stereoscopic lenses. The 3DS employs the same premise, but instead of using glasses, a pixel overlay creates the 3D effect. When we were watching the 3D video, there was considerable depth to the image, and the objects occupied both foreground and background space.
Although the 3D effect is best viewed when the system is directly in the center of your line of vision, I tried tilting my head from left to right, and though the view is more obscured as you move your head, there is still quite a bit of space for you to move before the 3D effect completely disappears. If you don’t like the 3D effect, you can also turn it down using a slider bar on the left side of the 3D screen. Turning the 3D effect down lessens the effect and minimizes the amount of 3D space you will see. If you don’t want to use the 3D feature at all, you can also use the slider bar to turn the effect off altogether.
In addition to the 3DS’ eye-popping 3D effects, there have also been a number of hardware changes to the system. First up is the aspect ratio. While the bottom screen maintains the DS’ regular 4:3 aspect ratio, the top screen sports a 16:9 widescreen ratio, which optimized the system both for cinematic gameplay as well as 3D movies. Though we don’t have firm details as to how movies will be viewed on the system, several movies were mentioned as coming to the system, including this past spring’s How to Train Your Dragon.