So the 3DS is released in Australia next week, but we just received one today. So partly to inform, but mostly so I can mix business with pleeaaasure, I’m going to be running a daily diary of my experiences with Nintendo’s latest exercise in wizardry. Ladies and gentlemen – welcome to day two of the 3DS Diaries.
I woke up late this morning, and my apartment was empty. I know that when my wife gets home I’m dead meat.
Here is the bed I didn’t make.
Here are dishes I haven’t washed.
And here are the pants I took off for comfort reasons, left strewn across the living room floor.
I’m so dead. But I can’t stop fiddling around with the 3DS.
Cleaning Up After Poopy
You may remember that yesterday, our Night Editor Elly Hart pretended she wasn’t interested in the 3DS, then sneakily stole it when I went for lunch. She spent my whole lunch break playing Nintendogs+cats. Her dog is called ‘Poopy’.
Poopy is a little poodle who wears a hat. I hate that little bastard. My plan was to buy a male boxer puppy and call him ‘Fidel’. Now I’m stuck with Poopy, and let me tell you – he’s called Poopy for a reason.
I took Poopy for a walk this morning. And Poopy did a ‘poopy’ on the road. I had to pick Poopy’s poopy and put it in a paper bag. Then he cocked his leg and did an almighty piss. Sorry Elly, I don’t have time for this – I want ‘Fidel’. Poopy is going to the great SD card in the sky.
POOPY DELETE!
Who AR You
I had people over at my place last night, so I didn’t get the chance to mess around with the Augmented Reality cards. I had to make dinner, then ‘socialise’. Plus there was a baby involved. Baby vomit on my 3DS is not a good look.
This morning my apartment was completely empty, so I felt free to bust out the Augmented Reality.
For a piece of built-in software, the AR Games have so far represented the most fun I’ve had with my 3DS so far. The games are slick, accessible and provide a genuine point of difference. Shooting is as basic as it gets, but physically moving the 3DS around the AR card, trying to get the right angle to shoot, is brilliant and, best of all, it was an entirely new experience for me.
Bizarrely, I found taking pics of my Mii, on top of the AR card on my living room carpet, utterly hilarious. The fact that I could run through poses, from your bog standard victory poses to the ‘playboy centrefold’ pose, is just a genius idea. I loved the idea of placing my digital avatar, which I had created by using a picture of myself, in the real world, on top of my carpet. There’s a lot of clever interplay between what is digital and real with the 3DS, which I find quite intriguing. Nintendo have developed some very clever uses for their 3D cameras, and I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring the options.
One drawback – I found that the AR Games themselves represented the first time that I had to turn the 3D completely off. Since the 3D effect is dependent on players finding the distance sweet spot, said effect doesn’t really hold up when you’re constantly being forced to move the 3DS around. Not a huge drawback, since the 3D gimmick is secondary to the Augmented Reality gimmick in this instance, but I thought it was probably worth pointing out.
Alright. I’ll leave it there. I have to run off and clean the dishes, make the bed and, possibly, put on some pants.
Catch you tomorrow.
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