Like most people in the country I went out and purchased my 3DS last Sunday. Of the reasons I haven't been blogging daily, as I intended to, this is the smaller one. In addition to being a games blogger, I have a second fake job that also doesn't pay, but is fun. I am involved in the Philadelphia comedy scene, writing, performing and taking classes. The Philly Improv Theater provides classes in sketch writing and improv with new 101s starting monthly. I took my 101 in October and have finally started 201, which has lead to me completely submersing myself into the comedy scene again. The last few months have been spent writing about games and doing little comedy.
I've yet to find the happy medium between my two passions and this usually leads to me going through phases. Months will go by without writing a sketch or performing while I tell all my internet friends about what Sega Genesis title they've overlooked, then I'll spend half a year trying to make rooms of strangers think I'm funny for my own validation and barely pick up a controller. The transition is usually instigated by me getting very sick as a result of a run of attending/performing in comedy shows or being out of town for games writing work. The PAX flu was avoided somehow, but right now I feel awful because I haven't been in bed before 3 since Wednesday. Things have been really active around Phit and many late nights have been spent in bars talking about Mega Man and Bill Murray. I've also been showing off my new 3DS to every comic in the city.
An impressions post for a new console is standard for any blogger, but I've been putting mine off because you could say I haven't been using my 3DS to its full potential. When the console was purchased I didn't buy any launch games to go with it. Many people are underwhelmed by the launch lineup including me, but it isn't so bad. The roster is admirably diverse and some of them seem to actually utilize the 3D in an interesting way. It's at least better than the DS's selection of mostly GBA games that had some kind of touch screen feature jammed in. Speaking of GBA games, I've been primarily using my 3DS to finally play Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Yes, I'm using my cutting edge Nintendo console to play a DS game that is so old it's a port of a GBA game. I also picked up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, which also is a game I might have had to extract from an ancient amber and clone. Actually I just got it at CEX and really dig it. You may have seen a post I made on another site about the 3DS's emulation of DS games. While it's not as bad as it sounded when Jeremy Parish wrote about it on 1Up, it's disappointing. The blur filter is juuust enough to look ugly, but I manage to forget about it once I really get into a game. I have yet to try the 1:1 pixel ratio feature, which actually shrinks the screen to sub-DS size as the 3DS has a much higher resolution than the 3DS. But, why would I want to see those hideous pixels? Nintendo knows what we want, and it's beautiful, muddy, blurry graphics.
When people ask to see the new 3DS the first thing I show them is the AR cards that come packaged with the console. Pre-installed games like Target Practice and Fishing are nice little tech demos and pretty fun in their own right. The character cards included are more disappointing. It's cool to see a 3D statue appear before your eyes and actually remain in place as you move the console, but Nintendo's claim of them "coming alive" is exaggerated. Once you cycle through the preset positions and take a few silly pictures of Kirby next to your dick, it gets old. I hope we see some AR characters move around the room like the Nintendogs. Unfortunately I predict Nintendo abandoning the AR feature pretty quicky a la the GBA E-Reader and... like every cool Nintendo peripheral ever. I really wanted to use that GBA-Gamecube link cable more, but Nintendo had new ideas to release into the wild and forget about.
You dirty little bitch
Also Face Raiders is pretty rad and Friend Codes still suck.
Play it loud
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