3DS Thoughts

I recently played a Nintendo 3DS at Best Buy a few weeks ago and wasn't that impressed. The game, Pilotwings Resort was too low-res (at least compared to the iPhone). I don't like the idea of Nintendo's increasingly barbaric "piracy protection", it's even worst than Apple's "walled garden". But the 3DS has buttons, which Apple's devices don't. The SD card slot is good, but no USB. And the 3D is really gimmicky. There's a joystick nub, which was cool, but felt a bit too unnatural. The remake of Ocarina of Time sounds good (they may just put in the original Ura Zelda stuff).

What I want to see, though, is a remake of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Given that the 3DS doesn't have a GBA slot, there's lots that could be improved for another remake. The GBA remake added some useful things, but also changed others.

Things that were good changes:
- Max rupees/bombs/arrows became a light shade of yellow.
- You can slash signs with the Master Sword and up.
- Selecting the Bottles were easier.
- You can keep both the Shovel and the Flute. Additionally, the Shovel was changed to be in all four directions, not just two.
- Starting at the last save space (instead of slogging back to the dungeon from the default spots)

Bad changes:
- The Hurricane Spin was nice, but not worth the other things (like the third Woodcutter, Four Swords)
- They kept the N64 voices, making Link very annoying
- They changed the Witch's assistant to look like Maple, which was jarring (she's in the Oracle series, and this isn't part of it)
- They officially named the Blind's Hideout dungeon to Thieves' Town, which made it vague as to tell which was the dungeon, and which was the town.
- I didn't care for the new script.
- The new way the intro was shown, forcing to you to watch it only when you have a new game...was stupid.

So if they re-did the way to get the Hurricane Spin, and trashed the other changes, it would be awesome!


Also, the "Virtual Console" has titles converted into 3D...but only Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. In addition to being needlessly unnecessary (playing Link's Awakening in 3D? Who cares?), it hinders new development, and frankly, there's a dearth of good GBC/GB games anyway. I could imagine them re-releasing Pokémon RBY (since FR/LG don't work with the 3DS) and being compatible with modern games, but that would be especially weird since they killed backwards compatibility in 2003 anyway. And trying to think of a great GB/C game that wasn't a licensed property is a bit difficult.

I mean, with the 3DS, it's so dampened all excitement from the get-go (the high price didn't help) which made it the most depressing console/handheld announcement ever. I almost want Apple to get its act together and release a gamepad for the iPhone/iPad/iPod family (after all, they made a keyboard) to put serious hurt on Nintendo's remaining business, then acquire Nintendo outright. Almost.