Nintendo 3DS Officially Announced to Launch March 27! Also, how it works!

During a press conference and in a series of twitter posts and "official statements", Nintendo officially launched huge amounts of information about their up and coming hand held console, the 3DS. Nintendo said that the device will be set to launch in the states on March 27 2011 and will be sold at $249.99, which is a little less than was previously estimated! The console is also set to be launched with 30 titles following right on its heels. Good things abound!

Wait wait! There is more to be had! Also announced, was a whole list of fancy things the 3DS will be able to do. The system will keep track of the games you play, logging away how much time you have put into each game. The 3DS will have it's own Mii's, that can be customized utilizing the machines camera, and will also have an SD port should you so desire to import your Wii Mii's (lol). Sadly, the friend code business still exists, but players have only one universal friend code that will be usable for all games! So there may still be hope for this broken broken system of networking. Available to gamers will be the capacity to download old GB/GBC at this fancy and ethereal internet store! The system will of course be backwards compatible with DS games. Well, most of the DS games, whatever that means.
 

The Outlaw already pre-ordered this. Like a boss.

We know the obvious structure of the system. Bottom screen is touch, top screen is 3D. What you might not know, is that the 3D screen has been fitted with an adjustable slider, presumably to alter the distance at which one must sit in order to experience the 3D effect. (I will explain how all this fancy 3D stuff works in just a moment, and that will make more sense.) The 3DS is also fitted with all manner of fancy gizmoz such as two cameras fitted on the outside in order to take 3D images, a full 360 control-pad, a 2g SD card built in gyro sensors whose purpose is at this point eluding me; apparently we are still on the motion control train, and (this one is my favorite) a pedometer! Yea! You can walk, walk with your DS! It will totally count how many steps you take and you get coins for walking! COINS! HOLY SHIT COINS! I have no idea what this means, I suppose these will be usable for certain games in really obscure ways. Whatever, Nintendo. Anyway, the DS will be launched it a purty aqua-y blue color and black. Whoo! Choices!

Games! All these doohickies are cool, but what we want is to play! The 30 games that are said to launch soon after the 3DS are as follows.


The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
Star Fox 64 3D
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Mario Kart
Animal Crossing
Paper Mario
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked
Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
Madden NFL Football
The Sims 3
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
Ridge Racer 3D
Dual Pen Sports
Super Monkey Ball 3D
Thor: God of Thunder
CRUSH 3D
Bust-A-Move Universe
Samurai Warriors Chronicles
Dead or Alive Dimensions
Asphalt 3D
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars
Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D
Rayman 3D
Rabbids Travel in Time
Driver Renegade
James Noir's Hollywood Crimes

My eyes actually look like that.

Now, for those who care, continue to read my ramblings. Those who don't, stop now because it is at this point I will attempt to explain the magic that is the 3DS screen of magical 3D. It's not black magic or any kind of blood sorcery, although that is what I thought it was at first also. What it actually is, is a layered screen with angled slits. In order to create a 3D image, you need depth. You can fool the eye into seeing depth that actually is not there by shifting angles ever so slightly in a picture. Example. Look at this picture. Cross your eyes, and try to look at the center image with your eyes still crossed. That image, should have perceived depth (albeit blurry and painfully created depth). The ability to create that depth by allowing each eye to see a slightly different picture is called stereoscopy. The 3DS uses this same technique, but automatically, or utilizing autostereoscopy. The screen that the 3DS uses is called an Autosteroscopic Parallax Barrier. The angled slits I mentioned before, alternate, angling different directions every other slit. For instance, slit 1 angles left, slit 2 angles right, slit 3 angles left, and so on. The purpose of this is to send light from the image to a specific eye. So, if we look at the picture from before, what the 3DS does is put both of those pictures on top of each other, but the slits allow each image to only be seen by the appropriate eye, illustrated in the picture above. Sit the correct distance away, so the correct light is centered in the correct eye, and Voila! you have a perfectly created 3D image, with out the use of glasses. Yay science.