Email: 3DS D-Pad
“Not even the Virtual Handheld with gameboy games can draw me in because why the hell do I want to play classic Gameboy games with inferior controls? I’d rather play it on my original Gameboy where the D-Pad is in the correct position.”
Do you realize that the position of the D-pad is synonymous with the Game and Watch? Shouldn’t that signal Nintendo is trying to return to the fundamentals of old-school gameplay? I can’t make an assumption about the control scheme until I actually try it, although I can’t agree that it is as “frightening” as you say it is. All they did was put in an analog stick. Otherwise it’s exactly the same as the DS.
I think it’s easy to draw comparisons between the 3DS and N64 and suddenly think history is going to repeat itself. Although I don’t think it will happen like that.
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It feels as if Nintendo developers are so addicted to making Gamecube games, now they are making them for the handheld. The controller scheme, of where the buttons are placed, greatly foretells what Nintendo has in plans for the software. The placement of the analog stick in the dominant position tells me that Nintendo wants every game to be a huge 3d game.
I didn’t like these Gamecube-esque games when they are on the home console. I will like them less when they are on a portable.
With the nature of a portable, I don’t have time to explore a large 3d world. And it isn’t going to be comfortable doing that on a small screen. It feels as if Nintendo is interested in making console games for their handheld. This is the mistake the PSP made.
But then again, the software and even the hardware for the DS weren’t correct when it launched.
Video game analysts are like a broken clock in that they are correct but only at certain times and never in the correct context. This is what analysts said of the DS before it launched:
Some industry insiders were less kind, comparing the DS to Nintendo’s greatest hardware debacle, the Virtual Boy. “The DS sounds very gimmicky to me,” a source at a major publisher told GameSpot. “It’s like a ‘Crazy Ivan’ response to the PSP.”
This criticism actually applies very well to the 3DS. The analogy of the Virtual Boy, of the ‘Crazy Ivan’ response to the PSP, fits much better with the 3DS than the DS.
The big problem with Nintendo betting so much on ‘3d smoke and mirrors’ for the consumer experience is that none of it has anything to do with the gameplay. The DS had the touch screen, and even two screens, which greatly altered how we played games. I don’t see how the 3DS is going to change how we play games. All it seems designed to do is play Gamecube-esque games on a handheld.