I tried to do the Kmart deal today, but my Kmart didn't have any of the Nintendo titles or SSF4, so I said "no thanks" and just went to GameStop and picked up my pre-order without any games (no way I'm paying $40 for SSF4 when it sells for $20 on PS3 these days).  I haven't tried the 3D camera, Face Raiders, or the AR cards yet, so I can't comment on those things yet, but I did the Mii Maker, setup Street Pass, played a DS game, and watched the OK Go video you get after you do a system update.

I agree with Jay about the way the system feels in the hands, and I like the circle pad from the little I messed with it in Mario 64.  I recommend turning the brightness down to Level 4 if you're playing DS games to reduce (but not eliminate) the oversaturation of colors.  The image stretching on DS games is a bit noticeable, but it doesn't bug me as much as the oversaturation.  If you hold START+SELECT when you start a DS game, you can see it in its original resolution, but it makes it so tiny that it's not worth doing.  As for the 3D, I'm thoroughly umimpressed.  It's neat in a "well, isn't that something" sort of way, but I think I'll only be enabling it when showing others or trying something new on it for the first time as it makes the screen darker, less crisp, and requires you to concetrate harder on the top screen.

One of my friends is in NYC right now, and he said he went to the Nintendo World Store this morning to get his.  He said there were only 10 people waiting in line by the time the store opened.  I assume the poor turnout was due to the midnight launch at Best Buy.  I found plenty of units available for sale at both Kmart and GameStop so this launch seems to be consistent with my experience at the DS, PSP, and DSi launches where units were easy to get in the first week.

The 3DS also marks the first system I've ever bought without any games* which is a testament to how lackluster and overpriced the launch lineup is.

*Technically, I bought the GBC without any games since I imported it from Japan prior to the U.S. launch, but I picked up Link's Awakening DX and the terrible Quest for Camelot on the U.S. launch.

you should at least buy Ghost Recon so Ubisoft won't stick Julian Gollop in a dark, damp hole somewhere.

Then again, this isn't exactly a good economy for voting with your wallet, and Ubisoft isn't really the type to listen anyway...

Was in downtown Chicago this weekend and they had 3DS Demo Stations set up at the main train station, so got to give it a quick 2 minutes of hand time.

Played one round of SSF4 and the 3d effect was quite noticeable and "neat", then went over to Steel Diver for a minute and got bored enough to walk away.

Cool for 2 minutes, but when I haven't even bought a 360/ps3/iphone/ipad, this doesn't qualify as a must have device either.

Got a few "real world" impressions, now that I've had the 3DS for a week.

The system feels good in the hands, not unlike the Lite, if just a touch heavier.  Not a fan of the glossy finish, as it's a horrible fingerprint and dust magnet both inside and out -- which is all the more prevalent on the darker colored Cosmo Black.  It looks sleek and gorgeous when wiped down, though, and I really dig the two-toned gun metal gray bottom. 

I've been growing more and more accustomed to the circle pad, which is worlds better than the PSP analog nub.  8-way direction does indeed work well, even for DS games like Mario 64 and Okamiden.  Any of you guys got a squeaky d-pad too?  I heard this is common problem with a lot of people, but nearly all of them have said that it goes away after some breaking in.  Apparently, the squeaking is caused by the d-pad being a bit too flush to the plastic finish.

I've been putting Super Street Fighter IV through its paces.  I tried 3D for all but a few rounds, and then switched to 2D for the remainder of my time.  I prefer the game running at 60fps, and with the 3D turned on, the framerate effectively gets knocked down to 30fps.  (Sadly, 30fps is the norm during online matches, regardless if you're using the 3D or not.  It doesn't break the game, but it does look a lot less impressive technically.)  My online matches have ranged from running fairly smooth to being complete clusterfracks worth of lag.  It's unfortunate you can't see how strong the connection status is for your opponents like the console versions, so you're always taking a gamble whenever you take on a new opponent.  I still can't pull off moves with 100% accuracy like on the console versions, so I've been dabbling in the touch-centric Lite mode.  It's great that you can map and tweak every single button to your own preference.

Also been enjoying Face Raiders, which takes excellent advantage of the 3DS's camera and gyroscopic sensor features.  Haven't had any Street Pass experiences, yet, but I love the way the 3DS tracks how many steps you've taken when you have it on your person.  Such a neat feature, and I'd definitely be temped to take the system along with me whenever I do my jogging sessions.

On the downside, regular DS games look terrible when stretched to the 3DS's native screens.  Colors are washed out, and the pixels are larger and uglier.  Yes, START+SELECT makes the images look good again (maybe even better, thanks to the compacted resolution), but at the cost of size.  So small, I swear it's nearly the size of the Game Boy Micro's screen!  Not fun.  I'll definitely be sticking with my Lite for optimal DS gaming experiences.

Finally, I'm glad that the system's build and touch screen size is roughly the same as the Lite's.  I had an extra DS Lite carrying case, as well as an extra Hori Lite screen protector which I was able to effectively place on my 3DS touch screen.  I'm all set.

Is the touch screen on the 3DS the same size as the Lite's was?  If so, I think I also have an extra DS Lite screen protector floating around that I should be able to use with the 3DS upon acquisition of one.

More or less.  The 3DS is 3.02 inches, while the Lite's is 3.00 -- a negligible enough difference so that you shouldn't have a problem.

Looks like a sweet piece of tech, but I'm going to pass until there are actually worthwhile games on it. I was an early adopter of the original DS and felt burned by the lack of quality titles during the first year, so I'll wait and see.

Have you guys been using the Stress Pass (LOL Street Pass ^^;;) feature?

I've been using it but have only had I think four in total so far. My usual routes wouldn't be great for that sort of thing. It's fun though - I actually think that's going to be a bigger and bigger draw. It's a nice surprise bringing someones Mii in and then there's a game where you use them to fight battles for you.

Having played with the 3DS for what must be about 10 days now, I love it. It's hard on my eyes and it's easy to see why - effectively the system simulates bad eyesight. The 3D fools you into focusing beyond the screen but, because that's still where the actual content is, you're then out of focus and your eyes try to pull focus back in. The two can't happen at the same time and so the system renders proper focus impossible.

But the 3D does look great and I love it. It's just another layer on top.

SFIV is very polished. I wasn't impressed with SFIV when it came out and many of my reservations still stand but I have played more of it on this, having only got it because there wasn't all that many games at launch. I started with the d-pad and the d-pad itself isn't bad but that it's much lower than the buttons started to get uncomfortable so I moved to the circle pad. It's not ideal, as I often end up missing jump directions and find it hard to judge diagonals but, for the most part, it works. Loads of characters to play with and some great battles. I think SFIV FINALLY won me over with a Dudley vs Balrog match, with SF3 music remix playing. I do still feel that, visually, the SFIV style doesn't do many characters justice though and two of my Alpha favourites, Guy and Cody, just don't seem as cool.

The port is great but the static background characters are really odd. Especially the big hippos. I really don't understand what restriction would have led to that. And isn't the Secret Lab background supposed to be in Arcade mode? It goes straight to Crumbling Lab. Or is that the way it's meant to be?

Ridge Racer is good and the few new courses are really excellent. Which makes it more of a shame that there are so few new tracks here. With so many classics I have already overplayed and really long tournaments, it feels like a grind at times.

And Pilotwings is nice.

What I really need is a meaty experience type game. The three games I have are kind of surface games if that makes any sense, not immersive. I'd like something I can get stuck into. Tempted to get the Lego Star Wars game but I'm not sure.

Overall, I'm really liking my 3DS.

Yeah, I'm definitely feeling that "early adopter" blues at the moment yeah.
I've gone back to my DS Lite because I still have a buttload of stuff to do, so I don't expect to visit my 3DS for a while.

I've been using the Street Pass (let's not pass stress to each other shall we? ) function like crazy. I'm at the Final Boss of the mini-dungeon and I have only 2 more puzzles to complete (Link and Kirby), and my Wii Square is stacked with, like, 70 people or something. That's the advantage of living in Japan perhaps: lots more gamers about.
I've also run into the same people several times, meaning they level up in the dungeon mini-game, making them much stronger. It's what I love most about the 3DS so far, and I can't wait to see what future games are going to do with it.

Sweet; thanks for the info!  I'm sure google search would get me my answer eventually to this next question, but for the sake of simplicity I'll just ask if anybody knows - even though the 3DS is region locked, can you street pass with people from another region?  Like if I took an American 3DS to Tokyo and wandered around with it, would I still pick up a bunch of Japanese Miis?

Gosh, it's been so long since I've even bothered with Arcade Mode on the console versions, that I can't even answer that.  But I'm almost certain that it's Secret Lab with Seth on the first round, which then transitions into Crumbling on the second.

I'm guessing they needed to keep the backgrounds static for the sake of keeping the characters running at 60fps.  Anyway, I'm less concerned about the stiff backgrounds, and irked that they've opted out of dual language options.  I'm sorry, but characters like Ryu and Sakura just don't sound right in English.

I'm also saddened that we couldn't get the Arrange BGM option like in the console versions, so we don't get to hear the character-specific themes outside of the Arcade Mode-only Rival fights.

Yeah, the big part of why I play arcade mode is to hear the remixed themes during the rival battle. Some of them are excellent.

One of things that's always irked me about the console game is that you have to choose between original and arranged music.  Why can't it just randomly play from both sets when fighting online?

So I went ahead and downloaded my first couple of games from the 3DS e-shop - and up till now, I had plum forgotten that Nintendo included a 2GB SD card with the system.  Reason being is that the card was already in the 3DS's slot right out of the box.  Needless to say, I felt pleasantly surprised.  And just a little stupid. 

The new 3D effect in Excitebike NES is very cool looking, by the way.

Yeah, Excitebike is pretty cool. And lovely to have Link's Awakening DX too - my favourite Zelda.

I decided to preemptively replace the 2GB card with a 16GB card.  SD cards are so cheap these days I figured this might prevent me from having to do card to card transfers later on.  I downloaded the 10 3D E3 trailers which are a lot cooler than I was expecting -- I don't know if I could actually play these games in 3D, but they sure do look nifty in 3D in the trailers.  I also picked up the free throwaways (Excitebike 3D and Pokedex 3D) and three DSi games: Shantae, X-Scape, and Dark Void Zero.  Haven't played any of those yet, so impressions on those will have to come later.

As for the store itself, Nintendo is disorganized as usual.  Instead of be able to search the DSi shop by sensible things like the alphabet, publisher, genre, etc., everything's broken down into random categories, and I had to find most games by actually searching for them by name using the search function.  I would imagine the third parties aren't too thrilled about this since it really limits the exposure of their titles.  It's also painfully slow.  Why is that my Xbox 360 can download 2GB demos in less than an hour, but these dinky little Nintendo shop things take forever (both over WiFi, btw)?  Is it too much to ask for a little infrastructure investment?

3D is getting slapped in the face!

1)amazon suspends 3DS sales
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gad … l?iref=NS1

2)3D hurts your eyes
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation … l?iref=NS1

but on a "good" note, Nintendo releases 3D video:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/07/25/ … ?hpt=hp_c2

has anyone used the 3D video capabilities? For those with a 3DS, how are your eyes holding out on the 3D?

Did you actually read the first article?
There was an inventory issue that was almost immediately resolved.
It's completely unrelated to the quality of the product.

It also says only 28 out of 359 reviews gave it one star. I would hardly call that "a slap in the face".

As for the eye-hurt thing, I guess it's highly personal.
I have used the device for as long as 2 hours straight and never had a single moment of discomfort.

If you can watch a feature-length movie in 3D, you can play on the 3DS, no problem.

Oh goody, a new Nintendo console doesn't have affront-to-God level sales right out the gates and we're STRAIGHT back to the "Nintendo is doomed" mentality.

No problems here.  I used the system a lot on vacation this year, so I was wary of using the 3D mode much at all (drains battery power much faster), but I do generally like it when I'm not worried about that.

Yeah, I don't use it much either because of this. Also I tend to play handhelds most leaning on my side at bedtime, making the system jostle more and the 3D less useful. If I do find myself in a situation where I want 3D and I'm able to sit just so, the effect works very well. But I'd just as soon not have to worry about posture and battery life, so I usually do without.

True, true...
but at any rate, the article was not exactly kind to Nintendo, what with the last words being:

"Out of 359 reviews on the page, 28 rated the 3DS with one star. Complaints range from technical problems with the handheld device to a lack of games to the now-familiar issue of headaches after playing."

Typically people who give 1 star ratings on Amazon are as likely to do so because their girlfriend looked at them the wrong way in the morning as for any legitimate reason.  Half of them simply do it because of some particular aspect of the product they dislike without having even owned it.

That an article would reference that as any sort of statistic is pretty pathetic.

The 3D makes my eyes ache. And I haven't even played it all that much. This thing is pretty much useless. Bought it a month ago and it's mostly been draining battery in sleep mode. If Konami cancels Contra 3DS, this thing is going to be sold so fast.

You aren't interested in any of the other 3DS games which have been announced but which we have essentially no details about? Just Contra?

Well, here are the games I'm interested in in some measure:

    Brave Company (Namco Bandai/Cattle Call)
    Beyond the Labyrinth (Konami/tri-ace)
    Chocobo Racing 3D (Square Enix/h.a.n.d.)
    CONTRA 3DS (Konami)
    Kid Icarus: Uprising (Nintendo/Project Sora)
    Nano Assault (Majesco/Shin’en Multimedia)
    Mighty Switch Force (WayForward Technologies)
    Shinobi (Sega/Griptonite Games)
    Sonic Generations (Sega/Dimps)
    Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (Square Enix/indieszero)

However, note that most of those are "Eh, I'll try it when it comes out". This list doesn't really have anything like Feel the Magic, Advance Wars DS, Castlevania DoS or Final Fantasy III back from the original DS. And those releases are spread out way into 2012. CONTRA is the sole go-to game here, and if something should happen to that, I might decide I'm not too interested in the rest of this bunch and just sell off this sorry excuse of a handheld console.

New development!  The 3DS is dropping to $169.99 in August (in Japan it's dropping to 15,000 yen from 25,000).

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 … 9-Great-3D

Current 3DS owners get 20 free downloadable games including 10 GBA games that *won't be available to anyone else.*

That is a MASSIVE price cut and a really weird idea for a reward (seriously as a current owner I would not be unhappy if they allowed anyone to pay for those games we're getting free - why make them unavailable at all?)

I'm not so easily pleased by these old games, which are supposed to trickle in at some point. The 3DS has just been a huge disappointment and this makes it even worse. Maybe the price cut will stop the bleeding of cancelled and delayed games, but it also reeks of desperation, and I feel simply cheated out of my money. And now I can't even sell the system for most of what I paid for it. Thanks, Nintendo!

It's so nice to see that there is a limit to the strength of Nintendo's reality distortion field.  For a time, I worried that Nintendo would be able to coast forever on the backs of its loyal fans and undiscriminating casuals.

Intriguing development. Stay tuned for more action.

I think the "reward" is pretty fair for early adopters that haven't had much to snack on and might feel a little screwed over. 20 free games, most of the announced ones pretty classic.

Heh, funny. Well, I think the issue is that Nintendo really has not had any competition with regards to a handheld. However, maybe the next generation PSP will be something to watch... if Sony doesn't screw up once again!

Yeah, this is huge news.  Nintendo must have a sh!tload of inventory and big holiday projections to meet if they're doing something this drastic, especially in light of how much they're going to give up on the exchange rate.  I think 20 free games for early adopters is a good deal, especially since they're mostly Nintendo classics (let's not forget that Sony only gave us four games for letting us get hacked).  I'm not sure why they need to be restricted from sale to other people, and I hope Nintendo will make them available to everyone later on.  At least this finally confirms that Nintendo is planning on adding GBA games to the virtual console.  The price cut is also significant because it brings the 3DS below the price of the iPod Touch and well below the price of the Vita.  At $170, the 3DS is much easier to recommend to people than at $250.  Now Nintendo just needs to get some games out for it.

As nice as the gesture is, the "won't be available to anyone else" thing is very bothersome. It's that kind of shit why I think video gaming sucks these days. It's one thing to get a gift for a preorder, it's another to be locked out of something because of where you live, when you bought the game (or in this case system), or because you're better than x % of players. It's just...such a turn off to playing games in general, as it were.

It seems though that what they've said is that they have 'no plans' to make them available. That does not mean they won't be available and my guess is they will at some point - they're going to say this to get people to buy a 3DS early.

It's not really fair to compare the two situations.  Sony didn't put out a press release asking hackers to kill PSN for a month.  Nintendo did put out a press release and it essentially said "Hey early adopters, thanks for the free 80 bucks, here's a bunch of games you've already played."  At least the Sony offerings were current generation and, you know, original.  It would have made more sense for Nintendo to send out vouchers for one free 3DS game instead.  Who in their right mind is going to buy a 3DS between now and the 12th?  No one, because 80 bucks for a bunch of old "been there, done that" games is silly.

The price drop could be due to many factors.. 3DS not selling well, third party devs pissed about hardware sales, disappointing software lineup, 3D is too gimmicky, Vita's $250 price, take your pick.  Whatever the reason, this is pretty embarrassing for Nintendo and it doesn't make me want to run out and buy a 3DS any time soon.

But on the flip side, us early adopters can now carry the official title of "Nintendo 3DS Ambassador."  Score!