Review: The New Nintendo 3DS is the 3DS done right

Just like the sunrises in the morning and the passing of time, you just know at some point Nintendo is going to update their handheld hardware.

Nintendo is well known for taking their consoles at some point during their lifetime and refining, refreshing and tweaking them to give the console another lease on life.

It’s now the time for the Nintendo 3DS to get its update, this time not one but two of the console’s variations are getting a refresh. Both the standard Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL have received a make over completely refreshing the line.

On the outside the standard 3DS has the biggest amount of changes. It’s a little bit bigger, there’s the bigger screens and those adorable SNES inspired action buttons on the front. If anything, the New Nintendo 3DS is more like a Mini 3DS XL in its appearance. This doesn’t mean things haven’t changed on the XL but for this review we’ll be focusing on the smaller, standard ‘New 3DS’ and refer to it as that.

Aside from how the new system’s look on the outside (screen size aside) the new console are identical on the inside spec wise. They both gain all of the new advertised features making that decision between the models just solely about screen size, physical size and how much you want those cover plates.

When the Nintendo 3DS was announced all the way back in 2010 the big craze was 3D. Movies in 3D, games in 3D and more, all of these required daggy looking glasses. The 3DS didn’t and it worked pretty well.

To get the 3D effect you had to hold the 3DS in that ‘sweet spot’ or the effect would break. Play a vigorous game and the effect would break and eventually we all just ended up playing with the 3D off. Games began to ship in 2D, most of Pokemon X & Y was in 2D and most 3D-required puzzles vanished from games.

There’s a new screen on the New 3DS, one that works a hell of a lot better and one that could bring back the 3D fun. The new screen doesn’t just rely on you looking dead on at the screen to keep the effect, it’s actually quite intelligent now. With a combination of the front facing camera, infrared LED light and the system’s gyro sensor the 3D effect now tracks your head and moves the 3D effect around to match where your head is, the angle your head is and gives the effect a greater chance of working. Even if you turn this effect off (for some tin-foil hat security reason no doubt) the effect is still better, but not as well as when it gets that lock on your face and gives you a near perfect 3D effect.

3D effect aside the New 3DS screen is a ton better than the original. It’s a perfect mix between the largeness of the XL screen and that crisp look you get on the smaller screen. I can’t stress enough that you’ll want to get your hands on these consoles yourself before you decide what you like.

I’d be remiss to not mention that both the New 3DS and New 3DS XL includes upgraded processing power and graphical abilities, it’s just that nothing technically uses this added power to show anything different.

The only real effect you can see with this added processing power is that Super Smash Bros. for 3DS loads faster; way faster than on the older consoles. You also don’t have to close the game to post on Miiverse nor use the browser, something we were all shocked to see when the game was released. The old console needs all the memory it can get.

The speed improvements also translate to the loading times of the console, menus and just a general performance boost switching between games and apps and the eShop benefits as well. You can now browse the eShop faster, download from the eShop faster and even download in ‘Sleep Mode’ when the system doesn’t actually have its lid shut. No more opening and closing your system 100 times to check on the progress of a download.

On the outside apart from the coloured A-B-X-Y buttons the biggest change you can see the addition of the ‘C-Stick’. Well that’s what Nintendo is calling, it’s more of a nub. The stick barely moves, you just have to tweak it to the direction you want. It is however analogue, while a Smash attack in Smash Bros. won’t reveal this, playing the demo of Resident Evil: Revelations shows that you can move the nub even just slightly to move slower and then further to go faster. It works, it’s not perfect and isn’t a substitute for a proper analogue stick.

Along the top side of the console there’s two new shoulder buttons, the ZL and ZR buttons. If these two buttons and the C-Stick being analogue sound familiar its because these effectively emulate the Circle Pad Pro, what little games that support it anyway. These new shoulder buttons aren’t hard to hit but they probably can’t be considered primary buttons unless you have really long fingers.

Aside from the buttons there’s changes everywhere you look on the console; the power button and the card slot has moved to the front , the volume slider mimics the 3D slider on the top screen and the headphone socket is back in the middle of the console away from hands.

It’s really hard to talk about the NFC feature of the console when nothing supports it yet. Amiibo figures are first due out the same time as the Australian release of the New 3DS so we’ll have to wait and see how that works.

There’s also a few changes that some people aren’t going like, you now have to use a micro screwdriver to open the rear compartment of the console to get the new Micro SD card slot. If you want to transfer your games to the Micro SD card, you better hope you either have a large enough card to replace the one in there or are willing to delete some things.

There’s also no AC adapter in the box, at least with our Japanese version and we know there won’t be with the Aussie version out in November either. This is such a stupid move, chargers would cost literally nothing for Nintendo; alternatively how hard could it be to throw in even a USB charger. This could then be used on an computer, iPhone charger or anything. Aside from these niggles the New 3DS is quite a machine.

The Nintendo 3DS isn’t as powerful as a smartphone, it doesn’t have the have the tech inside to push console quality graphics – but that’s kind of the point. The New 3DS doesn’t change this either. The 3DS plays great games on the go and gives you all the tools you need to get the most out of them. Proper button controls, the touch screen, 3D graphics, wireless play both locally and over the internet. Then there’s the one thing you can’t get anywhere else: the ‘Nintendo difference’. That’s Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Amiibo and something so simple such as StreetPass, no one even comes close to replicating.

All of that is now wrapped up in a console you can make your own, you can change the theme, the faceplate and it’s yours. The XL sorely misses out on the plates but that’s always been for a different audience. That gap between the two means you will have trouble deciding what’s worth your money. Sorry if you thought you’d find that answer here.

Australia, if you’ve ever wanted a 3DS, now is the time buy one. Plus you get to gloat at the rest of the western world, what price can you put on that?

For more videos, see our playlist which contains over 40 minutes of New 3DS hands on impressions.