Last June at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, a k a E3, in Los Angeles, Nintendo’s president, Saturo Iwata, spent the final third of the company’s annual press conference discussing their latest invention, the 3DS, a pocket-size game system that displays glasses-free 3D images. Yet Iwata had a problem. Because of the specifications of the technology, he was unable to show off the device’s 3D capabilities on the jumbotron-sized screen in the room.

What happened next is one of those surreal only-at-E3 moments: several hundred women, dressed identically in black leggings, white shirts and form-fitting black cardigans, poured into the auditorium bearing 3DS units discretely chained to a fashion-forward security belt around their midsections. If you wanted to see a 3DS in action, you had to talk to one of these women, which was harder than you think, thanks to the stampeding horde of excitable writer types and geeks clamoring to get near them.

I chose to hold onto my dignity — and my skepticism (which has served me well over the years) — for a little longer.

There are a lot of people hopping on the 3D bandwagon these days. I’ve gone to plenty of 3D movies in the last year, played videogames on Sony’s 3D televisions and the bottom line is 3D in no tangible way makes stories more engaging or characters less, well, one-dimensional. A good game is a good game; a good movie is a good movie. If anything, 3D gets in the way of my enjoyment of entertainment (see: Sanctum) and, for some inexplicable reason, it often leaves a dull, thudding ache behind my right eye.

Nevertheless, the next day, I reported for my appointment at the Nintendo booth inside L.A.’s Convention Center. I got the chance to personally try the 3DS, which was now chained to a heavy table. My first reaction: Holy shit!

I’ll be damned, but, true to Iwata’s words, the image literally floated before my eyes and rotated in midair. I thought of Joseph Cornell’s intricate boxes, with all of those tiny, tangible objects inside. I thought of the terrarium I’d made in grade school, this miniature ecosystem contained inside a fish bowl covered with a skein of Saran Wrap. Over the next few days, people were forever asking, what was the 3DS like? I answered with the same vaguely poetic response: “It felt like I was holding a little world in my hands.”

My unshakeable skepticism had been shaken. My soul had been stirred. I’ll never forget that moment. I wondered if Nintendo had ingeniously discovered a viable realm for 3D. Maybe this is where 3D had belonged all along — literally, in my hands instead of on a 40-foot movie screen.

Nine months later, the Nintendo 3DS ($250) arrived on my desk. Would it change the way videogames are played? More importantly: did it still have the ability to stir my soul? Here is a diary of my first 72 hours with the 3DS.

DAY ONE Thursday, March 17th

The first thing I notice is the 3DS packaging contains a shocking amount of paperwork. Two, possibly three trees were harmed during the packaging of this device. I’m currently living in multilingual British Columbia, which may explain why my 3DS arrived with three Quick-Start guides (one in English, Spanish and French). Then there’s the Operations Manual, clocking in at an astounding 329 pages! It weighs nearly as much as the 3DS itself.

For a minute, I picture Chief Brody, in the ship’s mast, aiming his rifle at the scuba tank jammed in the mouth of the approaching Great White. Except instead of a scuba tank it’s this damn Operations Manual that Jaws is chewing on. “Smile, you son-of-a-bitch!”

As with any portable device fresh from the packaging, the 3DS needs to spend several hours plugged into an outlet before it’s ready to travel. It comes packaged with a charging cradle, a handsome slab of matte-black plastic that the 3DS sits in as it slurps electricity from the wall. The charging cradle is nice and all, but seems a little superfluous to me because I can opt to plug the AC adapter directly into the 3DS. So I automatically place the charging cable where I know it will eventually wind up anyway, in The Drawer Where All Superfluous Pieces of Plastic Go to Live Until I Decide to Move Again.

For the most part, the 3DS is the same size, weight and shape as the DSi. The biggest cosmetic difference is the larger upper screen (16 x 9). The larger screen is larger because (1) bigger always equals better when it comes to screens, and (2) the 3DS can display movies. In the near future, I’ll be able to use my 3DS to stream content from Netflix, and some of those movie and television titles will be in 3D.

Another big change: the rubber analog control nub, or slide pad, on the lower casing. Now gamers have an alternative to the old-fashioned D-pad, which is still present and accounted for. There’s also a “3D slider” next to the upper screen to adjust the amount of 3D I’m in the mood for. Push it all the way up for maximum 3D, or down to turn off the effect.

I fix a turkey sandwich, return some phone calls. Within a couple of hours, the charging light on the 3DS switches off so I untether it from the wall, and the two of us become one.

The first order of business is to revisit the 3D effect from nine months earlier to see if it can elicit the same dramatic impact. I pop in Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition and after 15 or 20 seconds, boom, there’s the game’s logo, hovering in space, about an inch or two off the screen. Yep, there’s that same stomach-flipping-over thrill that I experienced earlier. My unscientific name for this condition is “The Little World Effect.”

What’s even more impressive is how robust this portable edition of Street Fighter IV is. It’s basically the console version in its entirety. I’ve never seen a portable machine handle a console game before, and handle it so well.

After a few matches against computer-controlled opponents, I feel an almost uncontrollable urge to show the 3DS to someone who has never seen it. I grab my jacket and head for the EB Games outpost in the nearby Pacific Center Mall on West Georgia Street.


The store is unusually empty today. “Is that the 3DS?” says the cashier, a woman in black glasses who vaguely resembles Velma from Scooby-Doo. I hand it to her and tell her to try it out. She’s beaming now, literally jumping up and down. “It’s really in 3D!” she says.

I encourage her to take it for a test drive while I look around. Like most game stores, this one is absurdly tiny so “looking around” means getting about four or five feet away from her. For some reason — maybe it’s my proximity — Velma seems paralyzed, to the point of being unable to even touch the 3DS. She simply holds it, and looks at the rotating Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition logo as if in a trance.

I ask if she’s planning to get one herself. She frowns. “I can’t afford one,” she says. She considered trading in her DS, but decided against it once she realized the store (the one she works for) would only give her $20 for it.

“I can’t let my old DS go for a lousy $20,” she says.

“You two have been through so much together!”

“We have!” she says.

She hands the 3DS back. I clamp it shut and slip it into my pocket. After I walk out, I peer back through the posters hanging on the store’s front windows to see Velma behind the counter, an awestruck expression on her face. I recognize that look. It’s the same one I saw staring back at me in the bathroom mirror at the L.A. Convention Center after I too had first glimpsed the 3DS. It is, I’m convinced, one of those rare pieces of technology that gives people “a moment,” akin, I imagine, to the first time people saw television in the ’50s.

Unfortunately, back at my apartment, after 20 minutes of 3D gameplay on Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, the Little World Effect starts to wear off far quicker than I’d expected. Instead of setting the 3D slider for maximum effect, I find myself toning it down. Then I lower the slider all the way. Pretty soon I’m getting annoyed with the limitations of the 3DS’s directional pad for throwing fireballs and dragon punches, both of which require precise movements and are the foundation on which fighting games are built.

The game’s developer, Capcom, has included a work-around for this problem: I can simply tap a virtual button on the lower touchscreen to pull off these complex moves. But doing so feels like cheating for some reason.

Yes, a console-caliber game is crammed into a diminutive handheld. Unfortunately, without console-caliber controls, actually playing Street Fighter on the 3DS turns out to be about as much fun as attempting to eat miso soup with a fork. You could do it, but why would you?

It’s getting late. Before shutting down the 3DS for the night, and plugging it into a nearby outlet so that it can sate its forever-hungry batteries (using the 3D effect apparently drains the batteries quicker), I discover a built-in user mode called “Activity Log.” It keeps track of the games I’ve played that day (SSFIV: 3 hours, 42 minutes) and more interestingly, the number of steps I took. My walk to the game store and back registered 6,742 steps.

I love having this mundane activity, previously known as “a walk to the game store,” defined with such certainty. I feel oddly proud of this number. I think, “If only I brought the 3DS to the grocery store earlier today.” I think, “If only I’d brought it with me when I went to buy cat litter. I would have easily reached 7,000 steps….”

I fall asleep that night, the 3DS on the nightstand next to me, its colored lights in “sleep mode” blinking slowly like a tiny 747.

DAY TWO Friday, March 18th

I’ve been moving through the process of buying an apartment here in Vancouver, which means I have to go to the bank today to see William. He’s my account manager. Since the bank is one of the first places you go when you move someplace, William was one of the first people I met in Canada. He’s a nice guy who speaks with an Eastern European accent and wears tiny glasses and unremarkable ties. Like me, William’s a gamer, so I brought the 3DS along to (1) gauge his reaction, and (2) see how many steps it takes to get to the bank. The answer: 3,042.

William is a staunch PC gamer, very much into World of Warcraft and large-scale MMO’s. So, not surprisingly, he’s fairly underwhelmed. “That seems pretty cool,” he says nonchalantly, before sliding it back across the desk.

With my banking finished, I pack up the 3DS and head for a meeting with my real estate agent, Shelly, at a local coffee shop (2,112 steps away from the bank) so I can hand over a deposit check for the apartment. Shelly is sitting at the counter with an awkwardly tall teenager. “This is Bruce,” she says. Bruce is one of Shelly’s pseudo step kids (pseudo because she’s not married to Bruce’s dad yet, though they’re engaged). Bruce’s handshake has the two qualities of all handshakes by overly tall, awkward teens: weak and damp. His cheeks are red. His head is large and round. He looks like a moon wearing rouge.

I think to myself, “I’ll show Bruce the 3DS and blow his brain right through his skull with this dazzling display of technology from the future.” Before handing over the deposit check for the apartment to Shelly, I say, “I’ve got something here that Bruce might be interested in.” I fish the 3DS out of my pocket, open it up to Street Fighter IV, and hand it to Bruce. I slowly step back, prepared to shield myself from the brain explosion that’s about to happen.

Bruce takes the device reluctantly, as if I’ve offered him a gnawed-on chicken bone instead of a nifty new way to play videogames. “It’s called a 3DS,” I tell him, speaking slowly, as if he were deaf. “It’s capable of producing 3D graphics,” and I pause here for dramatic effect, “without having to wear any special eyewear.”

Shelly looks over Bruce’s shoulder. “It just looks kind of blurry to me,” she says.

I explain that you have to be looking at the 3DS straight on for the effect to work. Which is true. During my more heated Street Fighter battles the previous evening, an inadvertent tilt would make the crisp, clean graphics suddenly appear as if I were playing the game through a Crisco-coated window.

Shelly looks at it from a new angle. “OK, I can see it now. Kind of. It’s cool, right Bruce?”

Bruce’s head is most definitely not blown clean off. Like Velma at the game store, Bruce seems to be afraid to even touch the 3DS. He fools with a few buttons, like he’s trying to humor me then hands it back, mumbling “Thanks.”

“When does that thing come out?” Shelly asks. I tell her it’s in stores next Sunday. She turns to Bruce. “See? You played something that isn’t even out yet. How cool is that?”

Bruce shrugs, smiles weakly and generally seems greatly pained by this entire interaction. “Maybe it was too much for him,” I tell myself after they’re gone. He was probably just overwhelmed. I mean it does seem like witchcraft the first time you see it. Maybe Bruce has a fear of witchcraft. Or maybe he’s a socially awkward teen wrestling with the idea of a step mom and is not in the mood to meet a strange man who carries around videogame devices in his pocket.

Or maybe Bruce, being a jaded teen and therefore an ambassador of the “next generation,” simply does not give a rat’s ass about the 3DS.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for. The 3DS and I move on with our day. I comfort myself by taking a couple of gratuitous spins around the block, adding another 1,992 steps to my Activity Log.

DAY THREE Saturday, March 19th

I kick off my third day with the 3DS by fixing myself a cup of coffee then creating a Mii, one of those caricatures that were previously exclusive to the Wii, Nintendo’s popular home videogame console. The Mii creation process is similar to the Wii, with one grand exception: I can snap a photo of myself using one of the two built-in cameras on the 3DS and, voila, model a Mii after me.

Unfortunately, the Mii created for me based on this morning’s photo looks more like Mia Farrow, so I still have to get into the Mii creation menus and submenus.

Once I’m satisfied with my Mii, he’s promptly banished to a virtual purgatory known as the Mii Plaza, where he’ll stand in place and occasionally sneeze and yawn until further notice. I feel sort of terrible for my Mii, being alone in that cold, empty place where the same annoying loop of music plays endlessly. My Mii will remain alone until I share my “friend code,” a seemingly endless string of digits that people must exchange in the name of sharing Miis and making your 3DSs communicate. I try to send my code to a friend in New York, who also has a 3DS. But I mistype the friend code not once but twice before finally giving up for the day. “Looks like you’re spending the night alone again, Mii friend, and I snap the 3DS shut.

A little later, I meet two friends, Jason and Lisa, for a late lunch at a cafe on Hastings Street (574 steps from my apartment). Jason works as a technical artist for a game development company in B.C.; Lisa works for Pixar.

Lisa glances at the 3DS for a second before handing it back. “Huh,” she says. Lisa isn’t much of a gamer, so I’m not terribly shocked. Jason, on the other hand, is a gamer. He experiences The Moment. “I can definitely see it,” he says. But then proceeds to fumble with the 3DS. He doesn’t know which of the unit’s face buttons do what, so I watch as he gives up on the buttons altogether and proceeds to tap his fingers on the upper non-touch-sensitive screen, hoping for an iPhone-like response. I explain that only the bottom screen is touch-sensitive.

As I watch him struggle with the 3DS, trying to get it to do what he wants, I’m reminded of how spoiled we’ve all been by Apple products. There’s something that’s inelegant and still stubbornly old school about the 3DS with its eight buttons, dual screens, multiple ports, slots and strange markings. Example of a strange marking: it says “4.6V = IN” on the back of my 3DS.

Jason finally manages to play a game called Face Raiders, a comes-with diversion that lets you take a snapshot of your face then transforms your visage into an incoming fleet of cackling enemies that you must defeat with what appear to be virtual ping-pong balls. You have to physically turn in your chair (the 3DS has an accelerometer and gyroscope) while viewing the environment around you through the device’s exterior camera.

Looking to everyone in the restaurant like a crazy person, Jason physically spins in place while holding the 3DS in front of him, as versions of his face fly at him onscreen from all directions: from the baked goods counter, from the booth next to us, from the kitchen. He defeats them with the ping-pong balls by pressing the A-button repeatedly. I notice a smile. He seems to be enjoying himself.

When he’s finished, I ask him what he thinks. “How much did it cost?” he asks. I tell him it was free, part of the 3DS’s pack-in software.

“Then I like it,” he says, “since it’s free. But I’m not sure I’d pay for it.”

He’s right. There is something sort of junky and tech demo-ish about Face Raiders. It has the lowbrow appeal of an iPhone app. The game holds your attention for a couple of minutes, before whatever charm it has begins to wear off. Which brings me to a larger concern with the 3DS: that it’s merely a neat trick, a technological sleight of hand. It does have some cool add-ons, including a new friend codes system that lets you view who’s online and what they’re playing. And “StreetPass,” which, when activated, allows you swap game data and player info with passing strangers. And it’s possible that game publishers will be able to harness the system’s strengths to create some amazing entertainment. But it’s not the revolutionary device that, say, the iPhone was. At least not yet anyway.

What makes the iPhone an indispensable part of my life is not the 99-cent apps that make lightsaber sounds or show me what I’d look like if I weighed 400 pounds; it’s that the tiny device ties me to email, Twitter, Facebook, the Internet and — least importantly — it lets me make and receive phone calls.

Without those intrinsic ties, without connecting me to the information I want and need about the world around me and the people I care about, gadgets never transcend their gadget status. Their appeal is always short-lived.

So it’s not surprising that after three full days with the 3DS, it’s the almost negligible Activity Log, and in particular the built-in pedometer aspect called Steps, that’s gotten its hooks into me more than the 3D capabilities or any of the launch titles. After the “wow” fades — and it always does — it’s Steps that I keep referring to because it’s real information. It connects me to the ground beneath my feet. It tells me something tangible about myself, and who I am, and how I move through the world.

More and more, it looks like the era of the big handheld videogame system is ending. Again, blame the iPhone/iPad. But when I’m on the go — whether I’m hoping in a taxi or waiting in line at the supermarket — all I’m looking for is a distraction for a few moments. I don’t think I want or need a game like Okamiden, that takes 25 hours to finish.

There was a time when I would have happily consumed Okamiden or the latest Legend of Zelda or Dragon Quest. As much as it saddens me to say, I think that time has passed. Like an overeater who’s had his stomach stapled, I simply no longer have the appetite (not to mention the freedom or ability) to consume these time sucks anymore.

So what can the 3DS really do for me? And what does the future of handheld gaming look like? Those are tough questions to answer. For now, the 3DS will stay on my person, not only because I love that first impression — seeing that moment when the Little World Effect takes hold on people — but also because I need to know how many steps there are between where I am and wherever it is I’m going. I guess that’s what you’d call progress. ⏏