General Update - Nintendo 3DS Edition.

My 3DS is finally seeing a little action. A little less than two weeks ago Nintendo finally got around to activating the other half of the online aspects for the 3DS. We can now browse the Internet and spend money in Nintendo's eShop. Yay? I guess if you don't have one of the other seventeen ways of accessing the Internet on you being able to do so with your 3DS would be cool. The eShop is potentially important of course. You'll be able to access all the DSiWare and 3DSWare as well as the Virtual Console and 3D Classics titles. They have a bit of free 3DSWare up there in the form of Pokédex 3D. It allows you to keep track of your Pokémon from the Black and White titles. It tracks all the data one could possibly want to know about Pokémon and allows you to view each Pokémon in full 3D. It allows for you to trade Pokémon entries for the Pokédex. If I were eleven years old and gave a rat's ass about Pokémon Black or White then this might be the coolest freebie in existence. They also have for a limited time 3D Classics Excitebike for free. The 3D Classics line are NES titles that have been reworked to have 3D functionality. I was genuinely surprised by how 3D Classics Excitebike works in practice. I was expecting the background and the motorbikes to stand out from each other. And that's what happens. Those bikes really pop off that background in 3D. What surprised me is in doing that Nintendo has actually increased the viewing angle. In the original Excitebike, or with the 3D turned off, the view is three-quarters top-down from the side of the track. You can see the track and the bikes and the grandstand as background. When you turn on the 3D you'll literally see the view stretch further into the background where you'll now see the grandstand has a cover and there is a horizon and sky in the background. It's quite like watching a movie in pan & scan and then switching to letterbox on the fly only the increased view is vertically instead of horizontially. It's actually quite a cool effect and one that was wholly unexpected. The Virtual Console section has already proven itself worthwhile for me. I didn't jump in with the GameBoy until the GameBoy Advance. Having played the Game Gear, Lynx, and the Turbo Express back in the day I just couldn't ever bring myself to get a GameBoy. It seemed already outdated. I knew I was missing a handful of great titles but still never pulled the trigger. So twenty-three years later I'm finally getting my chance to experience those few good to great GameBoy titles. As well as the ones that have some sort of historical merit or place. In the two updates the eShop has had I've grabbed two GameBoy titles and one GameBoy Color. Super Mario Land from 1988, Donkey Kong from 1994, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX from 1998. I've played through Super Mario Land for the first time and I've replayed Link's Awakening DX. It really feels as though that Nintendo through a bit of both hardware limitation and GameBoy brand identification wanted a distinct feel for its GameBoy software. This to me can best be discribed as Bizarro World. It looks like Mario, but something's just a tad off. It looks like Zelda but again something's just a bit bizarre. Donkey Kong on the other hand is just one of the coolest concepts and presentations I've seen. You play through the original four levels of the Donkey Kong arcade game and instead of repeating the cycle Donkey Kong grabs Pauline and exits the side of the screen and Mario pursues them into a whole new world of puzzle based action platforming. Being able to grab some missing classics for my collection is a real boon in my opinion. Especially once they start offering up some GameGear games like Shinobi. And eventually the retail software will come. It's just going to take its usual sweet time. Hell, we're getting Luigi's Mansion 2, that's a surprise and a half. It feels good to, you know, actually use the system. And of course this entry is on the eve of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Arguably the first real game for the system...