My Latest Obsession: The Nintendo 3DS

If you're like me, sometimes you're on a subway or plane ride thinking to yourself, "Oh man, I wish I could play a portable video game that has 3D effects not unlike the experience I had in the theater when I watched Avatar!" or, "Oh man, I could really go for a turkey sandwich from Torrisi right now!" Well, good news: the Nintendo 3DS now resolves at least one of those desires.

The Nintendo 3DS is not completely unlike the portable video game devices of your youth. (Unless you're thinking of those crummy handheld games made by Tiger that just used one background with a little LED character that blinked and "walked" across the screen. In retrospect, those probably shouldn't even qualify as a video game as there's no real "video" component to them at all. It's actually more of a digital watch than a video game. In fact, it's a little insulting to think that Tiger tried to rip people off so flagrantly by pricing those little pieces of plastic garbage at $25 when they provided roughly 8 minutes of enjoyment. Not to mention they were the causes of those even worse Big Lots generic versions of those games that didn't even use licensed characters, like the Ninja Turtles, to somewhat offset my disappointment at not having a fun game to play.). Anyway, the Nintendo 3DS is like any other Gameboy/Gamegear device, except it uses the latest in glasses-less 3D technology. What that means is, it looks like those fancy/"fancy" pictures you see in the front of Chinese restaurants that have a waterfall, some bizarre looking fish, and a really brightly colored sky.

Is it a gimmick? Sure. Does it entirely work? Mostly! If you're playing it for more than 30 minutes does it start to give you a headache? What doesn't these days? You're getting so old and frail. I mean, you had no idea that the hearing would be the first to go. Ugh, my back hurts.

It's pros and cons can be best surmised like this: the 3DS is best served, as of now, for two things: 1) to play Street Fighter against people online because no one your age wants to come over to your house to play Street Fighter with you, or 2) or to use the cameras on the back of the 3DS to play the augmented reality game which essentially lets you shoot at things in your house through the viewfinder—you'd be surprised at how fun shooting things in your house on a video game console screen can be. If these things interest you as much as they interest me, I would recommend getting a Nintendo 3DS.