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Nintendo 3DS European Launch

dock

Member
The dock included with the 3DS is amazing! I was apathetic to the idea of it, but it's so much nicer than dealing with the cable. Apple need to rip this off ASAP, the charging connector points on the device make such a difference, and move away from this idea of plugging things in.

Trying to get used to docking it when not in use. Need to find a good place in the house. Might end up with multiple docks! XD
 

Rich!

Member
Naked Snake said:

And this is why you use the dock whenever it's on sleep mode at home/overnight.

I've had my 3DS since wednesday, I didn't even give it a full charge to begin with and it still has not ran out of battery. I've been playing it for absolutely loads too - just every night or every time I go out and do something else, I simply place it on the dock. Easy.
 

Merovin

Member
richisawesome said:
And this is why you use the dock whenever it's on sleep mode at home/overnight.

I've had my 3DS since wednesday, I didn't even give it a full charge to begin with and it still has not ran out of battery. I've been playing it for absolutely loads too - just every night or every time I go out and do something else, I simply place it on the dock. Easy.

Exactly what I've been doing, and no battery problems either. Full brightness here too.

Finally got round to playing Rayman, and I'm not going to lie, really disappointed. It doesn't feel upgraded in anyway, and feels incredibly dated now. Definitely a regrettable purchase, but it was the only game I was slightly interested in with the half price offer. Probably going to trade it in Monday, thinking SSFIV.
 

Woffls

Member
richisawesome said:
I've had my 3DS since wednesday, I didn't even give it a full charge to begin with and it still has not ran out of battery. I've been playing it for absolutely loads too - just every night or every time I go out and do something else, I simply place it on the dock. Easy.
Same here, it's on my dock right now and I have no idea if it's fully charged or whatever. Even if I'm just dropping it for 10 mins to make a cup of Tea, I'll put it on the dock. Gotta' put it somewhere, right? Might as well be the dock. Not run out of battery yet, either.
 
The full brightness isnt necessary in my eyes. The low brightness is perfect for playing in the dark. So I would rather use higher brightness (middle) during the day and during the night lowest to keep the battery going. Todays experiment has been for 3 hours on lowest, half the battery drain. Which isn't too bad, upped the brightness one level afterwards so will see if it can last another 3 hours.
 
Might be a silly question, but do I need to keep wifi on if I want to use Street Pass for trading Miis? I know wifi is used for games and Wii demos, but is it used for Street Pass?
 

Mafro

Member
wackojackosnose said:
Might be a silly question, but do I need to keep wifi on if I want to use Street Pass for trading Miis? I know wifi is used for games and Wii demos, but is it used for Street Pass?
Yeah you need to keep it on for StreetPass.
 
wackojackosnose said:
Might be a silly question, but do I need to keep wifi on if I want to use Street Pass for trading Miis? I know wifi is used for games and Wii demos, but is it used for Street Pass?

Nope, your 3DS uses flying Pokemons and Marios to detect other 3DS systems and their Miis.

Yes, you definitely need Wifi for street pass to work ;)

Crap, too late :/
 

Tarin02543

Member
I was in my local Saturn shop and the black 3DS was really tempting. I was browing the games and none of them really interested me except Ridge Racer.

i'll buy it once it has a game I really want to play.
 

meppi

Member
Aru said:
So it seems sleep mode is as bad as DS' sleep mode ? Not going to bother about it then.
Not even close.

I played 4 hours last night, of which a good 2 hours, 2 and a half tops was while charging.
Then I unplugged the system and continued playing for about 1.5 to 2 hours afterwards.
Screen set to maximum brightness, wifi on and 3D on maximum.

I left the system in sleep mode for the whole night, with wifi on again and have just played about 20 minutes of AR games.

At this moment I have 2 out of 4 blocks, so sleep mode with wifi on doesn't put a lot more strain on the battery than previous systems did.
At first sight I'd say it's even less.
 
demonturkey said:
Why won't Nintendo let me have my Mii with sideburns?

WHY?
Isn't there a hairstyle which has sort of sideburns? At least that's what I remember when browsing, of course having a specific option for this would be great (as would be more beard styles in general for the manly part of the userbase.

jarosh said:
i'm having a lot more fun with pilotwings than i expected. didn't care at all for the demo i played at one of the preview events. i can already tell there's not much content but it's a ton of fun so far.
Yeah caved in as well and I really love it so far. Feels nice and looks cool too with 3D. Makes me want a Toy Commander game for 3DS, that would rock.
 

Luigiv

Member
dock said:
Apple need to rip this off ASAP, the charging connector points on the device make such a difference, and move away from this idea of plugging things in.
I concur. Let the 30 pin connector rot in hell where it belongs!

I really hate the 30 pin connector. And that's saying something because normally I don't develop emotions over such trivial things as connection port designs.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Luigiv said:
I concur. Let the 30 pin connector rot in hell where it belongs!

I really hate the 30 pin connector. And that's saying something because normally I don't develop emotions over such trivial things as connection port designs.

Also, the 30pin connector is the weakest point on the device - it's mechanically weak, it's prone to oxidation, if you wet it that can kill the device, etc. I think it was designed in such a way on purpose.
 

mclem

Member
Can anyone register products for stars at the moment? I was going through my stockpiled backlog of stars cards (I just registered *Polarium*!) and suddenly it stopped working, and it's not giving a useful error message.
 

jarosh

Member
the battery life on this thing really is a disaster. i knew it was bad going in, but holy hell... almost feels wrong calling this a portable device. charged all night, played for 1.5 hours, standby for 4 hours, LOW BATTERY light flashing.
 

Cosmozone

Member
Tried it at a story today (Face Raiders). Pretty nice, I could even notice the effect when looking over someone else's shoulder. Not that clearly in that case, of course. Didn't notice immediate eye-strain but that's no suprprising given the short amount of time I looked at it.

Won't get it anytime soon though. My backlog is just too big. When I'm through with it, there will be already a revision for sure.
 

samoset

Member
jarosh said:
the battery life on this thing really is a disaster. i knew it was bad going in, but holy hell... almost feels wrong calling this a portable device. charged all night, played for 1.5 hours, standby for 4 hours, LOW BATTERY light flashing.
What settings were the settings you used while playing? and did you have wi-fi on while in standby?
 

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
mclem said:
Can anyone register products for stars at the moment? I was going through my stockpiled backlog of stars cards (I just registered *Polarium*!) and suddenly it stopped working, and it's not giving a useful error message.
I heard there's a limit to the number of items you can register at one time. Try again later.
 

jarosh

Member
samoset said:
What settings were the settings you used while playing? and did you have wi-fi on while in standby?
yes, brightness at 5, wireless on. definitely causes the highest drain, i'm aware of that. but it's still ridiculous. i've been adding friends to the system and checking who's on and what they're playing and i'm not gonna keep turning the wireless on and off all the time. totally defeats the purpose of an online community, especially once we'll have more games with multiplayer features, the e-shop and a proper messaging system.
 

Hajaz

Member
anyone else noticed the hinge is a bit loose when the 3ds is completely open? im not sure if its normal or if its just mine ( second unit, first one had a stuck pixel)
Its like the screen wont stay put and has a few mms play
 

samoset

Member
jarosh said:
yes, brightness at 5, wireless on. definitely causes the highest drain, i'm aware of that. but it's still ridiculous. i've been adding friends to the system and checking who's on and what they're playing and i'm not gonna keep turning the wireless on and off all the time. totally defeats the purpose of an online community, especially once we'll have more games with multiplayer features, the e-shop and a proper messaging system.
The thing I'm most curious about is how much the battery drains while in sleep mode. I've heard it lasting up to a day but I'm not sure if that's with wi-fi on or off. If keeping wi-fi on reduces the battery in sleep mode as much as it does while playing then I'll never use it to try and get tags.
 

pringles

Member
Hajaz said:
anyone else noticed the hinge is a bit loose when the 3ds is completely open? im not sure if its normal or if its just mine ( second unit, first one had a stuck pixel)
Its like the screen wont stay put and has a few mms play
It's like that for me too. One of the few things I don't like about it so far.
 

qwerty2k

Member
First 10mins with the 3ds i have just been grinning like a cheshire cat 3d effect really is good, had a quick blast on face raiders and the ar cards and looking good so far, will have a go on street fighter shortly.
 

Shanadeus

Banned
My girlfriend apparently had quite a lot of problems with the 3D in both AR and when taking pictures.
She couldn't see a 3D picture, but instead only two pictures when tilting the system from side to side.

At least the AR stuff impressed her, shame on the 3D though.
 
Chittagong said:
Some initial impressions

Build quality
- The unit is much more glossy and angular than I thought it would be
- Analog controller is a similar disc as PSPs, but much better
- The Home button needs a lot of force and is slow to react
- The dock has to be the cheapest piece of plastic I have ever seen
- Overall, the unit feels a bit cheap compared to DS Lite
My Home button works great, so there is probably something wrong with yours if you need to use a lot of force for it to work.

When you say that it's slow to react I'm going to assume that you mean the second it takes to load the OS menu. It's not supposed to be instantaneous, that's just how it is because of hardware limitations. Just like it takes a second for the mini guide to load on a 360 for example.

Can't say I feel that it feels cheaper than a DSL either. The buttons are way better, and it looks better overall too imo.

storafötter said:
So the battery just lasted me an hour when I tried it the first time (didnt charge before hand). I hope the battery isn't bad already so I am testing the newly charged 3ds with the lowest brightness and 3d. One thing that is maybe a bit concerning is if I move my 3ds or shake it a bit it has a clicky sound as if something is loose inside. Is it something I should be concerned about? or is everyones 3ds are like that?
The clicky sound is coming from the stylus.
 

Deacan

9/10 NeoGAFfers don't understand statistics. The other 3/10 don't care.
Took my dog out for a walk and did over 4000 steps, managed to get past 2 doors, unlocked a Mario hat and Cat Ears, sadly did not run into any other 3ds owners heh.
 

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
samoset said:
The thing I'm most curious about is how much the battery drains while in sleep mode. I've heard it lasting up to a day but I'm not sure if that's with wi-fi on or off. If keeping wi-fi on reduces the battery in sleep mode as much as it does while playing then I'll never use it to try and get tags.
Well I've got it in sleep mode now without Wireless on and it's been like that since around 1pm. Still got power. I plan to turn the WiFi back of for a journey home though.
 

faridmon

Member
Aru said:
Got my 3DS a little sooner that I expected :D

Cosmo Black 3DS is really beautiful :) I don't have a DS lite so going from DS Tank to 3DS is really a big upgrade :lol
You are very patient person. I could never stay with the DS phat as I thought it was really clunky. Enjoy your sexy system.
 

Aru

Member
meppi said:
Not even close.

I played 4 hours last night, of which a good 2 hours, 2 and a half tops was while charging.
Then I unplugged the system and continued playing for about 1.5 to 2 hours afterwards.
Screen set to maximum brightness, wifi on and 3D on maximum.

I left the system in sleep mode for the whole night, with wifi on again and have just played about 20 minutes of AR games.

At this moment I have 2 out of 4 blocks, so sleep mode with wifi on doesn't put a lot more strain on the battery than previous systems did.
At first sight I'd say it's even less.

Well, I'll try and see for myself then. What I need is PSP level sleep mode. The PSP can stay in sleep mode for a few hours when the low battery screen shows up and put the system to sleep ! And more than a week with full battery.
 
Just went to the mediamarkt to check both this and the iPad 2 out. I overheard a salesman that the launch was huge with 130 people showing up at opening for 65 iPad 2s. Almost no interest in the 3DS as far as I could tell - it was definitely not sold out by a mile. I could check it out, see a running demo for pilotwings. The 3D effect worked perfectly and I could see it with no real issues from about 15cm from the screen until about 50cm. Side to side there were several sweetspots with double images appearing when moving between them. No-one was even remotely interested - I saw noone as much as glance at it and even when I pointed out to them that the thing had 3D some half-hearted attempts followed but either no-one could see it or no-one cared. I'm sure it will do well eventually, but right now, over here I'm not expecting much from it.

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D. The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Aru said:
So it seems sleep mode is as bad as DS' sleep mode ? Not going to bother about it then.

it'd be good for someone to do a sleep test. Fully charge it, and put it straight into sleep and see how long before the battery drains. Then you could adapt that for your own situation.

eg if it takes 48 hours to drain while in sleep, then 24 hours is half battery, so you'd have an idea how much time you have for actual play.
 

Rekubot

Member
Maastricht said:
Just went to the mediamarkt to check both this and the iPad 2 out. I overheard a salesman that the launch was huge with 130 people showing up at opening for 65 iPad 2s. Almost no interest in the 3DS as far as I could tell - it was definitely not sold out by a mile. I could check it out, see a running demo for pilotwings. The 3D effect worked perfectly and I could see it with no real issues from about 15cm from the screen until about 50cm. Side to side there were several sweetspots with double images appearing when moving between them. No-one was even remotely interested - I saw noone as much as glance at it and even when I pointed out to them that the thing had 3D some half-hearted attempts followed but either no-one could see it or no-one cared. I'm sure it will do well eventually, but right now, over here I'm not expecting much from it.

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D. The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.
Give it time. Most of Nintendo's systems sell thanks to word of mouth. Not too sure on this, but I don't think the DS sold particularly well at launch either.
 

m.i.s.

Banned
Finally got the system and, whilst the 3D effect is "novel", in no way is it a game changer.

In Pilotwings Resort, the 3D effect in no way helped me to navigate the 3D space anymore than good 3D polygons, texturing, lighting and shadowing would. And the trade-off with battery life is pretty unacceptable (in my opinion of course). I'm going to be playing this thing in 2D almost all of the time. The AR cards are gimmicky nonsense too.

The system lacks the wow factor that you saw going from the original DS to lite but is solidly built and the slide pad is one of the most responsive analog controls i've used. The shoulder buttons feel a bit off though - they feel like a thud rather than a click.

Bump in resolution is long overdue. Really hope to see the classics like Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island in widescreen aspect ratio but without the resolution compromises of the GBA versions of said games.
 
The original DS had a crap screen too. What might happen is that somewhere between 1-2 years from now, Nintendo can put a much better quality screen and cameras on this device, and that could help. Personally though, I feel that the whole design of the 3DS is flawed. They tried too hard to keep it compatible with the DS. A rear multi-touch pad on the back of the 3D screen would have been a big win, imho.
 
mrklaw said:
it'd be good for someone to do a sleep test. Fully charge it, and put it straight into sleep and see how long before the battery drains. Then you could adapt that for your own situation.

eg if it takes 48 hours to drain while in sleep, then 24 hours is half battery, so you'd have an idea how much time you have for actual play.
The manual says that the battery can last up to 3 days while in sleep mode.
 

wsippel

Banned
Naked Snake said:
Don't know what's wrong with Chittagongs system, but I got mine yesterday, charged it, played around with the system for almost four hours (Activity Log says 3:47), 3D and volume at max, brightness 5 with power saving turned on, Wifi enabled the whole time. Then I put it on standby (SpotPass enabled), and when I opened the device today, the battery was still at more at 50%.
 

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
62hdg.jpg

TTTKF.jpg
 

Fritz

Member
Maastricht said:
Just went to the mediamarkt to check both this and the iPad 2 out. I overheard a salesman that the launch was huge with 130 people showing up at opening for 65 iPad 2s. Almost no interest in the 3DS as far as I could tell - it was definitely not sold out by a mile. I could check it out, see a running demo for pilotwings. The 3D effect worked perfectly and I could see it with no real issues from about 15cm from the screen until about 50cm. Side to side there were several sweetspots with double images appearing when moving between them. No-one was even remotely interested - I saw noone as much as glance at it and even when I pointed out to them that the thing had 3D some half-hearted attempts followed but either no-one could see it or no-one cared. I'm sure it will do well eventually, but right now, over here I'm not expecting much from it.

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D. The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.

Nintendo is soooo dooomed this time!
 
M.I.S. said:
In Pilotwings Resort, the 3D effect in no way helped me to navigate the 3D space anymore than good 3D polygons, texturing, lighting and shadowing would. And the trade-off with battery life is pretty unacceptable (in my opinion of course). I'm going to be playing this thing in 2D almost all of the time.

Fair enough, as long as you're referring to the 20% decrease in battery life from having 3D on and not singling out 3D as being solely responsible for the system's overall poor battery life.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
wsippel said:
Don't know what's wrong with Chittagongs system, but I got mine yesterday, charged it, played around with the system for almost four hours (Activity Log says 3:47), 3D and volume at max, brightness 5 with power saving turned on, Wifi enabled the whole time. Then I put it on standby (SpotPass enabled), and when I opened the device today, the battery was still at more at 50%.

You had power saving on, that seems to make a bit of a difference. Having it on as well. Doesnt bother me too much and if it saves energy, why not.
 

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
Well it's around 6:45 here so my system has been in sleep mode for around 5 and half hours. The music player was used for around 40 minutes with the lid closed and wireless was on for about an hour in total.

The battery indicator was half full.

-------------------

One neat little touch I like is that the titles for channels are dynamic. The Mii Maker shows your Miis in the squares and Face Raiders uses your faces.
 
I got a reply from Nintendo of scandinavia about what causes the "clicky" sound. Apparently it is the gyro sensor. Not pedometer/3d volume/sound volume.
 
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