Sup dudebros
OK so here are my impressions, like they are worth anything
-Hardware FEELS like a DS. I checked the back of the unit and there's a DS card slot. Also an SD card slot on the left. Earphone jack dead center of the unit, not recessed.
-Viewing angle is very limited. You've got to have it lined up with your nose and from maybe a foot to two feet away/arm's length. If you wiggle it while pressing buttons frantically the 3D effect might disappear. There appeared to be a little bit of ghosting (seeing the left image on the right eye) but nothing too distracting.
-The 3D effect is very solid. I knew they were doing the every-other-line refracting technique but it is much better than the cell phones it was in before. There's no weird vertical lines that appear like the Sharp cell phone, it looks like a 400x240 display that is magically in 3D. I talked to some dudes who said it was better than PSP but not as good as PSP2.
-I set the 3D effect slider to max. However, this made my boss want to throw up so he had to basically put it into 2D mode each time.
-Overall graphics are probably PSP level. There's texture filtering now but no FSAA so edges are very pronounced. To be honest it shouldn't be hard to make nice looking graphics on a 400x240 perceived display (actually 800x240) in this day and age. The best looking stuff were noninteractive so I am sure they were throwing all the polys and textures into the characters, and that's not representative of what actual running games will be like.
OK here are some game impressions
-3D Challenge. It's like the eye doctor's office where you wear the dorky 3D glasses and they test your depth perception. Cool presentation style though.
-Nintendogs and Cats. You couldn't play with the cats so I got pissed off. This is beyond cute and makes me want to vomit. I said "Oh man, this is better than real puppies, with these if you don't feed them you don't have to bury them in the back yard" and the girl doing the demo looked at me in a really weird way.
-Resident EVil. Holy fucking shit this looks good. Like they downrezzed the PS3/360 models to the 3DS. Then again, there was nothing else on screen except for the characters.
-Metal Gear: The Naked Mans. Or whatever. This was awesome, polygon-heavy noninteractive scenes with snakes jumping out at you. Cool camera moves through a jungle. Analog pad wasn't bad.
-Dynasty Warriors: Ugh this was awful, barely a step above the DS ones. But it was playable.
-Kingdom Hearts: Nonplayable, but demo of some guy jumping around the island from the original Kingdom Hearts game. Looked on par with the PS2 one.
-3D Camera: THIS IS AWESOME. Live 3D preview and awesome looking 3D pics. I was like "Can I take movies too so I can dress up as a Na'vi and make my own Avatar pr0n" and the Nintendo guy was like "uuuuuuuuhhhhhhh"
-Sims: Some lame character creation mode, whatever
-Mario Kart: Nonplayable, just some footage of it running. Running code, not a movie. Looked okay.
-Kid Icarus: What you saw at the conference but in 3D, duh
-RIIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Halfway between Ridge DS and PSP.
All in all it was cool. I got fasttracked into the VIP line because my boss knows someone and it was worth the 30-minute wait but probably not 5 hours. I would probably buy one for $150 if there was good shit at launch.
