It (3DS) arrived.

I spent more on my first set of markers than it costs to buy one of these (way more) ...  It makes me so tempted when I think of that XD .  But I can't!  I refuse to give in.  I need a new laptop and a regular paycheck before being willing to spend on something so frivolous and unproductive as this!  (And yet, my NEW set of markers is definitely not frivolous nor unproductive, not at all...  Thankfully, cheaper than the 3DS at least) .

I'm just going to have to wait until  3DS Upgraded comes out.  Admittedly, the low battery is a big hit against it for me.  I'm awful with recharging, and I have a bad habit of continuing to play thinking "Oh, the battery will last a while longer!" until it dies and I'm "WTF face" .  Also, our family aaalways gets the 'first edition' of things like game systems, game editions, etc. but then never get the 'upgrade' versions afterward, and then our old system looks so crappy in comparison.  Who still has a DS original with the gray bulky casing, a rainbow screen, and one hinge broken off?  I do!

<3 ali

Dang, that makes me reconsider getting it now as opposed to later...

That's probably why they're doing it. There are really no launch games that sound particularly interesting (to me, at least), so a lot of people would otherwise probably wait for Mario/Zelda/StarFox/etc. before purchasing one.

Who still has a DS original with the gray bulky casing, a rainbow screen, and one hinge broken off?  I do!

Well, like I said earlier.     Though, I ended up replacing the bottom part of the top-screen casing with one from a black one, so I have this Black/Gray/Black/Gray thing going on.  That said, its battery lasts for less than five minutes now, so the 3DS is still an upgrade to me on that front.  Looks like they've even got homebrew (at least for Nintendo DS-original) stuff going well right now, too.

I also got a gray brick Game Boy!

*chorus of heavenly voices*

Short Reviews:

Super monkey ball 3D, although short is a brilliant game that I have enjoyed playing the most (they dumbed down the difficulty though :C). Pilotwings Resort comes close, and is somehow more frustrating than monkey ball but still appealing and quite long. Street Fighter 4 is truly the only infinite play game that I have, although I don't find it as fun as the other 2 titles.

Any impressions from those who got their's tonight?

Got it, though I don't have any full games for it.

Keep in mind that I pretty much don't read a lot of news articles, so I'm mainly hyped about being able to play my DS Games on the go again.  (Gee, it's a good thing I haven't ever said that before ever.)

The 3D has it's own personal flair, you turn on the 3DS for the first time and it goes, "You are quite good at turning me on.  By the way, I can do some 3D stuff.  Would you like to see the 3D stuff?" [OK] "Here comes the 3D stuff," and the menu goes woosh and you're like woah you're being too ordinary about this.

Using the camera to generate a Mii did not turn out as well as I'd wished.  My eyes were way too small and my cheeks were way too wide.  Sometime, I'll just need to figure out if I can just pull my Miis from my Wii or just remake from scratch.

The packed in Augmented Reality minigames are a great thing to show off.  I was just playing with the cards on my bed, and the only real problem I had was when I was playing a pool-golf-like game, and I needed to hit the ball from the opposite side of where I was at.  If I got up and approached the ball from that angle, the Charger cord would get in the way and the 3DS wouldn't recognize the card.  I solved this by rotating the card, effectively rotating the whole world.  It has some nifty Smash Bros. Trophy-like poseable picture thing, too.  My big concern about the AR games is that, you know, there's really only one card out of the six you get that you actually need, and the others are just used to effectively make menu selections.  It'd be just as easy to select "Add Mario" or "Add Samus" from a menu using the touch screen, or even the actual controls that are on the system.  It feels kinda wasteful.  Aside from that nag, with AR games, your 3DS effectively becomes a Wiimote, so if you like doing things with a wiimote you'll probably like augmented realitiy.

Did they really need to make a dragon burst out of my bed?   

For once, the screen resizing thing actually bothered me.  I'm going to second the link posted earlier in this topic, hold down START as you launch a DS game to play at normal DS resolution.  I'm not particularly a fan of the not-button start-home-select thing, but I'll probably adjust to it sooner or later.  It takes quite a while to turn on the system and to power it down, but from what I'm seeing in the user's manual and supporting materials, it looks like Nintendo just wants us to put these things into sleep mode instead of fully turning off the power.

I haven't seen all that much of the packed-in stuff use the circle-pad analog stick, and that's one of the things I'm most curious about.  The other thing I'm curious about is the docking station, but maybe I'm just weird like that... I just don't get it.

EDIT:  OH YEAH IT SURE IS AN IPHONE KILLER AM I RIGHT?   

The power button is shockingly close to where the start button used to be.

That is all. :C

I got mine today with Samurai Warriors: Chronicles. Amazing stuff.

The power button is shockingly close to where the start button used to be.

That is all. :C

True, but it won't instantly shut the system down like the old switch actually could if you were unlucky to swipe it while taking it out of your pocket.

It does seem like they're trying to phase out the start/select buttons which admittedly have become pretty useless in many of the recent DS games.

I'm probably not going to buy one of these until a new Advance Wars is announced for it.  Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars looks awesome, but those two are really the only things I'm interested in on this so far. 

The power button is shockingly close to where the start button used to be.

That is all. :C

True, but it won't instantly shut the system down like the old switch actually could if you were unlucky to swipe it while taking it out of your pocket.

It does seem like they're trying to phase out the start/select buttons which admittedly have become pretty useless in many of the recent DS games.

The power button doesn't instantly turn the console off, but it does instantly shut off the game.

You know, it wouldn't be Nintendo if they didn't drop the ball on internet capability.     No web browser or DSiWare until "Late May."  (DSiWare can be played if you purchased it on a DSi and transferred it to a 3DS, but not purchased directly right now.)  Here's hoping Mother Nature doesn't turn it into a Pokemon-GL fiasco.  At least I got my Mii fixed, and the Streetpass Plaza games are a nice distraction, with the bonus that I don't need to worry about finding other 3DS owners when I can buy my way through it by walking around.

(DSiWare can be played if you purchased it on a DSi and transferred it to a 3DS, but not purchased directly right now.)

Currently unsupported, it'll be in the may update too.