We are extremely close to the launch of the 3DS. Well, in one territory that is! In just a few days, tons of Japanese gamers will be lining up to purchase their own system. Meanwhile, Play-Asia already has the handheld in their position and have posted a bunch of photos of the unboxing “experience”. You can check them out below.
Gallery 1
Gallery 2 – spoilers
A bunch of Metroid Prime art has been collected from the sites/profiles of numerous Retro Studios, which even includes an image of Kraid (who would have been used in a boss battle). The gallery contains material from all three games in the series. Although some of the images above aren’t concept art, they all epitomize the impressive talents of the staff working on the games. Be warned, though: the second gallery contains art that most would probably consider spoilers… if you haven’t played Prime 3, that is!
This information comes from Hideki Konno, group manager of the 3DS hardware project at Nintendo…
Konno on his first experience with the 3DS…
“The first time I heard from [Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata and Miyamoto about this was just after I wrapped up Mario Kart Wii and got started working on DSi Sound. They showed me this piece of hardware which later became the 3DS and said ‘Here’s what we’re working on right now.’ Nintendo’s hardware and software teams work in the same building and we’ve always treated interaction between the two sides as important, but having software people go into the hardware-dev front lines like this never really happened before now. They wanted a closer relationship this time, and that’s why they wanted me to coordinate the overall project. It was a new challenge for me, and I was eager to pick it up.”
Konno on how the 3DS didn’t have 3D visuals when he began working on the system…
“I became involved with development starting in 2008, but at that time, it didn’t have 3D visuals. From Nintendo’s perspective, they’ve released 3D Hot Rally [a Japan-only 8-bit game that used 3D shutter glasses] and the Virtual Boy; they’ve had a history of experimenting with 3D visuals. With this system, you could say the timing was just right for us. It was the right time to start thinking about using the latest in high-tech and try out glasses-free 3D. The technology we got to demo was really impressive, and starting in early 2009, we began to think that it was time to bring it to games.”
This information comes from Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi…
“One thing we felt when making Dimensions is that players view and treat console and portable games completely differently. This is something that needs to be reflected in the game design as well. In fact, we are discussing daily about the way to make a 3D action game such as Ninja Gaiden into something that would be appropriate for a portable game system. When we get this answer just right, we will show it to all of you so stay tuned.”
It sounds like Ninja Gaiden 3DS isn’t very far along in development. However, if the game turns out to be anything like Dragon Sword, I’ll be pleased!
