As I mentioned in my last post, I got super spoiled last week. I’d like to blame that for my lack of productivity here, but I’ve been having some motivation and clarity issues. And a few depression issues.

Also, I’ve been trying to clean a little. Cleaning meant I found my camera, my card reader, and the charging cable for my camera.

Now we’re in trouble….

I have no transition here, so let’s just jump right in.

Back in 2006 [or so the internet tells me], I got a black DSLite. There wasn’t really a reason for it. I’d been avoiding the DS, because I hated the shape of the original. I didn’t want a DSLite, because it was white, and I don’t like white tech.

Feel free to make a racist joke there.

The black and the pink, I think, were released on the same day. And that’s right around when I got it — release day. I probably put down five bucks at the nearby GameStop — actually, I’m pretty sure I did. And I specified black.

I remember the guy working that day saying, “You obviously want a pink one, right?”

Obviously, I did not murder him for that. You can tell by how I’m not currently in prison.

I must’ve gotten a couple of games that day, but I’m no longer sure which ones. Possibly Big Brain Academy and Animal Crossing.

PicrossDS came later, after the DSLite earned the rank of ‘Hunter’s most played handheld ever.’

All that use wore out the touch screen, and caused one of the hinges to fail. I was able to repair it, though, thanks to DealExtreme and incredible overconfidence.

This turned my once standard Black DSLite into a Super Awesome Custom Green and Black DSLite.

Then, maybe two years ago, it broke again. In ways I didn’t think I could fix.

The other hinge — the important hinge, that held important wires — started coming apart.

With the failure of that hinge came what I call ‘Cancer of the Top Screen’.

As you can see, it’s pretty much terminal.

Well, mostly terminal. I managed to keep it going with a clear case [it helped to brace the hinge, which kept the cancer from spreading for a bit], and the battery — the original battery — is still amazing. The thing hasn’t been plugged in for over a year, which is amazing

Nintendo make some impressively hardy hardware. This thing has outlasted almost all of my iPods.

But, it’s obviously on its last legs. Hell, the problems it was having? I hadn’t played it for quite a while. I’d only recently resorted to borrowing Gremlin’s DSLite [which has probably only survived this long because it didn’t get used as heavily as mine] because I’d purchased Picross3D.

I love me some Picross.

Last Saturday, Gremlin surprised me with a 3DS — a system that I was avoiding partly because fuck 3D, and also fuck I missed the Legend of Zelda Special Edition. With a pretty heavy side of ‘can’t justify that expense.’

And I’m repeating myself. But I think it’s probably necessary, somehow.

He got me the Aqua one, because, according to Photoshop, it’s close to the teal I use in a lot of things.

Here they are, side by side.

Initially, I thought the 3DS was bigger…but apparently not. I figured this out when I discovered that it fit into my DSLite’s zipper case — and that thing was a tight fit with the Lite.

Here’s where the differences start to come in.

The most obvious difference is that the 3DS lacks a slot for GBA games. This is slightly annoying, if you don’t have any other way to play the old Gameboy games.

The headphone jack is different. There’s no extra thing, whatever that was for, and it’s right in the middle. Also, the volume button has moved.

And the wrist strap [not included] is on the front of the 3DS…in a slightly weird position, if you’re actually supposed to, like, use it to prevent accidental droppage or whatever. It might get a little weird if you’re right handed and using the stylus. Might. I haven’t tried it yet.

I guess it’s fine if you’re a leftie, but I am not. So I’ve put my Gir cellphone charm thingie on it.

And here’s where the hilarious fuckups start, because, look, the power switch has been replaced by the WiFi on/off switch. I’m pretty sure I hit that thing a dozen times and sat, confused, waiting for it to power the fuck on.

Also, note that the stylus is not here.

It’s back here, instead.

Somehow, I adjusted to that very quickly. I only tried to cram the stylus into the side twice, and only clawed futilely at the side about four times. Maybe five.

The charging port is on the opposite side, and it’s different. The 3DS charging cable [I’ve got a picture of that, but I’m going to post it a bit later] is bigger. The end bit, I mean. Also, there are these two little contacts on either side, which are important.

There’s a game in the 3DS — PicrossDS. It plays DS games, which is good. Another ‘Nintendo doing it mostly right’ thing. And I really can’t fault them for dumping the GBA backward compatibility.

And, hey, if I want to be super lazy, I can buy Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons right on my 3DS, from the built in store.

…wait, I think I just figured out WHY they ditched the backward compatibility. Those filthy capitalists.

There’s the volume. Right where you’ll accidentally hit it when you’re going for those shoulder buttons.

Which reminds me — I’ve heard a lot of complaints [mostly from Zero Punctuation] about the shape of this thing, and how uncomfortable it is to play anything on it. I haven’t had any problems so far, but I haven’t played anything that required the shoulder buttons.

Also, there’s an SD card slot, which is kinda nifty. It actually came with an SD card, too.

That’s not very special, though. I don’t think you can buy a bag of store-brand corn flakes without getting an SD card. Store brand corn flakes might be made out of SD cards.

This is kinda crappy. I’m not even sure why I’m including it.

More differences. And the source of a lot of hilarious fuckups on my part.

First, the D-pad. They both have one. Duh. BUT, the 3DS also has that funny round thing, which is…actually, I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t care. But it does roughly the same thing as the D-pad, but better. And more comfortably. I’ve been using it instead of the D-pad in everything I’ve tried so far [PicrossDS, Picross 3D, Animal Crossing].

That’s not the bad part. The bad part is…see how there’s a thick strip of something below the screen on the 3DS? Those are buttons. From left to right: Select, Home, and Start.

And, over there, where the select and start buttons are on the Lite?

That’s the motherfucking POWER BUTTON.

I swear and yell because maybe I’ll FUCKING REMEMBER that it’s the GODDAMN POWER BUTTON.

Say I need to go do something. For example: say I’ve been told that the corpse of that unicorn that I’ve been leaving passive aggressive notes about is actually mine, so I should go do something about it, because, honestly, they smell terrible when they decompose, and it’s been hot the last few days.

So I go to hit ‘pause’…and I find myself staring at the ‘This is what it’ll do in sleep mode, oh, by the way, touch here to shut off the system completely.’

Yeah. I’ve done that approximately seven thousand times.

And the select, start, and home buttons are really stiff.

Here they are, turned on, and side by side. The home screens are really different. The 3DS has a lot of other shit, including a shop where you can download demos of games.

You could kinda do something like that from the DSLite, but you had to be near a special spot, usually in game stores, and usually with the shittiest range imaginable. I was able to download a few demos from the comfort and safety of my own sofa.

You can also buy full games, and there’s that augmented reality thing, which is actually kinda cool.

I haven’t really played with anything else, though, which is why I could never do a proper review. I’m far too easily distracted…mostly by Picross.

This is the charging cable end. I should’ve dug out the DSLite charging cable for a proper comparison, but…yeah, I’m a tiny bit lazy.

It’s bigger. It’s bigger than MiniUSB, even.

But, y’know what? It’s okay. Because included in the box? Is this. A charging dock. I don’t have to mess with that plug at all — I just place the 3DS into this thing, and a couple of prongs make contact with the flat metal bits on the back, and it charges.

It’s also a convenient place to keep the 3DS when it’s not in use.

The thing in the background — the thing that isn’t an unsafe mess of a power strip — is a postcard I got from a friend in chat. A big, scary, thankfully dead wasp.

Paleovespa florissantia, if you care.

And here’s a stylus comparison. The green one is the DSLite, and the shiny metallic one is the one that came with the 3DS.

At first, it seems like the one from the 3DS is shorter, but it extends. It’s actually longer, but I think it might be a bit more slender. And I’m pretty sure it’s actually made of metal, instead of just looking metallic.

It seems sturdy, but light, and it’s not all that terrible to hold.

That’s pretty much what came in the box…which seems like very little, right? Because, well, have you seen the box? It’s pretty big, compared to the box the Lite came in.

Oh.

That’s why the box is so big. The manual is huge.

I should probably say something about whether or not you should upgrade, but I don’t really influence decisions like that.

If you are looking to get a new DS, and you’re going from Lite to 3D, expect to accidentally turn off your game a few times, and to go for the stylus in the wrong place. But don’t let the 3D part put you off, because it can be turned off.