The Religion Before Apple

Before I held my first Mac, Nintendo was the only thing I actually believed in. Our ethics teacher couldn’t talk me out of it. Every good memory that had nothing to do with melted cheese, drugs, or sex was somehow Nintendo-shaped—the collective howl in someone’s backyard the afternoon we finally caught our first Kangaskhan, the specific fury of a power cut three seconds before Bowser went down, the cold-blooded satisfaction of punting your closest friends off the edge of the stage with Sheik and feeling absolutely nothing about it.

Nintendo officially unveiled the 3DS to North American and European audiences in early 2011—the handheld successor to the DS, two screens, full 3D effect with no glasses required. Europe was getting it on March 25, somewhere between €199 and €250 depending on the retailer. The pitch was simple and kind of unbelievable: three-dimensional visuals generated by the screen itself, no peripheral of any kind required.

The launch lineup had real weight. Super Street Fighter IV, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Pilotwings Resort out of the gate. More interesting to me were the remakes—The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 rebuilt with overhauled graphics and 3D depth. Old DS cartridges would still work, and the Virtual Console would eventually bring back things like Tetris and Super Mario Land for a fee.

I felt it in my fingers the moment they announced it. That old itch. Nintendo promised hands-on events across Europe so you could verify the 3D effect yourself before committing. Whether I was actually going to buy one wasn’t much of a question—the only question was how long I could pretend I was still thinking it over.