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Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#71

Post by generj »

gugagore wrote: post #43
gambiting wrote: post #29

I always try to imagine what the final production run looks like at a factory for one of these. Is there usually some sort of ceremony for the very last unit rolling off the line? Or does it just run towards the end of the shift as normal, everything gets boxed up and shipped to retailers as normal, there just....isn't another shift after that? What happens with all the manufacturing hardrware?

It's not the same, but ‘Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu’ (you can find it easily online) is a documentary about the last day that the New York Times used linotypes and hot metal typesetting before they switched to electronic/optical typesetting. I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt, and technologically fascinating documentary. I recommend it when you have a half hour to spare.

Thank you for this recommendation, I heartily enjoyed it.

There’s something beautiful about the pride the printers had in their work. Even if the output is somewhat ephemeral - a daily newspaper.

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#72

Post by bfieidhbrjr »

gugagore wrote: post #43
gambiting wrote: post #29

I always try to imagine what the final production run looks like at a factory for one of these. Is there usually some sort of ceremony for the very last unit rolling off the line? Or does it just run towards the end of the shift as normal, everything gets boxed up and shipped to retailers as normal, there just....isn't another shift after that? What happens with all the manufacturing hardrware?

It's not the same, but ‘Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu’ (you can find it easily online) is a documentary about the last day that the New York Times used linotypes and hot metal typesetting before they switched to electronic/optical typesetting. I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt, and technologically fascinating documentary. I recommend it when you have a half hour to spare.

here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU

great video

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#73

Post by JohnBooty »

SSLy wrote: post #61
JohnBooty wrote: post #28

I'm nearly blind in one eye. The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D. In my life. I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in movies or a game console." It was the first time I ever saw in three dimensions ever. As a human being. It's a little bit hard to describe my typical experience with you, since I've never had "normal" version and I don't know what it's like. I would compare my life…

>(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech) I have a similar condition, and in fact only VR headsets and IMAX screens work for me. 3DS doesn't :<

That sure makes a lot more sense than my experience. The 3DS' lenticular system is kind of flawed -- though I wonder if that's perhaps part of why it works for me, somehow. I've never heard anybody else say, "only the 3DS worked for me"

I saw an IMAX 3D movie once but I forget how that system worked. Was it a shutter system, or was it like an updated version of the old red/blue system that relied on polarization somehow?

I haven't tried a modern VR headset. Honestly, I'd always kind of assumed that they wouldn't work because ViewMasters never worked for me back in the day. As primitive as ViewMasters were, they actually did provide fully stereoscopic images with a separate photo for the right and left eye, no lenticular or polarized or shutter system trickery involved.

May I ask what your eye condition is?

In my case, I was born with a cataract on my lens and my lens was removed circa 1980, before transplants were common. So that eye has just been chillin' without a lens ever since. I can see light and shapes, but I can't read the big "E" on the eye chart at the optomotrist's office.

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#75

Post by komali2 »

DCKing wrote: post #58

The 3DS, in particular the "New" models, I think are really recommended to pick up cheap. They are well built devices that are supremely hackable with access to lots of fun games. The 3DS library is good despite somewhat lacking in diversity. But the 3DS also has native compatibility with the entire excellent DS library, and after hacking it can also run the entire great GBA library without emulation (like Matroshka…

Yes! Don't forget you also get GameBoy Color and GameBoy games. IMO this massive library (N3DS, 3DS, DSi, DS, GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, NES) has at least 10 "must play before death" games in them (for people that care a lot about videogames, anyway).

Of course all of this can also be achieved on a PC with a simple 10$ amazon controller and free emulators, if you're comfortable pirating games.

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#76

Post by umvi »

perardi wrote: post #38

I wonder what the game plan is for offering these games in the future. The dual-screen setup obviously doesn’t map to the Switch, so it’s not just a simple eShop port like you’d have for an old SNES game. I am mostly thinking about Pokémon. They’ve got this rich new Pokémon Home system to transfer between generations, but that’s reliant on having functioning older hardware. Now, there’s a massive pool of functional 3…

I'm honestly surprised Pokemon is still around. The first one came out in like 1996, and it was initially addictive because there were a fixed number of pokemon to try to collect (150). But each iteration was basically a carbon copy of the previous gen with some map and monster changes. 7(?) gens later and now there are what 500? 600? More? I just don't understand the motivation to collect something now that you can no longer "catch em all". Is it like Hearthstone or Magic where you just collect what you can knowing certain cards will forever be beyond your reach?

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#77

Post by johnchristopher »

derefr wrote: post #37
Multicomp wrote: post #26

Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS began. Something tells me this is Nintendo hedging bets

Nintendo has never really wanted to discontinue a platform. Their vision was always that developers could support old and new platforms together through funky cross-compact measures. • Did you know that the SNES’s CPU starts up in a “NES 6502 compatibility” mode, sort of like x86-64 processors starting up in 16-bit real mode? It’s fully possible to design and build a game entirely for the NES as a 6502-assembler code…

> Since the market penetration of the NES was so high, many games in the early 90s were “dual-released” this way.

I don't remember games that were released on both systems, do you have any example ?

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#78

Post by JohnBooty »

bitwize wrote: post #67
JohnBooty wrote: post #28

I'm nearly blind in one eye. The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D. In my life. I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in movies or a game console." It was the first time I ever saw in three dimensions ever. As a human being. It's a little bit hard to describe my typical experience with you, since I've never had "normal" version and I don't know what it's like. I would compare my life…

My mom had the same reaction upon seeing a 3D movie with polarized lenses for the first time. For years she was like "I don't see 3D, I only see 2D." Then she actually tried it and... wow! My guess is your situation is similar to hers: you have a "lazy eye" and the artificial 3D stimulus somehow provides enough feedback to allow your brain to focus your lazy eye in a way the natural world does not. The eye and brain…

It's something like a lazy eye. It actually tracks along with my other eye, it's just that the vision in there is quite bad. There's no lens in there; I had a catarct removed in the early 1980s before lens transplants.

    Then I got a new prescription and was a bit disoriented 
    at how flat the world seemed, to my mind it was "like 
    a PlayStation game". What had happened was, my brain 
    had trained itself to use blurriness as a proxy for 
    distance (I'm myopic), and the eyeglasses removed that.
That's amazing. It was a bit of an unhelpful adaptation in your case, but it's just absolutely wild how they can adapt!

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#79

Post by kozak »

gugagore wrote: post #43
gambiting wrote: post #29

I always try to imagine what the final production run looks like at a factory for one of these. Is there usually some sort of ceremony for the very last unit rolling off the line? Or does it just run towards the end of the shift as normal, everything gets boxed up and shipped to retailers as normal, there just....isn't another shift after that? What happens with all the manufacturing hardrware?

It's not the same, but ‘Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu’ (you can find it easily online) is a documentary about the last day that the New York Times used linotypes and hot metal typesetting before they switched to electronic/optical typesetting. I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt, and technologically fascinating documentary. I recommend it when you have a half hour to spare.

It surprised me that the "new" in this documentary was not much different to my modern eye than the "old". Paper blocks were now moved around instead of lead blocks, but fully computerized layout was still relatively far away.

Re: Nintendo 3DS discontinued after almost a decade

#80

Post by SSLy »

JohnBooty wrote: post #73
SSLy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech) I have a similar condition, and in fact only VR headsets and IMAX screens work for me. 3DS doesn't :<

That sure makes a lot more sense than my experience. The 3DS' lenticular system is kind of flawed -- though I wonder if that's perhaps part of why it works for me, somehow. I've never heard anybody else say, "only the 3DS worked for me" I saw an IMAX 3D movie once but I forget how that system worked. Was it a shutter system, or was it like an updated version of the old red/blue system that relied on polarization some…

The IMAX system, at least in my Cinema City venue, uses polarization. I've also tried Real 3D cinemas but that didn't work.

>May I ask what your eye condition is?

I don't know if it's neurological but I just don't register depth w/o forcing it. I have astigmatism and short-sightedness.

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