I'm not buying this 3D thing

[Alby_da_Wolf]

LordTheNightKnight said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

While I think 3DS will succeed (but probably less than DS) and Ninty will make good use of the 3D "gimmick" in a sizeable number of games, I can't help laughing when I read some Ninty zealots (very few, actually) claiming that 3D will make 2D games better. If Ninty chose to make 3D its latest portable's main feature, it's quite obvious that it will focus on 3D for games too.

I am interested in how it makes Link's Awakening look though.

Well, isometric 3D and also more primitive from above 2D - pseudo 3D could look better, my doubts are mostly for side-scrolling 2D, making it popping out is really a gimmick, while making several 2D layers and making them look at different distances thanks to 3D, well, it makes me think about a safary toy with a light gun and a 2D lion with a photoelectric cell moving between 2D vegetation layers I had when I was a kid 

So basically it would look like "Viewmaster" 3D, that some of the really bad 3D movies look like?

Unless they actually do those game in real 3D, viewed from a side, but wouldn't it be overshooting? In 2D you achieve immediateness because limiting the PC to move on a single plane, and with some constraints on the directions too, simplifies both gameplay and the particular aspect of aiming, the welcome side-effect is a reduction of development costs too. But having to make a true 3D game, then nailing the 3D PC to move in a limited set of directions only on a plane would mean having a bulkier game engine and higher development costs and underuse them. But if you want to make such particular use of 3D look good, you have little choice, with the 3D screen the eye would detect even more sharply the flaws of separately developed and rendered layers just juxtaposed instead of a proper 3D environment viewed from a side and with a proper perspective projection. Obviously this unnatural effect could even be used on purpose, to give a retro look (*), but just imagine how bad would it become if after a few good games using it, there were a flood of shovelware and bad clones using it, people would fastly grow tired of it, so let's just hope possible games using this style arrive after most of the 3rd parties already have their proper 3D engines ready.

(*) Think about something like the video for Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight", for example,inspired to the movies of Georges Méliès, the "father" of special FX.