Thursday, January 6, 2011

3 - 3DS AR. Potential!

So you're playing the Pokémon TCG with your friend, and you yell, "Go Charizard, use Fire Spin!". In your mind, you see your Charizard card come to life, jumping out of the card, attacking and burning the other monster. But your friend just looks at you puzzled. He discards his fainted monster, starts his turn, simply declares an attack, and ends his turn - uninspired as per usual, ruining your excitement.

With the next Nintendo handheld on the horizon, we may be able to make such fantasies come to life on our portable screens. The idea is partially demonstrated here:


This technology could be used not only for Pokémon, but I bet there will be a 3DS Yu-Gi-Oh game which uses this augmentioned reality (AR) to finally make something like the holograms from the manga and anime come true.

Now, this technology is old news. Sony has already done it with Eye of Judgement, Kinect does it, and some iPhone apps do it (poorly). But Nintendo has the vision and resources to make a fun, useful, updated spritual successor to the e-Reader, using the 3DS's three cameras.

While I'm here, I would also like to offer up my prayers to the Nintendo gods for another Why Hasn't it Happened? idea: Pokémon Snap 2! Surely they could do it on 3DS, perhaps even incorporating AR to walk around and snap pictures of Grass and Bug-type Pokémon in the forest behind your house, or water Pokémon at your local beach.

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