Already have mine pre-ordered and paid for.  :cool;

Coooool.  Thanks for the impressions, Aaron.  I still believe the DSi XL is the best piece of hardware I have ever owned, but despite our differences of opinion there, it's good to hear the 3DS XL is shaping up just as nicely.

Unfortunately, I will be holding out for some better colors.  The Japanese white or the EU silver would have been good enough for a day 1 buy from me.  But the blue and the red? Meh.  I'll wait!!

Did you not play a 3DS game with it? I'm interested in how fuzzy the 3DS games are.

I did. They weren't fuzzy. Put it this way: the pixels on the 3DS XL are about the size of the pixels on the DS; there's just more of them.

I'm leaning allot more to it now than when it originally was revealed. My 3DS is a little beat up and I'm not sure if it will last for years and years to come unlike my DS Lite which is dirty but still very nice.


The improvements maybe small but it seems like it will add up for a worthwhile double dip, I really wish Nintendo did more though especially with the cameras. I wonder how more shitty the pictures will look blown up?

Appreciate the impressions.
Curious tho, you mentioned being " underwhelmed" by the dsi xl yet pleased with this one. Ive heard many liken this new portable positively with their dsi xl experience. What was underwhelming for you that was fixed with the 3ds xl?

The DSi XL didn't really improve anything over the DSi (it was all the same buttons, etc.), and I also found it to be top-heavy. My impressions for that system.

I LOVE my 3DS XL. After all the initial set up faffing, the first time I sat down with it to play some Mario Kart I felt my shoulders and eyes relax and I realized just how much more comfortable playing on a screen this size is over the original. And it's much more pleasant to hold.


But I'm surprised you prefer the select/home/start button. I know they look better in pictures but in practice I agree with the fan back lash - they are worse then the original 3DS design because you get virtually no sensation of feedback from them. At least the old home button clicked when you pressed it, even if it did feel like a Sinclair ZX 81 to use.


Anyway, aside from loosing my save stats on my eshop games this is one upgrade I would recommend too.

Well, I don't really care about the trio of buttons since they're rarely used; it's the inset power button that's an improvement since you can't accidentally hit it as easily.

I don't know if I'll prefer the new trio over the current ones but since the current ones nearly break my thumb after 5-10 min of playing LA I think I'll like the new ones more.
Anyhow, good to hear it's great to hold.  Just got my DS Lite after not having it for 2 years and man did I forget how great it feels to hold compared to the 3DS (or heck, in general).

They're not rarely used when playing Gameboy games, especially Link's Awakening. 

Yeah, I don't buy Virtual Console games. That they don't have a way to reconfigure the button mapping is unforgivable. But as you mentioned, they should be better for you since the old ones suck to press.