The element of 3-D in films has been used as a gimmick to get people out of the house since the 1950s, but it’s no grand secret that it’s had a resurgence over the past decade. Video games in 3-D are similarly not a new phenomenon, but with the North American release of Nintendo’s 3DS just a few months away, it’s definitely making a bigger splash in the game industry now than it has in years.
Back in the 1980s, the Sega Master System used a set of goggles called SegaScope which provided a 3-D effect for the small handful of games that supported them, but when most people think about the past of 3-D gaming, they remember the Virtual Boy.
Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, released in 1995 to an uninterested gaming public, is often considered one of the gaming giant’s rare misses. Despite a genuinely decent 3-D effect, the system was a massive failure by design. Using the system required placing it on a table and leaning face-first into it, causing neck strain. Of course, once you’re in there, Nintendo reminds you to take frequent breaks, and rightfully so. Staring at the system’s harsh, monochromatic red-on-black display for extended periods of time can really be murder on the eyes.
Even with its problems, the Virtual Boy had a few decent games. “Teleroboxer” is a fun riff on the arcade boxing style of “Punchout,” and “Mario’s Tennis” is a passable, if unremarkable, tennis game. The main issue with the Virtual Boy was that, despite the sacrifices of color and comfort the player had to make for the sake of 3-D, very few of the games made actual good use of the effect. Take “Galactic Pinball,” for example. Pinball games really have nothing to gain from the third dimension, and the Virtual Boy’s “Galactic Pinball” was no exception.
Fast foward to 2010, when consumer-level 3-D TVs finally become available. The price of the technology is still pretty steep, but that hasn’t stopped Sony from patching in 3-D game and Blu-ray support for the Playstation 3. A handful of games have already been released or patched with 3-D support, and many more are planned to come out this year.
The result seems to have been largely successful, though some developers have noted difficulty in the balancing act between graphics, performance and the 3-D effect. In an interview with British gaming publication “Computer And Video Games,” “Tekken” producer Katsuhiro Harada claimed that “Tekken X Street Fighter” would not be including 3-D support because 3-D technology requires a doubled frame rate. With most recent fighting games clocking in at 60 frames per second, Harada said that keeping the game at 120 frames for the 3-D support would be a major technological hurdle. It’s imperative to keep a consistent high frame rate in fighting games, though curiously NetherRealm Studios, developers of the 2011 “Mortal Kombat,” don’t seem as concerned and have reported that the PS3 version of the game will include stereoscopic 3-D support.
Of course, a bulk of the buzz now on 3-D gaming is on the 3DS. Not only do you have a technologically beefier version of Nintendo’s venerable handheld, but also the first console to allow 3-D effects without goggles. This could be a truly amazing feature or an incredibly annoying one, depending on how it’s handled. Thankfully, Nintendo is including a slider on the console to control just how far into the third dimension the image is displayed, even recommending that users under the age of six completely deactivate the 3-D feature to avoid potential damage to their eyesight.
As cool as the 3-D effect will likely be, it’s a good decision to leave whether or not to use it to the player. One issue that plagued the original DS was overuse of the touch screen. Many games legitimately benefited from the screen, but at other times it felt like developers only utilized the touch screen because they felt they had to. “Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow” is one of the best games on the system, but a handful of forced touch-screen segments just served as annoyances in an otherwise great 2-D platformer.
3-D visuals are unlikely to hinder game mechanics the same way the touch screen sometimes did, but the ability to turn off the effect should hopefully prevent developers from using it as a crutch. If they don’t know whether the player is using the effect, they’ll be more likely to use 3-D as an aesthetic enhancer, and not as a gimmick for an entire game to rest on, right? We can hope so, at least. The last thing the gaming world needs is an interactive version of the paddle ball scene from “House of Wax 3-D.”
Alex Girard ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and communication arts.
