3DS Originally Lacked 3D and Gyro Sensors

Despite Nintendo's experimentations with 3D have been going on for years and the fact that it's finally made it into one of their consoles in good form, the 3DS was originally going to lack the feature.

This is according to Hideki Konno, who was recently interviewed by famed Japanese magazine, Famitsu. Hideki Konno is responsible for directing and producing some of Nintendo's most well known games, which include Mario Kart Wii and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. His recent interview with Famitsu revealed some interesting information about the earlier stages in development of the Nintendo 3DS.

In one segment of the interview Konno talked about his involvement with the system and when he began working on it, this stretches back to 2008 and back then he told of how the system was a lot different. "At that time, it didn’t have 3D visuals", he said. Furthermore, he discussed Nintendo's previous attempted at 3D, with 3D Hot Rally (An 8-bit game that used 3D glasses and was only released in Japan) and the Virtual Boy, explaining the timing was right for the 3DS, with the technology becoming available to have glasses-free 3D.

From Nintendo’s perspective, they’ve released 3D Hot Rally and the Virtual Boy; they’ve had a history of experimenting with 3D visuals. With this system, you could say the timing was just right for us. It was the right time to start thinking about using the latest in high-tech and try out glasses-free 3D.

The motion sensors were actually put in pretty late. We officially went with them just before E3 last year. The boat had really left the port by that point - the hardware team had the final specs and just had to work it all out. Then, in the midst of that, Miyamoto said ‘This isn’t enough; we can really change things if there’s a gyro sensor in there.’ We had a prototype for the sensor already, so we got everyone together to try it out, and the conclusion we came up with was ‘Well, if we can do things this fun with it, I guess we’ve got no choice.’