For once, let us return to the loving embrace of video gaming, free from Fox News running “Muslims raped your dead mother, let’s send in the troops” stories, the economy being in the toilet, everyone lying about everything and basically the world being a jolly rotten place. After all, there’s only so many remarks you can make about how bad everything is before people start thinking you’re a bit down and need cheering up, which normally involves talking, hugging and other evil things. Yuck.

A little while ago, due to the fact that I wandered round the Eurogamer Expo last year in a suit, at which people thought I was working at the Earl’s Court center as security guard / concierge to get theatre tickets for them, a mail popped through the wonderful spam-gatherer stating that Nintendo, one of the world’s best known video game, chemical warfare and taxi cab production companies, (NOTE: that was a joke about the taxi cabs…err…) was jolly happy to allow a chosen few to go and have a play of their new toy before most people were allowed to get their hands on it.

The new toy in question, is called the Nintendo 3DS and basically it was touted as the world’s first 3D hand-held console which didn’t require you to wear glasses that mad you look like a rapist from the 1970s like most things these days, like most wonderful films at the cinema, or some overpaid tw*ts running around a football pitch on Sky Sports HD 3D RD VD Extra Ultra 7.

In order for Nintendo to ensure that people were willing to cut off their parents’ limbs in order to hold the 3DS in their murderous hands given the current state of people’s finances, the “Believe Your Eyes” event was held on February 5th and 6th in London and Manchester with a couple of others held in places no-one cares about.

Upon entering the warehouse after a sexy lady armed with a bloke the size of Godzilla checked you were who you said you were, You got to see a history of the Game Boy, before some more women, who I suspect at this point were getting f*cked off with repeating the same thing over and over again to gormless plebs, led us into a room with some bamboo shacks.

What went on can only be described as “You had to be there to believe they actually went to the trouble for all this.”

To begin with, we witnessed a live performance of Street Fighter 4.

To be fair you could only applaud the silliness of it all, which we all did afterwards before being lead to a point where a virus breakout had occurred at some point and we met the characters from the Resident Evil Series, (with the lady playing Jill whatever being “Oh dear god, I want her to have my children, then I will cut off my penis to avoid lusting after anyone else” sexy…..I’m just saying…) before being led through an area which had various zombies etc and a fat bloke with a chainsaw, before we were then allowed to have a go on the machines themselves in a dark room where you suspected bad things happened, to whit you had to then explain to police what happened using a doll.

Now this is the point where the pictures had to stop as any pictures being taken etc. of the games on show was a no-no and it would lead the big burly man from the front door to be summoned to rip your ears off. So in order to illustrate what the thing looks like, here is a reference picture pinched from the internet;

As you can see, there are two screens, one for sure was a touch-screen, the other I remember touching and stuff happened, but there were also lots of other buttons, and given how terrible I have been with these fangled controls on the consoles, they could order you a coffee and sell your car without you knowing, for all the good it would do to describe them.

The screen itself was where the “3D Magic” happens, and it appears that they have achieved this simply by having three layers, one background, one middle and one foreground, with different graphics being rendered at different levels depending on what it was. You also had to look at the thing head on all the time, otherwise the illusion falls apart like a sentence searching for a metaphor that you can’t remember, like what is going on right now actually.

Back to the darkened room of naughty containing the consoles and games themselves, People who wanted to see the likes of the new Mario Kart etc were not going to happy, but there was plenty on offer.The Resident Evil game was basically the exact same as Resident Evil 5 and the racing game they did show really was just a load of boll*cks we’ve seen before.

Street Fighter 4 was one of the more interesting titles, with the touch-screen on the bottom basically providing cheat buttons for you to do all that stuff which makes the screen flash rapidly and therefore as well as winning the fight, send you into a fit. Finally Dead or Alive looked like every other Japanese game with school girl looking women who have magic powers and jump around all over the place.

After having a bit more fun with the unit for taking some pictures of my face, then proceeding to shoot balls into my own mouth (a phrase which would normally cause a stampede of psychologists to be running down towards me and ask “How does that make you feel?”), for the first time you get the sense that Nintendo have carried over the features from the Wii and added to it with 3D. While it’s a great technical accomplishment which does deliver what they say, it’s questionable as to whether or not you’re better off waiting for the inevitable second version of this hand-held.

Mainly because the battery life when engaged in intense 3D gaming drains power quicker than a sex-starved woman drains power from her first dildo, and that’s normally one of the things which gets better in the next version of a product. But it’s an interesting concept and I do look forward to seeing what comes out on the machine beyond the same rehash of stuff which Nintendo have a habit of peddling out all the time, which regretfully is what was on show that evening.

I now return you to your hate-filled existence.