The Energon Pub

As both a nintendo and sony fanboy I'm glad to share the NGP (next-generation-portable) is revealed with incredible graphics and awesome features

It has a touchscreen on the front and back, with 4-times better quality (according to sony) than the original PSP with analog sticks. This is accomplished with a 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 core processor and a SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit (I have only a limited idea what it means, but it sounds hardcore). camera on the front and included. I highly reccomend watching some gameplay footage on youtube. Titles will include Metal gear solid 4, Little big planet, Killzone portable and Uncharted. Boasting near PS3 graphics and control. Playstation network, and a GPS are included. Price range is between $250-$300. Has a disk-based system with downloadable capability.


The 3DS made by nintendo This nintee hardcore gamers with titles like Super Street fighter 4, Ocarina of Time with updated graphics, star fox 64 with updated graphics, metal gear 3D, and Resident Evil. Lighter gamers may enjoy pilotwings resort, and the mii creator. cameras are included, with wifi capability. Nintendo shop channel included allowing new games and classics to be downloaded. With a custom PICA200 graphics processor the 3DS doesn't have the same processing brute force as the NGP, but the graphics are still quite impressive. It has cartridges, and will be able to play DS and DSi games. Price range to be $250


I might as well throw in this too. the sony ericsson xperia play, or the famous "playstation phone." Its a smartphone with a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a Qualcomm Adreno 205 GPU. It runs on Android 2.3 gingerbread and looks sleek. Its another touchscreen device. Camera is built in too. It is downloadable games only. It will be released in march.



So which one will you get? I'm sorta stuck between them, and will wait till I can see both demos and reviews. The NGP has a great lineup of games for it, and it will be as sony says a Next-Gen console in your pocket. The 3DS looks great too, and possibly has a greater lineup of games bringing classics back in 3D.... I find it extremely interesting both will receive their own different metal gear games..... The phone, I will probably pass on... feel free to share your thoughts, but keep the fanboy fighting in check

The NGP is the best LOOKING PORTABLE GAMING SYSTEM!

Okay, now this one has been bugging me for a while now: How are you supposed to use a touch screen on the back of a system? I can understand normal buttons, you can use those by feel alone, but a touch screen? I just don't understand how that could work. "Near PS3 graphics" Yeah, Sony, I'll start believing that when you start being honest about the specs before the system's launch.

That's not to say 3DS is without its own problems; I've been hearing that some people can't even see the 3D, and it only works at a certain angle. And why do you need two cameras on the back? I could understand if it was for depth perception, just like human eyes, but then that would require both cameras to recalibrate each time they move, just like human eyes.

So, until I get a really, really good reason too...I'm not getting either. I already own MGS4 and Ocarina of Time, thanks very much, I don't need to rebuy them on systems with broken gimmicks and/or gimmicks that make no sense to me.

Ocarina of Time is supposed to have some sections remade, most importantly, the Water Temple, which a lot of fans disliked.

I'm really looking forward to getting a 3DS when I can afford it - Pilot Wings looks cool and the promise of a less power-up dependant Mario Kart excites me.

Why touch screen buttons on the back of the NGP? That's stupid!!! How are you supposed to see what you're pressing, and the buttons are so tiny!

I've had the 3DS on preorder since January, and I have no plans to get a PSP2, so if I am to purchase one it depends entirely on Sony getting some titles I'll go all googly eyed over.

Also have no plans for 3DS games until June but I want the unit now for the best chance of getting one that can be used for homebrew. Just in case a hardware/firmware revision is released later that removes the chance entirely. Other than that, it'll probably be sitting in its box 'til June.

Also, the region locking on 3DS pisses me off to no end, since now I have to import EVERYTHING.

I'm not getting a 3DS for one simple reason: it has a region lock! I travel between the US and Europe on a somewhat regular basis, so the handhelds have always been an oasis for cheap and US-only games for me. And now this?!

I received my 3DS today, fresh from a Best Buy somewhere in California, after a long trek across the sea and a week locked in customs, along with Super Street Fighter IV Turbo Hyper Fighting Alpha Plus 3D Championship Edition.

I haven't had much chance to mess around with it yet, but I plan on making a few Miis and playing through a few rounds of arcade mode on SSF4 as soon as I get home from work.

After initial setup, the first thing I did was turn the 3D effect off because I didn't like looking at it. So much for that gimmick. I briefly loaded up Street Fighter to see how it looked, and I was pretty impressed to see how great everything looked and how smooth the game ran despite being on such a small device.

After that I popped in a DS game to see how that looked, and I have to say that this is one of the first things that I disliked about the system after opening it. The 3DS runs DS games through some kind of blurr/smoothing filter to reduce pixelation but it ends up making the games look far less attractive than they did on the DS, and messes with the textures on 3D models quite severely. I will look at this more later though, and hopefully there'll be a way to turn this filter off and get the original look of the games back.

Another very small thing which bugs me is the telescopic stylus. This was a terrible idea as far as I'm concerned. As someone that removes and replaces the stylus a lot during gameplay, and prefers the longer pens, having to extend it every single time is going to play on my nerves. The longer, side loading pens of the DSi were a much better design and for this reason I think I'm going to have to buy a few spare pens to keep loose and handy on my desk and in my wallet/coat.

I just bought a 3DS. How are the regular Transformers DS games in general? Are they worth playing?

I put together my own 3D image today. It works remarkably well as long as you don't try to put too much depth into the layers. If you do, it will skew the image and you'll be seeing double. Despite it looking just like two 2D layers a few centimetres apart, it still looks really good. After a bit more experimenting I hope to be able to create images where individual objects have depth. That will likely take a lot of practice though.

Obviously, this is an advantage the 3DS has over the DSi. You can finally put your own images on it, whereas the DSi would reject anything that wasn't taken on the system. An option in the future to set a 3D image as a wallpaper would be grand.

The 3D imagery is much easier on the eyes when it's not moving around, but I still get an odd feeling in my eyes even after staring at a still 3D image for a little while. My eyes are probably still expecting to see a split image when I switch back to looking at normal things and it takes them a while to readjust. I'm hoping it will get easier over time.

Overall this is a nifty little device and I'm glad I bought it. Making 3D images of my favourite characters isn't going to generate any long lasting appeal though, so I hope the library of games expands soon. My next game will be Devil Survivor Overlocked, and that's far away in June. But looking at the DS' catalogue of RPGs, I'm hopeful I won't be waiting too long for something engaging.

Personally, I'm excited for the PSP2. A right stick is awesome. Better graphics is cool too. The cameras aren't really a big deal and the touch control on the back isn't necessary at all. Friends list, YES! Trophies is the one thing we really don't need.