Almost a month after it’s release, I’m pretty sure by now pretty much everyone has seen videos and pictures of the wonderful things the 3DS has to offer.  Everyone knows it can take 3D pictures, create Miis, and even work as a pedometer.  But what about the features that no one has really mentioned.  Well that’s why I’m here, let’s get started.

#5  -Fishing

Easily one of the most impressive features on the 3DS are Nintendo’s augmented reality cards.  I’m sure you’ve seen videos of people playing a target shooting game and fighting a dragon, (heck it’s even on the commercials) but also packed into the cards is a small fishing demo.  While not necessarily the most exciting feature, the sole reason it made the list is for one interesting capability.

After acquiring enough in-game coins, players can purchase a whole new set of AR card apps for their 3DS.  Free Fishing is the equivalent app of the normal Fishing app that you can play right off the bat.  Also in this new set, is the inclusion of a Fishing Dictionary where you can view all the different kinds of fish you have collected.  Besides displaying animations of fish you’ve caught, and the number of times you’ve encountered them, the Fishing Dictionary has later entries that hint at how now fish can be caught.  These entries hint at using different color surfaces, or playing at different times.  Here is one such entry.

Hm ok.  So I open up the Free Fishing app, and put my AR card down on a blue binder.  All of a sudden a school of small fish show up!

And after a few seconds of Animal Crossing style fishing, I catch a Sardine to add to my fish collection.  It’s interesting to think of all the different ways that color identification could be used to add to games.  Just a thought.

#4  Find Mii

While I’ve seen mention of the 3DS’s Mii Plaza around, I haven’t really seen anyone talk about one of it’s sub features, Find Mii, a rather unique RPG experience.  Rather than bore you with my description of it, I’ll let this guy show you.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6np36FJ0Nc&feature=related[/youtube]

#3   Face Merger

This is one of the many features that exist in the 3DS Camera app.  Basically what it does is it prompts the player to align his face in the screen using the inner 3DS camera, while you have a friend stand away from you facing the 3DS’s outer camera.  The 3DS then takes a picture and puts the players face on the other person’s body.  While not necessarily technically sophisticated, it can create some pretty funny but mostly creepy results.  Here’s a montage of my face on random people.

I’m sorry if any of you are mentally scarred after that.

#2  Globe App

Now this one isn’t necessarily a feature, more of an easter egg, but it’s just too hilarious to overlook.  I couldn’t find any videos of it anywhere, so please bare through my bad quality recording.  In a nutshell, there’s nothing really special about it.  It’s a globe that you can spin around and resize, it also displays your location as well, but when you start to press the A button, well, stuff goes down.  I didn’t know Nintendo had a dark sense of humor.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbryX03Uwo[/youtube]

#1  Music and Mp3 editor/manipulator

Little did I know when I bought my 3DS that one of my most used features would be the Mp3 player, and not even for listening to music properly.  After uploading your songs to your included SD card you can of course play them through the music app.  There are even some really cool music visualizers in 3D that can be used as well.  But while most people may become caught up in the visuals on the top screen, my eyes are focused on the touch screen.  After navigating through some menus on the bottom screen you arrive at a picture of your normal x/y coordinate plane with a box in the middle.  You can then move this box around while the mp3 is playing to basically violate the heck out of your favorite songs.  If you move the box towards the top of the screen the song will increase drastically in pitch, your songs will sound like they’re being sung by elves.  If you move the box towards the bottom of the screen, your songs will decrease in pitch, making the vocals sound like the spawn of Satan.  If you move the box to the right, the song will speed up and moving it to the left will slow it down.  It’s extremely fun to mess around with different pitch and speed combinations while your favorite songs are playing.  Want Queen to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks on crack?  It’s possible.  You can slow rap songs down and laugh at how they pronounce words.  Try putting an extremely girly song all the way down in pitch and at super slow speed, the resulting song is frightening and hilarious.  I do not suggest doing this with very heavy metal, the results are just frightening, period.  I couldn’t find any videos of anyone messing with the graph itself but here’s an example of a something you can get through messing around with this mini feature.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wusGIl3v044[/youtube]

So in closing, the culmination of all these little features that Nintendo packed into their new handheld surprised me.  The possibility that Nintendo could include more of these little easter egg apps through future updates is exciting.  The 3DS’s amount of features on the hardware itself is the sole reason why I am not mad at such a disappointing show of launch titles.  I’m sure these features plus a whole skew of others will me get through to Ocarina’s June release.