Fishing and billiards are among six new augmented reality games that will come preloaded on Nintendo 3DS, according to an anonymous source who provided details of five as-yet-unannounced titles to Wired.com.
The glasses-free 3-D portable gaming system launches Saturday in Japan, and AR games are among its most highly anticipated features. While Nintendo has demo'd one of the games, the company has remained mum about the other five.
Speaking anonymously to Wired.com, a source who was provided a preview of the Nintendo 3DS filled us in on the mystery titles in Nintendo's AR Games line: Fishing, Graffiti, AR Shot, Mii Pics and Star Pics. Our source provided photographs that purport to be from two of the games.
The source said the titles were provided in advance of the 3DS release but were later pulled back by Nintendo. So it is possible that the final lineup may have changed.
You'll find descriptions of all five launch games below. (Note: The names of each game are descriptive and not necessarily official titles.) Asked Tuesday about the AR Games lineup, a Nintendo of America representative said the company would not comment.
The 3DS' ability to do three-dimensional augmented reality is one of the device's most interesting features. Its two camera lenses take a 3-D image of the world around you and overlay a game onto it. The 3DS ships with six cardboard AR Cards that you place on a table for the 3DS to identify and project images onto.
In a demo shown to Wired.com last week, we moved the 3DS around the room to shoot at a dragon that popped out of our conference-room table.
We were quite impressed with AR Games: The unexpected and clever ways they turn real images into a 3-D game will likely be one of the things new 3DS owners spend the most time exploring.
Nintendo's AR Games for 3DS
This game is described by our source as a sort of combination of pool and miniature golf. You aim at the ball with a cue stick and hit it around the course, hoping to sink it in the hole at the far end. You can walk around the surface of the table to take shots from different angles. This game was also described in a forum post by a British journalist with a 3DS.
Your table becomes a fishing pond, and you lower and raise your rod into the water to pull out bigger and bigger fish. Eventually, a shark might pop out of the water (and out of your screen using the 3-D effect). Our source was quite impressed with the control of the fishing rod and the visual effects that transform your surface into a pool of water.
A 3-D drawing application in which you can use several different paintbrushes and other visual effects, including fire. You can then manipulate the resulting 3-D image, using the 3DS buttons to make it spin around or bounce.
Many of the AR Games, including the one that Nintendo demonstrated to Wired.com, are played using a card with an image of a yellow question mark. Star Pics is played with other cards in the package that feature famous Nintendo characters: Mario, Link, Kirby, Samus Aran and Pikmin.
When you point the 3DS' cameras at these cards, 3-D models of the characters appear on your table. You can pose them in different positions, then save pictures of scenes you create.
Very similar to Star Pics, but it uses Mii caricatures that players make of themselves. (You can import your Miis from your Wii console into your Nintendo 3DS.) Nintendo made an oblique reference to this game in its official 3DS literature, calling it "an interactive photo shoot with your Mii characters."
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