The pretty princess pink edition is actually a two tone affair. It’s more white than pink when it’s open, which is actually quite appealing. I also like the shade of pink used in the 3DS more than the pink from my Coral Pink DS lite.

The 3D effect works surprisingly well as long as you’re holding the system at the right angle, and watching the intro movie for Kingdom Hearts DDD was all it took to convince me that it was legitimately cool. It doesn’t take much for the screen to go blurry, though.

Nintendo’s eShop is a mess. I was able to find Senran Kagura Burst in it because I knew the name of it, but I cannot figure out how to simply browse all games. This may be more of an issue because they have an April Fools thing going on right now so many of the icons have been replaced with pictures of Nintendo villains.

I thought that connecting the 3DS to my Club Nintendo account was supposed to register it, but it didn’t – I had to go to Club Nintendo and manually enter the PIN / serial number from the system.

Tying downloaded software to a system instead of an account is dumb, but there’s been enough said about that by other people that I won’t get into it.

I’ve actually stopped using screen protectors on phones / tablets / anything with a glass screen, but the abuse I put my DS Lite through playing Ouendan and The World Ends With You means that it was Not Optional. The Hori-brand 3DSXL screen protector is the only screen protector that I have ever used that went on without any fuss.

Physically it feels very solid, with nice tactile buttons and a screen hinge that clicks into place with a solid and satisfying feeling. I may lose the stylus soon though, I keep forgetting to put it back into the side of the system.

I haven’t tried any DS software yet so I don’t know how difference in screen ratio will affect things. I understand that, even though the console IS region locked for DSi and 3DS software, it isn’t locked for DS titles so I should be able to use my Japanese games. I’ll be quite fussed if that turns out not to be the case.

I’ve had my DS lite for a good eight years and it’s held up to a serious amount of abuse and served as both a fine games console and the best kanji dictionary I’ve ever owned. Hopefully I’ll get at least as many years of service out of its successor.