In This Case Two is Much Better Than One.
June 29, 2012
It seems to be getting harder and harder to have faith that Nintendo knows what they're doing now a days. After a string of underpowered consoles, complete and utter failure to make a proper online infrastructure, and losing more and more hardcore third party support. The folly I speak of today has to do with the 3DS. Evern since the Playstation video game developers found out that the best way to make easy and smooth controls for a 3D environment is to control movement with one analog stick, and control the camera with a second one. Nintendo caught on to this about a generation later with the Gamecube, kind of.
Anywho when the 3DS was announced it had a new edition to a Nintendo handheld, a circle pad, and it is awesome, smooth like butter. However it has only one. With a string of big name games, like Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Monster Hunter coming to the system Nintendo made the Circle Pad Pro an add on to the 3DS that would give the 3DS a second circle pad. Now there aren't a lot of games the use the Circle Pad Pro, but for the few that do it makes the gameplay significantly easier, and in some cases are inplayable without it.
So when Nintendo announced the 3DS XL a new version of the 3DS that is 90% larger, surely they'll add a second circle pad to it with all that extra space, right? Right? Wrong! The 3DS XL still has only one circle pad. And yes I understand that not many games use the Circle Pad Pro, but it still exists. More games will use it in the future. Why not just nip that problem in the bud while they had the chance and just add a second circle pad? It makes no sense to me. What makes even less sense to me is the fact then Nintendo is making a Circle Pad Pro especially for the 3DS XL The original Circle Pad Pro was bad enough, the ill formed carbunkle it is hanging off the side of the 3DS, now the awkwardness will be multiplied by 90% with the 3DS XL, which again begs the question, why didn't they just give it two circle pads to begin with?