Wishful thinking but here's a layout idea (see image attachment).

For those of you not familiar with the 3ds, the lower screen is a touchscreen.

That's a real creative idea. I kinda wish a few things like that could make it to the 3DS, but they don't that a lot.

-SNERK-

Sorry, but you do realize the 3DS is a 240p screen, right? How would you manage an entire ship on a screen that only manages to be slightly bigger than what the NES showed? 320 x 240 pixels isn't a whole lotta real estate. The idea, interesting as it is, just wouldn't work. You sometimes need fast reflexes, and that swap wouldn't work so great. The vertical split wouldn't do well either as you have to keep a fast track on their ship and yours using subtle visual clues.

This is a console they had to settle for a Minecraft knockoff on, mind you.

Now the Vita on the other hand, not only has the resolution, but also the real estate to make this work on. And enough fine controls. Just a nice split screen would do.

The joke while dated, inaccurate, and unamusing, is welcomed. :B

What joke? I haven't seen much of that's actually original content for the Vita. It's my least used device. :/

There are at least 59 titles unique to the Vita.

It's not that I hate the Vita. It has great hardware. It's just that for many of the over 900 non-exclusive titles, I already had ones I liked on the PS1, PS2, PS3, or PC. Even of the ones that are exclusive, a third are sequels or spin-offs of franchises on other consoles which is kind of sad when you think about it.

Can you name another portable where I can play Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Final Fantasy 9, and Fez on the go?

Nope. Then again, I never looked. I know MGS3 is on the 3DS and that's about it.

Hey It would still be great on my 3ds XL

At nearly the same resolution of the NES and requiring the Frankenstick to make it work nice. I mean sure you could call it playable.

I wouldn't know. That would require me to own it or have used it. :B

Nice idea, it could work though with the smaller 3DS/DS models it could get a little fiddly

To be honest, I believe that of the smaller 3DS/DS models in general..