*cough* Sega Gamegear *cough*.

Actually, there may be one problem 3D could well help with, depth. There are tricks games usually need to use for people to be able to judge where they actually are in game, particularly while jumping or guiding something that move away from the point of view. Shadows are used for instance. It;s quite a subtle thing but it's of more use in games than it could ever be in things like movies.

I picked mine up today. I think it's fantastic. I have no problems holding a handheld in front of my face without jumping around like a wild monkey, playing for <5 hours at a time between recharges, and can affording $250. YMMV. Neither me nor my son has had any issues with the 3D at all, but we've also used shutter glasses and never had issue there either.

I think the StreetPass is a brilliant way for Nintedo to encourage you to always keep your 3DS with you.

As for the games (I've only played them relatively briefly) they are typical launch fare.

Pilotwings: Fun enough, but mostly a play it for a while off and on game.
Street Fighter: It is Street Fighter IV shrunk to a hand held. This is the best of my 4 games and considering how my experiences match up with what I've read, this is the best of any of the launch games.
Lego Star Wars: I really liked the moving the little 3D guys around blasting blocks. I've always been a fan of the Lego games but 3D add to it for me.
Shadow Wars: Think X-Com. Again I like the moving the little guys around in 3D. I've spent the least amount of time with this game since this will be the game I end up playing the most.

If you can afford one, you should get one.

I get your point, and I'll be a little bit off topic here, but I found that Zelda quite horrible. Mainly because the game was waaaaayyyy too easy, hence quite boring. Also because you only use the stylus to play the game and that bothered me (my carpal canal hated it). The fact that I've played the quite good Zelda : the Minish cap just before (GBA port) didn't help either.

That's odd, I can't comment on Phantom Hourglass's difficulty, but i found Minish Cap to be extremely easy compared to other Zelda games.

Minish cap wasn't particularly hard (except maybe a couple boss), but I found it quite unique for a Zelda. The concept was amusing. At least, it worked for me.

My son is expecting his tomorrow but I would never spend that much on it especially with no real Titles yet.

I thought Minish Cap was better than either of the DS Zeldas too. That said, Minish Cap still pales in comparison to the older handheld entries in the series. The Oracle games are great and I rank Link's Awakening as one of my two favourite Zelda games.

But it does have a store in which you can buy classic Nintendo games.... as in Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance & possibly the DS & consoles.

I don't know why people get so upset about the lack of slot.... the GBA was two generations ago. If you want to play GBA games, either download them from the store or play them on a GBA. Thats just my take however...

Nintendo haven't said anything about GBA games coming to the 3DS Virtual Console (yet). As for DS games, I'm not sure whether a DS Virtual Console would be possible. The 3DS may be a lot more powerful than the DS, but it's not more powerful by enough to make emulation of the DS feasible. Backwards compatibility doesn't mean that those games could necessarily be made downloadable. Similar to how the Wii is backwards compatible with the GC, but you can't but GC games on the shop channel.

I agree with the other thing you said though, just keep something GBA compatible around. I have a purple GBA, two SPs (one first generation frontlit, one second generation backlit), a Gameboy Micro, an original DS and a DS lite, all of which are GBA capable. The GBA and the SPs are GBC and GB compatible too. I tend to keep the second gen SP around because it's the only thing GBC compatible with a backlit screen.

I'm kinda sure they did in there own little way. Looking at an insert that came withe the 3DS that was talking about the Virtual Console the showed an image. This image of course was of Super Mario Land on the store, but right next to it was an icon that I am pretty sure was of Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

Does the store give away the games for free? Why would I want to pay for them again, especially copies that Nintendo will not back up for me and go poof if my hardware does? Besides, some games benefit from having an older GBA version of the game in the GBA slot (at least some of the gen IV Pokemon games do).

People get upset at the lack of GBA slot for the same reason people get cheesed when you can no longer emulate PS2 games on the PS3. You can't tell me there's no room for a GBA slot in those behemoths, it's merely to try and push people towards Nintendo's stupid online store (which manages to be the worst deal of any console maker's online store).

EDIT: Wait... this thing doesn't play DS games? Wtf?! Is it actually a new gen handheld, because it doesn't seem like a big enough step up.

Do you mean the little clockwork Mario icon to the left of the SML icon? If so, I'm pretty sure that's the icon for "Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again!", a DSiware game. They've already said that DSiware would still be buyable/playable on the 3DS but they've said nothing about GBA games. In fact, when the 3DS Virtual console was first announced it was misreported that it would have GB, GBC and GBA games. It turned out that whoever translated it from Japanese somehow added GBA into the list (perhaps through making an assumption).

Oh well never mind then I suppose