I would like to think that Nintendo’s brand-new, first of its kind portable system wouldn’t have any kind of performance issues, especially when it comes to the previous generation’s games. Unfortunately, according to the people over at Gamespot, the Nintendo 3DS loads DS games 35% slower than the Nintendo DS Light, which by the way, was released in 2006, over five years ago.
No need to panic yet, as 35% slower computes to about a 5-10 seconds difference between the load times of the Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo DS Lite, which isn’t too much. Gamespot went on to report that while the 3DS took considerably longer to get to the in-game menu, no performance issues were noticed from then on and frame rates were normal.
I am happy to report that, when I played the 3DS last weekend at PAX East, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries didn’t seem laggy or take a while to load, so I presume that the newer games aren’t having these kinds of issues. Nintendo has yet to comment on Gamespot’s findings.
With the release of the Nintendo 3DS less than two weeks away, it’ll be interesting to see what other users find when they review the system. While backwards compatibility isn’t the key feature of a new system, it certainly is an important one, and if the Nintendo 3DS can handle 3-D, it should be able to handle a little ol’ Nintendo DS game, right?
Gamers in the United States can pick up their very own Nintendo 3DS on March 27th.
