Don’t forget the 2DS mini-slab (reviewed here), Nintendo’s budget 3DS without the stereoscopic no-glasses 3D or clamshell hinge. It’s just $130. It, plus A Link to the Past, brings you in well below $200, giving you a little extra wiggle room, say you want to pick up a nice case. But the 2DS’s screens are the same size as the regular 3DS’s — about 3.5-inch diagonal on the upper widescreen, versus the XL’s nearly 5-inch diagonal. It’s a significant difference — significant enough that I retired my 3DS over a year ago.
About Nintendo: The worldwide pioneer in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii U™ and Wii™ home consoles, and Nintendo 3DS™ and Nintendo DS™ families of portable systems. Since 1983, when it launched the Nintendo Entertainment System™, Nintendo has sold more than 4.1 billion video games and more than 655 million hardware units globally, including the current-generation Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo 3DS XL, as well as the Game Boy™, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi™ and Nintendo DSi XL™, Super NES™, Nintendo 64™, Nintendo GameCube™ and Wii systems. It has also created industry icons that have become well-known, household names such as Mario™, Donkey Kong™, Metroid™, Zelda™ and Pokémon™. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, please visit the company’s website at http://www.nintendo.com.
If, on the other hand, you don’t own a 3DS, or you own the original 3DS and you’ve been eyeing an XL (reviewed here), this new gold-and-black Nintendo 3DS XL (emblematic of the parallel worlds Link visits in the game) might well be for you. It’s $219, and while it doesn’t come with the physical game, it includes a code to download it.
I wouldn’t normally write about something cosmetic like a gold-for-gold’s-sake Nintendo 3DS XL, but we’re talking about a momentous event: the debut of a sequel to a 22-year-old Super Nintendo game that for some rivals Ocarina of Time for the honorific “best Zelda game ever.”
No, it’s probably of no interest if you already own a 3DS XL — not unless you’re a Zelda-phile or one of these compulsive game collector types. You can just pick up The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds standalone on November 22. It’ll work the same on your system as this upcoming Triforce-etched one.
«This beautifully designed Nintendo 3DS XL system continues a tradition that has delighted our fans for decades,» said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. «It’s a special bundle for a very special video game.»