NEW YORK: The New Nintendo will launch two big new products in U S latest model 3DS and 3DS XL’s new features.
On February 13, Nintendo will release two big new products in the US: the latest model of its portable Nintendo 3DS, the New Nintendo 3DS XL, and a 3DS revamp of its nearly 15-year-old game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Pairing them was a great decision.
Majora, originally released on Nintendo 64, was a sharp turn for the staid Zelda series. Instead of another rehash of the Link-saves-Princess-Zelda story, it went off on a bizarre tangent—Link found himself in a town that, in three days’ time, would be destroyed by a massive, leering moon colliding with Earth. Link can’t save the town in time, but he can turn back the clock just before annihilation, reliving the same three days over and over until he finds a way to stop the moon. Along the way, you got to play with the idea of time-travel in ways other games of the time never considered.
This isn’t a story about the long-awaited return of a classic. Actually, we’ve been able to download Majora’s Mask for 10 bucks on the Wii (or Wii U) since 2009. The benefit of Majora’s Mask 3D isn’t its existence so much as the fact it’s a refined version of a game that’s kind of hard to go back to these days. The system for saving your game is much kinder to the player now, as befits a portable experience that you want to start and stop frequently. And there are a variety of other tweaks that make the time-travel mechanic a little easier to handle.
Majora’s Mask 3D doesn’t require the New 3DS XL. You can play it on any 3DS or 2DS. But it’s an excellent test case for the upgraded hardware, since it makes use of the optional new features. I was quite impressed with how well the New 3DS XL held up during what turned out to be marathon Zelda sessions.
The right analog stick on the New 3DS, which controls the camera in Majora’s Mask, held up well over the long run. It’s the size and shape of the top of a pencil eraser, and, come to think of it, feels like one too. It’s nice to have full and easy control of the camera during a Zelda game, which hasn’t always been the case.
