I've had a very great fond of dual-screen handheld gaming systems, & still do today, but for the present being, there aren't any new ones like what we've seen, that is to say, the Nintendo DS, DSi, & 3DS.

Let me talk about a couple benefits in terms of what dual-screen handhelds brought since they arrived into our lives.

The Nintendo DS gave us the well-known dual-screen inclusions to the handheld gaming landscape, broadening additional conveniences prior systems haven't, such as in the cases with Sonic's 3 handheld games, Rush, Rush Adventure, and Colors DS, with gameplay spanning across 2 screens, providing a rather taller screen experience in seeing more vertically as if seen from a combined viewport of a tall screen, and many other games that provided a more convenient place for minimaps, inventories, etc., cutting down many repetitive switching from pause, to gameplay in prior games that were single-screen only.

I also remember a couple other key games that covered both aspects of storytelling in one sitting, such as Mario VS. Donkey Kong, Mini-Land Mayhem, where the scenes are both presented in their in-game and pre-rendered CGI image stills played at once, occupying both screens to convey the story and allow players to see both perspectives at once, rather than use either one for a single-screen game, which is a very cool sight to see the storytelling in a convenient and well-executed way for a dual-screen handheld system.

Needless to say, the DS gave different, and very cool, convenient ways to convey game stories, along with gameplay changes that stood them out.

We all have lots of memories playing that very great handheld system, such as our Mario Kart races with system to system connectivity, the Game Boy Advance compatibility for playing GBA games,

Then came the DSi, a rather nice addition to the DS family offering us to take pictures from the system, edit them to give added stylistic flairs, record and edit audio to our fun, but moreover, the addition of its own store for buying exclusive games taking advantage of its capabilities, the DSi Shop, offering more unique games none could ever see nor play.

Paved the way for Indie game developers to make their games there to showcase their work, and envision some possibilities in the download service. The very tight caveat for it is the 20MB size restriction to games, sure enough half as less than WiiWare's 40 MB limit, which does indeed hinder others trying to make bigger games there, and, yes, other games that went under the limitation radar have been less favorable, but each and every game still deserves to be mentioned and spoken of, no matter how bad they were in their execution and vision being DSi exclusives.

The 3DS came by, and eased up the size limit by a lot to digital-exclusive games, and offered cool glasses-free 3D viewing as its focus feature, along with providing gameplay experiences that match that of a prior console system, such as the Gamecube, but better, and a bit more powerful. And compatibility with the DS & DSi games saved us the worry of its availability, even towards later games. The many games gave us lots more fond memories than ever, and broadened indie devs to reach out more to the handheld landscape.

Even we enjoyed stronger online connections the 3DS gave us, letting us playing either against or with each other for amazing multiplayer fun in many games.

Moreso, the addition to patching and DLC are very amazing additions to handheld gaming, mirroring said experience from prior console games.

My one strong disappointment to that system is the 2 screens are rather uneven, in terms of their screen viewport sizes, that is to say, the top screen being in widescreen-like format(res size, 400x240), and the touch screen still being standard screen-like(res size, 320x240), which made certain games' scenes viewed in a rather uneven size when seen with both screens, the opening scene from Kingdom Hearts 3D being a key example. I've thought to myself, "Why couldn't the bottom screen be wide as the top screen, too?". A good advantage to that would be not just being able to see more from a widened viewport, but to have extra drawing room.

More from this post later...