Nintendo 3DS: Release Date and Price (Japan-only) Announced

Somewhere in the world (Japan), at this very moment, Nintendo is announcing the release date of the Nintendo 3DS while most sensible Americans sleep with visions of Mario and Peach and gravy-smothered sandwiches (just me?) in their dreaming minds. Luckily for the few of you that are awake, we chose to brave the witching hours to keep up with the Japanese press conference where it’s all going down.

The Big NEWS:

FEB. 26 – 25000Y – JAPAN RELEASE
MARCH – NO PRICE – Europe and America

(So much for that Nov. 22 rumor, eh?)

A Virtual Console has been announced to include GameBoy and GameBoy Advance titles.
A Home Button (ala home consoles) will pause the system mid-game.
The 3DS will ship with a 2GB SD card in the box.
Launch colors: Aqua Blue and Cosmo Black

The full details of the conference can be found after the jump…

To start the show, we should probably mention our recent article, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Nintendo 3DS, in which we explain in detail all the facts surrounding the new handheld that were available up to this point. Tonight’s events should make some changes to that tome of knowledge, and we’ll be happy to add those in as soon as the conference wraps and we catch up on some much needed sleep.

Also, there were some recent hardware leaks concerning the Nintendo 3DS specs, and as soon as those are confirmed, we’ll pass that info along as well. For now, though, let’s get on with the show:

The image above is the final design for the Nitendo 3DS.Not much is different from previous design incarnations, with the exception of what looks like a change in hue for the analog nub, and possibly a change to the stylus.

The conference started with some coverage of Nintendo sales, as can be expected, and then moved on to talk about upcoming titles like the renewed Donkey Kong Country before moving on to the new Wiimote + that we recently noticed was shipping with Flingsmash.

When Nintendo moved on to the 3DS, they began with screens of a new Resident Evil title (Biohazard: Liberation in Japan), as well as the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3DS remake.

Nintendo then showed off a promotional video that began to shed the light on some of the expanded functionality of the 3DS. It included the Tag Mode, which organized notices in a list, as well as Miis. The exchange of information over Tag Mode was covered as well, but most of this information was the same as had been said at E3. Some specific examples were highlighted with Namco’s Ridge Racer and Capcom’s Street Fighter titles. There was even an auto Mii creation tool using the camera.

They also showed the 3DS connecting to a web browser directly after stopping a game and some augmented reality gameplay using the built-in camera. Faster downloads of data can be done by putting the system in a cradle, although we’re not quite sure about that one – details aren’t too clear. The system can, however, actually connect to WiFi in sleep mode and download rankings, free software, ghost data, and other elements while powered down.

That’s it from Piki Geek on this one. Hope the news was to your liking. We’d like to thank the live bloggers and Twitter feeds out there in the world who helped gather this info as it streamed out of the Nintendo hive. Great job guys!