[By Chris Kohler, Wired]

[Excerpts.  Read the full entertaining article here.]

Nintendo 3DS arrives in the United States this Sunday bearing gifts. While the new glasses-free 3-D gaming platform doesn’t include a packed-in game, the handheld does come with a variety of apps baked into its memory.

“We spent a lot of time and energy on the pre-installed applications,” Nintendo 3DS producer Hideki Konno told Wired.com earlier this month. Konno says the applications were designed to get other people watching and interacting with the 3DS, which is why many of them feature augmented reality, motion control and photography.

We’ve already reviewed the 3DS hardware elsewhere on Wired.com, but the volume of features, games and applications that come with the $250 gaming gadget is so great that we’re taking a deeper dive into its capabilities.

Read on for Game|Life’s impressions of all the built-in 3DS software and hardware frills, so you’ll know what to spend time with first when you finally get yours.

Face Raiders

Face Raiders might just be the secret killer app for 3DS.

To begin this game, you take pictures of faces — yours, your friends, anyone’s — using the system’s integrated cameras. The game then transforms your photos into evil floating heads, which you shoot with colored balls. The game uses augmented reality, meaning it drops these face-enemies into a real-time image of the room where you’re standing.

 

Mii Maker

Nintendo has brought its caricature-making software from Wii to 3DS, with some major improvements. Now, instead of having to create aMii by assembling parts, you can take a photo of your face and have the 3DS automatically generate a few different variations to use as a starting point.

StreetPass

You may recall stories about hordes of Japanese gamers clogging major electronics stores while tradingDragon Quest IX data. That’s Nintendo DS’ StreetPass at work. On the 3DS, the feature is controlled by hardware rather than software: Instead of booting up a single game and carrying it with you all day, you need only set up StreetPass once per game and the 3DS will do the rest — for up to 12 games at once. Just leave your 3DS in sleep mode with the wireless turned on and it will link up and exchange data whenever it gets in range of someone else’s unit.

 

StreetPass Mii Plaza

StreetPass Mii Plaza is your passport to meeting strangers without the nerve-wracking tension of actually talking to them. Simply choose a Mii, input a bit of personal info (your birthday, your hobbies, your dreams) and the StreetPass function will quietly transmit your likeness and profile to any other nearby 3DS systems. It’s a consequence-free version of sending a friend request on Facebook, as there’s no chance for rejection.

 

Nintendo 3DS Sound

Did anybody actually use their DSi as a music player? Just on the off chance you actually want to load your SD card up with MP3s (or AACs) and rock out to some tunes, the Nintendo 3DS Sound app exists.

Activity Log and Play Coins

Similar to the Wii, the Nintendo 3DS tracks everything you do with it — how many times you play games, and for how long. Unlike the Wii, the 3DS presents this data in an eye-catching graph format and can group the data into daily, weekly, monthly and yearly charts.

AR Games

Hearkening back to Nintendo’s origins as a maker of card games, each 3DS comes with a pack of cards that enable the system to do augmented reality — projecting videogame characters into the world around you.

This is similar to Face Raiders, but requires you to place the AR Card on a flat surface, then point the 3DS directly at it. Once the handheld picks up the location of the AR Card, moving the 3DS around will let you get better views on the action unfolding virtually in front of you.

Nintendo 3DS Camera

Within a year, millions of consumers will own stereoscopic cameras that also happen to be pretty decent handheld 3-D content viewers. I’d call this a Trojan horse if I believed Nintendo was going to do much of anything to take advantage of this. Either way, Nintendo 3DS is a 3-D camera, another function that early adopters will use to wow jealous onlookers.

Read the full article here: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/03/nintendo-3ds-features/?pid=1021&pageid=33777&viewall=true