Why Ocarina is 3DS' Time to Shine

3DS has had a rough launch. For almost 4 months, its 15 mostly mediocre games sat lonely on store shelves while DS Lite and even PSP outsold the 3DS. As launch periods go, it was barren to say the least.

Today, though, the Legend of Zelda returns. Widely heralded as the best game of all time, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is looking to do for 3DS what the title did for Nintendo 64 all those years ago (1998, for the record). Does it succeed, or is it time to move on?

Not only is Link's greatest adventure still as magical as it is epic, it's actually matured with age thanks to the abilities of the 3DS system - and not just the graphical ones.

It's not really about the graphics - even though they are luscious in eye-popping 3D and more bright and beautiful than they ever were on N64 (and you really will worry about your eyes popping when arrows soar straight at your face). No, what's most startling about OOT 3D is just how well it shows off what 3DS can really do.

There's nothing worse for ruining a game than getting stuck. With any other game on any other console, the solution would be to slam the console or controller down and scurry off to the laptop to look up the solution. Not any more.

Thanks to the recent 3DS online update, you can suspend Ocarina of Time 3D with a quick press of the Home button, then launch the Web Browser. In seconds, you can go from traversing the wild plains of Hyrule to trawling the depths Gamefaqs.com for the answer to the next puzzle. Once you've found the solution, another couple of clicks and it's as if the game was never paused. Just like every good idea, it suddenly amazes you that no-one's thought of it before.

Sure, you might have a laptop or a smartphone you could have used. But then you'd probably get distracted and check your facebook or get sucked into Twitter, never to return. The beauty of the 3DS, as Zelda so brilliantly outlines, is how it integrates everything you need for gaming - and gaming alone.

Sure, Sony's PSP, or upcoming PS Vita, both offer millions of multimedia bells and whistles; music, movies, apps, you name it. But 3DS is a Nintendo machine. A games machine. It exists only to make gaming as perfect as possible. The mid-game Web Browser is just one small (inspired) step towards that goal.

See those icons? You can suspend your game and hit those

Not content with running to the internet for the solution? Well, you can use the Game Notes feature instead. This works the same way - suspend the game and hit the icon in the menu - and allows you to draw Pictochat style notes about the game and save them for later. The real beauty of this, though, is that it keeps a photo of your current game on the top screen. Handy if you need to write down a number, name, a clue or a certain order. It's ingenious.

Yes, these features work with other games, too, but with Zelda, the various bright ideas packed into the 3DS just seem to click into place. It's like the 3DS grew up in the space of one title release. Gone is the DS with a prettier screen - in its place is a smart, innovative and much more sophisticated system geared towards delivering a first-rate, painless gaming experience.

In short, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just the game to experience how Nintendo's handhelds have matured.

For Nintendo, it may have been 13 years, but it seems Link's still working his magic.