Duration: 15:09

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Fixed (has audio now!) AND "improved"! Did you know the eShop itself is also not designed to account for the between-screens gutter?! (Scandalous!)

Original (soon-to-be) unlisted version here:
https://youtu.be/-0Gs0JTzP_U

Ever inconvenient:
twitter.com/yuugijoou
discord.gg/bKT9pRW

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And now for something a little lighter. I think. I mean. I complain about it a lot. It was only a matter of time before I rolled out a soapbox JUST for the opportunity to address the elephant in the room.

Thigh gap.

... ... ...wait, no, that's not right. You can plainly see that THIS screen-spanning artwork that no doubt clickbaited you into checking this out is for good boys and girls and is not even remotely suggestive.

I'm serious.

But the weird thing here is... it's a two-screened piece of art that's almost totally (but not quite) seamlessly continuous? I mean, that takes a degree of effort, because the screens of the 3DS are different resolutions!

...and... because the screens are not contiguous, it will never actually be seen in this fashion on the hardware it's designed for. Oops?!

I mean, it's not surprising. Generally, anyway. I very recently had to reckon with the fact that Culdcept Revolt has an intro movie that is clearly not designed to be seen as a single screen-spanning video under any degree of scrutiny.

And don't get me (re)started on the scary nonsense I've already experienced trying to figure out just what the developers of The World Ends with You were actually planning around.

I mean, heck, the reason this is a "thing"... but also... NOT... a thing... that gets any amount of attention... is the simple fact that human eyes and their attached brains are... shockingly dumb. But very SMART about how dumb they dumbly smarten up a dumb workaround to the dumbness of smartitude. Or. Whatever. (No YOU'RE dumb!)

I bet you almost never spare a first, let alone a second thought about how top and bottom screen images that seem even vaguely continuous don't necessarily line up properly under even ideal conditions. Because we're wired to just put the pieces together automagically. (That's right. Your visual cortex is magic. I think. Congratulations!)

I mean, heck, we're GAMERS, right? We don't look at controls, because that would divert precious focus from the action at hand. It's the same principle by which objects temporarily offscreen (indeed, BETWEEN screens?!) aren't forgotten and are still accounted for as we're keen to presume they'll reappear in some way we're expecting. This ain't no game of peekaboo, we've got that OBJECT PERMANENCE skill down pat!

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But let's back up a bit. Have you ever considered just how much WORK goes into the minor miraculous magic trick of coordinating something that coordinates both screens? It's less of an art and more of a science! It requires actual recreational mathematics to function properly! Why would ANYONE ever do that?! Especially these days, those screens aren't even the same anymore! There's extra variables in alignment! How do we justify this?!

Generally, even as was the case in the DS era when it was both novel and novelty rolled into one, they... don't. The second screen is an accessory, attached at the hip, but not really USED for much visually intensive heavy lifting.

So you'll notice a lot of screens that just. Stand alone. Handy though they may be, they just don't share any connection. The map or menu or information added on one screen exists in its own pocket dimension relevant to, but spatially divorced from the rest.

And that's okay! Most of the time, your magic eyes and parts beyond don't NEED to put together a puzzle of how one thing informs and affects the other. You just want to glance at a detail or tap a thing instead of having to pause and press several buttons to get the result you wanted before resuming the gameplay.

The recently much-featured around here Culdcept Revolt is an excellent example of a LOT of use for a second screen, even if it's not pulling the main attraction levels of weight... and it does so in such a multifunctional way that I just couldn't resist putting it under the knife and vivisecting its various discrete functions for my own purposes.

So here's just several use cases of differing design philosophy with all this in mind in short order. (But the video it's sourced from isn't nearly interesting enough throughout to merit giving the WHOLE thing the vertical treatment. Which seems like it'll be a running case to differentiate the 3DS from the DS.

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Oh, but then there's ONE more thing. (There always is. Please, save me! Run away! Do something!)

The screens are bigger than the old DS, but this thing is of course backwards compatible with its predecessor. So let's just BLOW UP THE SCREEN and muddy up those pixels.

OR... you can hold Start or Select (on the original 3DS, they might as well have been lefty/righty alternatives for one another anyway) as the game loads for native resolution!

A bonus for your bonus!