Topic: Graphically, what % of performance is 3DS currently at?

You're talking about technical limitations. Aesthetically Goldeneye does a good job. Colour is used in a nice way, the backgrounds don't distract players from the action.

Wario Land Shake It! is one of the best games on Wii. If not this generation. I find the hand drawn graphics to be better than Rayman, A Boy and His Blob and Muramasa. The music and gameplay are fantastic as well. And the difficulty, and the replay value and the controls...

I agree with Waveboy and Viewtful_Joe about Wario land: the shake dimension being added to Tendoboy's list. The art style in that game is fantastic, as is the game itself as its one of the best games on the Wii. As for the GC part of Tendoboy's list, Tales of Symphonia deserves to be there. I love that game's cell shaeded art style.

I also consider Brawl being one of the best looking Wii games.

Resident Evil, Ocarina of Time & Mario Kart are the best looking by far, but I think the New Zelda, the new Conduit, and a Metroid game can bring it at it's best. But it does a good job with it so far, and Netflix looks nice in it.
EDIT I was told the Conduit 3DS demo used the same engine used for it's 2 other games. Impressive.

RE = 55 to 60 percent IMO

Graphically, it's hard to say. The 3DS would be capable of displaying far more detailed visuals if developers took full advantage of the console's processing power and made games that ran exclusively in 2D mode (as the console would have plenty of extra breathing space without having to render two separate images). Only then would we see the true extent of the textures and 3D models that the 3DS is capable of displaying.

But the fact that the console can render a game that looks as good as Resident Evil Revelations is impressive in itself.

I can't help but wonder though, if developers could easily release cross-platform games for the PS Vita and 3DS if they waived 3D display from the 3DS version.

Prior to the release of 3DS, I remember reading that it is supposed to match the power of the iPhone 4. IP4 has some amazing visuals on it and the best is yet to come. Have you seen the App version of Rage? I couldn't care less for the gameplay (on rails shooter) but visually it's just stunning. It will be interesting to see how close 3DS can get, if at all.

Of every single gaming console or handheld device, games released the first year are far from what is technically achieved later down it's existence. So I think it's fair to say the current games are certainly not using all the 3DS potential.

Also take note, and this is important, stereoscopic 3D rendering requires more resources as it needs to render every frame twice, one for each eye. It's for this reason they are currently forced the disable anti-aliasing when you choose to play in 3D, later down the existence of the 3DS we won't see such sacrifices.

This thread is about how much the current games are pushing the 3ds. Not people opinions about art style and if graphics matter.

The thing with 3ds is, it's hardware is so weak and simple that it is not hard to dev for. Certainly not like the 360/PS3 anyway. We will never see anything like current gen graphics on it. I would also say Resident Evil is probably pushing it to about 80-90%. It really depends what tricks the dev can come up with. With a underpowered system like this it's more about effective use of visual tricks (smoke and mirrors) than how much they can push the hardware.

IMO the devs are already doing an amazing job when you keep in mind that the 3DS has to render everything twice for the 3d effect. Personally I would like to see some game realeased without 3d support. I think the improved processing power the devs could work with would be well worth the trade off. Unffortunately Nintendo probably requires devs to implement it in all 3ds games seeing it's part of the gimmick.

Art direction is a matter for another thread, yes I think it can be improved, and I certainly look forward to what the next handheld Zelda has in store for us..

Edit: In regards to sillygostly's comment about cross platform games between the 3ds and Vita. Maybe, I doubt it though. Even though the Vita has to run games in a much higher resolution, it's specs still smash those of a 3DS. It'd be easier to to port a Vita game to the Android or IOS systems most unless they reworked everything.

I think the 3DS isn't being pushed to its full potential. So far, I think it is using maybe 85%. I say this because when you look at the launch line-up where a ton of the games were rushed out, the graphics still weren't bad.

However, I don't play games for graphics. As far as I take graphics is if I say, "Hmm, is that a rock? Oh wait, it is a rock. Okay." If I can't tell the difference between a bird and a bat, then I will complain about graphics.

This.

I guess one can get an idea of the 3DS' graphical oomph by looking at past consoles (both handheld and home). Traditionally, visuals on a system get better as they age, so I imagine the 3DS is no different. Take a look at the PS2 launch titles and compare them to latter titles such as MGS3, God of War 2 and Shadow of the Colossus - a HUGE leap in wringing out every last drop of juice from Sony's console.

With Nintendo's machines, the graphical difference between earlier and latter day titles aren't as pronounced as the competition's - simply because Nintendo systems are (usually) easy to develop games for; and as such developers can maximise their efforts fairly early during the machine's lifespan. Compared this to something like the PS3, where only now game makers have full confidence in the complex architecture (read some interviews with Naughty Dog in regards to the Uncharted games).

Take a look at the Iwata Asks article for Resident Evil: Revelations. The developers provide some insight into working with the 3DS.

i think they got to about 70%. the last 30 will be harder to get since it will need experience with the console developpment and art direction that will dare to inject a decent budget for a 3DS title.

3ds games can look much better, but they need time and budget, that goes for a quality art direction.

but...do they really need to be super nice looking like a ocnsole game to be great games ?
i mean... i played a DSi title, cave story. cost me about 5 dollars and i had a better gaming time than i had with uncharted 2.

you really don't know your talking a about do you. its been on record that the wii had a pretty horrible development kit. power was one thing but it wasn't even a little close to the ps2 or xbox. this meant alot of engines were useless. i remember it being said if the wii would have been able.to tun preexisiting engines we would have seen more title support but the wii meant having to put resources into a whole new engine.

I would assume that it took a lot of the 3DS's power... I dunno much about this sort of thing though.

check the DS.it was a bit more than the advance at first, then...bang. we could see mario 64 a couple of yeras later. games like the world ends with you, or dragonquest 9. contrast on the handheld from nintendo is much biggert han their consoles.
nintendo 64 was ugly at first, and ended up ugly in the end
gamecube didnt improved much from start to end neither. mario sunshine and smash bros came early, and yet were some of the best looking games of the cube.
i doubt we will see a frostbyte engine for the 3ds, or an unreal engine especially made for it.
still, capcom surprised me with their resident evil, too bad im not a huge fan of RE. what's their engine? is it homebrew or is it nintendo's ?

@Samholy: I beg to differ at one point. N64 had some games that weren't so ugly. One example is Pokémon Stadium 2. All the Pokémon models are really well done and they still had room to make awesome mini-games which also didn't look too bad. There are some 2D backgrounds which should be in 3D but otherwise it's really good looking game if you ask me.

paper mario looked nice too.

okay, pokemon stadium was good looking for its age. nintendo seal is again on the rendez-vous.

Who cares?

yeah. and anyway, i didnt buy the 3ds for performance or graphics, i bought it because my older DS began to break down, and the 3DS was the new handheld.

so much time spent on nintendo's handheld. theyre the best since the old gameboy, and still are today.
the DS especially gave me random titles, very innovative game design, and games that really are out-of-the-box.