GAME IMAGE

• 3DS producer explains new Tag Mode, confirms final hardware shape

  

  While that big 3D screen is the most noticeable new feature of the Nintendo 3DS, the company has some other ideas for extending the boundaries of gameplay past the flat screen -- like Tag Mode, a passive wireless communication feature that allows DS systems to talk to each other and beam game data back and forth.

  Speaking to Wired, platform producer Hideki Konno offered additional details about the hardware's expanded implementation of Tag Mode. "In the hardware," Konno said, "we have the capability that when you first play a game that supports Tag Mode, it will save to a Tag Mode data slot in the hardware system. We are planning to support multiple games at the same time: Mario Kart, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, etc." The current DS system allows Tag Mode-enabled games to communicate only when that game is running, with data saved to the cartridge.

  Konno said that Nintendo was planning a "Tag Mode Viewer" that would allow users to manage the data received in this way. He hopes the use of Tag Mode will "bring consumers a sense of wanting to play a game again, after they get new data from games that they'd forgotten about."

  At the end of the interview, Konno said about the design of the 3DS shown at E3, "You can take this as the final shape." Nintendo has previously said (and is still saying on its E3 site) that the design was "TBA."