Nintendo adding second circle pad ‘expansion’ to 3DS

Posted September 7, 2011 by Mark Ankucic in Industry News, News.

Pictures from this weeks Famitsu magazine have proven the recent rumour about the 3DS and an extra thumbpad peripheral to be completely true.

I’m calling it right here and now: the 3DS is just ridiculous.

Courtesy of IGN, we have a good picture of what the add-one will look like and how it will attach to the handheld.

Being sold under the title of ‘Slide Pad Expansion’, Andriasang are reporting that it will hold the 3DS ‘like a cradle’.

The announcement goes hand in hand with the revealing of a Monster Hunter title for the 3DS, Monster Hunter 3G. This won’t be a completely new game, merely an update from the Monster Hunter that came to the Wii is ages past.

Ryozo Tsujimoto, Monster Hunter series supervisor, joked that the extra thumbpad was a ‘secret weapon’, and that players will now be able to play the game as if you’re playing it on the Wii, and we all remember how fun that was.

While the news of the additional hardware will undoubtedly make most of us in the West shake our heads and mutter under our breath, Japanese gamers love Monster Hunter with a passion. Monster Hunter was one of the primary reasons that the PSP sold so well and has continued to do so – one can only assume Nintendo want to use this franchise to move some more 3DS consoles.

The price and release date have not been announced, but Nintendo do have a press conference coming up in a week, and TGS is around the corner, so it won’t be long til we hear further news.

Thanks to Andriasang.

 

Tagged as 3DS, Nintendo, Thumbpad