Miyamoto: Nintendo's been researching 3D for 20-years

Shigeru Miyamoto has said that not only has Nintendo been working on 3DS for about three years now, the company has been researching 3D games for over 20-years.

Speaking in an interview with Joystiq, Miyamoto said that the company's first brush with the tech on LCD was with GameCube.

"The first time we started looking at 3D with an LCD screen was during the GameCube days." he said. "We've continued to experiment with it since then, particularly implementing it into the 3DS. That's something we've been working on for the past three years.

"We've been talking about 3D games back when Mario 64 first came out, but that is in reference to games that are 3D in the sense of having fully rendered worlds that you can run around in.

"Now we're talking about 3D visuals through the effects of the Nintendo 3DS screen. Up until now, running around those worlds on a flat screen has made it difficult to discern the spatial relationship between objects, or how far away things are.

"A specific example is from a Mario game. With 3D visuals in a 3D world, it becomes much easier to identify where a question mark block is. Sometimes in a Mario game, if you're trying to hit the block, you run around and think you're underneath it, but you miss. That becomes vividly clear when you have 3D visuals. Similarly, trying to jump onto a tree in a Mario game is something that could have been difficult. With 3D visuals, you have such a clear sense of how far away objects are, that it becomes easier to navigate that space.

"Any ideas that we've had over the years that have been limited by a lack of depth perception in a fully rendered world are now ideas that can come to life because of the 3D visuals.

"It's also fun taking classic games from different consoles that we've released in the past and giving them that three dimensional depth. You see them come alive on the screen in that way and it makes you very happy".

One of those classic games from the past is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which Nintendo announced yesterday would be released on 3DS.

Eurogamer has shots of it through here.

Nintendo also put out a rather hefty list of tiles coming for the new handheld, and you find it through here.

A release date for 3DS has yet to be announced, still,  recent rumors have it hitting in December - but Nintendo is staying firm regarding its "before the end of the current fiscal year which ends on March 2011" time frame.

More through the links.