We found the cameras included in the 3DS hardware to be of poor quality in our review, but the fact they allow you to take and view 3D images is proving attractive to many. You can now download and view pictures tourists have taken of the Disney resorts with their 3DS systems, and an enterprising gamer has converted screenshots from well-known video games so they can be viewed on the 3DS in glasses-free 3D. Of course, Nintendo itself offers no way to share 3D images, limiting the social possibilities for 3D photography.

3D images are saved to your 3DS in the .mpo file format, and Inside the Magic has instructions on its download page to help you move those files to your 3DS for easy viewing. This is where the addition of the SD card slot in the 3DS comes in handy. Indeed, the process is both simple and fast if you have an SD card reader on your computer, but the fact that external websites have to explain the process and host the images themselves shows just how little Nintendo cared about leveraging this particular selling point.

By taking existing images and converting them to 3D, people are bypassing the poor 3DS cameras while taking advantage of that neat screen. We can understand Nintendo being gun-shy about gamers being able to upload pictures with no oversight—we can only imagine the 3D dong pictures that would be available within seconds of such an ability going live—but what about between players who have exchanged friend codes? It's neat to see what people are doing in 3D, but it would be even cooler if I could snap a fun picture in 3D and fire it off to a friend who also had the system so she could take a look.