I was thinking how I should track my steps to see how much I walk every day and then remembered I have a 3ds still and maybe I'll use that as a pedometer
remember when kids would tape their 3DSs to ceiling fans to get their precious playcoins without going outside. i wonder if they used location spoofers with Pokémon Go when they grew up
One last story before we all go!!! I dunno if I'm allowed to tell this story but who cares fuck it
I used to work as a tester for Nintendo very briefly. For about four months. And during those four months I tested the 3DS before it came out.
And by that I mean I tested the UI. I spent weeks with our little team testing the notes app. We got so good at drawing in the notes app we made masterpieces but couldn't keep any or take photos of what we drew because security was tight to prevent leaks. We tested the music app for almost a month (or was it just two weeks? What did time even mean anymore when I entered those doors). The first week they gave us one album to use to test the app - the debut Katy Perry album. The second week, they added a Mumford and Sons album.
By the time we were testing the little mini-game that comes with every 3DS, it was just me and another person, I think? But I could have just imagined that person out of sheer loneliness. For you see, in order to test the wifi and infared (I think?) capabilities we had to eliminate all possible variables. And that meant being in a Faraday cage all day long. If I entered that cage with one other person, I left alone.
So I spent weeks in a Faraday cage all by myself. And the mini game needed Play Coins. And the way you got those were from walking.
We did not have a debug version to test things. Which meant we had to run in place to generate the Coins we needed to test the game.
But you can only earn a certain amount of Coins per day. So you couldn't just jog mindlessly in place for an hour or whatever and build up Coins. You had to run in place until you hit the max amount of Coins for the day and then manually move the system date one day and then run in place again.
For weeks (or what felt like weeks? My memory is honestly hazy at this point), my job was to enter a Faraday cage alone for eight hours and run in place while sporadically checking how many coins I generated to see if I needed to move the day forward like I'm trying to cheat at the shittiest version of Animal Crossing.
I think back now on those days and marvel at the psychological cruelty I suffered. Pretty sure half of my experiences are banned by the Geneva Convention.
I still really loved the 3DS tho! I still have mine! I play on it all the time! One of my favourite consoles honestly.
