T3’s concept is slick. Maybe a little too slick; it looks like something a designer would make when asked to build a shiny phone that plays games, not necessarily a Nintendo phone. The software was also a little too unoriginal and the gamepad inputs a bit clunky, but hey, we’ve seen way, way worse efforts.

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FLIP PHONE

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I love Thomas Chanal’s ideas here. Or at least, one of them. The “flipping” thing may look nice on paper but would likely be impossible to build to a reliable standard. What I love is his OS design, which is crisp, bright and clean; exactly what you’d want from the software powering a Nintendo phone.


SMART BOY

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I’m not sure about this one. The design of Pierre Cerveau’s phone itself is great; a big glass screen, just like a real phone from a real phone company, but with the shell of a Game Boy. The fact it’s running stock Android is also a practical plus. Where I get unsure is the gamepad clip-on; these things just aren’t a good idea, because the second you need to carry around extra gear is the second you defeat the purpose of having a Nintendo phone in the first place.


THE THUMB DESTROYER

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This one takes Cerveau’s design idea and pushes it to the extremes: the case is even cooler, but the tiny control solution at the bottom would be utterly unplayable (not to mention uncomfortable).


CURVED/labs

This one was only released today, and there’s a lot to like. The renders are great, for one; they’ve even got dust on them! The sliding control scheme also seems practical (if limited, since it only has two buttons. I also love the fact they not only included a box, but that the box looks hot.

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It still doesn’t look quite right, though. It looks cheap, a little too plastic, like a Chinese knock-off of an actual Nintendo phone.


There you have it. Years of big dreams and, for the most part, bad ideas. The fact so many of these concepts have such big problems maybe speaks to one of the reasons why Nintendo hasn’t actually made a phone.

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Most of Nintendo’s hardware is, well, very Nintendo. You can look at it, and use it for five minutes, and you know it’s just something made by Nintendo. The world of phone design and operating systems is a foreign one to the company, and trying to combine its cold and practical necessities with Nintendo’s cheerier game design is a fit no amount of design may ever be able to manage.


Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends.