3D gaming: past, present & in your face.

Will 3D gaming be coming out of our screens and strangling us half to death anytime soon?

With the explosion of 3D across the cinema and TV industries we've almost been tricked into thinking that the world that have known for all our lives and the lives of our ancestors all the way back to the dawn of time has been made from flat, paper figurines that simply flap around in the wind until you put on a pair of 'magic' glasses that make every cliché fast-moving football and strangely angled long object (pardoning the innuendo) seem as if its literally 'coming right at us' (if you will once again pardon the innuendo). Alas, the world is made from solid 3D objects, most recently the Nintendo 3DS (launching in the UK March 25th). before I go into why this hand-held console could make one mis-aimed bullet feel like it will literally blow your mind, I shall give you a brief history of 3D in video games.

• 1995

Nintendo releases the ultimately flawed 'Virtual Boy' made you look like Georgi La Forge for the brief time you enjoyed playing 'Star Fox' in 3D. It lasted a year before production ceased.

• 1996 - 2009

Anaglyphic images required paper red/cyan glasses to create the 3D effect.

• 2010

Sony released games for the PS3 that when viewed on one of their new range of 3D TV's (only an extra £3000) with their bulky, battery powered glasses (another £50 on top of that) allows the average video game player to enjoy the full 3D experience in a room void of furniture, food, or other things in life that require money.

• 2011

Nintendo releases their nintendo 3DS. The full 3D experience without any glasses or extra purchases? it must be some kind of witchcraft!

But, no, its just science. Namely a technology called the 'parallax barrier'.

It is, surprisingly, not a shield to protect against phasers as the name might suggest, but instead a system where a device is placed in front of the screen so that each eye sees a different sets of pixels. Producing the 3D effect in the same way that using both your eyes to see does. The only downside of this is that you need to be in the at the optimum viewing angle to see the 3D, so each of your friends will need to actually have a go at playing it instead of just viewing over your shoulder like the poor at the 2012 Olympics. Ultimately this will lead to less time on your magic box of depth, but your friends will be super jealous.

To top it all off, playing 3D games, taking 3D pictures of 3D things and downloading 3D games from the 3D 'Virtual Console' will make this a 3D purchase worth every cold, shiny 3D penny.