Owners of older versions of Nintendo’s 3DS won’t be able to play one of its upcoming titles in 3D. Perfectly Nintendo reports that Hyrule Warriors Legends’ developers faced a bit of a challenge porting the Wii U game onto the handheld hardware, primarily due to the high number of enemies on-screen. To solve this problem it has disabled stereoscopic 3D on all hardware bar the new 3DS and New 3DS XL.
This helps because to display in 3D the console has to output two separate images to the top screen, as well as a third image to the bottom screen. Newer hardware is able to handle this thanks to its beefed up innards.
This isn’t the first time Nintendo has segregated owners of its older and newer hardware. RPG outing Xenoblade Chronicles is only compatible the 3DS’ modern variants.
In the interview producer Yosuke Hayashi added that he hopes to make Hyrule Warriors Legends Amiibo compatible and that all of the DLC characters found in the Wii U game will make the trip to 3DS, although owners will not be able to transfer them between the two games.