First up was Super Mario 3DS, which was teased earlier in the year and then unveiled properly at E3. Rather than give you a comprehensive breakdown of what the demo showed, I think you would be better served by a thought I had while playing it: “This is a very traditional Mario game.”

A deceptively boring concept, but think about that for a minute. The game is basically a mash-up of every Mario game before it. The 3D feel of Mario 64 and Sunshine, the 2D nostalgia of New Super Mario Brothers, the iconic Tanooki suit, and even flags at the end of each level (some in 2D, some in 3D). It’s every Mario game. It’s the game you have already played 100 times, only to be unable wait before playing again.

While Miyamoto may think that 3D on a platformer will help players judge depth better, the reality of the situation, for me, was that I was just annoyed by it. Depth had never been a problem in any previous platformer, and it may have even been made more difficult due to the 3DS’s touchy viewing angles.

Next on the docket was Mario Kart. It…was….Mario Kart. It’s hard to give it to you any better than that. My time with kart customization was limited, but it is in there and seemingly more robust than the Wii version.

Karts are now equipped with hang-gliders and propellers, allowing them to, you guessed it, glide and swim. Karts move faster while gliding, so you want to stay airborne if you can. As for the water portions, the physics are almost identical, making it hard to deduce the benefits of it.

Mario Kart, however, is always a slave to the level design, and they are as pretty as ever. Regardless as to their impact on the gameplay, the underwater portions are gorgeous. The levels will not disappoint.

As far as the 3D goes, again, not something I felt like I needed, or even wanted. It’s a cooler effect this time, similar to that of Pilotwings, but it doesn’t add an essential angle to the game. It reminds me of the “retro mode” in the Monkey Island remakes that morphed the graphics back into their original style. Cool to look at once or twice, but after a few minutes you just turn it off and forget about it.

Next came Star Fox 64 3D, a game that I loved on the N64. Going with the theme of the other games on display, this was Star Fox, just as I remembered it. The bottom screen serves as your communications hub with your other teammates, which is nice given that space is at a premium because you aren’t playing the game on a 30+ inch screen. All the same tricks worked, the forking path in Corneria City was still there, and the game didn’t look a great deal different than I remembered.

Anyway, on to the accelerometer-based control scheme that Nintendo announced on stage. I don’t know if this feature was known beforehand (I am a bad journalist) but I can tell you that it just didn’t work for me. The caveat here is that I don’t own a 3DS so I don’t know if my kung-fu for this particular activity is weak, but moving the system around to “steer” does nothing more than perpetually break the 3D effect. It was so discombobulating that I wouldn’t realize that I couldn’t see what I was doing until 5 or 10 seconds after the effect had been broken. I imagine there has to be a way to utilize this control scheme effectively, but I wasn’t able to deduce that method in the 15 minutes I was allowed to spend with the game.

Finally, I got to Nintendo’s big surprise, Luigi’s Mansion 2. Fans of the game have anxiously awaited a sequel because it was a franchise that showed the heart and soul of Nintendo without having to rely on a “major” franchise player. We had all been expecting it for the Wii, the controller just made sense, but instead, we got it for the 3DS. After waiting for 30 minutes to play, most games only required a ten-minute wait, I stepped back into the shoes of my favorite perpetual sidekick and set out with the purpose of vacuuming up more ghosts.

Luigi has a new mansion to explore with all new puzzles and (assumingly) new gadgets along the way. The game played like the original Luigi’s Mansion, and I didn’t feel slighted by that notion. The animations were gorgeous, the world managed to once again look better than Mario’s. It was the sequel I had been asking for.

Unfortunately, the Los Angeles sun beating down from overhead is about the worst possible condition for playing Luigi’s Mansion 2. The game is dark, and even hiding under the tents didn’t stop the reflective glare on the screen from obscuring Luigi’s world. I spent my 15 minutes with the game squinting, to the point where I couldn’t progress very far because I was missing on screen clues. Adding to that frustration was another gyroscope/accelerometer control device that had me swinging a reflective piece of glass all around the place to try and use my in-game flashlight better.

Before you ask me how the 3D was, I don’t really remember, which I suppose is a good and bad thing. Good insomuch as it didn’t get in the way, bad because it was completely unmemorable. My hope, and maybe my projection, is that they do something cool with the ghost busting puzzles, but given what I saw, it probably will just be more: “Oh look, I can walk behind geometry.”

I left the event feeling the same about the 3DS as I did walking into it. It’s a beefier DS that has the Nintendo catalog quivering to be exploited. But with the PS Vita and iPhone 5 on the horizon, they need to find more interesting ways to go about exploiting it.

The rumors are true there is a new Luigi’s Mansion game. Titled Luigi’s Mansion 2 and for the 3DS the game takes place over several mansions and has been remade from the ground up for the handheld. The footage we saw also showed some sort of pyramid level. Unfortunately no release window was given for the game.

So don’t sue me if I’m wrong, but on the upcoming End of 2009 “funtacular” that hopefully you will be seeing soon, Alex says they should take the flashlight mechanic from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and either Wiimake or sequelize Luigi’s Mansion. Wellllllll……..Kotaku just noticed that Nintendo re-trademarked Luigi’s Mansion. Does Alex have a man on the inside!?! Or is he just a good guesser? Time will tell my friends, time will tell. Of course, worst case scenario is Nintendo just craps out a new Luigi’s Mansion game that doesn’t utilize the mechanic at all. In which case we will all be very sad.