Tokyo Game Show 2023 is currently underway and many new products are being revealed on the showroom floor, and one particularly interesting one making the rounds on social media is a brand new Nintendo 3DS clone called the “Project Nadeshiko” by Tassei Denki.
I had never heard of Tassei Denki before and you probably have not either. They are a Japan based consumer electronics company that have previously made controllers and other gaming related accessories. Probably nothing we’ve seen before though.
But thanks to the magic of Google Translate and some clever photoshop zoom/crop/transform on my part, we can get some pretty solid details about this 3DS clone directly from the placard featured at TGS2023.
Tassei Denki – Project Nadeshiko
“Recently, the popularity of mobile gaming terminals has been increasing, but since there are many similar shapes, what kind of shapes do you think they will develop in the near future? This concept was born while imagining what the future would look like for playing retro and modern games on the go.”
-Tassei Denki
All signs indicate that the Project Nadeshiko is an emulation device, not a hardware clone of the Nintendo 3DS.
Because the placard specifies a Ryzen 5 chipset inside the device. So the Project Nadeshiko is not similar to a 3DS on the inside.
The placard also indicates that this will be a device that can “play classic Nintendo 3DS and PC games”, which leads us to believe that this will be a Windows-based solution.
If it is a Windows device that can handle up to Nintendo 3DS emulation, it should also easily emulate everything else up to the same era.
Which means this handheld can also easily play Nintendo DS, PSP, Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, and probably even PS2 and Game Cube.
The Project Nadeshiko will feature two massive AMOLED screens at 6 inches and 7 inches (both at 2400 x 1080), with a refresh rate of 90Hz.
Two models of the 3DS-alike were on display at the Tokyo Game Show – a black & blue model and a black & red model.
Check out the full placard translation below:
Impressions
At this point, we are quite excited to see a dual-screen emulation device being shown at the TGS2023.
But it certainly leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions as well.
The first being – how can they get away with this?
Second – will they be able to sell it?
Third – will we ever see this device in production?
We would love to see a clamshell dual-screen emulator sooner than later. And it seems inevitable that we will see a wave of these kinds of devices appear in the next couple of years.
Nintendo DS and 3DS emulation is one of the least explored areas in the handheld emulation scene.
And we’ve been seeing clamshell devices appear, such as the AYANEO Flip, Miyoo Mini Flip and Retroid Pocket Flip. But nobody has attempted the dual-screens yet (at least none we’ve seen done well).
So the future is looking exciting for clamshell dual-screen devices. And the Tassei Denki – Project Nadeshiko shows us that the wave is incoming. Time to sit back and watch it all crash down.
