Unity now supports Nintendo 3DS

Devs can now use Unity to build games for Nintendo’s 3DS handhelds.

Unity first announced that it would bring support for the 3DS platform to its eponymous engine at last year’s Unite Tokyo event.

Both the original 3DS and the New 3DS, which boasts slightly faster hardware, are compatible with Unity – although, Unity advised creators to aim for the newer console’s higher fidelity of visuals.

Unity is working with a number of studios to port existing games to 3DS-friendly ROM images, with Wind Up Knight 2 the first game to make it to the portables so far.

As part of the move from Unity 5.1 to 5.2, a number of shader code hurdles were jumped to improve console performance.

The changes aren’t compatible with version 5.1 and below, meaning shader improvements will be dropped for the older frameworks going forward.

Unity initially released a 3DS-specific version of the Unity editor, but expressed its aims to finally release as a plug-in to the standard editor.

Several features, including UNet and Shadow Maps, will not be included with the first release of the 3DS support, although Light Maps are present. Unsupported shaders will be rolled-back to earlier versions.