If you like gaming and 3-D, Nvidia is currently offering the cheapest way into the 3-D world with its 3-D Vision GeForce graphics card enhancement package ($200 and up), which with a fast enough monitor (such as the 120 hertz, 22-inch Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ at $300) would still bring your budget 3-D setup in at well under four figures. With recent model GeForce cards (details on Nvidia's Website), a 3-D Vision's Infrared emitter modules plugs into a USB por tand chirps its "left-eye, right-eye" syncing signal to Nvidia's active 3-D glasses while its pipes 3-D signals to the monitor. And unlike Sony's PlayStation 3, which boasts only a handful of full HD 3 games, there are more than a hundred Nvidia 3-D Vision-enabled games for the PC. Some streaming noninteractive content-such as this past spring's golf Masters Tournament-is also 3-D Vision-ready. Of course, whatever desktops can do, laptops will be doing soon. In November, Asus announced the first Nvidia 3-D Vision gaming laptop.

With one downloadable firmware upgrade. Sony's PlayStation 3 (US $300) will support 3-D video game titles. As of mid-May, neither Microsoft nor Nintendo had announced upgrades of their Xbox 360 ($200( and Wii ($200) systems to do 3-D gaming on this year's new line of HD 3-D television. Of course, old-fashioned red-blue anaglyph glasses-the king used for 1950s horror movies-can be used for a 3-D effect with any console and any television. In fact, Majesco Entertainment's new shooter Attact of the MOvies 3-D ($30 Xbox, Wii) draws inspiration from the 3-D creature features of yesteryear-and gives its users four pairs of kitschy plastic gel glasses for the full dimensional experience.

The world of 3-D video games, any gamer will tell you, is almost as old as video games in color: Nintendo titles in the late 1980s like Rad Racer and 3-D WorldRunner each had 3-D modes that used red and blue passive eyeglasses to produce images that jumped off the screen just like 1950s era movie monsters.

What's new in 2010 is the prospect of 3-D games running on the new 3-D television sets coming onto the market place. Sony is promoting 3-D video games on its PlayStation 3-firmware upgradable to run on 3-D TVs.

It's one thing to say "hey, world, I could make a kick ass video game" and quite another to actually go and make the thing. The biggest obstacle remains the technical barrier to entry, as games require extensive coding knowledge, the ability to draw things better than stick figures (most of the time, anyway) and other bases of knowledge that can't be learned overnight. The web-based Stencyl is one of many companies who attempts to make that easier for the amateur developer, and the company recently told us about a slew of improvements coming to Stencyl, including support for Flash.

Prior to embracing Flash, Stencyl games were published on Java. Why switch?

"It was a combination of a better user experience and the 97.1% market penetration rate that Flash enjoys," explained Stencyl founder Jonathan Chung over e-mail this week. "Although Java has certain advantages in performance and graphics capabilities, after we released some games to the public, we observed a significant percentage of users running into issues. I ported our engine to Flash and released it in May to testers. Our switch to Flash has opened up many doors; our games can now be posted on popular portals, such as Kongregate and NewGrounds, can be played on Facebook via our upcoming app and can be embedded in posts on personal blogs."

Flash's future has been the subject of debate recently, given Apple's decidedly anti-Flash stance. Games are one of the most popular uses of Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and there's little evidence to suggest that Apple will be embracing Flash anytime soon, favoring open standards.

"Apple's "iDevices" [have] always been on our roadmap," he said, "but if we go after that market, we would port our technology to Objective-C to bring it into compliance with Apple's terms."

Outside of expanding distribution, Stencyl is also rethinking the development itself, recognizing wanna-be developers often come in with one set of skills, not every set of skills, required to create a full game. Stencyl's solution, an attempt to counter designers starting the process and giving up, is StencylForge, an iTunes and Wikipedia-influenced marketplace where developers can search for specific tools to can aid their game. If you need a specific add-on, maybe it already exists.

"Early on, our intent was to make it easy for anyone to create games," explained Chung. "After a year, we realized that easy game creation, by itself, wasn't quite the right approach because we were solving the wrong problem. The problem is game creation is inherently hard because people working alone lack all the necessary skills, and often the time, required to create a game. This led us to pivot our toolset's design again."

At the moment, however, you can't actually access Stencyl -- Java or Flash. The toolset is currently in private beta, but Chung told me everyone should have.

The well-known global leading provider of gaming consoles, Nintendo has officially announced its new Nintendo 3DS at 2010 E3 Expo. It’s the portable 3D gaming system which eliminates the need of a special 3D glasses, equipped with a 3.53-inch (800×240 pixels) top 3D screen and 3.02-inch (320×240 pixels) bottom touch screen. In addition to the dual display, Nintendo 3DS with Wi-Fi connectivity also features three camera (1 inner and 2 outer) to enable the 3DS to capture 3D photos for delivering an ultimate 3D effect.

Furthermore, Nintendo 3DS that fully backward compatible with Nintendo DS/DSi game titles also incorporates a motion sensor, gyro sensor as well as Slide Pad that offers 360-degree analog input, aiming to enhance your game control experience.