You know the deal by now. The Nintendo 3DS comes out March 27, and will retail for $249.99. There’s your Cliffs Notes for the Big Gaming News of the Day. However, I have a bigger revelation, that comes only after finally getting some hands-on time with the 3DS myself, at Nintendo’s big event yesterday morning.

The 3D works. It actually works pretty well.

After Reggie’s remarkably long announcement, the curtains parted and all the various tech journalists at the event were greeted with several dozen 3DS systems, woefully strapped securely to tables and counters but still freely available for us to try out. I missed my chance at E3 and CES, so this was the first time I actually got to handle the handheld.

I tried The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Ridge Racer 3D, and even FaceBreaker, the AR game that will come installed on the 3DS. They all showed a surprising amount of depth. Guy jumped out of the screen against an impressively receded background in Street Fighter, and the menus and meters seemed to float over the action. Link ran around the entirely too familiar Deku Tree looking like a real polygonal elf boy, jogging through an impressively vast and ancient tree trunk. One-eyed monsters spat fireballs at me, which seemed to genuinely fly toward Pit and my own eyes in Kid Icarus Uprising. Glasses-free 3D works. I can attest to that.

It’s not a perfect system, though. The nature of the parallax barrier display requires that you be right in front of the screen for the 3D effect to work. If you shift just a few inches sideways, the picture becomes blurry and full of ghosting. Keep your head straight and hold the 3DS steady and you’ll enjoy a remarkably compelling 3D experience. Get a little wobbly, and the picture will look like crap. Fortunately, the 3DS has a little slider switch on the right side of the screen. You can adjust the 3D effect and even completely disable it for casual playing. That was a great choice on Nintendo’s part.

While the 3D works, I have no idea if it will cause Virtual Boy levels of eye strain with prolonged use. My eyes got a little tired after staring at the screen for several unblinking minutes, but the harsh overhead lighting and loud, thick crowd at the event might have contributed more to that than the screen.

Besides the 3D, the 3DS comes with plenty of new features that… I sadly couldn’t test. Nintendo boasted a new StreetPass system that eliminates the need for game-specific tag modes and lets players share content easier. The 3DS has a new Mii Maker that automatically generates a Mii based on a photo you take with the handheld. And, perhaps most surprisingly, the 3DS will get its own Virtual Console with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.

I could ask some questions about that last one. Like, what took Nintendo so long? Why wasn’t this on the DSi? Why no Game Boy Advance games? But those are topics we can save for another time. What matters is that the 3DS’ 3D effect is actually pretty darn spiff. Is it $250 spiff? We’ll find out in March.