I had a New Nintendo 2DS XL sat in a drawer doing nothing, so I did the obvious thing: pointed its terrible little dual cameras at the sea and the pier and recorded video like it was a real camera, looking like a weirdo to all the surrounding grockles.

It is a real camera, technically, just a very cursed one in 2026. It's VGA — 640×480, 0.3 megapixels, a resolution that was already behind the times when this console launched in 2013. The result has a very specific texture: grainy, slightly too real, somewhere between a 2010s camcorder and old LiveLeak footage. Found media from a timeline that skipped HD entirely.

Test 1 — the sea at Mumbles

25 seconds of the bay and the Mumbles seafront, shot on a console that was never meant to be anyone's main camera. Soft, washed out, slightly underwater looking even though it's pointed at actual water.

Test 2 — the wheel at Mumbles Pier

Same story, different landmark: the big wheel against a grey sky, smeary and low-bitrate, like found footage from a device that was already obsolete when it launched.

No further experiments planned, but if the 2DS XL has more to give, I'll keep finding out.