The 3DS will hopefully be Nintendo's first successful games machine to enter the glasses-less third dimension- but it's far from the first.
In an interview with the Nintendo.com feature, Iwata Asks, company president Saturo Iwata lists all their previous endeavors on the subject. Some of them will definitely surprise you-
Did you know that the GameBoy Advance SP (you know... the clamshell one) originally had a 3D screen? Iwata says that the portable had such a low resolution that the effect wasn't worth the extra cost.
Likewise, the Gamecube had an optional attachable screen that could display 3D imagery. The problem there was that, while the resolution was fine, the tech was so expensive that the peripheral would have cost more at retail than the actual console.
And then of course, there's the Virtual Boy. Do we really have to get into the problems with that one? Poor bastard...