The Louvre museum, in the center of Paris, is the home of the most famous paintings of all time: Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. While not a natural home for the Nintendo 3DS, owners can now take tours of the Louvre with the devices.

Nintendo 3DS are replacing the previous devices that were used for giving extra information on museum tours and for providing extra information on the Louvre collection.

The 3DS provides over 35 hours of audio content with 700 commentaries, including art lectures and interviews with Louvre curators along with high resolutions images as you walk through the museum.

To ensure visitors don't get lost in the Louvre, there is a "Masterpieces" trail that highlights the museum's most famous paintings. With 35,000 works of art across 60,000 square meters of space, the feature will likely be used by the millions of people who visit each year. The software also shows off features such as small cracks in the face of Mona Lisa which can't be seen by the naked eye. A second feature is planned that will highlight the collection of Egyptian antiquities.

The museum attracted 8.9 million visitors last year, with more than half under 30, and two-thirds from overseas.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the brains behind some of gaming's greatest franchises such as Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, said he became disorientated when visiting the museum but used the software to be familiar with the layout.

One needs to pay for the handheld consoles on top of admission prices (€10 for adults) at €5 per unit. The 3DS guides are available in seven languages with a French sign language version in the works.

The 3DS guide has raised eyebrows but the museum officials said the Louvre must move with the times. The museum has also drawn controversy for renovating certain parts of the museum, including a glass pyramid that was constructed in 1988. Some Parisians though the 16th century appearance should have remained.

This year the Louvre-Lens will be introduced, a French satellite to the museum. It will open in the city of Lens later this summer.

(reported by Jonathan Charles, edited by Dave Clark)