Nintendo Press Event

By: Brendan

Nintendo has usually been a safe bet to really show the audience something that will steal the show. This year was an exception. While Nintendo has some real A-List titles, but none of them made any appearance. Mario? No. Zelda? No. Starfox? No. Kirby? No.

Instead we where given a new Animal Crossing game called “City Folk.” While this game did do some new things, like add a new Plaza where you can access all of the shops. No mention of Wi-Fi ever came to the surface, leaving us to believe that the friend code system will play into use.

Nintendo does get Best in Show, but only at their ability to produce bar graphs. The white backgrounds look very crisp and clean, and White, Blue, and Yellow complement each other well. These graphs showed that the Wii was selling very well, and the DS was steadily climbing in popularity.

The DS made a stronger showing than the Wii. The use of the DS in modern day life style was a very interesting addition. In the future Nintendo hopes to use the DS as a way to get directions to a place to eat after you get off the plane at an airport, which is only one example of what they would do with the DS. This idea is not too far out of the question. In Seattle, Nintendo’s U.S. base of operations this is already happening. Safeco field, where the failing Mariners play, you can use your DS to order a hotdog and it will be delivered to your seat. I personally have tried this first hand, and it works, really well. One last final note for the DS, there will be a GTA game for it. GTA: Chinatown Warfare. Nothing else has been announced about it, so let’s leave it at that.

Only one last thing is worth mentioning. Wii Motion Plus. This is a little cube that you attach to the bottom of the Wii-mote that supposedly makes it more accurate, but for what I could see hunched over my PC monitor, I really did not see anything that this Motion Plus addition did that the Wii-mote does not do out of the box. It was demoed by showing Wii Sports 2: Resort. There was a sword fighting game, and Frisbee throwing game, and a water ski racing game, all three did not do anything that really impressed me, or anyone I was talking to at the time.

Finally, at the end of the show, one would expect Nintendo to pull out all the stops and really show something incredible. They did show something. Wii Music. You now use the Wii-mote and Nun chuck to play instruments on the screen. You can use the controller(s) to play over 50 different instruments. At the end, they brought out about 8 people and played the Mario theme song on Wii Music. A nice way to end a severely underwhelming press conference that disappointed both fanboys, press, and anyone looking to Nintendo for innovation.