E3 2007: Nintendo E3 Conference
We report all about Nintendo's E3 Conference
Feature by Kiwi

Following the Microsoft conference last night, Nintendo began their conference bright and early at around 9:00 in the morning. For most people, this means sleeping early, setting the alarm, and waking up early to get down to the conference. For me, hyped up on the thrill of E3 and the near-constant announcements and a general love of the night, it meant pulling an all-nighter. The conference itself was standard-fare: a convention hall, three big screens, and all sorts of demos. Despite that, Nintendo took full advantage of the moment to push their plans for the Wii and DS in the coming year, including the announcement of a new Mario Kart for the Wii, and one extremely unexpected title: Wii Fit.

The theme of the morning conference was expanding the mass market for gaming; several videos were shown throughout the conference, clipping together blog posts and news stories on the benefits of the Nintendo lineup, from exercise with the Wiimote to the appeal of the games on both the DS and Wii to young and old alike. As the main presenter said himself, Nintendo plans to not only “hit the bullseye” for hardcore gamers, but to also expand that target to attract people who’ve never played a game before, like the elderly or young children. Nintendo also took the time, as any company does, to pat themselves on the back on their popularity, officially stating that 15 million Wiis have sold worldwide, with 5.5 million users utilizing the Nintendo WiFi on the DS and Wii, and 5.6 million downloads of games in the Wii store. Clearly impressive stuff, but as the presenter said, Nintendo is “happy, but not satisfied”, and thankfully, the topic of games was finally brought up.

Most of the games mentioned failed to pique my interest, and sounded like filler just to make Nintendo look like they had more coming up than they really did. Such games included High School Musical: The Game on DS, based on the popular Disney movie; Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2 on the Wii; My Word Coach on the DS, which Nintendo made sound like uses the mic on the DS to train your vocabulary, with talks of expanding the series to a My Life Coach series; and Picross DS, which just… no.

When it came down to it, Nintendo basically had MySims for the DS, which could be hit or miss; Brain Age 2, sequel to the strangely popular DS game, to be released on August 20th; a new Legend of Zelda game for the DS; and a brand new Mario Kart for the Wii, something which prompted cheering from the crowd watching, They stated that the new Mario Kart would be playable online, but did not mention a release date that I caught. However, they did also announce a new peripheral to go with Mario Kart Wii (as I’m deciding to call it): a wireless steering wheel, which looked a little small, but slightly bigger than a Wiimote, which actually plugged into the wheel – for motion sensitivity and menu control, I would assume.

On the note of peripherals, when the floor was passed to the president of Nintendo, a machine gun-type accessory was shown on the screen while he gave his speech on the expansion of the mass market, which held both the Wiimote and nunchuk. If you’ve ever held an old Super Nintendo Super Scope or played Crisis Zone, it looked kind of like that. Maybe it was hinting towards the introduction of Super Scope 8 games into the Wii Shop? Only time will tell.

The conference continued, showing more montages and more patting on the back and giving the tired speech of “games are for everyone,” while slipping in that Super Mario Galaxy would be hitting America on November 12th as they talked about how SMG would not just be a platformer but a game for – you guessed it – everybody to play. And then eventually, Nintendo announced their final new game of the conference, and spent the last 20 or 30 minutes showcasing it: WiiFit.

The presenter brought out Shigeru Miyamoto of Mario fame, who then said that of all the games Nintendo was showing, WiiFit was the one he wanted people to see the most. They presented a little, rectangular white board, and then rolled the demo footage. Honestly, it’s like nothing I think I’d ever seen before. The accompanying montage showed people doing all sorts of exercises with it, from stretching to hitting back soccer balls and doing Yoga and stepping on and off of the board for leg workouts. Personal favorite: playing Marble Madness by standing on the board and shifting your weight. The demos they had on hand were odd: the first was a woman doing the stretches shown in the video, standing on one leg and stretching the other out in a cycle. To be honest, it looked somewhat silly, and makes me thankful that if I bought it when it comes out, I won’t be exercising on a conference floor in front of hundreds of members of the press.

The second demo was a man stepping on and off the pad in timing with the commands on the screen. It was simple, and it showed that the mat could register both feet individually of each other. The third demo was a little sad to watch: the demonstrator was supposed to twist and stretch in certain ways in order to change their center of gravity to put it into a target zone of sorts, but unfortunately, she was horrible at it. I don’t know if it was her fault or the board’s fault, but I had to keep from laughing watching the targets constantly getting missed.

Some of the other features of WiiFit included each individual Mii on a system being able to keep track of their progress on the system with their weight and other factors, and charting it over time and comparing with others, effectively turning exercise into a competition for families, possibly a fun one. Also, they demonstrated another feature of the application by having the presenter stand on the board for a few seconds. Eventually, it graphed the shakiness of his center of gravity over time, both left-to-right and up-and-down, then showed the entire thing in 3D space, and showed that he leaned to the right slightly, and then proceeded to criticize his posture. Still, it looked very unique.

One of the highlights of the night was the competition between Shigeru and the presenter on two mats, playing the soccer game, where they had to move their bodies to hit soccer balls back but to avoid other things like boots. It was short but fun to watch, and the presenter beat Shigeru with a score of something like 33-to-5. They bowed, shook hands, and the conference, save for the closing statements, was effectively over.

All in all, Nintendo’s conference was a mix of the underwhelming and strangely surprising, making for one very interesting event. Basically, the general announcements were, apart from Mario Kart Wii, lackluster, with some things expected, most not asked for, and a few making me question the need of their existence (although I also question the existence of Nintendogs, and that’s become a hit, so this is probably why I’m not in Nintendo’s marketing division). But the one I didn’t expect, WiiFit, ended up leaving me much more interested in the Wii as a means to be more than a gaming machine. I mean, sure, most of the exercises were games of some sort, but Nintendo’s taken the concept to a whole new level, it seems. Whether or not WiiFit, and in general all of Nintendo’s campaign, succeeds is, of course, up to the ones who buy the games: gamers. However, Nintendo’s conference did show one thing: they’re hoping to further reinvent the concept of what a game is, and through that, redefine who a gamer is, turning ordinary soccer moms and grandmothers into people moving around and having fun. If they can succeed in that, Nintendo’s going to have a very good year ahead of them.