The Nintendo Wii Conference Unveiled

Walking out of the back of the Nintendo stage, dressed in full tuxedo even sporting a small bow tie, Shigeru Miyamoto held up one thing in his hand- a small Nintendo Wii controller. Behind him, the logo of “NINTNEDO” slowly morphed to a 3D rendition of a small orchestra. Waving his hands, he slowly conducted the orchestra as they played the full song of the Hylian Field from The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Sometimes purposely slowing down, he showed how even the smallest change in his pace changed the speed of the song, and finished off by waving his arms wildly, causing a huge finale. Needless to say, we broke out into applause.

Nintendo's press conference was one hell of a showoff of the Wii technology ranging from showing a diving game to a fully animated version of Red Steel (Note: Miyamoto just danced around, he had someone else play because apparently he's nowhere near what Gametrash officially calls an “Underwear Samurai”.

Reggie Johnson, Nintendo official spokesman, made it obvious to us. “If you came for the future, you're in the wrong place. Because what's coming from Nintendo is absolutely new.” Just like every Nintendo fan on the internet, he made it blatantly clear: Nintendo was not about graphics anymore. Calling it the “Next leap in gaming”, he touted that it was no longer about a few, it was about “Everyone”, and even added a small attack in there, saying “What you see isn't always what you get”. Ouch, Nintendo.

I can say from personal experience that the press conference was impressive. Back again with those trendy model videos with the Wii controllers, it showed a variety of people playing the Nintendo Wii in their own home- a mother, a fat guy, a balding middle-aged man, even a really old Japanese man. Obviously the whole press conference was about getting to play and getting to touch, and Nintendo had no qualms about showing off all the different ways the Wii could be used to enhance gameplay. With videos of Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and even some unnamed games (Such as a flying game with something that looked like an old Biplane), it was information overload as seemingly hundreds of games were shown in rapid succession.

Press conference style, by the time anyone was talking again, everyone was pretty much wearing wet pants. The simple display of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess used by the Wii system was cool enough to have me excited, and all of this was shown with beautiful graphics. While it was obvious on the large screen that the graphics were the same as what we have seen on the Gamecube (Except slightly- and I mean slightly- better), I was somewhat disappointed to see that the prettiest game on the system was The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. Though, in their defense, most of the games (Including the Wario Ware minigames) had that Katamari Damacy meets “Feel the Magic” style, which is actually more interesting to me than 300,000,000 polygons.

Continuing the press conference, Reggie Johnson proceeds to explain the following- “Do you know someone who has never watched TV, read a book, or seen a movie? No? Well, do you know anyone who has never played a Video Game?”. It was actually somewhat intriguing- and through the press conference, he managed to explain everything I wanted to know about it- from “Why it's so different” to “How much it's gonna cost”. I'll cover each individually.

Why is it so damn weird?”

The answer is simple, and I agree with them- Nintendo thinks that Innovation drives the industry. As he put it, “playing on the margin” only works for a while, and Nintendo needs to be the leader of the pack. Again making a throwback to the PS3 showings, he mentioned “Our industry has become content with what is on the screen”. I wanted to laugh, but I still had my PS3 obsession boiling. Whoops. But yes, he even cited the mega-hit Super Mario 64 to demonstrate that Nintendo is about “Feel” rather than “Look”, and managed to convince at least me about that.

Price and Release Date?

That jerk didn't give it. “It's in our best interests to keep it secret for a while”. While he did state that you will get “More fun for less money”, and even that it will be released “In the fourth quarter of 2006” (Which basically means it will be released around the same time as the Playstation 3), nothing definate was given. This could mean that they are trying to cut back on cost, are just trying to develop mystery over the actual info of the system, or just feel like being jerks.

What is up with the name?

This is when I started laughing:
“I want to thank those of you who wrote good things about it when you heard it..... both of you.
He made it blatantly obvious that Nintendo knew that the name was ill taken. Citing such names as “Lexus” and “Google”, he said that the name “Wii” is about inclusion, and, showing some of those pictures of the old people playing the Wii, he said that “Wii” is about everyone. This is just like we heard before, but it's at least nice to know the name isn't a joke.

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