In a stark white booth in the far hall at the Leipzig Convention Center, Nintendo opened Games Convention 2006 with an exciting press conference. As the launch of Wii is only a few months away now, we were expecting big news to come out of GC, but unfortunately we were somewhat disappointed with the lack of new information.
Doing a quick tour of the booth beforehand yielded little information about the Wii, and with absolutely no Wii presence on the floor, it appeared as if Nintendo was going to focus solely on the DS at this year's show. Even the conference pre-video only focused on the DS, with Germans of various ages in white rooms playing Nintendo DS systems. Although you couldn't see the screen, well recognized tunes from Super Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Metroid were playing as they laughed, touched the screen, and cheered one another on.
Then the countdown began...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The conference started with a speech by Bernd Fakesch, General Manager of Nintendo Germany. The catchphrase of the Nintendo conference was "We prove our promise," and as Fakesch said while touting Nintendo's accomplishments over the past year, "we say what we do and we do what we say to extend videogaming." Fakesch said Nintendo was dedicated to reinventing videogames and introducing videogames to all new audiences, just it has been doing for the past 20 years.
Although he didn't give an exact release date early on in the conference, Fakesch said the Wii will be released at the end of this year and "will be the start of a new chapter of videogame history." Fakesch shied away from the Wii for a bit and went on to talk about the success of the DS, saying "with the Nintendo DS, we're extending the borders of gaming," and talked about trying to attract new audiences with the handheld. "We have a new brand label, 'Touch! Generation,'" Fakesch boasted, and said that Nintendo is going to reach all gamers, old and young.
A few days ago Nintendo exceeded the 1 million mark for DS users in Germany since its release in 2005. Fakesch said that 18% of DS users in Germany had never played a game before in their life, and 24% had only played PC games, proving that Nintendo is drawing new audiences into gaming. There have also been 600,000 copies of Nintendogs sold in Germany, which is the most popular title by far, and Fakesch sees this title as bringing more women and girls into gaming.
Fakesch then introduced Dr. Kawashimas' Brain Training (the German name for Brain Age) to the audience, which was just released in Germany, and showed a brief video of some German star playing Brain Training.
Fakesch and the German star then started talking about using the DS as a teaching and learning device, and introduced Learning English for Fun, which will be released in Germany on October 13, 2006. In the demo we saw for Learning English for Fun, the DS says a phrase in English and you have to write the phrase out in English using the stylus. After the demo, Fakesch did stress that Nintendo did not want the DS to become solely a learning console, but to be primarily a gaming machine with some educational software.
It then went on to show a few more of the games under the Touch! Generation brand label, including ActionLoop, which is a Japanese puzzle game (Magnetica in the US), and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which has not yet been released in Germany.
Next, a model sporting a hot pink DS Lite sauntered onto the stage during a heavy beat breakdown to unveil the European premiere of the pink DS Lite, which will be available in Europe on October 27, 2006.
After a brief sizzle reel showing off a number of DS games, including Hotel Dusk (a film noir game that looks like Aha's music video for "Take on Me"), Tomb Raider, Soduko Master, New Super Mario, and a slew of other games mostly already out in the States, Fakesch introduced an "exclusive presentation" of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The video was only a few seconds long, but we saw Link in a dungeon, disarming a fire trap, plotting a route across the sea using the stylus, getting shot by cannons, and attacking an octopus creature. The footage was previously displayed at GDC 2006.
Finally it was time to move on to Wii information. The Wii presentation started with a hip-hop dance troupe swatting away mock mosquitoes with the Wii controller while phat beats were being dropped. Yeah, we didn't really get it, either.
A seven-year-old girl took the stage to show how easy it was to play the Wii. After a brief audio outage during the conference, we were back up and running. Unfortunately, we lost our English feed, so we were on our own trying to translate what was happening. However, if anything comes close to a universal language, it's the simple controls of the Wii.
The young girl took the Wii-mote in her hands and started playing Tennis. To be completely honest, the folks on stage looked rather awkward playing Tennis, and most of the serves were missed completely, with several easy aces served up. Even a few serves were missed completely, with the ball falling at the player's feet. Finally the English language feed kicked back in, and we heard the people on stage saying "I don't know who I am," and asking "Did I win? Who am I?"
Mario Strikers Charged, the Wii sequel to Super Mario Strikes, was shown next, with Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Mario powering up and kicking wild soccer balls across a dry, rocky field. It looked like the goalie controls brought up a pair of hands to block the ball as it sped toward the goal. Someone onstage then challenged one of the audience members to a 1-on-1 game with Mario and Bowser. The same dry, cracked field from the trailer we saw was the live field they were playing on. Huge leaves were blowing overhead, while lightning stuck the field at various times. As we had guessed from the demo trailer, when you make a kick on goal, a pair of gloved goalie hands pop up on-screen and you have to block the incoming balls with the Wii-mote in a mini-game. Depending on your success, you're treated to a cutscene of the action that mimics what happened in the mini-game.
Next they noted that Battalion Wars 2, the Wii sequel to Battalion Wars, was at GC, and although Nintendo didn't show it onstage, it noted it would be playable after the press conference.
