Nintendo World 2006 (and Osaka Games Festa 2006) on the same day

(tags convention, Nintendo Wii, Dual Screen, Osaka)

I went to Osaka for the Nintendo and stayed for the Xbox 360.

Nintendo World 2006 at Osaka was pretty much what I expected, long lines, short play time demos. Here's the meager swag I collected (excluding the game I bought at the top) from that event and the nearby Osaka Games Festa 2006 event.

First off on the left was the booklet that Kotaku exposed page by page. I spent a lot of time leafing through it, verifying various tidbits: yes you can play Gamecube games directly (Ikaruga lives again!), no I cannot continue to use my hacked Gamecube VGA cable on the Wii, Google Earth-like weather info "channel" is interesting, oh the price of the controllers is not too bad, etc.

The experience of the Wii's controller will be done over and over again on countless blogs, so I can't possibly offer anything new or insightful. I'm just writing this down so I remember my thoughts.

If I had to sum it up, it would be disappointing and promising.

I came in with high hopes on the Wii Sports Tennis game. There were 10 demo units, 2 people each, with a waiting time of 80 minutes. Between visitor changes, each white smock dressed companions wiped down the controller with a wet cloth and held the controller like it was on display. Finally I got my turn. I wanted to do big arm movements just like in real life tennis. But the constraints of the controller reminded me that I was playing a video game that was training me for its own virtual world. My forehand was good, but my back hand timing was too late. I got frustrated with the back hand so I tried playing with just a flick of the wrist with better results. I even successfully hit backhand shots with a forehand movement. It was then I realized I was experiencing Nintendo realism. It's not bad or good, it just is what it is. Unfortunately I was a loner playing a doubles game and the the companion cranked up the game difficulty so could they boot me faster. I left way before the other partnered visitors finished. That reminds me that in the same line for this demo, a guy had a nifty retro 80s shirts with the credits of Famicom Tennis game. Nice.

Then I found the Swing Golf Panya (スイングゴルフ パンヤ) demo. This one was a single player demo, 2 units, 70 minute wait. I loved the visuals, nice and colorful. I wanted to play that cute character "Arin", but her course was pretty complicated. Besides, the demo guy pre-selected the easy, straightforward course for me, darn him. This game is interesting in theory, but in practice, it seems the TV screen should be placed right where the golf ball should be so it feel like I'm playing golf. I don't have real golf skills, but isn't it true you have to keep you eye on the ball and your head down for the proper golf swing? With this demo, it would have been better to visualize playing baseball instead. This game requires the use of one button (A) for the swing, and the controller for the swing has to be pretty low (almost pointed directly down) to get good control. I got the only double bogey out of all the people I saw, because I missed a 1 foot putt due to button mashing or being an old fart or something. Swing Golf Panya. Cute, but do I really like (slow action) golf that much?

Right next door was Konami's Elebits (エレビッツ) demo, which grabbed me. I didn't know about this game at all, but that's the reason why you go to these events right? This one is a fast-paced, arcade like FPS game, but none of the gore or realism. It's a domestic, rid your home of the cute infestations "elebits" with the randomness of Katamari Damashii and the colorfulness of Fantavision. You had to zap the little critters with a bit of dexterity and they would disappear in a rainbow curved streak (pretty colors), but you could move objects around with the controller pretty wildly with some kind of light beam grapple. I got the "who ya gonna call?" (Ghostbusters!) feeling really quick. You end up with a home with a lot of clutter and junk just lying around, which is just fabulous. Plus no slowdown at all. They had two demo units, with a wait time of 80 minutes and it was my first nunchaku experience. Plus they were giving free swag, but it turned out to be a pop up booklet, cute but disposable. This demo had a daily score ranking, and I was hoping to place, but I'm all thumbs, or not because you use your thumbs to play this game and I was definately not using my thumbs correctly. I didn't get close. But it was immediately fun because of the controller: left hand nunchaku analog stick is movement, right hand is point and shoot. More PC FPS like than not. But A (top side) was the shooting button, not the underside trigger. I queried the companion about the button customability, but as far as I know she only knows the demo. Actually she was trying to get some conversation out of me: "What country are you from? ... Your Japanese is pretty good ... Keep playing more games to keep learning. Ha ha." I suppose she was bored out of her mind telling people how to play and what to shoot/smash/open, but I was too caught up with trying to get a high score to engage with her.

I wanted to try these other demos: Sudoku (数独, hey the wait time was only 30 minutes), Rabbits Party (ラビッツ･パーティ, as close to light gun shooting as far as I saw), Wii Sports Boxing. Red Steel. Zelda: Twilight Princess. But my patience ran out. Zelda's line was already closed for the day at 12:00, or before. Red Steel looked like molasses at some points. Please give me the constant frame rate goodness. What happened to the coolness factor I saw in that funny commercial for the USA market (thanks Joystiq)? Boxing, I never figured out if moving the nunchuk dishes out the left jab. Sudoku. Ah Sudoku.

I moved over to the DS area, but along the way there was a stage presentation of Rhythm Tengoku and a multi-talento guy named Kitayama who had tremendous drummer skill was saying all the right things about this wonderful game ("exercises both sides of the brain", ha ha yeah right). The only thing I wish they did on stage was to demo that samurai sword mini-game. That captures the Rhythm Tengoku essence for me like no other, and I would have like to have seen the crowd reaction to that.

The only DS game I actually tried out was Sudoku 2 Deluxe (パズルシリーズ Vol.9 数独２ Deluxe). Oh no, not Sudoku again, not after I said I would never play it again. But you know what, I really like it. I showed my mom the game a few weeks ago on Google Personalized Home Page and it started me thinking about it again. I came into the demo telling the companion that I finished the previous game so she was like uh can I kick your butt with the highest difficulty level so I said sure. I should have concentrated on asking her more questions about the new parts of the software, like the wrong guess highlighting and the new design. I didn't realized the official web page was going to be so low info. The controls are the same but the "spruced up" graphics are more bleary-eyed and annoying. She allotted me the five minutes and I saw here looking at my experienced play as if surprised, though I'm not sure because she asked me if it was too hard when I paused for thought. I was about 60% done but she told me to take a hike because there was one person in line. Ha ha. Oh yeah, the wait time was 5 minutes for the two unit demo. The consolation prize was the aluminum bookmark swag (middle of the picture). Heck, it's a buy, so here's to toting the DS again.

Nintendo World 2006 was about the games, but there were a lot less "hardcore" gamers (read: bad hygene otaku) there and more couples, family units and clans of women just having fun. There were amazing displays of real world DS usage, DS fully modded with stickers galore, etc. The young tweens behind me in the line to get inside were off-handedly calling me "o-chan" (middle aged loser) because I was playing my teensy GBA Micro but I didn't give a care. I left the event feeling a little bit more knowledgeable about the Wii and its lineup, but admittedly less enthusiastic about its current state. Sure it will appeal to a lot of people, and there's no doubt I'll be getting one sometime, but it's not the must buy for me right now.