Nintendo Passport to Summer Game Launch

Game Event from Starks - Thursday, 22 October 2009 @ 1:28am

Launch parties for games used to be a fairly mundane affair. Midnight store releases, some advertising, excited press releases – Those were the old days. How it used to be. These days, launch parties are held at classy clubs with celebrity MCs, free bar tab and promo staff helping you play games on classy set ups. How times have changed as gaming begins to emerge to the mainstream.

I attended the Nintendo ‘Summer’ launch; an event they organised to showcase 5 of their upcoming releases. Sadly, I was only armed with my BlackBerry, so none of the photo's of the game displays were very good. The games being launched were:

• New Super Mario Brothers

• Wii Fit Plus

• Style Boutique

• Professor Layton and Pandora's Box

• Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Frankly, only one of the games interested me on that list but I went with the intent to see how Nintendo would ‘do their thang’. Given Microsoft have held a fair few of these, which usually turn into drinking binges with celebrities, I was quite shocked to see that there were quite a lot of female invitees to the night. A more friendly atmosphere, accessible to everyone, was presented, and a rather entertaining if corny presentation from MCs Maude Garrett and Peter Rowsthorn as well as Wii-Fit ambassador Rebecca Gibney. Nintendo are definitely making a solid attempt to change the perception of what and who gamers are.

The night was relatively straight forward. Turn up, drink free drinks, have a bit of a chat with people, play some of the new games and then go home. I rocked up at 5:30pm; One, because the first media to arrive were meant to get prizes and two, because I left work at 5pm and wanted to give myself plenty of time to ensure I wasn’t late. Whilst the latter point was fine since the event started at 6, I got dudded by Nintendo on the former. As the first person there, lining up and actually waiting, I did NOT get my lucky door prize. Poor me. *sniffle*

Realistically, the tone of the night was set by what they highlighted. Wii Fit Plus, the sequel to the high-selling game, is looking to expand upon what its predecessor established. This was the focus of the night, not New Super Mario Bros. To me, that’s a pretty clear message that Nintendo are looking to concentrate the direction of their gaming towards a stereotype they’re trying to embody; less hardcore, more casually based gamers who would probably not consider themselves gamers despite their ownership of the Wii console.

In terms of the games themselves, I’ll give a brief blurb below:

• New Super Mario Brothers: Mimicking the 80’s NES classic, Nintendo have gone back to a side-scrolling style. Main features are the graphics are very clean, some new abilities (e.g. the helicopter hat to help you jump / fly) are given and the major improvement of making the game multiplayer for up to 4 people. The game doesn’t utilise much of the motion controller, and probably will play better on the classic controller, but it looks good and will no doubt entice a lot of retro gamers.

• Wii Fit Plus: Realistically, it’s Wii Fit with new and different exercises, games and activities to enjoy. There’s quite a lot of new and interesting games and I found that it was quite a lot of fun. No real innovation, but that isn’t what is important – Enjoyment was definitely a high priority and that was what I experienced.

• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Yawn. Zelda gets kidnapped. Link goes to save him. Game over. Despite the tired storyline, it was a reasonably fun DS experience. I won’t say it was brilliant, but it didn’t make me want to scratch my eyes out.

• Professor Layton and Pandora's Box: A puzzle-based game, this looks to take the accomplishments of Brain Training and turn it into a story-based scenario. I thought it was fairly good. Difficult, for sure. Enjoyable, not sure. As a game, though, it played well. It’s just not something I’d choose to buy, and frankly not something I want to play when I come home from a hard day’s work to relax.

• Style Boutique: This was interesting. Nintendo appear to be trying to entice teenage girls into the DS market through the fashion industry. Now, I hated the game. Thought it was junk, and couldn’t handle more than 10 minutes of it. Fitting women with clothes and running a fashion store isn’t my type of game. However, judging by the women around the game waiting to play and also enjoying it, I would think Nintendo are on to a potential winner. This is the type of game that really breaks boundaries and stereotypes. I applaud Nintendo for this.

All in all, the night was a lot of fun. Not as ‘fully sick hectic’ as anything Microsoft put on, but definitely more ‘food for thought’ and a good indication of where Nintendo are aiming to be for this summer – The number one games company that is accessible to every demographic, not just the gamer niche.