Impressions of the North American Press Event

by Mike Gamin - September 15, 2006, 6:28 pm EDT

General thoughts on both Wii and the event itself, pictures, and some small news items are inside.

I was lucky enough to attend the recent press event in New York City. The event took place in a good sized room (though considerably smaller than Nintendo's E3 2006 booth). One half was set up as a small theater with chairs and a stage. The other half was set up in a similar fashion to E3 with around 40 Wii stations. Most were traditional stations similar to what we will start seeing in retail stores in the coming months. There was one couch set up in front of a 60 inch (or around there) television running the Zelda demo. That was my favorite spot in the room.

You may remember that I was one of the ones that was sad about the recent E3 changes that were announced. E3 2006 was my first ever E3 and I had a riot. If this event was anything like what E3 2007 will be, I could not be happier. The environment was much more advantageous for the press who attended. At E3 there was always a sense of urgency when it came to finally playing a game. People would stand in line so long that when the thought of giving the controller over to someone else came up, it was often met with a belligerent response. The limited number of people invited and the amount of time available completely removed this urgency. People were inviting other people to try games out at specific moments. At one point I was able to get a miniature Rayman presentation from one of the developers right out on the floor. The developer would demonstrate one of the mini games and then myself and two or three others would pass the controller around trying it. We then repeated this with each of the mini games on hand while laughing and discussing the game (impressions will come later this weekend). There was no need to wait in lines either. If the game I wanted to play was occupied, I just picked something else up until it was open.

I now have more Wii time under my belt than most people and I officially consider myself a Wii convert. It has a chance to out DS the DS (in terms of changing the way we play, not necessarily sales). As I was riding the subway back to the airport I had an interesting thought. The last game I played at the event was, of all things, Madden. I found myself thinking quite a bit about buying it. You may remember my E3 impressions of Mario Hoops for DS in which I asked “What's the point?" about the controls. I couldn't figure out why I was using the stylus instead of the buttons. In many ways Madden is the same way. Gestures are mapped to things like snapping the ball and throwing passes. These actions could easily be mapped to buttons on the Wii controller. The thing is, it genuinely made the game more fun. I can't give an exact reason for it, but I really enjoyed the sensation of snapping the controller back, and then hurling it forward to throw a pass.

There were some things about the event that came up short though. The $60 dollar price tag on the controller is far from ideal. Complaints about that were everywhere. Not many people are willing to drop $180 dollars to fully outfit their Wii. Three games showcased the speaker in the Wii remote and I was far from impressed. I will have detailed impressions of that posted over the weekend. I was also surprised to see that Project H.A.M.M.E.R. wasn't there in any form. I asked a member of an NOA localization team about it and he seemed confused as well. According to him the game is still going smoothly and he has “been across the street" to play several new builds since E3. I still can't help but wonder why they wouldn't even include the E3 demo at the event. I met several people that either weren't at E3 or weren't able to get into the Wii booth while there, and they should have been able to try it out.

One thing I wanted to come back from the event with was a detailed report on any changes made to the sword combat in Red Steel. When the event first started there was a large crowd around the system and there was definitely a sword demo being played. Because of the crowd I went on to something else and came back later. When I did come back, the UbiSoft developer offered me the controller and I played through some of the shooting areas. It was a lot of fun and I think the visuals have improved since E3. When I finished it up I asked if he could switch it over to the sword demo. He then told me he wasn't allowed. I'm still puzzled by this. Was there a big bug that came up? Were people still unimpressed so they wanted to minimize bad press? Did he just not feel like changing the demos? I'm not sure, but I didn't get to play it.

Overall the event was a big success. The only thing that was missing was the rest of the PGC crew (and maybe Super Smash Bros. Brawl).