On Wednesday 22 August, Nintendo held a press event at the Games Convention 2007 in Leipzig, Germany, to highlight some of the current and upcoming games that European players will be seeing on shop shelves.
Bernd Fakesch, General Manager of Nintendo of Germany, and Patrick Ensign, Marketing Assistant Manager, presented a vast number of games that will satisfy hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike. Instead of a standard press conference, the two led members of the media through Nintendos booth and showed them demonstrations of games in addition to videos of the newest Nintendo products.
Before taking the press through the booth, the members of the media were shown a hands-on demonstration of Super Mario Galaxy, which will be released in Europe on 16 November (click here for a batch of brand new screenshots!). They were also shown clips of some of the many other core Nintendo titles for Wii such as Pokémon Battle Revolution, Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS (check out the new trailer here).
From there, the guided press tour moved to the Nintendo DS area of the booth, featuring Touch! Generations games. Bernd spoke of what Touch! Generations means to the gaming and non-gaming community and gave some interesting facts about Nintendos breakthrough with mature audiences. Silver gamers, he said, are the fastest-growing target group and Nintendo is really seeing results in its push to capture the imagination of non-traditional gamers.
In Germany alone, Nintendogs has sold more than 1 million copies and Brain Training sold more than 750,000 copies. Brain Training has been in the top 3 of the German sales charts for the last 12 months. On the show floor, event attendees can play More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima and the upcoming Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day (tentative title).
Most of Nintendos showing at the Games Convention focuses on mental and physical fitness. For the mental side of things, the booth tour stopped at the Big Brain Academy for Wii stage where Patrick introduced Christine Stenger, a junior world champion in memorisation. She gave the audience a few tips on how to improve their memorisation skills. Taking ten words from the audience she then took on the challenge of remembering what they were. She did this by associating a word with a part of her body and an object. Christine then challenged a member of the audience to a Mind Sprint in Big Brain Academy for Wii and easily beat him to the finish.
The last stop on the tour took the collected media to see Wii Fit in action for the first time in Europe. Wii Fit uses Nintendos unique Balance Board (tentative name) and senses the motion of the person standing on top of it. Those movements are then translated into on-screen actions. Football star Philip Lahm demonstrated Wii Fit via video. He played the Ski Jump and Football mini-games, saying Its a different method for keeping in shape. Then, a personal trainer and a yoga expert took the stage to demonstrate Wii Fit in person. After performing a couple of yoga and stretching exercises, each woman tried to get the high score on the Hula Hoop mini-game.
But the Leipzig Games Convention is not just a press event. Everyone can freely walk around Nintendo's booth until the end of the event on 26 August. The booth is filled with Wii kiosks, a Touch! Generations lounge, Wii Fit and Big Brain Academy for Wii stages, desks to play the new More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain? and at the centre of it all there is a Mii creation station. Here, people are invited to make Miis, and they can have their creations and names printed on a wearable badge to take home.
Click the Images link above for a gallery of pictures from the Nintendo booth at Games Convention 2007!