Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Nintendo UK, along with the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, are teaming up to offer patrons of this year's show a chance to try out some Nintendo products. The show itself is a 3-day event, which is held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, and will be conducted between Sunday, August 10th and Tuesday, August 12th of this year. We have no idea exactly what Nintendo will have available on the show floor, but you can bet the Wii will be there.

David Yarnton, Nintendo UK boss, said Nintendo is "very proud to continue our support of EIF for the third year running. Edinburgh Interactive Festival raises our industry's profile into the wider cultural arena and celebrates the input, talent and creativity from all with a common interest in video games." EIFChairman Chris Deering also chimed in, commenting that "Nintendo's support of Interactive Festival in Edinburgh is great news and demonstrates an understanding of the importance of a cultural games event within the landscape of the world's biggest cultural Festival. Games and EIF have been embraced this year by Scotland PLC like no other year and the support of Nintendo is an important factor in encouraging these respected organisations' commitment to us." So, you Edinburghians are in luck, yet again!

Having never been to the UK, we honestly don't know what to expect from these shows. Sure, the official website provides some insight, but we'd much rather hear from folks who've attended. So, have you been to EIF in the past?

The Leipzig Game Convention? Nintendo is so over it. In an announcement to the press earlier today, the company ruled itself out of the forthcoming event, stating that it will be focusing instead on "smaller, local events and national promotional tours" -- a bit like this one, we suppose.

Ninty was keen to emphasize that this was nothing to do with the event itself (the kind of "it's not you, it's me" excuse we've heard a thousand times before!), but we're still surprised; didn't Leipzig have 185,000 visitors last year? Our guess is that Nintendo is trying to reach out to its new audience, which we understand consists primarily of people who don't attend game conventions.

[Thanks, Andreas!]

Okay, so it's not Space World, the legendary Nintendo-only event whose last appearance occurred in 2001. Nintendo's announcement of a new event, however, named Nintendo World 2006, certainly conjures fond memories. The event, which takes place over a mammoth ten-day period from November 3rd to the 12th (and again on November 25th and 26th), will feature hands-on playtime with the Wii and some of the hottest new DS titles. Best of all, it's open to the Japanese public, and completely free. Awesome.

While it's unknown if Nintendo will be making any major announcements at the event, it's understood that they will, at the very least, announce more specific details of the Virtual Console service (read: launch titles) a bit closer to Wii Day. What better place to spring some good news on the unsuspecting Japanese?

(The image is a personal favorite, from digital artist Greg Martin. Check more of his work here.)

Over at the Nintendo NSider forums, a poster documented their time with the Wii during the NYC event. Yes, late coverage, but it poses an interesting scenario all the same. Turns out, the sunlight affected gameplay for this poster during the event, affected gameplay for the worse. To quote:

"We know that the sensor bar goes all wonky when halogen lights are in the room. But did you know that natural sunlight messes it up too? That's right, if you have the sun beaming right onto the sensor bar, it doesn't work. For about an hour or so, the sun shone right into the store, the two MP3:C kiosks had to have curtains above them, and the Wii Sports Tennis and Shooting Game kiosks were unplayable since they were "shrouded" in sunlight. Later the sun went behind a building, and everything was in working order again."

Interesting, however does it actually affect most of us? With the advent of curtains (or mini-blinds, if you're that kind of person), we're hard-pressed to believe this will really hurt the experience had on the console. That is, only if you're playing on the front porch or out by the pool.

At last, it looks like this could be it. Nintendo announced a second press conference in the middle of September, a day after the New York event. The only thing that's missing is an announcement for Japan, but if this is the real deal -- when we'll learn release dates and pricing -- then surely we'll hear about a Japanese event soon.

Of course, there's always the possibility that these events could be about something different. Nintendo seems to be enjoying keeping us on the edge of our seats. But if the system is going to make a splash this holiday season, something has to come soon.