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By Jeremy Azevedo

Today started out with the Nintendo press conference, inexplicably held across town from the rest of the show at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

I already knew to expect some sort of announcement regarding the “Wii-Motion Plus”, and possibly something about Animal Crossing for the Wii or perhaps some sort of hard drive add-on to complement the new Wii Ware service. I wonder if you can guess which one was not addressed?

It was strange that there was no mention of the virtual console, Wii Ware, or storage problems with the Wii made at any point during the conference. Instead, Nintendo execs spent most of their time bragging about how they had reached this whole new demographic of casual gamers, and outlining the myriad ways in which they hoped to pander to said casual gamers (which is kind of a tough sell in a room full of hardcore gaming journalists). Nearly every game debuted here seemed aimed at families, save for maybe one. But I’ll get to that later, the one game I speak of was really the only huge surprise of their show.

Animal Crossing: City Folk is one game that many Nintendo fan will be looking forward to, but my impression was kind of more of the same. The only new features to speak of are the ability to travel into the city to gab with annoying humanimals and buy shit, and the ability to spend yet another 30 American dollars on yet another useless Nintendo Peripheral, the “Wii-Speak” microphone. Unlike a traditional headset, the Wii-Speak sets on your TV top and records the whole room so whole groups of people can converse as they play, I guess.

Several games made use of the Wii Balance Board, including Shaun White Snowboarding, an impressively detailed open-world snowboarding game, a new Rayman Raving Rabids party game, and the new sequel to Wii Sports, “Wii Sports: Resort”, which will be a pack in with the aforementioned “Wii-Motion Plus” and features beach resort themed sports such as volleyball, Frisbee and sword fighting. Wait, what? I haven’t spent a lot of time in resorts in my lifetime, but at least enough to know that I’ve never gotten into a sword fight at one…

Sadly, there was no Kid Icarus at the show, despite rumors to the contrary. Although we were assured somewhat cryptically that the teams behind the Mario and Zelda franchises were hard at work on new projects… What those projects are is still unknown. What we do know is that there is a custom “Spore” title for the DS called Spore: Creatures, a new Pokemon for you otaku man-children out there, a sequel to the popular Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS called “Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades” and lastly… wait for it… an exclusive GTA game for the DS, “Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars”. That last one elicited the biggest gasp of the entire E3 thus far, without question. How did something like that stay a secret for this long?

Of course, Miyamoto had something to show at the end of the presentation, and that something was Wii Music. While Wii Music doesn’t have the “cool factor” of Rock band and Guitar Hero, it does allow you to make your own music, in a group, using the Wiimote and Wii Balance board (for the drum pedals) and utilizing over 50 instruments, from saxophones and guitars to xylophones and cowbells.

Ubisoft echoed the skirt chasing “girl gaming” sentiment of Nintendo by yammering on about “Petz” Monkeyz, Catz, Dogz, etc. as well as a new line of Imagine shovelware designed to appeal to girl’s fantasies of pretending to be an interior designer, wedding planner or shallow celebrity. They also showed a half dozen shooters that were each unique in their own way, most notably Farcry 2 for having an “Apocalypse Now” type storyline and Tom Clancy: Endwar, which utilizes voice command for your troops. Could be an awesome development, we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.