Nintendo World 2011: Day 1 Report and Impressions

Its a been a busy exciting day! Lets take a recap

Nintendo World 2011 kicked off today at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba City, Japan. As you know we’re in Japan so we thought it would be prudent to attend. We set off from our hotel in the wee hours of the morning (well, 7:30 is early when you’re on holiday) to arrive just after 9am, and there was already a line at the entrance – the first of many that we had to patiently wait through over the day.

Once in at 10am, the other attendees and ourselves were free to explore the exhibit at our leisure. Nintendo had the place set out with one side mostly for their own wares and the other side with all the third party offerings. There was some overlap, but oddly all the third party games were on Black Nintendo 3DS units, with first party titles displayed on the aqua coloured ones.

There wasn’t enough time today to play everything, the line for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time itself was at one point over two hours long. Some games like Winning Eleven Soccer, were less popular and a it was only a mere ten minutes for us to check out the game’s football action.

There were multiple showings on the main stage during the day. First up was a demonstration of the new Mii functions for the 3DS. We’re not sure the two guys they rolled out to demo it were actors or not, but there amazement at making a Mii from a photo was perhaps are a little too over the top. The feature was rather cool though. Second up on stage was a band playing tunes from The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Animal Crossing all in ’big band’ style. We’ll look into it, but we’d love to get our hands on a copy of the footage.

The second last event on the stage was a long discussion with Yoshikazu Matsuhana from Konami about Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. They’re putting this game on the 3DS first as it’s the first game in the series chronologically. Nothing new from the game was shown, just footage from the E3 demo.

 To cap off the show for the day, Nintendo gave those in attendance a look into Kid Icarus with Masahiro Sakurai who went into Kid Icarus with a ton of detail. Part of the presentation was showing off the older designs of the characters and how they have brought them up to 2011 ’level’. The original NES game was also played showing off how characters and enemies have been brought to life in 3D.

Today we got hands on with Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Winning Eleven Soccer, Dead or Alive Dimensions, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, Nintendogs + Cats, Ridge Racer 3D and Kid Icarus. We’ll have impressions of those trickling out soon, as well as a wrap up impressions on the system itself.

Here’s our video of the day just to give you a taste of the action: