Visit the only place on Earth where waiting in line is an attraction.

by NOA_Steven

Being NP definitely has its perks, like not having to wait in line for an hour to get into the Zelda demo area at E3. On the other hand, if I HAD to wait in line, Nintendo really has people covered this year: gamers who heard through the grapevine to bring a DS could download a bunch of DS stuff from the wireless DS Download transmission spot, so tons of people were burning off the hour by playing the Meteos demo. Or the Electroplankton demo. Or the Polarium demo. Or one of last E3's DS technology demos, like the submarine-controlling or table-hockey demos. Or watching the Zelda trailer on their DS. What a way for thousands of people to see the life-altering potential of DS Download.

But for those unfortunate souls who didn't get the word, there's lots of eye candy, like the gigantic Odama bell (who do I need to talk to to give that 5-ton monstrosity away in the magazine?) And the gaming masses in line were also devouring their free copies of the new Nintendo Power … and our world-exclusive mag feature on the new Zelda game. Between the downloads, the Odama bell and the magazine, I give my vote for Best E3 Line to Nintendo's area.

The Zelda booth has the demos. And the trailer. But the booth itself is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen at E3. It's like walking through a Halloween-style haunted house, but not some kind of cheap production. Nintendo must have laid out a lot of cash for this multimedia extravaganza: In the area where players take on the village and horseback-attack demos, the place is designed to look like a forest, with trees shooting up out of the floor, and a light show projected onto the floor to seem like a koi-filled pond. When you walk through it, your motion causes water ripples, and you chase away the fish. There is also a bridge that spans the pond which collapses when you step on it. Very cool.

Then to get to the Forest Temple demo, you need to walk into a castle area, where a skeleton trapped in a dungeon cell antagonizes pedestrians. It's a human-powered puppet -- along the lines of something that the Jim Henson creature shop would pull off -- but lots of people came through and thought it was a mechanical thing, and would go up to the bars to activate the "motion detection" and see the skeleton rush the bars. Motion detection? Suckers!

In the final area, the guts of the castle dungeon, another human-powered puppet -- of the now infamous wolf -- would come out every five minutes to bay at the moon and growl at gamers from above. Don't get me wrong: I like my E3 experience to be loud, blinding and buoyant with booth babes, but it's refreshing to go somewhere this year where the showcase puts the "art" in state of the art. Nice job, Nintendo.

Game Boy Micro is pretty sexy. I want five of them. Fortunately, I'll only need to buy one, then get five different style faceplates, I guess. And visitors to Nintendo's area are getting an eyeful, thanks to several space-ace Game Boy Micro girls, who are giving visitors a chance to go hands-on with the hardware. Super-bright screen, lightweight, thin … I can't wait until it comes out in the fall.