OMG Nintendo

On July 23rd 2009, Nintendo took over a portion of Times Square to show off their new title: Wii Sports Resort.  OMGNintendo was lucky enough to have a reporter on scene to take photos of this special event.

To see more than this establishing shot of the Square itself, as well as see some comments on the event, head on beyond the jump.

Here is the main entrance. You will notice the giant horde of people crushed together in the background. The inside was like that the entire time. A lot of people showed up for the event, and not just people coming in off the street. There were at least three different Summer Camps that had taken a field trip to see the new game and enjoy the set-up.

On the building to the right of the event, this display was shown the entire time. The middle screen was used for demos of people trying out the game on a main stage near the front, as well as general footage of the crowd.

You will also notice some of the scrolling text on the bottom gives away a special surprise: For that day only, a limited number of Wii Sports Resorts would go on sale at the Nintendo World Store before the official release date.

There was also a small pool people were encouraged to dip their feet into, as well as allow their kids/grandkids/little sibblings/etc. to splash around in.

And in-between main stage showings, a two-man band entertained the crowd. Their song choices were somewhat strange though. Is My Heart Will Go On something you should play when so many of the games involve being on water, guys? They did a nice cover of the Mario theme once or twice too.

Most of the booths were set-up as Freeplay, letting people try whichever game them liked for one round.

Surprisingly, people seemed to really like a game that had not gotten much attention overall: a small prop plane flight that is part of the Air Sports event.

Three of the booths were set-up to specially demonstrate specific games: Canoeing (which seemed to take some effort to get to work right), Swordplay (which is incredibly fun and could be its own game), and, as being demonstrated by a mysterious blog writer, Archery (which is amazingly accurate and much better than any previous attempts to do it on the system).

The thing around his neck is a lei given out at the front and not some strange kind of weird neck ruffle.

The MC for the event caps things off by gathering together all the Summer Camp kids into a big group and taking a picture with his DSi. Shortly after this, it started to rain, dampening the final hour.  However, that did not mean the event was quite over yet.

Now-a-days, no event in Times Square is complete without an appearence by the (in)famous Naked Cowboy. The Wii Sports Resort showing was no exception.

As proof that the giant glowing sign near the entrance was indeed telling the truth, our mysterious blog writer made the trek to Roosevelt Center and the Nintendo World Store. As you can see, he was successful in aquiring a copy of a game before those not in New York City.

All in all, it was a small but fun event. It was also incredibly crowded, but never to the point there was a chance of people getting hurt. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo, or anyone else, tries something like this again to drum up last minute attention for their big releases.