Nerd Mentality

Nintendo World and E3

Posted May 6th 2006 by Stephanie DeSiena.

I'm talking about things in here, but there are no pictures! Read only if you need something to help you procrastinate more!

Two Thursdays ago I went to everyone's favorite Nintendo-centric store in Manhattan to check out their "Spring Fashion Show". I have no specific reason as to why I decided to do this. Earlier that week I had gotten an e-mail that told me about the fashion show, and a chance to meet the Regginator the week after. For one reason or another, I had no motivation to see Reggie again. I think once is enough. However, I did want to see some new shirts, and I was hoping to luck out with some super cute models that I could woo over. Before you read any further, I must warn you, I did not get any action.

I was accompanied by a man named Mike, known internally as the N-Philes Fashion Expert and externally as Bi0hazard. He is a former writer of this site, for some reason or another. Mike agreed to come with me so he can take pictures and be mentioned in one of my many articles that usually have no point and wind up being 10 thousand words about absolutely nothing, much like how I anticipate this one to be. But, that's neither here nor there. You'll see subsections that break up the interesting parts, I'd imagine.

So! This fashion show started at something like five or six thirty in the afternoon. We met up roughly ten minutes before this time, and arrived that the store practically at the exact time advertised in the newsletter. As expected, there were a lot of little kids there. And I don't really understand exactly why, because there was nothing really interesting there for kids to see outside of the usual Nintendo wares.

The first thing we did was go upstairs. Mike had never been to the Nintendo World Store before, but if I recall correctly, he was vastly underwhelmed. I don't know what he was expecting. Nintendo fans are usually very underwhelmed by the Nintendo World Store when they finally get to see it. Luckily, I am not a Nintendo fan, so I was happy enough with it as a franchise store when I went on opening day. That, and I got to meet Ryan Sheckler.

Now, Mike is a very energetic dude. He likes to talk to people for no reason. He gets confused when no one responds to him. Sometimes people don't even look in his direction. I had to explain that Manhattan is mostly filled with very disconnected and depressed people who don't want anything to do with anyone except for themselves. I could understand if no one buys that line, but I find it to be true. Manhattan is depressing.

When we walked down the flight of stairs back to the first floor, there was a kids, maybe 17 or 18 years old, leaning up against a pillar while looking down at his shoes with a very blank stare. This is typical. When we passed him, Mike snapped his fingers in front of the kid and asked, "Are you alright?". The kid barely budged. He had a video camera wrapped around his neck, so we just assumed he was for some other, lesser Nintendo fansite, and was looking to cover the event.

Finally, things started. A roundish, bored looking guy had a microphone in one hand and a clipboard in the other. He began to call the first round of models.

The models were sports. They were getting paid to wear t-shirts about video games in front of little kids, who all sat cross-legged in front of the older crowd, and didn't look very amused. They didn't look bored, they just looked like they were lost, or that they knew they were completely out of place. They don't make those t-shirts in kid's sizes, I think.

I believe Nintendo World had hired three girls and two guys to walk down two flights of steps over and over again, modeling about 25 different outfits. They were mostly just shirts over other name-brand jeans. Some of them, admittedly, looked nice enough that I was all ready to go up to the second floor after the show was over and buy some for myself. Some of them were just shirts that I've seen in Hot Topic stores for ages. Know your mushroom? Come on.

There was a killer Duck Hunt shirt, actually, that I didn't buy. Something about it being too plain. When the announcer was presenting the shirt, he said that it was "...a testiment to one of the most underrated NES games." I'm pretty sure the whole room heard Mike and I contest this. Yeah. I'd imagine we were pretty audible. There was another horrible looking shirt that said "Top 10 Reasons to be a Gamer" or something lame like that. The list looked more like the top one-hundred reasons. It was iterally a wall of text printed on a shirt. Why would anyone wear that? And besides, I can't think of ten reasons to be a gamer. I can't even think of one, really.

Mike had left his digital camera home, so I had to buy a disposable camera for us to take pictures with. We didn't anticipate there being so many shirts. We were down to four pictures left, and decided to stop snapping the same models over and over again. I really don't know why were even bothered. Maybe I'll show you what we have, some day.

When the show finished, I went back upstairs to look for the shirts I liked. The announcer clearly said that all of the shirts being worn at the event were in stock right upstairs. I didn't find a single one of them. He also advertised a really nice shirt that was a pre-order bonus for that ridiculous looking Super Mario game for the DS. I went to reserve it just to get the shirt, as I did for Twilight Princess. The guy on the upstairs counter told us they had them downstairs. The guy at the downstairs counter told me they had them upstairs. I shot him a "you just lost a sale, jerkoff" look. Then, he gave Mike and I free foam keychains.

I got a nice Wario beanbag thing from them, though. For fourteen bucks. Actually it isn't as nice as it is hideous. I'd take a pic of it now, but I'm in school. I'll probably forget to do it later.

After wandering around mid-town Manhattan for a few hours, we called it quits and decided it was a job well done. Except, we didn't actually do any work. My original intention was to cover the event in full for N-Philes, and I would have, had the event been more interesting. I hear Nintendo World is going to broadcast the E3 keynote address live in their store. This brings me to the next section of my post.

I now want to talk a bit about E3.

Next Monday I am going to be leaving my humble abode and traveling a couple thousand miles to Los Angeles, California. I'm going to be attending E3 along with something like 11 other N-Philes staff members. As condescending as I may be about the whole ordeal, I'm viewing this as somewhat of a large opportunity for an enthusiast like me to be able to see what I'm going to be playing in a few months in person, on the spot, as it is announced. I'm talking about all of the video games at the trade show in general, here. But let's just say I'm going to be doing something else of vast importance that some people here - hell, some people at the actual damn trade show - will look upon with envious eyes. And I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

The day I arrive I'm going to be meeting up with the N-Philes traitor, Vincent Anderson. Him and I are rooming on the first night, and then I'm going to be in a different hotel with Nik, Daniel, and Mohamed for the following days. On Monday I'm also going to be with Aaron and David Dayton, whom some of you might actually know from his long running Nintendo cheat site. So what does this mean for you, the reader?

It means hilarity. I don't feel hilarious right now because I'm actually kind of sick. I'm also very tired and visibly run-down. And I have to take a large test in a few hours which I should be studying for now instead of writing this. But I want to get this out of the way while my ideas are still in my head. I shouldn't have even wrote this paragraph, really.

Anyway! I'm probably going to stock up on some media for everyone on the site. I need to buy a vioce recorder for certain unnamed events that I'm going to be taking place in next week. I have a lot of surprises for you, so keep an eye on my blog. I don't know what the front page is going to look like next week, but I'm sure it'll be friendly enough for you to spot me!

This also means that I won't be moderating the yearly E3 N-Philes chat. This is typically when the channel is busiest and most entertaining. Before I leave I'm going to try to collaborate with the other moderators there, who have all gotten lives and moved on to bigger and better things, and find a poor sap who will moderate for the entire week. I'll also see about getting some of the E3 Staff to talk in the channel for a while, maybe at night, and let you guys in on what you're missing.

So, to recap: my blog will be the best one on N-Philes during E3, so keep looking at it. We have a lot of cool media that I'm going to try to give a hand with so it has a chance of being organized and fun to watch/listen to/read.

I also want to talk about a few new games that I've gotten, but I really need to get cracking on this test. I apologize if some of this was difficult to read, or if there are excessive typos, as I am typing a mile of minute.

So.

I'll leave you hanging.

| Comments (3) | Permalink