Those of you who have been paying attention to this year's ECTS will already know that Nintendo refused to have a cubicle inside the Sony-sponsored event and so decided instead to park a huge truck outside filled with and surrounded with the most powerful of Nintendo's gaming arsenal.

The truck itself has cubicles inside, all demoing playable versions of Viewtiful Joe, F Zero GX, Metal Gear Solid :Twin snakes, Pokemon Colosseum, Rebel Strike and, of course, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!.

The truck doesn't just have games playing inside it, but all around the edges are playable versions of the fabled Mario Kart and Zelda: Four Swords. The whole area around the truck looks like a go kart track, which circles the vehicle. This isn't all, on the side of the track areas and chicane markers is a huge TV screen with 4 go karts in front of it. The go karts have a screen above the wheel and a wavebird controller in place of the wheel itself... this, my friends...is Mariokart.

4 people battle it out while crowds of people stay fixated to the giant screen, which highlights everything from the coolest screech to the most horrific banana skid. It really is beginning to look like Nintendo will be rewarding us for the seemingly long wait.

Aside from Mariokart, Viewtiful Joe was another crowd puller with its visually spasmic cartoon graphics. People were literally ooing and ahhing to every one of Joe's jumps, dodges and kicks.

Rebel Strike currently only has one playable level, but it's still promising, mixing flying with third person, to first person action with a little tauntaun riding mixed in.

Metal Gear Solid:Twin snakes brought back some good memories. The demo is EXACTLY the same as the origional MGS demo in terms of what is available to you level wise but having the first person adds a whole new level, literally. MGS was horizontal as they come...an enemy couldn't see you unless you were on the same height level as him...this caught me off guard and I ended up underwater with bullets leaving impressive lines in the water. Of course...I heard the usual "Snake? Snakkkke!?" audio but even then, I walked away knowing that another great game is headed to cube.

F-Zero moved fluidly in single-player as well as 2 player, and it would be an understatement to say I'm not anticipating this game. I can't wait...basically...the speed, the looks.... everything is wowiing. We had a pretty much full version to play with and I am 100% sure that this game will please a lot of people.

Mariokart sure as hell didn't disappoint either. Apparantly faster than the E3 version, the game still needs some minor additions such as the tricky banana dodge and the jump slide, but still, the two people per kart idea works very well and crushed my previously held thought that they might have altered it too much.

Zelda: Four Swords didn't get as much of my attention as the other titles, but I played briefly and found the use of the SP very novel and clever. Maybe with FFCC coming up as well as this I should finally buy a GBASP (well done Nintendo).

Nintendo certainly put on a good show this time. Sony is of course planning to steal the show with its "Playstation Experience", but I reckon Sony'll have a hard time simulating disappointment and frustration of playing outdated games and re-releases ;) Overall, I'm very impressed.

We'll be back at the Nintendo truck early tomorrow morning for a Mariokart tournament as well as an exclusive interview with the gang, not to mention some early morning F Zero and Viewtiful Joe. If anyone else is down in that area don't be afraid to say hi... but if you plan on challenging us at Mario Kart, be afraid... be very, very afraid.

by Matt Plummer