9:58 - After elbowing several journalists in the ribs, I'm at the Nintendo Press Conference in Hall 5. I was told I was on the list. I was not on the list. Never the less, a combination of Irish charm and an insinuated capacity for great acts of physical violence got me in.

Right now, it's simply a spartan, quasi-deco white stage illuminated by Nintendo red lights into a pinkish glow. Clips of several people playing the Nintendo DS bombard. What appears to be a drunken Welsh cabbie. A hyperactive albino. An octagenarian gumming droolily through a puckered grin. Children are few and far between. They really are emphasizing bringing new gamers to the fold, and not merely the corruption and lassitude of today's punkish youths.

10:02 - Just realized that this is going to be in some foreign gibberish. This indicates very clearly to me exactly how little I understand how any of this "journalist" stuff works. I wonder how the social misanthropes about me, visibly oscillating smell waves into the air to create a sort of shimmering effect in front of the Nintendo stage, seem just so much more capable. I'm now hysterically flagging down someone who is handing out headsets, desparate pleading in my eyes.

10:04 - The headsets have those uncomfortable foam ear pieces that I despise so much. I am, however, relieved that they are not the variety that I need to plunge directly into the orifice of my ear canal.

10:09 - "Wii prove our promise" is the motto of this press conference. I figured this out by reading over the German's shoulder ahead of me. He typed it onto his laptop, then emphasized it, as if English were ancient Latin. Due to the vagaries of infinite recursion, as soon as I write that last sentence, someone behind me begins to giggle and type frantically.

I still hate the name Wii. It just encourages jackass puns like this. Is endless misspellings of the 'we' what Lewis Carroll was crucified for?

I'm guessing the big news, the promise being referred to, is date or price... what else is there? Erotic I/O port? I know that date and price are probably wishful thinking though.

10:14 - One minute to go. It's standing room only. It just occurred to me that you can tell the Europeans from the Americans - the Europeans are all sitting down, quite impotent in the art of kicking their way to the front of a maddened crowd. Americans, on the other hand, impotently twiddle their thumbs, expecting some sort of omnipotent power to rigorously enforce the sanctity of the single-file queue. I snicker.

10.21 - General Manager of Nintendo Germany (find out name) Dr Bernd Fakesch comes on. His entire spiel is to compare the con's motto (expand definition of gaming) with the Wii. Interesting: Wii is pronounced by translator as "Dubya Eye Eye". This is adorable.

10.27 - The translator is terrible, but Faksech brings up a psychology of media report that makes distinctions between natives and immigrants, where the former are raised with a media form, therefore being comfortable with it, and the immigrants are those who come to it later in life. Obviously, Nintendo is aiming at bringing immigrants into the fold.

10.28 - Wii "a new chapter in video game history. Game controls represent the greatest technological limitation in gaming, in that they prevent people who have never played video games to try them." Touch! Generations is mentioned several times as representing the entire new strategy.

10.32 - Germany's sales numbers of the DS include a whopping 42%for DS. 44% of female users. Nintendogs is the only game saccharine enough to sway the ladies, apparently.

10.38 - A suspiciously handsome Germanic Brad Pitt look-alike leaps on stage and nervously explains what he likes about Brain Training. That he likes Brain Training validates the theory that supermodels are stupid almost universally. His name is not flashed up on the screen, so who even knows who this dude is.

10.39 Clip with strange supermodel/actor plays. It is not translated. "Rot" he says into his DS... they cut out the part where he Brain Age doesn't recognize his pronunciation until he skewers his tongue with a fork.

10:43: "13th of the October Launch..." gets me excited. But that aposiopesis is bullshit. It's for a German game called "English Training".

"I love music, JA?"

The DS doesn't like the pretty boy's handwriting. He's asked to write "She can speak english"... he has a difficult time with it. The audience applauds, duly impressed by Aryan Pitt's acumen with the Bard's mother tongue. I am reminded of Manuel from Fawlty Towers, impersonating a talking moose heads: "I can Speak English. I learned it... from a book." Insert your own trilling r's.

Pretty-boy gets the worst rating for English that English Training will give: "OK".

10:45 New game: Action Loop, described as "like Tetris", "drop the balls in the right order... real big fun!" I've never heard of it, but there are some appreciative murmurs about me.

10:48 Nintendo DS coming to Europe in Pink on the 27th October 2006. Another special guest whose name I don't catch... it must be taken as read for the average German. She looks eerily like Paris Hilton

Ashcraft ahoy! "We like this pink model because it's aimed at fashion conscious women." Ashcraft, Dr. Bernd fakesch, General Manager of Nintendo Europe? He just called you gay.

10:54 A lot of upcoming games are shown, nothing that really seems new. Super Mini Mario World, Action Loop, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Some awesome game involving a samurai running around (The title appears to be in kanji, and therefore mystifies me), English Training, Gray? Starfox, Sudoku Master, Zelda. Zelda looks swell — I don't remember it being possible to draw notes on the map.

10:55 - Some breakdancers undulate and butt slide on stage, then start dancing with wiimotes. They're really good at pretending to play games.

11:00 - Okay, here we go. The "Double U, Double I". It turns out that semantic justifications for the objectively terrible names are cringe-worthy no matter what country you go to.

11:01 - Sleepy journalists spring to tautness like a bobbing crowd of phalluses when the Wii is mentioned.

11:01 - Feel bad for that last line when a 7 year old girl walks on stage. She's going to play the Wii.

11:01 - All the sound drops out, Then it comes back but the translation is gone. My job just got either a lot easier or a lot harder, depending on how lazy I am.

11:03 - The little girl, a granny and a pretty boy Aryan begins to play Wii on stage. Wii Tennis. As near as I can tell, the adults team up against the little girl. It actually looks a little boring to play. I haven't seen a single serve returned in the entire demo."That was almost as fun as Wimbledon", says Dr. Faksech. An audible groan collectively exudes from the audience.

11:06 - Translation comes back, just in time for them to kick the granny and little girl off stage and show Mario Strikers Charged. I immediately raise the spectre of a thousand game reviewers everywhere by saying to myself, "This looks like a real mixed bag." On one hand, it appears to have Donkey Kong fatality moves. Mario Strikers Charged. Mario skydives out of the sky to land in the field. When he takes a power shot, he leaps into the air and propels a series of balls down at the goal. The goal then defends in first person by waving asround the Wiimote. But on the other, the game looks surprisingly drab on its overview screen. The level is entirely brown, the teams made up of Boos and Mushrooms. I suspect that is probably less of an issue with the art design itself and more a bad pick of a demonstrable level.

11:16 - Battalion Wars 2 coming to Wii. Let's hope this one is a step up from the last.

11:17 - I decide to stop taking pictures unless something frickin' amazing happens. There's like a thousand people covering every stray photon of reflective light in here, and they look like they actually know what they are doing.

11:18 - A trailer plays, showing the great games they are showing. They appear to be recycling the same old E3 Wii trailer. Super Mario galaxy, Excite Truck, etc.

And that's it. The lights dim. Booth babes start icily grinning and gobbling doofuses pounce upon them to have their pictures taken. There doesn't appear to be anything really big here — date and price are still unannounced. It's certainly aimed very strongly at gamers, and German gamers in particular... but it's clear that this isn't the venue for a huge global announcement. Heck, they didn't even drag Miyamoto's skeleton along.

Off to the Microsoft Presser next. Florian Eckhardt