This week, Jimmy Fallon's Late Night provided a kind of victory lap for video gaming's heavy-hitting brands coming out of E3. "Video Game Week" on the show wrapped up last night with Reggie Fils-Aime, the boss of Nintendo of America, giving Fallon some hands-on time with the Wii U.
Sure, it's a hype appearance, but Fallon isn't a trained product demonstrator like we saw up on stage in Los Angeles. So this is the best we can do, for now, in the "real people playing the Wii U" category. He tosses some shuriken in Takamura's Ninja Castle, one of the 12 attractions inside the Nintendo Land suite debuting with the console. He then zombifies his face (as Fils-Aime did to his own on stage) within ZombiU, though no live gameplay is shown.
What else did Fallon play this week? Well, there's ...
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Eric Hirschberg, Activision's CEO, shows off the game's tactical "overwatch" mode and explains branching story paths to Fallon, who just wants reassurance he can still shoot his friends in multiplayer. "That's not doing anything," Hirschberg politely says when Fallon lays on the trigger while piloting a quad-rotor remote.
Halo 4
Josh Holmes, the game's creative director, gives Fallon a gamepad and announces he's the first outside of 343 Industries to play the game's campaign mode. Fallon then craps his britches when he stares into the glowing green skull of a Promethean Knight.
The Last of Us
Fallon flatters Naughty Dog "wild stallions" Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann by calling Uncharted the best video game ever in the history of video games, then goes on to tour post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh. Looks sort of like the hotel-level demonstration we saw on stage in L.A. Note the subtle bleeps of the dialogue.
Madden NFL 13
Josh Looman, the principal designer on the game's new Connected Careers suite, proctors a Jets-on-Jets showdown between Fallon and an utterly taciturn Darrelle Revis.
(Timothy Burke contributed to this report)