Nintendo van hits San Francisco

December 9, 2005 12:59 PM PST

At around 9 a.m. Friday, a nondescript white van pulled over and parked on Second Street in San Francisco. To anyone outside, it just looked like something a young couple might travel around in.

In fact, the inside of the van was a gamer's fantasy (click here to watch video): a collection of nearly everything Nintendo is promoting for the holidays, including its latest games, its Wi-Fi-enabled Nintendo DS handheld game console, and several GameCubes.

Video: The video game van
Nintendo takes its show on the road and CNET News.com's Vincent Tremblay gives you a look inside.

And the point: to woo journalists into the van and ply them with the best Nintendo has to offer.

The so-called Holiday Media Van Tour has been going on for nine weeks. Along the way, it has made its way through most regions of the U.S., hitting cities like New York, Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, Phoenix, L.A. and so on. San Francisco was the last stop on the tour, much to the relief of Nintendo product tester James Sakshaug, who had been onboard for the last three weeks.

Inside the van, Sakshaug showed off a series of games, including "Nintendogs," the company's ultra-hip and ultra-canine answer to Tamagotchi, in which players take control of a dog, teach it tricks, feed it, walk it and even pick up after it.

And he said that upon its release, "Nintendogs" helped the DS outsell Sony's PSP, at least for a while, two-to-one.

Anyway, Sakshaug said that Nintendo had kept the van away from gamers because the company didn't want some of its pre-production equipment to get into their hands. And thus, in the middle of one of the most gamer-centric cities in the world, a van full of video games sat unnoticed by anyone who didn't know what they were looking for.

Posted by Daniel Terdiman

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