C3 Special | Cubed³ Goes to South Korea: Nintendo DS & Wii Report

However, everything kicked into gear when it was revealed a fully localised version of the Nintendo DS Lite, which had already taken the rest of the world by storm, would be hitting the land of StarCraft and Lineage in January 2007. In other words Nintendo faced the uphill battle of convincing a country where PC gaming rules the roost by far to love the portable console that the rest of the world has already fallen in love with. Was it a major risk that could blow up in its face? Well, definitely, but if you do not take calculated risks then you are never likely to make any progress…right?

Well, we have read many stories about how the PlayStation Portable sales have become stagnant, the Xbox 360 is mostly overlooked and the PlayStation 3 is well out of the price range of those considering video games instead of PC ones, plus we already know that 270,000 units of the DS Lite were sold between the January launch and the following four months. But from asking my wife to quiz her family (yes, she is South Korean and all her family still lives over there) on how present Nintendo is right now, the response received was that nothing had been seen and her brothers did not even know what a Nintendo DS Lite was. This certainly did not bode well considering how well Nintendo was supposed to have been doing there, yet I remained hopeful that something had simply been lost in translation. So, upon arriving in the country clearly my first question was to specifically stress had they heard of the latest Nintendo handheld system…This time I was told that her younger brother remembered a Nintendo baseball game. Which one, though, he was not sure, and with him being 34 it could have been from quite a while back rather than the recent GameCube edition that feature Mario (especially since the GC barely made a ripple over there thanks to poor distribution and coverage by former external partner Daewon).

In all honesty I started to give up hope, but little did I know, redemption was just around the corner. We were set to meet a group of my wife's friends the following day and she got a call from one of them urgently asking for advice on something. Sure enough it turned out her 12-year-old son had been constantly pestering her about some new 'game machine' that all his friends at school had. I tentatively asked did she mean the DS and a light bulb down the end of the phone line went *ping*. So we decided to meet them at the local E-Mart (basically a multi-storey Asda, which was five minutes walk from where we were staying in the district of Hopyeong-dong, just North-east of Seoul) to see what he wanted, with me asking if he preferred adventures, puzzles or racing (basically the main genres on offer at that time - Mario platformers, Mario Kart, Pokémon Dungeon, nintendogs and some of the Training games). Racing was what all his friends loved, so Mario Kart was the obvious choice so he could play the same game as them. Sure enough, when we met the other families later on (four in total, with a mass of ten children running around), all of them had DS Lites and the majority had Mario Kart, whilst some of the girls had New Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon Link.

At last, a nice indication of the youth getting into playing with the DS, and the ages ranged from as low as six to as high as fifteen that day. Revitalised in my mission to learn more, I decided to ask my six-year-old niece to go on a mission the next day, asking people at her school if they 1.) Knew about DS and 2.) What games they played. Being the thorough girl that she is, she went around and asked everyone in her class. The general consensus was that basically everyone had a DS Lite, with it being the hot playground item right now and nobody bothering with other game systems. The boys all played various Mario games the most, with Super Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros. being the standout choices, whilst the girls plumped for the latter of the two Mario titles because of the fun mini-games found in it. Clearly the lure of Mario is as strong as ever…

It was at this point that I thought it unfair for my nieces to miss out on all this Nintendo goodness, both my wife's younger brother's two girls (we were staying with them for the duration of the holiday - one is three, the other, as already mentioned, six) and my other two nieces on her older brother's side (six and seven). Therefore, I bought two DS Lites for them. Clearly I am not made of money, and the DS Lite hardware is barely any cheaper over there than it is here in the UK, so I got one for each set of girls and hoped they would share responsibly. The younger set preferred the Noble Pink version, whilst the older ones got the Ice Blue. Neither liked the recently released Gloss Silver or Metallic Rose editions and even the shop clerk said the silver one looked rather boring. As for games, I suggested getting New Super Mario Bros. for the young ones and Super Mario 64 DS for the older pair since nintendogs gets rather limited too quickly, Mario Kart was too boy-ish for them, they thought WarioWare was too confusing, Big Brain Academy looked boring and they were too young for English Training. The younger brother was amazed to see Tetris for the system and was sorely tempted to pick it up…As for me, I was more surprised it only cost 20,000 Won, which roughly equates to an ultra cheap £10, a far cry from the £34.99 we were charged when it first launched in the UK! The games in general were definitely cheaper than over here, with New Super Mario Bros. being just £20, WarioWare: Touched! £17.50 and Brain Training £15. I wonder if the Koreans know how good they have got it in comparison to us?

Whilst at E-mart, I took the opportunity to question the woman behind the counter about purchasing trends and she stated that nintendogs, Super Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros. are all extremely popular selling games right now, but so are the likes of early releases Quick Shot and English Training, plus relatively new release Big Brain Academy (came out at the beginning of August) as parents are keen to improve their children's knowledge, perception and language skills. However, the store clerk also pointed out that many families return shortly afterwards for an actual proper game since the children get bored of the 'educational' titles quite quickly and want to play fun action games with their friends. As for Brain Training, at that particular store it had not been as popular since adults were only buying the system and games for their children rather than for themselves. However, one store is clearly not indicative of a whole country and considering the amount of coverage both Brain Training and English Training received back in January as the launch duo, it would be crazy to believe they have been anything other than a resounding success.

Heading over to my wife's Aunt's house a few days later, her children, in their mid-to-late twenties, have all heard of the DS and many of their friends use the system, but are unsure of whether to buy English Training or not since they are not aware of its background and if it is actually based on any proven course. After telling them it is based around the TOEIC standard they appeared much more interested. Perhaps this is something Nintendo should have factored into their advertising campaign rather than the cute advert with a woman in a fast food joint…Now here is the big thing; the same people had also heard about Wii due to a recent TV documentary covering the new Nintendo system. They were not sure when it was being released, though, and the only game they had heard about was Wii Sports, with Boxing and Tennis specifically shown, but I was quite pleased to hear something about Wii recognition. It also seemed that they thought the sports games were separate and were quite shocked when told all five come in the same package. But at least it appears the word is already beginning to spread about the home console that is ubiquitous elsewhere and famed for its motion controls. In fact, since Nintendo has not yet announced a firm Wii release date for South Korea, it is no wonder they did not know! Last week Nintendo of Korea merely stated it is "aiming to introduce the Wii console to the Korean market soon". How soon is 'soon', though?

Anyway, for the time being it is all about the DS, with large adverts for the system itself adorning the walls of subway stations such as the large one at Gwanghwamun Station, on the way to the Gyeongbok Palace (do you blame me doing a bit of sight-seeing whilst there?!) and some of the large pillars within the COEX Centre in Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul being dedicated to adverts for nintendogs, Super Mario 64, WarioWare: Touched!, New Super Mario Bros. and Tetris DS. In other words, Nintendo has not only been peppering the TV with adverts at varying times on numerous channels, but is ensuring its other forms of promotional material are in clear sight of as many everyday people as possible and it helps that recognised Korean personalities are being used to promote the games.

As for the actual games line-up, to some it may look rather sparse, but recently the Korean localised list of games has been greatly expanding, with MySims coming out just now, alongside SimCity DS, Cooking Mama, DS Chueok ui Donghwa Touch RO Puzzle (which looks like a reworked version of Zoo Keeper), Picross DS (came out about four days ago and the game's official Korean page can be seen here), Samgukji DS (historic turn-based strategy from Koei, otherwise known as 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' in the West) and even Hoshigami Remix all hitting stores across the country in the past few weeks. So owners are finally getting a real taste of Third Party goodness as well as just Nintendo First Party games. But that does not mean Nintendo is slacking, as it has Ouendan / Elite Beat Agents coming on 11th October and Yoshi's Island DS launching on 8th November, plus Metroid Prime Hunters and Online Mah-jong in the near future. There are even games appearing from small Korean developers, such as a Sudoku title from SKonec. But a big question has to be how long before Maple Story developer Wizet gets the DS version of its hit MMORPG completed and Nexon pushes it out into the retail scene, plus whether or not NCSoft chooses to put some of its considerable development weight behind the petite handheld. With Nintendo supporting small Korean developers and having its dedicated branch in Seoul, surely any hostility towards the Japanese firm should be put to one side now in favour of good business practices and strong profit margins instead. Satoru Iwata was clearly right to do what Hiroshi Yamauchi thought was a waste of time - invest in Korea.