London 3DS Launch Event: Photos

VIP event counts down to midnight launch

Published 2011-03-25

The 3DS has just launched in the UK.

While crowds queued up outside stores up and down the country to pick up a unit and a selection of titles come midnight, a mixture of Club Nintendo members, press, and the odd celebrity mingled in the hours leading up to the strike of twelve at a VIP event in south London.

Aside from a main stage with a series of performances during the night and a live link to HMV's flagship store on London's Oxford Street, the massive hall was decked out with Nintendo 3DS pods. Each showcased a range of titles like Pilotwings Resort and PES 2011, as well as video preview footage demoing how proposed Sky partnership that was announced at the Amsterdam event would work.

Nintendo representatives decked out like walking 3DS pods (the same type used to great effect at the end of Nintendo's E3 conference last year) wandered the hall with a unit in each hand. Their wares were connected to specially designed belts (plastic in look, and decked out in battery packs and combination locks to stop anyone thinking of doing a runner) and came with preloaded tech demos, such as the Ocarina of Time remake.

A dual projection screen on one side of the hall played out an ongoing Street Fighter tournament early in the evening, with queues forming along the hall's entire length to jump on a 3DS to take on challengers.

Street Fighter's Yoshinori Ono dropped by briefly, along with Jonathan Ross and Nintendo's original icons Mario and Luigi (the people inside the suits must have been sweating up as storm).

But the night belonged to the hardware - after last year's debut at Nintendo's E3 conference, through the swelling developer list signing on to work with the console, the UK tour letting people catch their first glimpse of the 3D effect, and reports of the Japanese launch, Nintendo's much-heralded revolution - 3D without glasses - has finally arrived in players' hands.

Check back with GR-UK tomorrow morning, when we'll have shots direct from the launch event at HMV's flagship store in London.

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