Nintendo Scene

During the month of August, the city of Edinburgh becomes a frantic, muddled mess of activity for the world’s biggest arts Festival. But what we call the ‘Edinburgh Festival’ is really a collection of different festivals that take over the city, attracting folk from all over the world. In addition to the international performing arts festival, we have the Book Festival, the Film Festival, the world-famous Fringe, and, since 2003, Edinburgh Interactive – the Edinburgh Video Game Festival in all but name.

I first went to the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (as it was known) back in 2006, where I was delighted to get my hands on a demo of Twilight Princess a few months before it was released. At the time, a large part of the festival was a showcase of upcoming and recent “Game of the Year” candidate games that visitors could try for themselves. In more recent years, however, this aspect of the festival has been toned down in favour of discussion panels manned by industry heavyweights on subjects related to the industry. There’s a public programme that’s free to attend and an industry programme that you have to sign up for.

This year, Robert Lowe of Nintendo UK will be showing off some of the new features of upcoming Zelda game Skyward Sword as part of the public programme at the Radisson Blu Hotel on the Royal Mile. Additionally, Nintendo Unleashed, who have been touring the UK with demos of upcoming games, will be around with demos of Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land. Nintendo Unleashed invite everyone to come along and try these hotly-anticipated games out. I’ll be checking out some of the panels as well as getting to grips with some of those eagerly-awaited 3DS titles. Look for my report on the event this Thursday/Friday.

For more information on Edinburgh Interactive’s schedule, go here.

To RSVP for Nintendo Unleashed, go here.