It's buried inside a menu of an app primarily designed to play commercials, but it's there.

The Nintendo Channel launched this morning, to everyone's surprise. Nintendo just loves to manipulate their own little universe. Sony would have announced this three weeks ago; Microsoft would have made it part of a Mountain Dew promotion. I think I've made that comparison joke before.

Video playback is predictably crappy, due to both server load and the general Wii online slowness. No matter what video I picked, it would only run about 12 seconds of it, then sit and load again for another thirty seconds. When a video is about a minute long, having it take five minutes to watch it - in pieces - just isn't worth it. I would like to watch promo videos. I would even watch videos for games I already own, just because. But if it's not fast and easy to click through a pile of them, I'll just head back to my iMac.

Hopefully this will smarten up soon, or no one is going to bother. At that point, it won't matter how nice the presentation.

Which IS nice. Although I wish Nintendo would have standardized the back-to-Wii-menu buttons! In one Channel, it's bottom left. In the next, it's top right. In one, it's a home icon. In another, it simply says "Wii." Jesus.

I like how the little "new" icons strobe in time with the music.

As far as DS demos go, that too was slooooow. But at least there's some kind of reasonable excuse there, because first the Channel has to load the entire demo data then switch over to broadcast mode so your DS can grab it. It takes a fair amount of standing around the mall when you go for demos at retail as well... but now we'll never do that again, will we. I tried out three DS demos tonight, and I wasn't even wearing a shirt!

First I checked out Disney Friends, which is the Mouse's blind stab at Nintendogs. Only not all dogs. The demo tutorial sets you up with one of the green alien guys from Toy Story. After tickling him for a bit (oooooooooooooo!), I bailed out for Flash Focus.

I quite liked the Flash Focus demo. I may have to pick that up, because it's a $20 or less cheapie these days. (SEE NINTENDO, IT WORKS. WAY TO GO NOT GIVING US DEMOS A YEAR AGO.) Flash Focus is a visual Brain Age. So, mini-games bracketed with a lot of medical jargon. "This test measures your visual acuity and hand-eye coordination!" Yeah, what video game doesn't.

The truncated Eye Age Test (yes, they play the "age" thing again) gave me a score in the 20s. Which is as good as it gets, bitch. Suck on my eyes, balla!

Then I went after the Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword demo. The controls are very, very nice. The ninja guy bounces all over the screen, killing whoever you slash with the stylus. Being a demo, I doubt I graduated much past the pen-based equivalent of button-mashing, but I could see how smarter play and tighter motions would build skills.

I hope Nintendo keeps this demo list alive and hopping, with weekly updates adding to today's list of nine demos. They already have a back catalog of demos they could draw from (I'd like to try Pokemon Trozei again!) I never see anybody using the DS Download Center kiosks in stores, so I think most people don't realize you can do this... having it in the living room should get more people to try it. It's kind of like a free Virtual Console.

Also played some Mario Kart tonight, finishing off the eight 100cc races. Now I can race as Mii. And I played in the online tournament until I beat my sister's score.