It seems Nintendo had only the GameCube version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ready to demo at E3, and pulled a sophisticated rigging together of the GameCube version and the Wii controller to fool show attendees. I repeat, no one at E3 played the Wii version of Zelda--it was all the GameCube version rigged up to the Wii controller.
On Thursday, two friends of mine were playing Twilight Princess in the Wii section of Nintendo's booth when the game demo crashed and froze, necessitating a reboot by the blonde booth representative. This is not uncommon with E3 demo code, which are works in progress and nowhere near as stable as a final game. What was uncommon was how she went about rebooting the Wii--she didn't! Instead, she went to get another representative, who arrived with a key and unlocked a drawer in the TV stand. When one of my friends asked, "Why don't you just reset the Wii?" she shook her head...
Inside the drawer a black GameCube was just visible, which she powered off and back on quickly. The game rebooted on the TV set accordingly. All the while, the Nintendo Wii to the right of the set remained powered on, its blue LED lights glowing the entire time. "Shh! It's a secret!" smiled the booth rep.
So it seems that the Wii on display alongside Zelda was mostly for show. It may have been completely a dummy unit, while the Wii controller was driven by the GameCube via a prototype adaptor of some kind or a hidden dev kit (there were two other drawers in that stand). This sure would give ammunition to folks who clain that Wii gameplay could basically be accomplished on a GameCube with Wii controller--because that's exactly what was happening at the show!
I don't believe any other game had this kind of setup, and Twilight Princess was probably the only title shown in this fashion. It makes sense when you consider that the game was in development for GameCube for so long and was only ported to the Wii relatively recently. I got further confirmation when I photographed the back on the TV stand--look closely and you can see the black GameCube, partially obscured by a clear plastic bag. The other Wii demo stations were considerably less cluttered with wires, because I believe they were actually running on Wii's.
On Thursday, two friends of mine were playing Twilight Princess in the Wii section of Nintendo's booth when the game demo crashed and froze, necessitating a reboot by the blonde booth representative. This is not uncommon with E3 demo code, which are works in progress and nowhere near as stable as a final game. What was uncommon was how she went about rebooting the Wii--she didn't! Instead, she went to get another representative, who arrived with a key and unlocked a drawer in the TV stand. When one of my friends asked, "Why don't you just reset the Wii?" she shook her head...
Inside the drawer a black GameCube was just visible, which she powered off and back on quickly. The game rebooted on the TV set accordingly. All the while, the Nintendo Wii to the right of the set remained powered on, its blue LED lights glowing the entire time. "Shh! It's a secret!" smiled the booth rep.
So it seems that the Wii on display alongside Zelda was mostly for show. It may have been completely a dummy unit, while the Wii controller was driven by the GameCube via a prototype adaptor of some kind or a hidden dev kit (there were two other drawers in that stand). This sure would give ammunition to folks who clain that Wii gameplay could basically be accomplished on a GameCube with Wii controller--because that's exactly what was happening at the show!
I don't believe any other game had this kind of setup, and Twilight Princess was probably the only title shown in this fashion. It makes sense when you consider that the game was in development for GameCube for so long and was only ported to the Wii relatively recently. I got further confirmation when I photographed the back on the TV stand--look closely and you can see the black GameCube, partially obscured by a clear plastic bag. The other Wii demo stations were considerably less cluttered with wires, because I believe they were actually running on Wii's.