Nintendo Hires Walking Gamers
Plug1 writes "CNN.com has an interesting article about nintendo hiring people to offer free samples of their games. Stephen Pellitier "will wear a 15-inch flat-screen TV on his chest and a pack of batteries on his back. With a game console and joysticks dangling from his waist, he will spend his weekends inviting passers-by to play games.""
imagine the possible pickup lines involving joysticks, buttons, and playing
with them! The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!
After all, grab the wrong joystick at this kiosk, and you could end up in a very adult situation!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Dude, this guy's probably spent so many years honing his 1337 sk1llz on Street Fighter that he could take any punk ass that tries to take him down... or at least, he thinks he can... ;)
-raph
Work officially begins this weekend as Nintendo Street Team members hit malls, concerts and other events in six cities across the country. Their mission: To drum up interest in the latest releases from the Redmond-based video game developer
Uh huh, yea!
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
They get kids to sell to other kids. Now apperently Nintendo are taking this route. Whats next offering the first game free?
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
... at darwinawards.com.
"Derp de derp."
How long until some kids beat this guys ass and take the game? My bet is for less than a week.
Michael Loves Me!
...and the number one pick-up line.....
"My joystick's been 'ruggedized' for exceptional durability and long lasting play!"
I'm sorry, but that's my dream job. I'd take near-minimum wage to have that job.
I have a shitty sig!
now when I ask women in bars if they would like to play with my joystick, it will be for a reason!
Will the guy be able to invert the monitor so if he gets bored he can play himself?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
where he who shoots fastest gets the most rewards!
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!
must... get... mind... out... of... gutter...
c-hack.com |
quote:
"With a game console and joysticks dangling from his waist."
hah! what a great way for geeks like us to meet REALY HAWT chix0Rz!
"scuse me, i'm having a problem with my joystick."
"wanna play a game? grab hold!"
"if you wanna donkey kong with me, yer gonna hafta play with the joystick."
... that color LCD screens don't work outside. I think this is a clever ruse by a parents group to get their kids outside.
For six hours a day every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through mid-August, they'll solicit people to grab a joystick and play a few games
Who is John Galt?
We all knew this was going to happen at some point. We are already a walking advertisements (nike hats, shoes, shirts, etc..) it's really about time in this day and age that human advertising machine became interactive.
Think about the future this could bring, We advance from having a flat screen on the front and batteries on the back to an imbeded LCD/plasma screen in the chest and runs right off the electricity created by the brain. The games/advertisements are stored in the brain as well and just played back from memory.
Who needs walls and signs when the human body could do it more efficiently.
Of course, when this happens for real, I think it will be time to check myself out of the gene pool.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
"Hey baby, wann aplay with my joystick?"
:)
Sorry.. couldn't resist
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
And I've been doing it for so many years for free!
Visit my website assmuffins.
tcd004
Teletubbies and Pokemon are together at last. Kiddie crack if ever I heard of it...
There's always someone bigger and tougher, my friend...
Ya these guys better make sure they stay in the good areas... otherwise they'll get mugged and that gear stolen.
Hell - I might even steal it.
Can only imagine all the germs on the controllers from snot nozed kids and pimply faced teenagers pawing them up all day. Maybe they'll have someone with Handywipes nearby.
I'll stick to my own joystick, thank you very much...
5. I'll make all your Final Fantasies come true. ... and ...
4. You sure set off my Chrono Trigger.
3. Want to see what I can draw in Mario Paint?
2. I'll be Link, and you can be my Zelda.
1. Want to play with my Mario?
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
I wouldn't try this approach with Quake III. People might get the wrong Idea.
Hello Cruel World
Boy, do I feel sorry for these people. I used to work for a promotional marketing company (who would subcontract to do these kinds of promotions), and this is some of the hardest work you can imagine. People are downright MEAN to people who do this kind of work, and $100 a day would not be enough to get me to do it!
You think being beat up is unrealistic? How about taking insults all day about how much cooler Dreamcast, xbox, is? How about the snotty kid who wants to play for hours? Good luck to these people, they will need it!!!
.....
The uniform is part Super Mario, part Teletubbies.
How long 'till Falwell denounces all of this?
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
I'm in love with the girl pictured in that article. I can't imagine anyone wanting to beat up someone THAT good looking ;)
Some Mayberry cop might mistake the "walking game" for a "walking Palestinian suicide bomber". Sorry, Sheriff! All those wires and those controllers confused me!
Well they can try and given enough people they will. It's the 9mm toting 7th graders that you have to worry about they will probably miss you (cant hit broad side of a barn at 10 paces) it's any other bystanders that would have to worry about.
Hrm I can see it now a little sign that says this game system will ceace to function in 12 hours to keep kids from stealing them.
No sir I dont like it.
Just curious but where do they plan on deploying these people to? I would be very amazed if a few or all dont get stolen within a few weeks. Think about it? A 200+ game console and battery walking around and all you gotta do is beatup the guy who has it and run......maybe I just look at the dark side....
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
Not to mention more of them, with better armaments...
BlackGriffen
to think ... i went to college.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
The Nintendo Super System?
Basically a SNES in a JAMMA cabinet?
I actually thought it was excellent, but none of my friends did!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those?
booth-babes has been sitting all bored after E3
Yeah- hot women have absolutely nothing to do unless there's some kind of geek convention going on.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait to round-up my hoodlum friends and yank the whole kit off some unlucky PR monkey.
Imagine what happens when someone loses a match of Super Smash Brothers Melee, and pulls on the controller cord in anger. Whee, there goes a gamecube & LCD screen, not to mention cuts and bruises ;)
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Its like those annoying people on the streets wearing chicken costumes telling you to go into the restaurant..
"come on man. play eternal darkness"
'no!'
"come on."
'go away! oh god please go away'
Kinda puts "Shine Get!" in a whole new context.
...completely and utterly stupid.
It is silly. I don't think anyone would stoop so low as to become a walking game console stand...
Every teen i know and their dog have at least one console, and don't expect to find someone walking on the streets, with a console on his head to find out about the latest gaming news.
Who is this "idea" targeted at? My mother returning from the grocery store?
On a lighter note, this scheme involves gamers ever getting OUT of their rooms...
Go ahead, mod me as troll, but deep inside you you know that while games are fun, there's something to be said about self respect.
__
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
After the great dot.com bust and 9/11, advertising has gotten pretty tricky. I imagine that budgets are tight, media options are somewhat slimmer, etc.
The neatest thing about this campaign is that sure...this may not work, but it made national news because it's a new idea.
So...they spend a couple of hundred bucks to pay a few guys to walk around crowded areas on weekends. Pay a couple thousand on hardware...probably about 500 for each. And reap the (probably small benefits) associated with this campaign. But...the national exposure this should generate because of the fact that it's new and wierd would probably have costed hundreds to thousands of times what they spent on the few kids and units.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
I especially remember the cigarette girls in all the shopping malls passing out cigarettes. I think there'd be some kind of outrage if that happened here though.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
The old school Marine theory would prove that idea wrong. Got a LCpl who won't do as he's told? Take him out of view of the public and teach him to comply. If you can't kick his ass, go find 4 more Cpl's to help. Repeat process until the LCpl learns to comply. I don't care how big or tough you are, the mob will always win.
between a midshipmen and an airmen?
The airmen has been promoted twice.
It is hard to find a group of people as stupid and at the same time as arrogant as midshipmen and ensigns.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Walking teletubbie to retarded 300 lbs 14 year old: "Hey! Ouch! Stop that. The game cartridge doesn't go there! Ow! Quit it. If you want to play a different game, just ask. Yipe! Ow! Hey! That isn't the reset button, thats my EYE! "
The Street Team's website can be found here. They have people in LA, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas.
The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!
I hope they have it in their budget to replace the guys stuff every night. I cannot imagine him not being jumped and having the flat screen + games taken from him just about everytime he sets foot outside.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
Doesn't anyone have concerns about Nintendo collecting information on how good of a game player they are? Sure, you say, you might have nothing to hide, but what about others that do?
If it were, then there'd be all sorts of jokes about people coming up to the Dreamcast rep on the street and asking to see "Seaman." That poses a whole host of problems...
wouldn't you just end up standing in front of a mirror all day, playing with yourself?
don't answer...
Why does being a Navy ROTC and football player equate to a good fighter.
If you will note the hall of fame for best fighters in the world, none include "Football Player" or "ROTC recruit".
It's real fun when people like you spout off and think that. A friend of mine did that to a fairly small black guy who was military and for the most part a goliath. The fight was over in 30 seconds and the little guy didn't get touched.
After the fight he said, "I'm a golden gloves, don't think cause your big you can fight."
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
you may be tough, but you still look like a frickin teletubbie.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
wear a 15-inch flat-screen TV on his chest
Hmm...maybe this can solve the expensive display problem for my wearable computer.
How long until you can go hang out at the mall and the "internet guy" stops by.
Well, at least they're not wearing some objectionable game like GTA3.
blame me!
I figure it makes pretty good economic sense, since many different sites with low CPM rates still get over a million page views per day. Problem is, she replies, there's probably only around 150-200k unique visitors at any of these respective locations, each of whom is triggering around 5-7 page views per person per day.
And besides, she continued, using the Jungean Archetype model to illustrate her point, the target audience is devoted to reason, not emotion. This, I concede, defeats one of my central tenets: applying a test to determine whether a person is Apollonian or Dionysian, left-brain or right-brain, etc. in order to assess the likelihood of downloading Centiare, my cool little cash management/forecasting program for individuals and small businesses.
Centiare quickly and automatically calendarizes projected deposits, payments and running cash balances over any time period selected - the output looks like a spreadsheet. But since transactions are stored in a database, the way it works is through a series of SQL pivot/transformation functions. The results are stored within multiple counter arrays to keep track of time periods, monthly totals, and grand totals. Once the recordset is complete, viola', the whole thing is formatted and printed - the flash report looks really good.
And besides, it's free to try, and only $20 to buy!
To be continued ...Centiare
If this really catches on for marketing games, this guy has some hope of realizing his dream.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Right on, man. I can bench press 250 pounds (12 reps) and once put a guy in the hospital. Because he picked a fight at the bar. Almost killed him. :) Oh, did I mention I love playing video games. Not Nintendo so much. More along the lines of Gran Theft Auto 3 and john madden. Thin gamers ought to feel ashamed of themselves and they're bodies. Plus they are unfairly giving all gamers a horrible reputation, we are not all inept weaklings. Get out of the damn house once a while and exercise for godsake.
So when I play and I die, I wonder what he's going to do when I grab the cord to the controller and start whacking the thing on the cement like I do at home.
Nintendo controllers are indestructable.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
About time those pasty kids got outside for a bit, although I'd think that the glare off of their faces would distract the players.
I'm a 140# hippie who practices yoga and kung fu. Occasionally I cross paths with someone like you who announces his might and tries to start a fight. I try to avoid fights, but roid freaks seem to never take no for an answer. I only throw the second punch, and make the first (and only) connect.
Choose your fights carefully, and realize the stupidity in risking your life over material possessions that will soon become worthless.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Would you want to play with my *joystick* baby? That was wrong... maybe he just will make a better tv than a window. Don't kill me please.
Looks like fun.
hey baby, how about you and me paint this "sim" city red.
I'll just make fun of your joystick, buttons and haircut then, since you insist.
Haha! (in Nelson Muntz voice)
when all of these out of work .com'ers were going to get a chance to work again. ("Last you saw me I was burning through 40 million VC and had no product --- now I am walking throught the streets with an LCD around my neck and joysticks hooked to my waste....")
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
That may explain why the top two sellers of gaming system do not have to resort to this travesty in marketing to sell theri gaming systmes..
But I am glad that soemone else other than just MS is making this mistake..
GO SONY!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
+5, Insightful
Cunning linguists
That Denise Gonzalez Atlanta street team has to be the cutest one. Too bad the screen will cover her goodies whilst playing.
?sp
Here Taco tries to be funny...
imagine the possible pickup lines involving joysticks, buttons, and playing with them!
The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!
"beaten" indeed. Pervert.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
"Yeah right pal, put the plumber away, okay?"
I saw this last year at Boarder-X in Battersea, London. It was Nintendo again, but they were pushing the GBA. There were a few guys strolling around in jump suits matching the GBA colours, with 2 GBA attached to their belts with security teathers. The disturbing thing was trying to play a game with some guy thrusting his pelvis in your direction because he was wired to the device in your hand via a 1ft steel wire..
-j
Walking Video Game Class Action Suit Victory
The 13 surviving "walking video game" employees had a major victory in court today when Dr. Robert E. Burdick, medical expert witness for the class action suit showed that the flat panel screens used to display the games on the "walking video game" employees actually exposed its wearers to 800 times the amount of radiation as would typically be used in a dental x-ray.
Nintendo's defense panel had no comment, except to say that their medical expert would also be testifying as soon as his chemotherapy treatments permitted.
In other news, the goatse.cx troll is still actively spamming the slashdot comment boards.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Beware the sticky joystick in the middle...
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
People with screens on them hmm.... hm... Teletubbies?!
From the CNN article:
So, picture a chubby whale of a kid figuring the same thing about working for McDonalds on account of how much he likes burgers.
An employee telling a corporation how much he loves his job is a bit like an altar boy telling a Catholic priest how much he likes to be spanked.
I know it's for the original NES, but just immagine playing Duck Hunt like this. Passersby might freak out.
t'nera semordnilap
...but I'll pass on the complimentary drinks, thanks.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
I walk around all day encouraging people to play with my joystick, AND I get paid $100 a day? Where do I sign up???
Hey look at that Asian chick there...who cares about the video game, I wanna play with her buttons and put my data in her slot.
Hey baby want to push some of my buttons?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
heey nice ... now they walk around with those brain-supporting games on the streets ...
...
(as if there are not enough dumb people walking/driving on the streets)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Please hire playboy playmates as walking gamers
As a great deal of my fellow CS grads are still without jobs, this is amusing but not suprising. I'll pretyy much take any kind of job even, god forbid, helpdesk :(
How about Hungry?
I was fired from Good Humor Ice Cream Co. for eating all the ice cream I wanted while driving the truck around playing the tune. (boring).
I'm sensing a lot of unchecked aggression in this thread. What is it about video games that brings out the hostility in people? Will you just take it easy?
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
75% of the Street team is not white.
May I play with your joystick?
I can just imagine the pictures in that CNN article: Kids walking around hunched over with strained faces trying to lug those whopping X-Boxes around all day. You'd see the occasional one on the ground being kicked by dorks in penguin T-shirts.
"The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!"
No shit. I'd beat up some nintendo smurf to get my hands on a large flatscreen version of the latest & greatest console.
And now the TV is on the little white square.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Study shows that people on the streets are now getting dumber...
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
...between these guys and the people who get paid minimum wage to hold up signs in the shape of arrows advertising used car lots? I do. It's scary.
i remember it was when win2k was released and we were paid to skate(rollerblade) around with these big LCD screens on our chests... it was fun... we got paid big... but i felt like a slut afterwards... we also did some other skater butterfly promos for them after, if u wanna see some pictures, lookie here
i think it was orged by a company called maloney+fox... anyways... i feel cheap...
If you follow the theory that anything which brings humanity closer to cyborgdom is cool, then being a human teletubby is a step toward the future. Even if the cyborg to which you're a precursor is nothing more than a common everyday kiosk. You're not even VersaKiosk compatible. As you recall, the VersaKiosk was a wetware package originally developed by the Kamakazu Corporation and first released in 2047. This was in the infancy of nanobotic technology, before the advent of macrocyber. Instead, the user interface, which for a VersaKiosk consisted of standard A/V equipment and a touch screen (later versions provided for Personal Remote interaction), consisted of external electronics on a harness worn like clothing. The host and external harness communicated by muscular and tactile feedback. Needless to say, the bandwidth was lossy and a mere fraction of what we have now achieved with macrocyber. Today's state-of-the-art BrUIn 6K** infokiosks feature the complete melding of biological and electromechanical systems that only the most elite military research projects had just a few years ago. It just shows how far we've come. The A/V interface is literally grown into the host, who travels around the operational floor quickly and nimbly with the capable battery power of a neurally controlled 4-degree-of-freedom wheel drive (which is typically farmed out to mech specialists like Eisendracht or RLAX), while....
Oh no, I've been spouting anachronisms again. I'm in violation of any number of Directives. What year is it again?
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
They had booth babes wearing a similar getup (but without a 15" display) at the 2001 E3. Each girl had 4 (as I recall) GBAs strapped to her waist. Each unit was attached via a thin cable on a recoil mechanism so it snapped back into place.
Judging by the looks on some of the girls' faces, I think they were equipped with geek-recoil mechanisms. There's nothing quite like being surrounded by four fat, smelly computer geeks playing games and staring at your tits! (Or so I'm told!)
"Scientists prove we were never here."
-- Devo
Kari Ann from Dallas looks like a fine young lady too.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Now I can play Street Fighter II Alpha blah blah on the actual *street*.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I have two words for yas baby...
"Force Feedback"
Er, right. I'll be going now.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
FYI: the previous link is not to amazon and contains a virus
the batteries run out. "Sorry, can't feel the rumblingness of my joystick my fair lady..."
> Incidentally, child labor and inhumane, dangerous working conditions are the big, dirty secret of tech: you can bet that your own computer computer contains its own share of human misery.
For Christ's sake, that removes "playing Morrowind" from the list of things I can do without feeling guilty. All that's left is "selfless toil" and "modding up funny slashdot posts".
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
I think you're all looking at this from the wrong angle. Sure, we'd all mug and beat any guy who lowered himeself to this level, but Tanya Woo is cute. Something tells me since the majority of the gaming population is guys, you'll be seeing a lot more women in this role for obvious reasons. After all, what guy wouldn't help her in her job by playing with her... I mean the game on her chest... Er, the joy-- Nevermind...
and you keep whining about why Japan has the most wacky advertising in the planet, and now that Nintendo is trying this out everybody complains and thinks about mugging this poor person? and then when you see this is Japan and a lot people take notice you /. complain why you dont have those wacky advertisements? Well just look in the mirror to find out.
now i can get paid to do that
"heres all the pictures i took from the XP promtion! =D this was fun, just like last year.."
So did you have fun at the time, and feel cheap afterwards? Do you mark out to MS often?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
School uniforms have been walking advertisements for years. Bout time someone made ads less dorky.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I did pretty well at it, and won a Mario Paint. (It was all location, Christmas time at one of the busiest malls in New Jersey.)
Of course, this version of a Nintendo demostrator sounds like a real life rip off of the Sega game, "The Typing of the Dead." In that game, if you've never seen it, the Agents have Dreamcasts with big batteries attached to their back and Dreamcast keyboards in front as they kill off zombies with a well typed phrase. (Too bad "Typing of the Dead" isn't coming out, as far as I know, for Gamecube. They could package it with the keyboard peripheral they are supposed to release...)
<wistful sigh> ... well, now I'm off to sleep (well, to watch an episode of Trigun and then sleep) I have to go to my boring Web $TITLE job tommorrow... Hope those kids enjoy their time as Nintendo demonstrators... </wistful sigh>
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The first deployment of Mobile Nintendo Gaming Persons came to a sudden, terrifying halt today as they unloaded from their Suburban.
A gang of uppity mimes armed with make believe billy clubs and pretend guns violently pantomimed through the vicious, grisly murders of each and every one of the Nintendo employees.
Although no one was injured, the crystal-clear depiction of their own demise sent the Gaming crew into a deep, trance-like coma.
"Obviously," said the police spokesman, "we are dealing with ninja mimes."
----
how long will these kids last with this? what about getting beatup and mugged for the system.
id think about it. a 15in flat screen a few pounds of power and a GC all for minimal effort.
how long can these kids hold this much gear and weight safely is another concern of mine.
As I said, gamers don't walk, at least in my experience. They get driven in minivans. The older ones drive '86 Nissan Sentras with a big rusted-out hole where the floor used to be under the gas pedal.
Any walking distance greater than that from the car to the mall tends to inspire panic and cardiac arrest.
...if menaced with a supersoaker...
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
Either that, or an angry mob of people'll hog tie the kid up with the controller wires he has hooked up to him.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Umm, My local store is already giving away two (admittedly crap) games 'free' with each Gameboy. Is it now required by ettiquete to offer your game dealer a shot of your new game before you leave the store?
-= Never enter a battle of wits with an unarmed man =-
you retarded AC troll, it does not contain a virus... so quit spreading retarded news like that. Way to undermine a former troll's attempts to vindicate himself with informative posting.
Yeah, that's what gamers are known for - their clever pick-up lines. ROTFLMAO
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Bahhh! I am not going to play it on someone else.
I want one for myself. Find a mirror, Bam! Hours of entertainment
It's all good.
Especially if you played against me in MarioKart..
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
15 inch screen on his chest, and perhaps an antenna on his head for wireless multiplayer gaming? He'll be a dead ringer for a Teletubby!