At the end of last month, we wrote about the emergence of some new footage of Space World 2000 that had been posted online by the Ziff Davis vice-president Adam Doree. Now Doree is at it again, this time posting some high-quality footage of three great speeches from the former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.
The three speeches took place across three locations (Paris, Tokyo, and London) between 2005-2006, as Nintendo started to unveil more information about the DS and the upcoming Nintendo Wii. Although the videos are titled the "Unseen Speeches", all three speeches have been posted online in the past (including by Doree himself), though never quite in quality as good as this.
The first of the three videos Doree uploaded to the channel was filmed in Paris back in 2005 and covers the run-up to the Nintendo DS launch in Europe. It sees Iwata begin his speech with a cheeky bait-and-switch that according to Doree made some NDA'd journalists sweat (as they had already written up some new stories from his speech in advance).
This bait-and-switch saw the Nintendo president appear to the audience initially on a huge monitor (suggesting that he might not actually be in attendance) before the Nintendo of Europe's Jim Merrick interrupted him talking and invited him out on the stage (revealing he had been there all along).
From there, Iwata then launched into a fascinating talk about the Nintendo DS and the need for Nintendo and other companies to increase the video gaming population with their latest products, as without it "there's no bright future for this industry". He claims this is what informed the Nintendo DS's unique touchscreen controls and iconic dual-screen design.
The second video, meanwhile, Doree filmed at the Tokyo Game Show 2005 and is all about the reveal of the Nintendo Wii's remote control-style controller. Iwata gave a speech in Japanese at the event, though, fortunately, the video on Doree's channel also contains an English dub of the talk so that more people can listen in and follow along This speech is a lot more formal than the previous one that took place in Paris and mostly includes some demonstrations and explanations about how the new controller will work, and how it will make it more intuitive for families to play together. Considering how successful the Wii eventually became, the speech is incredible to look back on now, to see just how the Wii's unique controller was first revealed to the public.
The last of the videos Doree filmed then skips ahead to Wii's European launch in London in 2006, and sees Nintendo of Europe president Satoru Shibata and Welsh television presenter Gabby Logan onstage briefly before Iwata takes over and begins another speech. In this talk, he reveals more about the philosophy behind Nintendo's current slate of products, which saw the company stop chasing technology for technology's sake and instead focus on developing a console for anyone and everyone regardless of their gaming experience.
If you find yourself enjoying any of the videos above, be sure to subscribe to Doree's channel for more brilliant archive footage.