Nintendo planning E3 demos at Best Buy stores

Firm in its belief that Nintendo consoles are better experienced than explained, the console giant is teaming up with Best Buy stores across the US and Canada, giving passers by a chance to play games otherwise exclusive to the E3 show floor.

Firm in its belief that Nintendo consoles are better experienced than explained, the console giant is teaming up with Best Buy stores across the US and Canada, giving passers by a chance to play games otherwise exclusive to the E3 show floor.

Nintendo is thus far tight-lipped about which games those will be but had outlined some of its E3 provisions for trade and press at the turn of the year.

January's edition of the regular Nintendo Direct webcasts promised E3 showings for a new game from the crew behind "Super Mario Galaxy," as well as a "Mario Kart" and "Wii Party" for the Wii U home console, and a glimpse at a new "Super Smash Bros." on Wii U and portable 3DS.

The Best Buy game list won't be annouced until June 11, so there's plenty of time to speculate, and those demos will be made available for public hands-on sessions at selected stores between 4pm and 8pm on Wednesday, June 12, and between 1pm and 5pm on Saturday, June 15.

The chain's US branch has posted a list of 89 participating stores at bestbuy.com/NintendoEvents while the Canadian arm (@BBYCanada) told Twitter followers that its 21 Canadian locations are currently TBD, pledging to "post once we have the finalized list."