I arrived at the Rochester Best Buy 1 hour early, just to make sure I would get to play before the line got filled up. 1st of all, I noticed that the event was terribly planned. Around 300 people showed up, and only 1 demo kiosk to go around. We started off having full cup races and multiple levels of 3D world playable, but then it was shortened to 1 level and 1 race. June 15th needs to bring out more store demo kiosks. Wednesday at 4pm had 300 people. Saturday at 1pm will be packed.

Free Stuff-WiiU lanyard, Luigi Hat, Shiny "Year of Luigi" commerorable emblem. Animal Crossing sheet, WiiU pamplet, and a lot of Streetpasses. (I'm guessing around 60-70 streetpasses) 

Moving on to the games.

Mario Kart 8

Impressed but not that impressed. The gravity and other stuff still looks amazing and all sure, but in their effort to hit 1080p and 60fps, I feel they cut out too many effects. I was expecting more particles and water effects. I realize they still have about a year to fine tune, confident it'll be stunning by then, but for now? Decent visually. Gameplay is very solid, not many new elements introduced, but I feel that the turns have somehow improved.

Wind Waker HD

This one surprised me the most, I was expecting pretty much celda in HD, but the depth of field and all the tiny twaeks they added to improve the gameplay really shined. Grappling hook animation is a LOT faster, and the Wind Waker gamepad control method is very smooth. It seems justified as a remake. There were some minor clipping issues during the demo but it's very minor and looks like it can be fixed very easily. One thing that struck me as forced was the lighting. Shadows and bloom don't fit well with cel-shading. But overall, a great demo showing off all the little things they took into consideration. Do not judge this game ony on the trailer.

3D World

Truthfully, not as bad as I thought it would be. People were having a blast playing in 4 player matches and throwing each other off cliffs. Level design doesn't exactly have the "WOW" factor of Galaxy, but the isometric view really allows for some seriously polished level design. Sideways conveyor belts and the clear pipes really have an impact with the isometric view and I can totally see why this would be needed on a 3D Mario with multiplayer. Still though, it felt like playing the NSMB series of 3D Marios. Not a bad direction to go with if they want sales but still wish they'd have gone for innovation instead of trying to polish the existing to it's maximum limits. They hit the diminishing returns wall with the gameplay focus and I really felt it as I was watching people run through the levels.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

Well it's not Metroid, but Donkey Kong sure can crawl. Honestly, this demo was the biggest bummer of the 4. The demo was Wiimote+Nunchuk compatible only, and waggle was back. In terms of level design, it really goes back to Donkey Kong country returns but with a lot of new and unique ideas. Think of this as the Galaxy 2 of the Donkey Kong series, more polish and better music. (You can hear David Wise). Again, stressing depth of field here, it really shines in this game during the cannon sections, but they don't make use of it enough to be really innovative.The trailers don't do this game justice either, but neither does the demo. I see potential not fully realized. Nintendo rep stated that it would support gamepad but he wasn't too sure about pro controller support. (It also seems like multiple paths exist?)

Anyway, that's pretty much it for the demos. I had to wait 1.5 hours just to get my hand on Kart 8 for 2 min of a race. The most enjoyable parts of this Best Buy experience was playing on my 3DS with other people on Animal Crossing and talking with people about games. (A lot more people are excited for X than I thought though there was an equal number who had no idea what we were talking about. Needs more advertising Nintendo.)

Lots and lots of youtubers were filming demo footage for their own show. It really was like a mini E3. (And every single girl played the 7min long celda HD demo slowing the pace of the line. Beware of the Zelda girls, make sure you get in line before they do. I'm not even joking here, big group of girls in the middle of the line all played Wind Waker taking up 45 min of the time)

I'm so tired, standing for 4 hours was really tiring. But man are a lot of people playing Animal Crossing.

I noticed in some Mario Kart gameplay videos the only items they had were shells, mushrooms, bananas and the fire flower. Any signs of anything else?

No that was all we saw as well. Though the guy did say more power-ups were coming.

thanks for your honest impression

Ah okay thanks.

A new item or two would be great

must have had different free stuff (unless they ran out quick). there wasn't any wii-u lanyard or year of luigi emblems at mine, but we had mario kart checkered flags with mario and luigi on them (along with the other things)

I had a blast at mine. About 20 people so I got to play all four games and did three races in Mario Kart. Everyone was having fun and it was very cordial about time allotment. Sorry about your experience, I was there for two hours and spent 20-30 minutes playing games thanks to three of the four having multi player.

I had a very good experience actually, just not enough playing the games.

I was honestly pleasantly surprised by what I saw so it's very very justified.

Nice to see the best buy events look like a success. I'm so jealous :( 

MK8 have more than 6 months to go. I think all of the games shown were just to showcase the gameplay and no where near complete polished.