When Nintendo came to San Francisco for their recent two-day Media Summit, they stayed true to form in just about every way that counts:

Being Nintendo, they still started the thing too early and ended it too early (as they are, for some reason, wont to do).

Being Nintendo, they still rolled out a few peripheral and game-title propositions that looked dubious back when they were first mentioned... and held even the most jaded gamers and editors in thrall at the figurative (and literal) end of the day.

And being Nintendo -- for this seems to be the pattern, of late -- they kept the whole endeavor nicely low-key, basically turning us game-review monkeys loose in a hotel conference-room full of gameplay stations and flatscreens. No annoying, blaring DJs, no unnecessary hand-holding -- just open-access, cafeteria-style gaming. They even had a complete, new to Wii Rock Band setup out in the hall, which was jammed (and jamming) with press-folks for pretty much two demo-days solid.

No booze, however -- you know, it's a goody-goody Nintendo thing, at least during the daylight hours -- and that's probably just as well: As it was, we already almost had a couple of those potentially-fatal, Wiimote-flying-out-of-people's-hands because they-weren't-using-the-damned-safety-strap like all-the-warnings-tell-you-to types of incidents that the interwebs have been giggling about over the last year or so. The bad news is that, during a particularly heated session of the sensational Boom Blox, one of said "incidents" involved me; the good news is, my Wiijectile hit the carpeted floor instead of the thousand-dollar display three feet in front of me. So lucky break there.

Anyway, the games on display -- see next page for details on the more notable ones present -- ran the gamut from the expected and long-awaited A-listers like Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit, Rock Band and The Force Unleashed to sneaky show-stealers like Boom Blox to some downloadable (and downright oddball) "Wii Ware" titles with suspicious names like Strong Bad and Goo Balls. There's even an upcoming title based on WTF-intensive "sport" of competitive eating, translating into gameplay the unlikely hazards of the activity, such as biting your tongue or blowing your lunch; it was easily the most head-wobbling thing to be seen at the Media Summit...

...Until they took us upstairs to watch the real thing.

And by that, I'm afraid I do mean an actual, flesh-and-blood "competitive eater," a surprisingly fit-looking guy (made up like a pro wrestler) named Tim Janus, known in the competitive eating community as Eater X, who jammed away 141 pieces of sushi in five minutes flat. Without yacking.

If this seems somehow fundamentally wrong to you, you're not alone. But wait, it gets better... or worse, depending on how you look at it:

Those of us attending this mini-event sideshow freakshow were given the option beforehand to guess the number of eaten pieces for prizes, in a Price-is-Right style (closest to the ultimate number without going over wins). Hard as it was to watch -- I couldn't even look at sushi for two days afterward, and that's a long spell of abstinence for me -- I was right up front for this mind-boggling spectacle. And yes, I did make a guess of my own, for 150 pieces -- hell, if that guy'd been just a little quicker on the binge, I'd have walked away with a $200 first-place cash prize, or at least a second-place copy of Eat This Book. The weirdest part of the whole thing? Two attending Nintendo representatives, Krysta Yang and Tiffany Burnett, won both prizes! You have to stand in awe. Bonus awesomeness: Since Krysta gave her cash to charity, parent-company Nintendo automatically matched it. Nice.

Anyway, the forthcoming Nintendo lineup has some promising stuff. Next up: a round-up sneak peek for you, just because you're all so special.