Earlier this month, I was able to make a visit to the Nintendo World store in New York City. It's a pretty amazing place, and while I don't think my pictures can do it justice, I figured I'd attempt to give a short tour of my experience:

To start, here is the view of the first floor lobby upon first entering the store:

The store isn't gigantic, but it's plenty of room for what's inside. Straight ahead in this picture, you see the back wall with the Wii logo and several TV's with either playable demos or gameplay videos. There are also several racks of first and third-party Nintendo games for sale for Game Boy Advance or DS (the Wii and Gamecube games are upstairs). To the right is the DS bar:

A handful of DS systems are set up here for casual play and with short gameplay demos of Mario Party DS, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and other recent releases. This area is mostly for people walking by who want to check out the gameplay of some of the more popular games without actually investing too much time. For actual competitive play, behind this area is the much more comfortable DS competition table:

With the exception of that lone Zelda: Phantom Hourglass kisosk set up to the right, this table is where the store's formal or informal competitions go down. There are comfortable pod chairs to sit on, and each of these systems had full copies of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl inside. This is where gamers can sit down and really invest some time into the games. An employee told me that this is also where gamers were invited to sit down during recent tournaments that invited them to bring their own games/systems, and was the central hub at some of the recent Pokemon giveaways.

The rest of the first floor consists mainly of a big shop, with several game accessories, as well as most of the store's Pokemon items. In addition to packs of trading cards and small collectible statues, there was also a tall rack of Pokemon plush toys:

That about does it for the first floor, so now it's time to head to the elevator:

Above it are silhouettes of Samus, Bowser, Mario, Peach, Yoshi, and Wario, and inside, classic Nintendo game music is playing. Cool!

The first thing I noticed upstairs was the larger Wii demo area to the left:

This was a more centralized area for Wii demos, and had plenty of room to move around, as opposed to the rather cramped demo areas on the first floor. While I was there, only the middle Wii was active for gameplay demos, while the right and left one were simply showcasing the Wii's various channels, such as the News channel.

Beyond this demo area, there was a larger upstairs lobby with plenty more Wii kiosks that alternated between demos and gameplay videos:

This is also where the Wii and Gamecube games were available for sale.

On the other side of the upstairs was the more general merchandise department:

This is where the Nintendo-branded shirts, hoodies, underwear, and all kinds of other wearables were available. This is also where you could find strategy guides, more general accessories like controller sleeves, and the majority of the store's plush toys, including Animal Crossing, Mario, and other series. I didn't get a good picture of it, but to the right of where this picture ends is quite a few more rows/shelves of various shirts.

Finally, the centerpiece of this upstairs floor is the small area of glass cases that serve as a museum. Various Nintendo classics and imports are available here, such as a comparison of the original Famicom compared to the American NES:

and a collection of tons of different DS systems from around the world:

Also on display were various Game Boy advance systems, a gold Game Boy Advance SP signed by  Shigeru Miyamoto, and an original Game Boy that was nearly burnt to a crisp (but still fully functional!) that survived an explosion in the Gulf War.

Overall, it's an amazing store to visit for any Nintendo fan, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's in the area. It's located at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, and more info (like the phone number and hours) can be found on the store's official site.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip, and I hope to document any other visits to interesting video game sites in the future.