This morning when I woke up I saw my Wii flashing. I checked my messages and found that the Nintendo Channel has been launched today, so I jumped in the Shopping Channel and nabbed the free download.

The first thing I saw when I got into the Nintendo Channel was a video clip being played welcoming me to the new channel and telling me what to expect from it. After its over, I’m brought to the main menu which is essentially a list of trailers and video clips of some new and a handful of older games. WiiFit was in the front of the pack with Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kark Wii taking center stage as well. Clicking through a hanful of the clips here, it reminded me of what they did last summer when Metroid Prime 3 was nearing its release. Nintendo hosted a Metroid Prime 3 Preview Channel that gave weekly tidbits and sneak peeks of it in a similar manner to how this part of this new Nintendo Channel works. The video quality is fine and passable, and clicking on the clip will scale it up to full screen which is a nice little touch. Everything loaded up a decent pace as well, so the browsing experience went smoothly.

What I really wanted to check out was the DS Downloadable Demos that I had heard about. The demos were not featured on the main page, but instead I had to click a button at the top which then brought me to a new list of options. At the bottom of this was the DS Demos I was looking for. At the time of this writting, they had eight demos up there. This works in the same fashion to the DS Demo kiosks you would find at a Toys R Us. The demo is downloaded to your Wii, and when that is finished, it begins to transmit it. You turn on your DS, select teh download option, and there you go. I tried Raving Rabbits 2, Cooking Mama 2, and Ninja Gaiden (which I highly recommend) demos. All downloaded and played with no hassle. Once you turn your DS off, the demo is gone. If you want to play it again, you’ll have to download it again or go buy it.

Essentially, the Nintendo Channel is a giant ad for both the Wii and the DS. It also serves as an online catalog of just about every game that has been published on the systems. Each game has its own info page which has a “Purchase” button. Clicking that will take you to your Wii Internet Browser which then brings you to Amazon, Best Buy, ect.

The DS Demo section is easily the coolest part of the Nintendo Channel. I’m looking forward to the WiiWare Channel which will be available in a few weeks…call me crazy but Lost Winds looks like a winner to me.