Safeco Field – Nintendo Fan Network
Posted on August 9, 2007 - Filed Under Baseball, Events, Geek, Mariners, News, Sports
We celebrated my mothers 59th (holy cow!) birthday this past weekend at the Red Sox vs Mariners game slaughter on Sunday and I got the chance to use the Nintendo Fan Network.
The Nintendo Fan network allows you to use your Nintendo DS to view replays, player stats, chat, play games and order food for $5 per game.
Setup is pretty simple. You select the DS download and play option and download the software to your Nintendo DS. Once loaded, you enter your user name, the network password provided to you and your section, row and seat number.
The first thing we did was order food. The menu has a decent selection of food and beverages (including alcohol, woo!) but it does not include the entire menu of items available in the stadium. We ordered burgers, chili dogs, sandwiches, nachos, peanuts and beers which were delivered to our seats in 10 minutes flat. Taxes and service fees (tips) were included in the price of the order.
Next I tried the replay and video modes. Video is fast but very low quality and was probably the least impressive part of the service. The video is the same thing that plays on the screens throughout the stadium and it was easier to watch it on those.
The ability to bring up current player stats for both teams was a nice feature and I used this quite a bit during the game. The stats were complete and current, including stats for Adam Jones who was called up from AAA Tacoma the day before for the Mariners.
A similar service allowed me to check current scores around the league for games played that day. I was able to keep an eye on my Yankees while they beat up on the Royals 8-5. Stats were not included, which would have been a nice feature.
The chat feature is decent but limits you to using canned messages and replies. You can bring up a list of other people on the network and send/receive messages like “What’s your favorite team” and “I just caught a fly ball”. It’s cheesy but fun. I spent most of the time chatting with someone named “Ms”, and knew a message had arrived from them when a mail icon on the front screen would flash. There were at least 100 users on the network during the game out of a crowd of 46,377 people. I’d love to see them allow users to type their own messages but understand why they don’t do this.
Games are included. There is trivia, find-a-word crossword style game, and a memory match game where you have to match tiles on a board to clear the level. We spent most of our time with the trivia game and enjoyed it. When you complete the games a leader board opens up so you can compare your scores with other fans on the network.
Five bucks bought a lot of convenience and I would be more than willing to use the service again. If they can improve the video playback and open the chat features up to include custom messages this would be the perfect service offering for Nintendo DS baseball fans.
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