Nintendo World NYC
In April 2009, I had the opportunity to visit a place where any Pokémon fan would love and beg their parents to go to: Nintendo World. Originally known as the Pokémon Center, Nintendo World offers many Pokémon and other Nintendo products all in a traditional chic NY style scene. Here's my review below.
Review
Finding this place in New York City I thought would be difficult, but it wasn't at all. It's off of 5th Ave and W 48th street in Rockefeller center: right next to NBC studios where The Today Show is filmed.
Once inside, I immediately realized that the entire first floor is dedicated to Pokémon. Numerous figures, small plushes, cards, and of course: the games can be found here. It's all well and good, but honestly the stuff is certainly not unique to Nintendo World. You can easily find everything they sell at other select stores and online. Frankly I was disappointed with that since I was excepting more in terms of selection. (What ever happened to those big Pokémon plushes?! Ugh, I can't find those anywhere in stores!)
On the plus side, free wi-fi allows players to battle others, and there is a nice area in the center of the first floor where trainers can play various Pokémon games. There's also a Pokédex people can use along with countless DS's all around the store. There's a neat Pikachu statue they have here too; the place really is impressive in terms of it's appearance. Everything is very clean,organized, and easy to find. The staff seemed to be very friendly too and would great you as came and went from the store.
I went upstairs briefly which is full of other licensed Nintendo characters (Mario, Kirby, Zelda, etc). There seemed to be a good selection of plushes, games, t-shirts, etc of many of the different Nintendo characters.
All and all, if you're a true Pokémon fan, this is defiantly a place to visit. The atmosphere is very cool and seeing tons of happy Pokémon fans running everywhere enjoying what the store has to offer is fantastic. It's really something else. Because of the lack of unique Pokémon merchandise though, it's not entirely epic in my book. Unless you live in Manhattan, you probably would just want to see it once and go on a big Poké shopping spree!
Official Site: http://www.nintendoworldstore.com
Address:
New York, NY 10020
Video
Here's a brief video I put together. Sorry I'm not the greatest camera guy in the world. This was taken on my Canon Powershot S5 IS. Enjoy and be sure to watch it high quality if you can!
Images
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