Like lots of gamers over the years, Jimmy Fallon couldn’t get to E3. He’s got a job he can’t get away from so he just had to kind of watch from afar. But, of course the SNL alum isn’t just any gamer. He’s got his own late-night TV show and, when he couldn’t make it for the annual gamefest in LA, he just brought some of E3’s hottest games to him. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’s first-ever Video Game Week’s been happening since Monday and the host’s already had Microsoft’s Kinect, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Call of Duty: Black Ops on the air. But, Fallon’s had a history of featuring gadgets, video games and the geeky side of pop culture on Late Night. We spoke to the funnyman in Hump Day to ask him about dedicating precious network airtime to interactive entertainment. Wanna know what his favorite gaming system is? Just start scrolling.
Why Video Game Week? Why now? How’d you pick these games to feature during these days?
Well, obviously, I love games. I’m a hug fan of video games and think there should be a platform where these things can be shown. And I’m happy to be the platform. They’re making so much money and they’re the biggest thing in entertainment right now. They’re bigger than movie premieres, some games. I think that they should be respected and heard.
We’re doing it now, because E3 was last week and we’re not in LA. We’re doing live shows from New York City. I can’t get out there. I guess we could send a correspondent. We did that last year and it was okay. But I wanted to see the games on hand so I could ask the questions I want to ask.
It’s also kind of cool because you get to extend the window of awareness about these games. A lot of games, they show at E3 and you don’t hear at anything for months…
Yeah! [Laughs] You don’t hear anything for a year, until the next E3! We put the word out for a bunch of games while they were fresh out of E3 and see what the biggest push was going to be behind. We got a lot of callbacks and that was really encouraging.
Was there any game you wanted to have on the show but couldn’t?
Yeah, I wanted to get the new Zelda but [Nintendo game director Eiji] Aonuma wouldn’t let that happen. If it was up to him, he probably wouldn’t even release it. He’d probably just say it exists just so you’d know that it exists, and then hide it in a safe and bury it under the ocean floor. He’d use it to plug up the BP oil spill. Just plug it up with Skyward Sword. I was like, can we show just a little bit? They were like, nope. Zelda’s probably my favorite game of all time. They might bring the Nintendo 3DS but the cameras won’t pick up the 3D so that’s be worthless. It’d just be lame on the air. But I’m a big DS guy so I can’t wait to play that thing.
(More on Techland: Nintendo Makes the 3DS Official, No Goofy Glasses Required)
Really? What’re you playing on DS? What’s your game of choice?
I love any Brain Age; I try to play that at least once a day. It doesn’t make me smarter but it makes me better at Brain Age. It builds my confidence, makes me feel like I’m smarter. So that’s something… But I love the Ace Attorney games. They take some weird swings in a lot of DS games; it’s my favorite system, I think.
There’s a lot creativity on it…
Oh my God, it’s insane! Like a “how to be a lawyer” video game? That doesn’t make any sense! But it works and it’s fun.
[Brief segue while I tell Jimmy about Ghost Trick, which is being developed by former members of the Ace Attorney development team. His words: “I mean, c’mon, that’ brilliant!”]
Ok, you like Zelda but what are your favorite recent games?
I like the first Fable. Fable II, I didn’t love that much. I didn’t quite understand it… you compliment somebody, fart, burp… wait, what?
Yeah, some of those systems were a little dodgy. I feel like they’re going to come at it from a cleaner angle this time. Peter Molyneux always promises a lot so we’ll see how much he delivers this time.
Yes, we shall see.