The Nintendo Holiday Mall Tour is a kiosk showcasing the brightest, if not the best, of Nintendo’s upcoming prospects for interested shoppers this holiday season. In attendance are a slew of titles for DS and Wii, and a dearth of representatives to help curious passersby play and learn about the games presented.

With the high-selling innovation of the DS and Wii in mind, Nintendo is setting up pristine and inviting kiosks in malls around the country — here: in Northgate and Southcenter — to show off recently released games that make use of both systems’ easily accessible quirks and technology.

“It all starts with the hardware,” said David Young, an assistant PR manager at Nintendo. “The DS and the Nintendo Wii were both designed to be inviting pieces of hardware that anyone could get into. The fact that you’re using touch screen, the fact that some of these are using voice commands, were really designed to be fun, whether you had experience in video games or not.”

Young used the game Scribblenauts as an example. In that game, the character plays as a kid on a mission to do favors for people and collect items called “Starites” in return. But, instead of just running and jumping around until reaching the end of a long stage, players are given a small stage with an objective that can be plainly seen, but is unattainable somehow. Then they use an on-screen keyboard to type out the name of absolutely anything they feel will help them. From a jetpack to dinosaurs to a submarine, players can use anything to accomplish the goal, limited only by his or her imagination.

It’s simple, wide-reaching games like that Nintendo’s known for, and Young said it also goes back to the simplicity of the hardware. On systems like the DS and Wii that use non-standard controller input, game designers are given a huge canvas on which to paint games that play any way they see fit.

On the other hand, the Wii’s aim is to allow anyone to play it thanks to its use of motion, rather than standard button-controls, on some of its most popular games.

“If you start out with a game like Wii Sports and you’re seeing, ‘Oh, if I swing this like a golf club, then my character swings it like a golf club,’” Young said, “or, if I swing it like a tennis racket, or like a bowling bowl, and anybody, despite their gaming experience, can look at it and say, ‘Oh, I can do that.’”

This idea of limitless control Nintendo is attempting to use in all its new systems allows for people turned off by a genre typically mired in technical complexity to break in at a ground floor, when most systems are trying to create a ceiling and make games as complex as possible.

“That’s why we’re getting all these people,” Young said. “We’re getting housewives … and grandparents that are getting into it because that barrier is gone.”

Now infamous on the Wii is the game Wii Fitness, which uses a balance board, sold alongside the game, allowing the player to play by shifting his or her weight while also using the controller. Wii Fit’s unexpected popularity and usefulness as an actual fitness device sets the stage for Wii Fitness Plus, which has more activities and an interface more suited to the popular, rather than proper uses of the exercises.

“Now you can string together activities to go exercise by exercise … just a great upgrade to this product,” Young said. “We also noticed with the original Wii Fit people played the mini-games as party games, and so it has an interface where you can do multiplayer, so everyone can use their own Mii character, and it’s a lot easier to play.”

The most recently released game at the demo stations was New Super Mario Bros. Wii allows one to four people to play through an old-school side-scrolling Mario game, either competitively or working together. It controls exactly like an old Mario game (the Wiimote is even held on its side, like an old NES controller), with a few intuitive motion controls old players will need to master alongside new players. And yes, it is possible to screw up the other players and make it look like an accident.

A side note: As I was being shown Mario Kart Wii, I noticed an attendant wearing a shirt that read, “Beginners Welcome.” Perhaps that is the most succinct way to put Nintendo’s game-design strategy.

The Wii and DS currently sit at the bottom of the console-pricing lists at $199.99 and $169.99, respectively, and the demo stations will remain at both malls through Dec. 20.

Reach reporter Morgan Gard at weekender@dailyuw.com