Games are always a big deal at conferences like E3 but in recent years, especially with Nintendo, a new peripheral (or two) will be brought to the audience’s attention with wild promises of a deeper and more immersive experience. This year, peripherals were very much making their presence felt in Nintendo’s conference.

The big focus was on periperhals we already knew fairly well about. The release of Wii Motion Plus is just around the corner while the Wii Balance Board is seen as one of the biggest ingredients in Nintendo’s casual success.

Motion Plus was unveiled at last year’s conference as Nintendo finally fessed up that their Wiimotes hadn’t been providing the 1:1 motion control experience which many had imagined would be present right at the system’s launch.

Still, Nintendo are working to right that wrong now and while they didn’t have a new Zelda to show off the gadget, Wii Sports Resort did a bang up job of showing some of the dongle’s potential. While we already knew about the sword fighting element, it looks set to be archery that draws most of my attention. The combination of the remote and nunchuk looks set to provide a proper archery experience and consume hours of my time in much the same way that bowling on the original Wii Sports managed to.

Twelve games have been confirmed for the title – not including the opening parachute tutorial – and I just can’t stop myself from thinking this will be a launch day purchase out of total curiosity (and no matter how bad my wallet looks in a month’s time).

Nintendo’s other past peripheral revisited was the Wii Balance Board. Two years ago, Nintendo unveiled the Board and eyebrows were raised. What looked like little more than a set of bathroom scales was being described as one of the next revolutionary steps in gaming.

Skip forward 24 months and Nintendo are standing proudly by their Balance Board. Wii Fit has shifted almost 20 million units worldwide while the peripheral itself is being supported by a range of third parties including Ubisoft, EA and Sega (in the upcoming Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics).

Following such success, it was inevitible that a sequel to Wii Fit would be on the cards and so we are all advised to keep an eye out for Wii Fit Plus in the last quarter of 2009. The game will feature the original title’s activities as well as a host of new games, a calorie burning counter and a facility to create your own fitness regime.

I’ve been steering clear of Wii Fit, favouring instead for a daily four-mile walk which doesn’t cost me anything but for those with a little paunch to shift it seems to be the gimmick of choice – and eventually working out cheaper than a gym membership.

The Big N’s other perhipheral offering however was highly questionable indeed. Satoru Iwata is the mastermind behind Nintendo’s growth into casual gaming masters and every year he has something new to offer which he believes will make the audience grow even further.

This year, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was simply testing the theory that casual players really will buy any old junk. Looking like (and I mean exactly like) one of those things you get on the end of your finger in hospital, the Wii Vitality Sensor. Turns out Nintendo have tried the pulse-tracking technology before with Tetris 64, where your heart rate controlled the speed that Tetriminoes fell. As it stands, that’s the only concept we’ve got to go on when it comes to how this technology will work on Wii. For me, though, it was the major low point of the conference. Perhaps a demonstration or application would’ve made me feel better, but mostly it was a wasted 10 minutes for Iwata.