There is something about Nintendo that brings out the excitable child in us all. The Kyoto company’s commitment to video games as giddy, family-friendly escapism has seen it travel a very different path in the industry to its peers.

Its long history of crafting innovative, accessible, tactile consoles has it approaching games more as toys, in the finest sense, but its technological design is as assured as any electronics firm on the planet. Nintendo’s path doesn’t always lead them to success, as the Wii U will attest, but how much poorer this industry would be without it. How much less colourful. Less fun.

And so it was a mix of excitement and apprehension that crackled through journalists and industry figures waiting in the snow outside London’s Hammersmith Apollo. We were waiting for our first hands-on with Nintendo’s new console Switch, a fascinating hybrid of home console and handheld device, which had been fully unveiled in Tokyo just a few hours previously.