Nintendo brings new console Switch to Jimmy Fallon for first ever live demo

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night (7 December) to show-off upcoming mobile game Super Mario Run, but he also brought along a surprise in the form of the company's new console, the Nintendo Switch.

Revealed under a Mario-style question mark box, Fils-Aime presented Fallon with the first ever live demonstration of the hybrid home and handheld console, which was announced back in October.

Reggie played RPG The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the show's large screen (representing the average user's television) before removing the handheld portion and handing it to a giddy Fallon, who continued playing from where the Nintendo boss had left off.

You can watch the complete segment in the video embedded below.

The demo focused initially on the size of Breath of the Wild's open world – the largest in the Zelda title to date – with Reggie pointing out specifically that everywhere the player can see, they can go. He also showed off a how players will be able to approach scenarios in different ways, by pushing a boulder that took out a group of enemies.

Fallon meanwhile, demonstrated his Nintendo knowledge by bringing up the childhood love of exploration that inspired Shigeru Miyamoto (who was in the audience) to create the Zelda franchise, which first debuted in 1986.

When the talk show host took over, Fils-Aime removed the handheld and handed it over with Breath of the Wild running from the point he had left off pretty much instantaneously. Fallon also mentioned the small controllers that detach from the sides of the Switch's handheld portion.

In the Super Mario Run demo at the start of the video below, Fallon played an early level showing how the player taps to jump as Mario runs automatically through each stage. Miyamoto, meanwhile, later played the Super Mario Bros theme with The Tonight Show's resident band, The Roots. That video is also embedded below.

Nintendo Switch launches in March 2017, with Nintendo set to reveal more details and new games for the system at a huge event taking place on 12 January.

Super Mario Run meanwhile will be released in free and paid-for forms on iOS devices on Thursday, 15 December.

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