Hawthorne Heights will headline the fourth annual Nintendo Fusion Tour, which will also feature Relient K, Emery, the Plain White T’s and Hawthorne Heights’ Victory labelmate the Sleeping. The outing will run from Sept. 27 through Nov. 11.
At each stop, fans will be able to preview Wii, Nintendo’s new video game console due this fall, and play the hot-selling Nintendo DS Lite portable game system. “Bring on Wii,” says Hawthorne Heights lead singer JT Woodruff. “I’m an old-fashioned video game nerd who loves everything ‘Mario’ and still have my [old Nintendo] NES with over 500 games.”
The new Wii console, which got great response with demos at the May E3 game expo in Los Angeles, will give Nintendo a heightened capability for music interactivity with its Wi-Fi connectibility and download opportunities. Among games with major music soundtracks in development for Wii are the “Madden NFL” and “Need for Speed” franchises from Electronic Arts, and Activision’s “Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam.”
Nintendo’s Fusion Tour has provided early exposure for then-developing bands such as Evanescence, Story Of The Year, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. The outing has expanded from 25 dates in 2003 with 90,000 in attendance to 45 last year with more than 160,000, according to Nintendo.
