Is this the news? I don't know. Who cares. Lots of stuff here folks. Dolphin at E3? In 2000? Can anything be more vague? Ahhhhh! Screw it. Did you ever go to the bathroom because you had to take a really bad &%$ and then end up just farting? Maybe just a bad analogy. But when you wait so long. Oh well...read on my dolphin brethren!

At a recent Nintendo event in Seattle, company executives Howard Lincoln, Peter Main and the NOA president himself, Minoru Arakawa, met the press for a quick QA session. The gathering had a special significance as Mr. Lincoln's last public appearance as NOA chairman. He is set to step down from the position in two short weeks. It also saw company leader Mr. Arakawa testing the waters for his new role as acting spokesperson for the firm, a duty that he will no doubt share with the one they call "The Main Man" Peter Main.

The three executives briefly answered questions tossed out to them by the gaming press, most of which related (not surprisingly) to Nintendo's suspiciously conservative stance on Dolphin. IGN64 has the interview for you below.

Q: What was the most memorable thing that happened to you in your long stay as Nintendo chairman?

Howard Lincoln: Probably getting Tetris in Moscow. It was one of the most fascinating things that I've ever experienced and Mr. Arakawa and I had an absolute ball doing this. We got on the airplane and we were the only two people in first class. We had been in Moscow for two weeks, in this god-awful place with no food and dirty -- we we're in seventh heaven [to be leaving]. So I looked at Mr. Arakawa and said, "You know, we have to come back here." He looked at me and said, "No, we don't have to come back here -- you do."

After three more trips, including the last one in 1995 or so, I went to a restaurant and they were checking their machine guns at the front door. I came back to Mr. Arakawa and said, "That's it. No more."

Q: What is the schedule with Dolphin?

Minoru Arakawa: Dolphin? We still have a plan for the end of this year.

Q: Do you think it's possible to ship Dolphin and Game Boy Advance in the US simultaneously?

Howard Lincoln: I think it's possible to do both. The one regret that I have about retiring right now is that I am so excited both about Dolphin and Game Boy Advance. Obviously with Game Boy Advance we have huge market share and the product will speak for itself. It's a great product and it's backward compatible so all I can see is a tremendous introduction and a lot of sales.

And I'm really excited about Dolphin as well. We have deliberately tried to keep low-key this and keep as much information on Dolphin as we can confidential for good reasons -- for competitive reasons. But [I'm excited by] the more I see of Dolphin and the more I see how we will be able to market the product at a very competitive price point -- both hardware and software. Mr. Arakawa and me have had to listen to some third-party publishers over the years talk about the "economic model" of N64 with cartridges. The idea that we're going to be competing on a worldwide basis on a DVD software format is really music to my ears and I have to tell you that Dolphin is going to be the great system. I think it's going to get tremendous support from third-party publishers and I think we're going to give Sony a run for their money. So I'm kind of not so sure that I should retire right now because, boy, I'd like to be standing here in front of you guys to show you Dolphin hardware and software. I think it's going to be great.

Q: Are we going to see Dolphin at the upcoming E3 show in Los Angeles or is a Space World unveiling more likely?

Howard Lincoln: It's possible that you'll see something at E3 and it's possible that you'll see something at Space World. Anything's possible.

Q: How much control does NOA have over Dolphin development? It seems that NOA has much more power than it did, say, five years ago.

Howard Lincoln: I've seen a natural transition over the years from the early 80s when our parent company [NCL] was essentially doing everything to today where Nintendo of America has a great deal of involvement with the development of Dolphin. A lot of the control, not only in Dolphin development systems, but actual development of the ArtX chip, relations with IBM and what-not are all being handled here at NOA. And certainly the relationship that we've developed with second-party developers, for example Rare, Retro, Left Field and others -- those are all companies that we deal with.

So we are much more involved with both the development of the hardware and software [for Dolphin] and I anticipate the same thing will be the case for Game Boy Advance.