E3 2009: Nintendo Press Conference Recap
Giant video screens offered up Nintendo trivia questions of varying difficulty before the lights dimmed and a flashy video montage reiterated Nintendo's theme of "Everybody's Game." Cammy Dunaway talked up the NPD numbers about how big gaming is and how it's overtaking home video and movies, then kind of took credit for Nintendo expanding gaming into the market beyond the hardcore. Of course, as usual, Nintendo wasn't ignoring their core fans, as was evident from their first big announcement: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. For her intro of making the same step of bringing Mario from 2D to 3D to bring him into the fourth dimension, what she's really talking about is four-player Mario action. Holding the Wiimote sideways, up to four players can jump, spin and run around on the screen (which helpfully zooms in and out to keep everyone visible). The game will be out in time for a holiday 2009 release.
What else did Nintendo have up their sleeve? Make the jump and find out!
Next up, she reminded us how Wii Fit has been a best-seller around the world since its release, and now they're releasing a sequel in the fall of 2009, Wii Fit Plus. As you all know, I'm intimately familiar with Wii Fit, and basically, Wii Fit Plus fixes all the complaints I had with it. There's new exercises and balance games, but the real improvement is being able to link exercises together into a training program so that you don't have to waste time navigating the menus and can keep your heart rate up. Wii Fit Plus will come on its own for those who already have the Balance Board, but will also come in a bundle for the ones who haven't already picked one up.
Then Reggie took over to talk about revolutionizing gaming interfaces, but that just led into a whole thing about Wii Motion Plus and Wii Sports Resort. After a somewhat less-than-informative trailer, the game was demoed, and we saw some skydiving and then some archery. Then the guy who was demoing it played a three-point basketball challenge against Reggie that Reggie won. (Always let the boss win!) It looked cute, but from the demo, didn't seem like anything the regular Wiimote couldn't have done on its own. I'm sure Wii Motion Plus is something you can't really see, but have to feel. After reminding us that it would be out on July 26, Reggie noted a few sports games that would use the add-on as well as Red Steel 2.
Next, he turned the conversation to RPG's, showing off a snazzy-looking trailer for Square-Enix's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicls: The Crystal Bearers for the Wii. Then he revealed the new DS Kingdom Hearts game 358/2 Days. After that was the announcement of a new Mario & Luigi action RPG, Mario & Luigi IV: Bowser's Inside Story. Basically, Mario and Luigi are shrunk down and do a whole Fantastic Voyage trip inside of Bowser's anatomy. This leads to all kinds of clever bits like Bowser drinking water from a fountain on the top screen as water fills up the level in the bottom screen, giving Mario and Luigi the opportunity to explore new areas. The final RPG he showed off was a trailer for Golden Sun DS, and I have to admit, my heart melted just a wee bit as the familiar theme music played.
Following the RPG goodness, Cammy returned to talk up the DS some more, and how the bestselling platform is introducing new audiences to videogames. This led into the trailer for James Patterson's Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion. I know they think this will get women to game, but even though my sister and mother read his books, I can't see them picking up a DS to play through one of his murder mysteries. There was also a trailer for Style Savvy, where girls (or fashionable guys) can open up their own clothing boutique. The clothes look kind of ugly on the DS, but I guess there's an audience for this somewhere or they wouldn't keep making these games. In between those two girly games, though, was a trailer for C.O.P.: The Recruit, where you play an undercover cop in what seems to be an open-world action adventure game complete with driving and shooting sequences.
Footage of what was clearly the DSi launch showed a bunch of people (who likely hadn't yet used the system) talking about how cool it was. But this led into some cool DSi announcements, including Flipnote Studio, which is an animation program that I'm really curious about exploring when it releases this summer. Another DSi Ware game coming on June 8 is Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again. But this time, you can design your own levels, sharing them locally or over WiFi with friends. Continuing the whole "design your own game" theme, they then announced another DSi Ware game, Wario Ware DIY, which will let you design your own bizarro Wario Ware mini-games. I can't even imagine the kind of insanity you people are going to dream up! Oh, also, for everyone annoyed at how complicated it is to copy your photos from your DSi to the SD card to actually do anything with them online, Nintendo has just announced that this summer they're going to make it possible to upload your DSi photos directly to Facebook. Hopefully this app will be free, or at least super-cheap, because otherwise I'm not going to bother.
Some footage of Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks segued into a video of Nintendo users worldwide. Satoru Iwata emerged to talk about expanding the gaming market, getting those people who wouldn't necessarily play videogames to join us in our world. This led him to introduce Nintendo's newest gaming innovation... The Wii Vitality Sensor? No, seriously, it's a pulse monitor that you stick your finger into, and it monitors your heart rate. There was no mention of exactly how this would factor into gameplay, or any actual footage shown. It was really just a tease. I guess it would be useful for something like Wii Fit to make sure your heart rate was up and you were burning calories. Or for something like the sanity meter in the old Eternal Darkness. Playing a survival horror game that knows how scared you are? That might be neat. Or it could be completely ridiculous. I don't know.
Then they surprised everyone with some footage of what was clearly Super Mario Galaxy 2 right from the start. It looks pretty, but there was no release date beyond 2010. Reggie started summing everything up, which led into the touting of a few third-party releases that we already knew were coming up soon. Trailers were then screened for Sega's The Conduit, Capcom's Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, and EA's Dead Space Extraction. Then Reggie revealed their final surprise of the conference by announcing that a more mature title was coming from Nintendo themselves. Well, with the help of Team Ninja, that is. 2010 will bring us Metroid: Other M, which looks like a fantastically brutal third and first-person action adventure game starring everyone's favorite intergalactic bounty hunter, Samus Aran. No idea what the title means, but I guess they've got to leave us wondering something...
So we've got a bunch of casual games on the way, more than a few Mario titles, a Zelda and a Metroid, plus some intriguing "create-your-own-game" titles for the DSi and a completely bizarre peripheral. All in all, not too shabby. Some surprises, some weirdness and some Mario. Sounds like Nintendo to me!
Wootini
Posted to E3, Hot Stuff, Video Games on 2 June 2009
· Comments (6)
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Woooo! Golden Sun DS!!!
I was hoping they would give that series another chance.
Awesome all-round conference I say, they really worked the traditional and expanded audiences well [unlike last year].
The ripples from this E3 [in terms of motion innovation] is gonna continue for many years to come I believe - should be interesting to see what Nintendo come up with to go beyond WM in the future!
now that Nintendo think "Everybody's Game", I don't want to use their product anymore.
It used to be only people who appreciated a well made, challenging, entertaining game. And the minute anything less than desirable came out everyone hated it and it disappeared from all memory.
Now it has turned into tripe to pander to idiots just to sell more product. Everything on shelf now is crap. And the idiots buying it keep it going.
No No Nintendo.
We made you, now you've invested in a type of idiot that will play anything. So good luck with that in the future when we're all enjoying our Xbox's & PS3s and we laugh and remember that silly old door stop called the Wii.
Nintendo has effectively killed any semblance of consoles surviving another ten years, what they've done is take away any semblance of hobby and replaced it with flash in the pan nothingness, it'll work for a few years and these consumers will get bored and move on, like all smart people have with the Wii, leaving them unplayed for months on end in the majority of cases.
What's worse is Sony and MS are altering their business models to slowly follow.
Hooray for QTE's and Mini-games.
hey haters, why not take your DOOMED posts back to 2006.. along with your "Motion Control is irrelevant" "but but its a fad!!1!" comments. Lol who's looking irrelevant now? XD
Metroid looks well tasty, as does the return of Golden Sun.
their lack of "LOL SURPRISE GAIZ! WE'RE ACTUALLY GONNA RELEASE FATAL FRAME IV!" made me cry.
but golden sun also made me cry. in a good way this time.