E3 – Nintendo Conference Review

Nintendo’s conference finished not so long ago and luckily for my work ethic it was mainly a lifeless boring affair. It was definitely saved by a couple of big announcements though. Just like last night I’m going to start at the beginning.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I Missed the first few minutes of the press conference because of an abundance of streams crumbling under the weight of fanboys but I saw enough of the gameplay. Miyamoto was named here but not seen, Cammie Dunaway talked about him like he was some sort of omni-present God hidden away only to appear now and again as he pleases with a golden egg to show off. This was the game where the LittleBigPlanet influence on Nintendo started to show. It’s traditional Mario Bros stuff but with four player co-op in a platforming environment. What we saw looked good with the four players consisting of Mario, Luigi and various Toads. It looks like a very easy game for Nintendo to make and all credit to them because this will no doubt sell bucket loads. This is heading for a Christmas release and there’s little doubt it won’t make that target.

Wii Fit Plus

Everyone knew this would be at the show and it was bearable because of it.  I was expecting Cammie to announce some kind of interaction with Motion Plus but instead we found that players will be able to make custom fitness routines. Err yay? There will be 15 new balance games including “Perfect 10” which sees players moving their hips in four directions to burst numbered bubbles which add up to 10. Sounds simple and fun enough. Christmas release for this as well.

Motion Plus & Wii Sports Resort

Cammie isn’t getting the laughs she wants to quickly (and much to the relief of the audience) gives control over to Reggie who re-introduces us to Motion Plus. They then rather inexplicably show us what the add-on does again because apparently we’d forgotten about last year. This was done with a video which showed us how precise it is by using slow motion, which was rather clever. [/sarcasm] The video turned into a Wii Sports Resort. We then went back to Reggie who said: “You can do almost anything in a video.” Wow sick burn! Peter Molyneux just pulled a sad face. So then came the demo and it did look quite fun but I never expected it not to be. We had archery first followed by nameless Ninty goon squaring off with Reggie with the Basketball. Reggie pulled out the fluke (yes, fluke) win and the laughs just kept coming! [/sarcasm again] The fighting talk was dire but kinda funny because of it. This is when the conference started to get boring.

Reggie then went over the three games that would be sold within the next month packaged with Motion Plus: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, Grand Slam Tennis and Virtua Tennis 09. Reggie then mentioned Red Steel 2 which will be only playable with Motion Plus. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not though.

Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Here be lols! Wonderful premise of the bros being shrunk and entering Bowser himself, we’ll actually be platforming in his colon. A fanboys wet dream. Looks to be another great Mario and Luigi RPG with some great humour, it’s coming to DS this winter in the US and Europe.

Golden Sun DS was announced to the delight of people who are into that sort of thing with a standard RPG trailer attached. The other big DS game was…

COP: The Recruit which despite a shite name looked rather promising. A shameless GTA clone it may be but it’s a rip of the console games, not Chinatown Wars and it looks to be working rather well. I’m going to keep an eye on this one.

Flipnote Studio

This is a nice idea and began the focus on User Generated Content (UGC) that we’d see in the next two games for DS. This allows players to draw on the DS and create frames resulting in small clips that can be sent around via Wi-Fi. Good stuff.

Mario Vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again

This game involves level creation with the levels being able to travel the internets to other DS’. This though was confirmed for release next Monday (June 8^th) and is only available through DSi Ware.

Wario Ware DIY

This is the killer from Nintendo. A Wario Ware game where the user can create their own mini games to be shared. This is the stuff of dreams and by my reckoning the game with the most potential so far shown on in the conference. It has massive potential. Cammie Dunaway was nice enough to tell us what DIY stands for before describing the game as the closest thing to real games development, not that she has a bloody clue what that’s like. While I don’t agree with her given the game is basically an interactive version of the Flipnote game shown earlier, it’s certainly impressive.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was brought up but staggeringly no footage was shown! Bewildering but we’re bound to see something before the week is over.

Confirmed: Iwata is here

And finally out comes Iwata to save us from a fairly lifeless conference. Or so we thought. He ended up being the most boring part droning on and on about all the usual bollocks we’ve come to expect from Nintendo PR people. However the biggest shock/laugh/WTF moment of the show came as Iwata announced the Vitality Sensor. There was a silence from the crowd as Nintendo genuinely, GENUINLEY show off a peripheral that monitors your heart rate. Facepalms all round for Nintendo. This is for Wii Fit and Wii Fit only. At least at the moment until someone can think of a way to implement it. To be fair though it could very well be used amazingly.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 – MEGATON

Now that’s what I’m talking about! A straight sequel of one of the best games ever made and it is coming. As am I at the thought of it. Is it imaginative on Nintendo’s part? No. Is it an easily churned out sequel using the same engine? Yes. Do I give a crap about those two points? No. Cannot wait for another slice of wonderful platforming from Nintendo. It may be unlike them to do something like this but it genuinely doesn’t matter when the game is a near shoe-in for GOTY, whatever year that may end up being. My guess would be a Spring release next year. Oh! And Yoshi is in it! Instant buy!

The Conduit from Sega, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space: Extraction were shown as third party exclusives. The Conduit looks like a decent FPS with a dire storyline to drive it and the latter two look like fun but not brilliant on rails shooters.

Metroid: Other M – MEGATON

This one came completely out of the blue. The impressive trailer showed off a hybrid of everything we’ve seen from the Metroid franchise. It mixes frantic 2.5D side scrolling gameplay with first person sections and some wonderfully animated death sequences and set pieces. There was also the promise of a lot more Samus Aran hinted at in the trailer’s cinematic and when Samus Aran spoke. It looks very exciting and is being brought by the combined team of Nintendo and Team Ninja, the developers behind the Ninja Gaiden games and given their experience this is truly worthy of its place at the end of the conference.

So Nintendo did what they set out to do and won over the hardcore fans. It wasn’t perfect or what we expected but it was a good show in all and just about memorable. It was drawn out and certainly had it’s boring moments but the three stand out games were great to see at the time. My Sony analysis will come later and after that more articles going into further detail on parts of E3.

~ by Ben Skipper on June 2, 2009.