Four years ago, Nintendo discontinued making physical appearances at E3 in favour of digital presentations – deciding that, as trailers and video make up a large part of what gets shown off for a video game, it’s cheaper to just put the whole event on-screen than actually send people to turn up at the event and talk. This year was no different, but Nintendo DID see fit to make a joke of on-screen presentations with the intro to this year’s Digital Event, with clips of a CGI audience who would heckle Reggie Fils-Aime twice during the course of the event – and subsequently get laser-eyed or beaten up before moving on to the next presentation. It’s a charming Nintendo-isation of the realities of E3 and a perfect demonstration of what Nintendo’s about – making you smile.
Yes, Day 1 of E3 kicked off today and to kick off proceedings, Nintendo took the “stage” for its annual Digital Event. In an hour of non-stop reveals, trailers and on-screen appearances and interviews both real and digitized, over a dozen games were revealed or had further information shown off about them; and we even heard of a new Nintendo toy line coming out and how it’ll tie in with Mario Kart 8 and future Nintendo titles, plus a new character reveal for Smash Bros.!
Over the coming hours I’ll be writing articles on each game and what was revealed. But here’s a quick run-down:
- Super Smash Bros.: Mii characters become playable fighters for the first time and can be customised for three specific types of fighting.
- Amiibo: New line of NFC-enabled toys from Nintendo that will be compatible with Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros Wii/3DS and many future titles.
- Yoshi’s Wooly World: Gameplay footage, discussion of the concept, 2-player co-op revealed.
- Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker: Puzzle game featuring Toad as main character, release Winter 2014.
- Open-World plans for a future Zelda title discussed.
- Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire: New Trailer launched with some game-play footage and first look at Groudon and Kyogre’s new formes.
- Bayonetta 2: will include original Bayonetta; and Zelda and Samus costumes.
- First look at Hyrule Warriors, launching September 19, 2014.
- Digmbot gets angry on Twitter following last announcement.
- First look at plans for a new, as-yet untitled Kirby game coming 2015.
- Xenoblade Chronicles: New footage.
- Mario Maker: Create-your-own-Mario-level Wii U game revealed.
- First look at Splatoon, “a 4-on-4 game about controlling territory” – by dressing as squids and shooting ink. Seriously.
- “One more thing”: Lady Palutena joins the fight in Smash Bros; two S.FM staff members go crazy at the news.
There was a lot of exciting news to be seen in the hour-long presentation; and Nintendo even ended by saying that they still have much more to reveal that they just didn’t have time for. Personally, I think the titles they focused on this time around were carefully selected and made a lot of sense – mostly big titles, a few First looks in the middle, new first-party titles being announced that aren’t anything like what you may have expected, an interesting third-party effort to round off and Smash Bros. buffering both ends. I was personally surprised to see Mario Maker announced – the ability to make your own Mario levels had been a common fan request for Mario titles from almost the beginning; but while fans have often made their own self-developed game engines to do the job themselves, or have ROM-hacked the official games to introduce their own levels (we at Sanitarium.FM do NOT condone this practice!), over the years the idea of a Nintendo-authored, official tool or feature to do this just began to felt like a pipe dream. Now it’s finally happening, my question is – what took you so long, Nintendo?!? (Admittedly, the Wii U may well be the best platform for the tool what with it’s controller with built-in touch-screen offering an excellent interface for level creation; and the large TV screen offering tons of space to work with – a DS screen may not have offered anywhere near the real estate for the game or its interface.)
However, my pick of the crop has to be the announcement of Amiibo – the idea of NFC-enabled Nintendo figures was actually discussed in the Wii U promotional material before it even launched; and with Skylanders already showing how it can be done, it’s about time Nintendo got into the game too. The idea of the figures not just representing the characters though, but also acting as storage to keep your own character’s stats and enhancements on within compatible games seems like an interesting concept though; and seeing how the figures will be cross-compatible with multiple Nintendo titles which are likely to be very different in play – Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. aren’t even in the same genre! – it may well turn out to be something quite big indeed for Nintendo. Stay tuned!
