E3 2012 Nintendo

So it's been a few days since the Nintendo Conference on Tuesday (UK Night). The big talk was about Wii U and the presentation was a hit and miss most of the time.

What went well:

Pikmin 3: This game was in the talks since 2008 and Shigeru only said last year that Pikmin 3 seems to function much better on Nintendo's new console. This year we finally get to see gameplay footage and there are a good amount of features that makes it different enough from Pikmin 2 such as:

- The introduction of Rock Pikmin,
- Controlling up to 4 leaders
- New camera angles when using the Wii U Gamepad
- Runs at 60 frames per second.
- And many more.

Support from Ubisoft: Unlike the other 3rd Party developers releasing games already out on XBox 360/PS3 such as Batman: Arkham City & Mass Effect 3. Ubisoft had the courage to create new games to take advantage of Wii U's features and put them into good use.
The video below is Rayman Legends coming out on XBox 360, PS3 and Wii U.



New games (timed) exclusive to Wii U includes ZombiiU which also takes advantage of the Wii U Gamepad to simulate how players use survival kit to equip weapons and tools (looking at the Wii U Gamepad screen and not the main TV). Ubisoft's conference received much better reception than the big gaming developers.

Reggie mentions his infamous quote:It's a bit of an insider but back in Summer 2007 where Wii Fit was revealed the first time, he said "My body, my body is ready." which only took off by storm only sometime in June 2010. This year Wii Fit U was revealed (for Wii U of course) and Reggies teases the audience to remember back in 2007 and mentions "My body was ready". Also he mentioned "Speed Run" on New Super Mario Bros U which made the IRC chat on #SDA wild.

New Mario Game for launch:
In the past history when Nintendo launches a new console without Mario, sales figures are not as high during the first six months. 3DS was a famous example as the launch line-up was lacklustre that it had an official price cut in less than 6 months worldwide. So a new Mario game on day one could give Wii U a good start.
However I am not putting this game as high as Pikmin 3 mainly because:
* Nintendo will release 2 New Super Mario Bros games this year:
 New Super Mario Bros 2 for 3DS [August 19th]
 New Super Mario Bros U for Wii U [Nov/Dec 2012]
* NSMB 2 theme is collecting gold coins.... 1 million of them.
* NSMB U notable features involves Flying Squirrels, playable Miis, Boost mode and Miiverse Messages.

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What went wrong:

Fitness, dancing and singing games:
Should be banned to be shown during an E3 conference, pointless, boring, filler material.

The lack of first party franchises not relying on the plumber:This year's conference had 4 games featuring Mario/Luigi including:
* New Super Mario Bros 2
* New Super Mario Bros U
* Paper Mario: Sticker Star
* Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon

The others includes:
* Pikmin 3
* Game & Wario
* Nintendo Land

Notice the lack of Star Fox, F-Zero and Metroid. F-Zero especially never had a chance to shine during Wii/DS days as its last (Worldwide) appearance was back in 2004. There was also a trend on Twitter saying "No Zelda". Shigeru said that Zelda on Wii U is still researching/experimenting and Skyward Sword took 5 years to develop and was one of Nintendo's biggest projects ever.

But sometimes bad things can lead to good things.... imagine these underused franchises getting a chance revive and shine in E3 2013 like Kid Icarus did back in E3 2010.

Nintendo Land presentation was weak:Nintendo Land is meant to be the 'Wii Sports of Wii U' showing off simple demonstration of the new technology. One mini-game involves 4 players (using Wiimotes) finding an invisible ghost (using Wii U gamepad). The players will win if they nab the ghost and drain the life points to 00 and the ghost will win if it manages to faint all of the human players. While it was a clever idea, the execution was slow paced which tends to bore the audience a bit. I remember the #SDA chat were spamming typical espeak negativity it managed to harden the blow as it was the last game to be shown during the Wii U conference. So basically, the E3 hype meter started off high with Pikmin 3 and it went lower and lower to rock bottom during Nintendo Land.

Death of Wii/DS:Not really a weak point but there was a lack of announcements for Wii/DS, it looks like they will be out of use by 2014, the end of two of the most important consoles in the early years of the 21st century.

Some good games wern't shown during the conference:
There was a few games missing that were shown after the conference where the fans/journalists gets to try out the 'work in progress' version of the newest games available in the booth. One of them was Project P-100 developed by Platinum Games, responsible for the amazing Bayonetta and decent Vanquish, the style seems to resemble Pikmin (controlling loads of mini players) but gameplay and objective is completely different!

Nintendo Meme Moments:
Even if this year was one of Nintendo weaker years it did have memorable moments.

After E3, there was a series of videos on Nintendo's E3 website where Iwata reveals the games in more detail. This is a simple clip that is shown right after Donkey Kong Crash Course minigame on Nintendo Land.



Non Specific Action Figure stole the show as it gained a huge fanbase since the Miiverse feature video was revealed on Monday. Even Iwata approves on Nintendo's Official Youtube page

That's all for now: Greenalink OUT.