E3 - Nintendo's Presentation

Tuesday, June 7th, Nintendo (corp.)  gave their presentation to those attending E3. Last year their presentation was extremely cool, so when I logged onto the Nintendo website and loaded the video of the presentation, I was expecting great things. I was not disappointed.

The Nintendo Presentation screen

The screen they used for the presentation was interestingly asymmetrical, and they started off with a small orchestra (~20 instruments) playing a medley of music from the Legend of Zelda series while clips from the games played behind them. On February 21st, 1986, the first Legend of Zelda game was released in Japan, and this year Nintendo is celebrating the 25th anniversary of one of their best-selling series. I was pleasantly surprised with Nintendo for starting their presentation off with a huge tribute to Zelda, especially since in February it appeared like they weren't doing anything.


A couple years back, the Mario series celebrated their 25th anniversary with a new special colored Wii and Wiimote, and a compilation boxed set. For Zelda's 25th, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto came on stage and introduced the theme for the new game, played by the orchestra as part of their medley, and announced, via a translator, several Zelda titles coming out and being re-released:

• On Wednesday, Nintendo launched their eShop for the 3DS (so gamers can download games and apps, a la the Wii, straight onto their 3DS). The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was the first title released to people to download and play (in normal 2D).
• Next week, on June 19th, the, remastered, 3D version of Ocarina of Time is coming out, finally, after a year of anxious waiting
• Also, for the still widely popular DSi, the only multiplayer Zelda title, Four Swords Adventures will be available as a complimentary download in September. FOR FREE.
• Finally, after more than a year of waiting, the latest Zelda title, Skyward Sword, is finished, and will be released for the first time "this holiday season!" (That's the closest we've ever gotten to an actual date). The game will apparently be bundled with a special, Golden Wiimote, but we'll have to learn more about that later.

Also, to celebrate 25 years of amazing music (The fans all thank the wonderful Koji Kondo, whose name I remember without even looking up), there will also be a worldwide concert tour, similar to the Play! The Video Game Symphony or Video Games Live concerts. More information, along with CD soundtracks of the concerts, will be available later.

Small Orchestra and Zelda 25th Anniversary logo

The Legend of Zelda is probably my favorite video game series ever (maybe even my favorite fiction series ever), so all this special recognition was super exciting for me to see. I've been saving money for the new game ever since they announced the title at E3 last year, and I've almost got enough. This'll be the first Zelda title I buy for myself, and off all the things they talked about during the Nintendo presentation this year, the Zelda news made me the happiest.

After all that, Nintendo's Global President, Satoru Iwata, came onstage to give a teaser on the Wii successor console (Code named Project Cafe, announced months ago to be a hi-def competitor to the hi-def Xbox and PS3 systems). Saving that for later, however, he went on to talk about upcoming 3DS titles. The 3DS came out in North American in March, and though the glasses-free technology was astonishing, the hand-held console itself was underwhelming for one simple reason: bad launch titles. Launch titles are the games for specific gaming consoles that are released at the same time as the system, to give players something to play right away. The 3DS had quite a few boring or unexciting launch titles, proving that, even if the system is awesome, it's the game that makes people interested. Global President Iwata promised that those titles we'd all been waiting a year for would indeed be coming out soon, and then turned the time over to Nintendo's President over America, Reggie Fils-Aime, for an in-depth look at some of the most promising new 3DS titles:

• Mario Kart 3D, which, according to the teaser, will include flying karts, submarine karts, better customization, and a large online play function. Due to be released "this holiday season."
• Star Fox 64, 3D. I'm excited - one of the approximately four Nintendo 64 titles I had for the majority of my childhood. The 3DS version includes motion control (unless you'd rather use the joystick) and utilizes the 3DS camera for group play (so it'll be your friend's face popping up in the corner, instead of Falcon's). This is due in September.
• Super Mario 3D - the first exclusively hand-held Super Mario title? Very cool for people who are into the Mario series, due by the end of the year - hopefully.
• Kid Icarus, the first new title since 1991. This pseudo-series is apparently quite popular, and I'm excited for the third Kid Icarus title, which includes group play and a trading card deck with Augmented Reality functions in-game, due sometime "within the year" (you mean the next 12 months?)
• Luigi's Mansion 2. Sequel to Luigi's Mansion. Nothing terribly exciting, in my opinion.

Old-School fun!

There were more 3rd Party Developer titles announced, along with a brief explanation of the 3DS eShop (which, as I said earlier, functions a lot like the Wii's eShop). Along with Link's Awakening, the new eShop would feature a free download of the old classic Excitebike (23-year-old nostalgia!) and a special PokeDex feature to get people to buy more Pokemon cards (though this also includes an Augmented Reality function, so you can take pictures with your pokemon. If you've never seen Augmented Reality before, it's totally fun!)

Finally, American President Reggie (I don't think anyone refers to him as just "Fils-Aime") moved on to announce what we've all been waiting for: the name of the new Wii successor.

I agree with you. When I first heard the new name - Wii U? - before I watched the actual press conference, I was less than impressed. All we really knew about it was that the new controller was supposed to include a separate screen and the console would support hi-def graphics (Nintendo's relatively low graphic capabilities are one of the reasons Microsoft and Sony gamers tend to dislike Nintendo. Because the greatness of a game is solely dependant on realistic graphics. Uh huh.)

Nintendo managed to impress everyone, however. The most important thing about the Wii U is the new controller, which can be used along with the regular Wiimotes. It has its own, 6.2 inch touch-screen, double analogue sticks, and all the other functions of classic controllers. If you're like me, you found the Wiimote kind of annoying in its pointer-use. Sure, you got more exercise than you would thumbing an Xbox, but it was annoying to have to point it at the screen to play. A return to a classic controller style gets a positive vote from me.

The new controller also has the ability to continue a game on the small screen if you're forced to give up the TV to another member of the house. Whatever image was previously on the TV screen is then transported onto your smaller controller screen so you can keep playing while your room-mate watches their football game or soaps or whatever. You can even play games, like board games, solely on the controller unit, though they stressed that the Wii U controller was NOT a portable device - I guess it has to be within range of the console to work, like the Wiimotes.

More functions for the new controller include motion control (just like the Wiimotes), the ability to zoom onto portions of the TV with the controller screen, and otherwise interact between the two screens (they showed off a Ninja-star throwing game, and someone finding videos on the controller and sending them to the main screen for everyone else to see). The new system is completely backward compatible for the Wii, and the controller has a rumble feature, a microphone, speakers, and an inward facing camera for video chat.

To excite the audience some more, they announced plans for a new Smash Brothers game for both the 3DS and the Wii U. Of course, for Smash Brothers fans, the new game wont be released for at least another three years, seeing as it isn't even in the works yet.

They also played a video to show off their new hi-def graphics. Nothing was actually said during the video (really, it was of a bird, flying around a Japanese style garden), so I'm not sure exactly what we were suppose to get out of it. Another cool thing about the graphics, however, is the idea of 360 gameplay - we were told of one particular game in the works, Shield Pose, which would require gamers to look around with the controller screen for assassins hiding around in any direction, not just where the main screen is. The Nintendo President stressed that, with the new technology, even they didn't know everything they'd be able to do with it, and  they wanted their 3rd Party Developers to test out their limits. This sounds like an exciting time to be a 3rd Party Developer.

At this point, they invited the CEO of EA Games, John Doe (Well, it was 'John' something-or-other) to come on stage. He couldn't have said much, except confirming the new High Quality graphics and stating how exciting it was to start working on games for such a new system.

The actual Console everyone'll be buying

I noticed, by now, that all we'd really seen was a controller - was there actually a new machine, or was the controller just in addition to the Wii? Before closing the presentation, we finally got to see the new console, which appears to be slightly bigger than the Wii, and lies on its side. An internet celebrity who attended E3 said that the new Wii U controller felt much lighter than expected, and was pretty easy to use. While I don't expect to get the Wii U right when it comes out (sometime in 2012, probably just before the holidays), it does look like an exciting thing to be looking forward to. As far as I've heard, the Wii U stole the show this year at E3, much like the 3DS did, and how I imagine the Wii did when it was first released. As much as people try to downplay how great Nintendo is, as far as I've seen they're leading the video game industry, and have been since they decided to start selling the Magnavox Odyssey (the world's first video game console) in Japan in 1974.