At E3 this year Nintendo focused more on the casual game audience, and showed off Wii Music, Animal Crossing, and Wii Sports Resort. But nothing for the the “core” game crowd aside from Miyamoto finally relenting and letting slip they are working on Pikmin, and the assurance that their teams were hard at work on our favorite series but weren’t ready to show anything off yet. Apparently Nintendo is taking a cautious approach of announcing games after the long delays such as Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and instead when they’re ready to be shown off and close to release to maintain hype like Wario Land: Shake it! that wasn’t known until several months from its release. Last week’s Nintendo conferences in the U.S. and Japan showed off what’s coming up for the company.
Nintendo released a few trailers showing off Punchout!! (Wii), Sin and Punishment 2, and Mario and Luigi 3 (DS), and announced for U.S. release Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the DS remake of the first Fire Emblem for the Famicom starring Marth. After the boxing portion of Wii Sports PunchOut!! seemed like a shoe in for Wii controls, and Treasure was known to be working on a few projects after working on the virtual console version of Sin and Punishment. In Japan, Nintendo released videos of their Wii and DS lineups.
There’s a new model DS set for release in Japan, dubbed “Nintendo DSi”, featuring larger screens at 3.25″, up from the original’s 3.00″, and the addition two cameras to further broaden the market. It’s also slimmer than the DS lite with the removal of the Game Boy Advance slot and adds a SD card slot for downloadable games. The removal of the GBA slot may be unfortunate for some, but really, with GBA support slowly fading away, does anyone still play GBA games that don’t already own a DS lite or a GBA SP? DSi won’t be coming to the U.S. until sometime in 2009 since DS lite sales remain strong, and I don’t know if I’d want to upgrade. Though, if DSi has a better refresh rate to go along with the larger screens, I might be sold.
Nintendo Co Ltd. president Iwata gave a presentation about the reasoning behind the Nintendo DSi, and talked about reaching the goal of not only having one DS per household, but a DS for everyone person.
Miyamoto had mentioned before that they could possibly remake some GameCube games with Wii controls, and now they’re going to remake them for those that missed the GameCube, starting with Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, Pikmin 1 and 2, and Metroid Prime 1 and 2. Even at a value price, I wonder how that’ll play out if used copies of the GameCube originals are still available. Unless there’s a Zelda: Four Sword Adventures remake using the DS, and a Zelda: The Wind Waker remake with less sailing and more dungeons, I’ll probably pass on the games I already have.
I’m glad to see Nintendo finally showing off some games after E3, and seeing the video montage of games got me excited about video games. There hasn’t been much on Wii lately that I’ve wanted after Mario Kart and Mega Man 9. Owning a Nintendo console over the last few system generations, I’ve gotten used to relying on other systems (PS2 and DS) that I didn’t think much about Nintendo not showing much at E3 at the time.