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Nintendo Direct E3 2013 Presentation

Hakai

Member
Reposted to prevent it being ignored at the end of the last page

There were two strange things about the Nintendo presentation for me:

1. That there were almost no surprises. No "Retro's made a sequel to Gumshu!", no "The next Mario is entirely underwater", no "Say hi to our new employee, Mr Bleszinski".

2. That I don't really care about point 1.

For all the desire to see dramatic reveals and megatons and other cool stuff to talk about on forums, the reason I watch these things is because I like to actually play games. And, unlike any other E3 presentation I can remember (and I've been watching these since you had to wait for a VHS that came with a magazine), I actively want to play every single game I saw. During literally every single game they showed off I was thinking to myself "I really want to play this".

During even the best E3s of the past, there have always been at least a couple of games that I'm just plain not interested in. In Sony and MS's conferences this year, even with the big impressive reveals there were only a handful of games that I actually wanted to play. It's something I only noticed after the presentation had ended, but Nintendo, in a strange, quiet, understated way, has produced a wonderfully appealing line-up of games.

On to the actual games themselves:

Super Mario 3D World

I've said a few times before (and I've read it from many others on GAF) that the best parts of Mario Sunshine, and arguably some of the best parts of any Mario game ever, are the fludd-less mini-levels. These levels were made of simple, floating platforms, and were just straight-forward platforming bliss. Here's me talking about it back in 2006:



I actually didn't remember that last bit when I searched back for the quote, but it does tie in nicely to the point I was about to make; that the recent 3D Mario games, and especially 3D Land, have really moved in the direction of more linear levels that focus on tight, well-designed platforming, and are all the better for it. They're three of the best games of the last 6 years of all time, and Mario 3D Land is criminally underrated.

Nintendo have basically taken that platforming-first approach and made a wonderful-looking game with one significant addition: multiplayer. For all people's grumbling about not getting the Skyrim-Mario hybrid they for some reason craved, Nintendo have just made the biggest change to the franchise since Mario 64. As Joe Biden would put it, this is a big fucking deal. Not only is it going to be fantastic fun, but I have no doubt that it'll sell like hot-cakes because of it.

The last thing I'd say to anyone who doubts how good this game is going to be is to read Yoshiaki Koizumi's Wikipedia page. Seriously, read it. That guy has pretty much the best CV in the industry, and he's producing a four player 3D Mario game. This is a four-player 3D Mario game produced by Yoshiaki Koizumi. I'm going to repeat that: this is a four-player 3D Mario game produced by Yoshiaki Koizumi. Seriously, folks, this is a four-player 3D Mario game produced by Yoshiaki Koizumi! I frankly don't know how anyone can't be excited by that sentence.

The Wonderful 101

Looking as wonderful as always. I don't know what more I can say about this, pretty much everyone on GAF seems to appreciate it, so let's hope the general public will.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze

Retro came into E3 with a problem. In the three years people have been waiting for their new game, there's been a lot of speculation as to what they're working on, and people have got a lot of ideas in their heads about what they think Retro should be working on, whether it's a Startropics reboot or a gritty sci-fi FPS to compete with all the other gritty sci-fi FPSs out there. The problem is that people have gotten themselves pretty attached to their ideas, and are now actually angry at Retro for not making a game that never existed outside of their own head.

Here's the thing. Donkey Kong Country Returns was a fucking fantastic game. This looks even better. I'll take an actual incredible game over an entirely theoretical game any day of the week.

Super Smash Bros

Smash Bros in 1080p. There's nothing else to really go on at this stage, but that's a damn fine start.

X

Mother of god this looks glorious.

Wii Party U

Yes, I'm seriously including this in the "games I really want to play". I need a good multiplayer mini-game collection for my Wii U, and this is starting to look like good fun (especially the gamepad-only slot-car racing!)

Mario Kart 8

Strangely enough, although I played an unhealthy amount of Mario Kart 64 back in the day, I never even bought Double Dash, and never got into Mario Kart Wii. Neither seemed to offer enough to supplant 64 as the definitive game of the series for me.

Mario Kart 8, though, actually has me very, very interested. Not only is it a looker, but the anti-gravity mechanics should give Nintendo a lot of scope to change up the course designs in some really interesting ways. The fact that it's giving me some serious F-Zero vibes is no bad thing either.

Bayonetta 2

I never played the original, but the sheer over-the-top ridiculousness of this is starting to draw me in.

Wind Waker HD

See the first sentence of my Smash Bros comment, but with Wind Waker in place of Smash Bros. Seriously, though, this looks (as one would expect) amazing, and even Miiverse seems to be really well integrated. A perfect way to re-aquaint myself with one of my favourite games.

Pokemon X&Y

Like Mario Kart, this is another franchise that Nintendo have managed to interest me in for the first time in a while. I played as many hours as there were Pokemon in Red back in the day, but haven't touched the series since. This seems like a great place to get back into it.


This isn't an E3 that's going to go down as one of Nintendo's greats. To be honest, I probably won't even remember it myself in a few years. I'm sure as hell going to remember those games, though.

Great post! Exactly how I felt.
 
Totally warmed up to Super Mario 3D World. Watching the E3 footage shows me that this is a gorgeous looking game that should prove to be really really fun with a friend.

And I didn't think Mario Kart 8 looked great in the Direct trailer but the showfloor footage is insaaaane. Looks amazing.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Since this is the thread about the presentation, a news about it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1I5s236o

As you can see, the presentation video has already been viewed over 1,000,000 times in less than 72 hours, much much MUCH more than most of the other Directs so far, especially in this little span of time.
 
Reposted to prevent it being ignored at the end of the last page

There were two strange things about the Nintendo presentation for me:

1. That there were almost no surprises. No "Retro's made a sequel to Gumshu!", no "The next Mario is entirely underwater", no "Say hi to our new employee, Mr Bleszinski".

2. That I don't really care about point 1.

For all the desire to see dramatic reveals and megatons and other cool stuff to talk about on forums, the reason I watch these things is because I like to actually play games. And, unlike any other E3 presentation I can remember (and I've been watching these since you had to wait for a VHS that came with a magazine), I actively want to play every single game I saw. During literally every single game they showed off I was thinking to myself "I really want to play this".

I think what's contributing most to Nintendo's downward spiral is the justification from Nintendo fans that the minimal effort they seem to be giving right now is "just fine." Granted I really wanna play these games too, but approaching this as more than just a fan of their games, I can see how with the validation their superfans give them, that pool of buyers is getting smaller and smaller. They completely honed in their main fan base and that lack of inclusion is contributing most to the Wii U's low sales numbers and the company's bad reputation now.

As much as I wanna play these games (and I do) I still think that they're phoning it in at this point, and that they're doing themselves, the industry, and consumers a disservice by seeing this asteroid heading straight to them and not doing anything about it. Going from the company that took over the world with the Wii to this insignificant group of people that make Mario games over and over... that's really sad to me.
 
So after this e3 Direct, the Wii U is this:
13053012055492909.gif

Or not?
 

Meelow

Banned
No, it ended in March.

Can't believe I didn't know about this, I understand why Nintendo Week got cancelled and that was because there was nothing coming to the Wii anymore, but it's weird how Nintendo Show got cancelled when the 3DS was getting really good.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
Can't believe I didn't know about this, I understand why Nintendo Week got cancelled and that was because there was nothing coming to the Wii anymore, but it's weird how Nintendo Show got cancelled when the 3DS was getting really good.

Probably not a lot of people watched it.
 
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