Nintendo Announces New Mario Bros, Mario Galaxy, Metroid 291
Nintendo's E3 press conference was an eventful one, with announcements for a new Super Mario Bros. Wii, a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, and a new entry into the Metroid franchise by Team Ninja. The new Mario Bros. game will be available for the holiday season, and the other two are scheduled for 2010. Nintendo also confirmed an updated version of the Wii Fit, called the Wii Fit Plus (trailer), due out this fall. A full list of Nintendo's announcements is available, which includes more games and new features. Live blogs of the press conference, with commentary and pictures, are up at Engadget and 1Up.
Re:Nintendo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's kind of my feeling. I thought Nintendo did better this year (and Cammie dropped the creepy smile, so that's a win), but I still came away feeling like there was nothing new. It was the same thing we've already tread on the Wii. Where was the Starfox or FZero or Kid Icarus or SOMETHING new and exciting? Even the New Super Mario Bros. Wii reminded me of the multiplayer Mario flash game where players stomp on each other's heads.
Even the DSi announcements fell flat. Mario and Luigi 3 looked kind of fun, as did the Mario vs. Donkey Kong for DSiWare. Of course, the latter is just the continuing strategy of ripping pieces of old DS games out and putting them up as DSiWare. (At least we got Mighty Flip Champs on Monday.)
When Nintendo showed the interviews with the kids on the street, I got a kick out of the girl saying she was excited for the new internet features of the DSi. As I expected, Nintendo did nothing with that. I joked with the guys over on DSiCade [dsicade.com]* that Nintendo should really cut to DSiCade and show our conversation as it was happening. Alas, the poor DSi still got so little love.
* Disclaimer: I wrote DSiCade.
Still dissapointing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, everyone loves Mario but at this point it's obvious Nintendo is very stagnant. Most of the stuff on the Wii is pure shovelware garbage, and I've yet to be truly impressed with the uses of the Wiimote (although the device itself is fantastic and I even use it with my computer via bluetooth). The Wii is a stagnant system all-around for the more active gamer, and its "environment" is so sterile (less mature games, using the friend code system, etc) and the system is far enough behind the others in terms of graphical and processing ability to not allow for faithful ports of games on the XBox 360 or PS3.
You'd think Nintendo would at least ramp up 1st party games but nope. Most of what is coming out is unremarkable shovelware. The DS is definitely starting to lose some of its luster as only a few good games on it seem over the horizon--though I do think the DS was overall a success with many quality games.
Mario, Mario, and Metriod. And another gimmick, Wii fit. How depressing for us Wii owners.
As an aside, when is Nintendo going to come out with a faithful quality sequel to Star Fox 64?
Re:Nintendo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
And Red Steel 2, which I'm anxiously awaiting. Overall, I think all three developers had a good showing this year, but I think Nintendo's was strongest. Not just because of their conference, but because the entire subtext of Sony and Microsoft's presentations was about them trying to copy the Wii's success.
Re:Looks good but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Underpowered? Other then for cut scenes/graphics the games really don't *need* the extra power. With the Wii not doing HD it really doesn't need any extra power. What the Wii doesn't have is buttons, if you use the motion controls it ends up not working like all the other consoles, if you don't use the motion controls you get angry reviewers saying how it doesn't use "the full potential" of the Wii. Final Fantasy XIII is meant for hardcore gamers, the Wii just doesn't have that audience, now most hardcore gamers do own a Wii but play most games on the PS3 or 360. As for Street Fighter 4 and Soul Calibur, you kinda need buttons to do all the combos, waving around a Wii Remote doesn't exactly have the same appeal.
I agree about the third party games though, it seems that due to Nintendo's marketing of the console towards 8 year olds and 40 somethings, they have lost the demographic of good third party game publishers. Either they give you crappy mini game collections, bad licensed titles, crappy ports of old PS2 games or rip-offs of Wii Fit or the other Wii titles. It seems like few developers will actually make a good game on the Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is proof that it is possible. But even for studios who do make an effort, their work is overshadowed by a better game released for a different console, just look at Namco, they released the decent-ish Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World for the Wii, then released the amazing Tales of Vesperia for the 360. They could have done Vesperia for the Wii but Nintendo's marketing kept them away.
Re:Looks good but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nintendo.... (Score:3, Interesting)
As for Red Steel, the first game had some serious usability issues do to motion control, aiming was kinda funky and no matter what I would always end up stabbing my knife when I wanted to reload and vice versa.
And new Wii Zelda (Score:5, Interesting)
While there's extremely little information outside of "It exists", a new Wii Zelda [nintendoworldreport.com] has been announced. Supposedly more "mature", though that can mean many things to many people.
All in all, this is a MUCH better showing from Nintendo than last year's "Yay let's flail around faking music!" show. I almost wish they had split what we've see this year between this and 2008 E3s, so that we might see more of each thing.
Personally, I'm more excited for Golden Sun DS than anything else, though I'm sure to pick of SMG2 and Metroid. Too bad that rumored Metroid: Dread for DS never came about.
I don't get you. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that the 3rd party situation is abysmal, but I'm scratching my head when you say that they are stagnating. If anything, I'd say they are the only console manufacturer that has truly managed to innovate and break out of traditional "gamer" demographic.
And then there's this:
Translation:
So you want innovation... except when you don't?
Ridley... isn't dead? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm really wondering how Nintendo is going to resurrect Ridley this time. He's "died" in every game he's been in, and they're not going to tell me that killing him in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption didn't do anything. Again.
As much as I love the Metroid series, I know that it must some day end. For me, it'll never get better than Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. The way I see it, the whole adventure of finding new areas or trying to skip areas (at which I horribly suck, but the trying part is fun enough) is pretty much gone in the 3D versions. Time for Nintendo to leave the saga as it is, and create some new great idea.
Re:I'm a hypocrite (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd have to agree. Nintendo pretty much just keeps the same characters we know and love, tosses in some totally new aspect to it and comes up with a new story. It's a great way of keeping things fresh while still appealing to our nostalgia. Mario isn't the only property that's done it. When I first heard about Metroid Prime and the fact it would be a first person shooter, I was appalled, but it was a fantastic game.
The Zelda series hasn't really innovated as well as Mario or Metroid, though. Twilight Princess introduced new characters, but the game play didn't add anything really innovative. At least Wind Waker had the cel-shaded graphics to set it apart as something new, and Majora's Mask might not have done much with gameplay, I'd still say that with the dark tone of the story, it's probably my favorite Zelda of all time.
Re:Nintendo.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually Nintendo still makes original games, but for some strange kind of reason they seem to drown it themselves.
Example, last year they released the excellent survival action game Disaster Day of Crisis, what happend.
Almost zero advertisement, and the release only happend in Japan and Europe.
Overall the game got very high ratings, it was full of fresh ideas, but it drowned! I guess we never will see a sequel, not because of the game quality but because it did not sell at all!
(Even the hardcore crowd did not know about it!)
It is easier to ride the Zelda/Mario train as long as it sells to keep the platform alive.
Its nice to see Nintendo actually making an effort to appeal to gamers who want a game more involved than a tech demo, but can we please have something... fresh? Sure, Mario, Metroid, and Golden Sun are good, but it seems like Nintendo has really stagnated in good games that aren't gimmicks. Plus theres a bunch of old IP that isn't being capitalized on such as the old Japanese Fire Emblem games, Earthbound hasn't even seen a US release on the Virtual Console and Kid Icarus hasn't seen a new game in ages.
Nintendo needs to make more "hardcore" games so whenever they aren't in first place anymore they won't go belly up.
Re:Nintendo.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The PS2 was either on par, or slightly inferior to the original Xbox, I don't know their stats offhand, but it was certainly superior to Sega's DC, and Nintendo's GC.
GameCube > PlayStation 2 any day. Compare the PS2 and GameCube versions of Capcom's Resident Evil 2. Part of it is that the PS2 didn't have useful texture decompression in hardware; the others had S3TC, which produced decent results at 4bpp. Even the DS has texture compression, which is why some 3D games have been beating PS1 and N64 visual quality.
I hope they get Wii Fit right. (Score:5, Interesting)
What really breaks Wii Fit is the time spent navigating the menus between exercises.
What it needs is a way to setup a simple list of exercises in advance (like a songlist in Guitar Hero's quickplay mode), and then run you through those as quickly as possible (don't explain to me how it worked *every time*, thank you), and with as short load times as possible.
As it is now, you never really break a sweat...
Still waiting to hear... (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, the console is still selling fine at this same price - and hence demand seems to remain - but this seems like an unusually long time for the components within the system to have not fallen in price.
Re:Eternal Darkness (Score:3, Interesting)