[E3] Nintendo’s Conference: Games First

We love that Nintendo really shows and explains their games.  Nintendo knows E3 is about the games, and went out of their way during the presentation to focus on them.  Nintendo showed a pre-E3 briefing on the Wii U to explain the hardware, and will show a post-E3 briefing on the 3DS to showcase even more games.

Wii U

Nintendo revealed that the Wii U will launch this holiday season (no price yet), and with it’s launch window comes a decent number of interesting games.  Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition looks great. Sure, it’s a game that was already released but if you played the previous version you know that Armored Edition is adding functionality and changes to content.  Assassin’s Creed , of course, and additional/all-new titles we may have known about like Ninja Gaiden, Tekkon Tag, Aliens, Trine, Tank tank Tank, and Scribblenauts.

“Hardcore gamers” are bellyaching that Nintendo didn’t show anything, but we’re hardcore gamers -and- Nintendo fans. We saw plenty that looked amazing.  Pikmin looked fantastic, and utilized the Wii U Gamepad to control multiple characters are once.  New Super Mario Bros. U appears to use the same style that Super Mario World on the SNES had, a format we love, and utilizes some of the neat Miiverse features.

One of our absolute favorite games shown for the Wii U is Lego City Undercover.  It looks like an open-world game in the familiar Lego video game style that gave us a GTA vibe, but from the perspective of an undercover cop/detective.  Exploring a big Lego city and using the Wii U Gamepad simply looked like a ton of fun.

Nintendo Land, albeit a tech demo for the system like Wii Sports/Resort, did have interesting games that emphasized the asymmetric gameplay.

3DS

It’s still an awesome time to own a 3DS, and owning one is going to be even better in the coming months.  During their conference Nintendo unveiled a slew of titles in addition to whatever they’ll announce during their 3DS coverage tomorrow.

  •   New Super Mario Bros. 2
  • Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
  • Paper Mario: Sticker Star – fantastic looking!
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate
  • Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D
  • and more titles we’ve heard already.

We feel Nintendo ‘won’ E3 this year, but it wasn’t hard given Microsoft’s lack of anything gaming related and Sony’s focus on third party support.  The Wii U is going to augment gameplay far more than the ‘waggle’ of the Wii’s motion technology, and we understand the asymmetric gameplay concepts.  Makes sense to us, and we’re anxious to play all the upcoming games.

  • To clarify the whole ‘winning’ E3 thing… I really don’t like picking winners and losers at these things because it’s really subjective to me. When we say Nintendo ‘won’ it mostly means that they showed stuff that was most interesting to us personally.

  • Sadly, I did not see much that blew my mind in any of the press conferences. EA might have been tops in my book.

  • We’ll put a post up tomorrow detailing the one game each of us thought was the best with a runner up or two. Overall, I agree that no one showed anything mind-blowing. Had this been the first time we heard about the Wii U, Nintendo would have blown my mind but this felt more like a solid reassurance that I want to own one.

    I was let down by EA. They didn’t indicate a direction, and I was left wondering what they were going to release in the next year. BF3 content, SimCity (which looked okay), and Dead Space 3 weren’t doing it for me.

    Ubi’s Watch Dog hi-end PC title has piqued my interest, but I still feel clueless about what they’re going to do with it.

  • @Thomas: A lot of people seemed really shocked by there being no Zelda announced for the Wii U launch window. I’m not that surprised. Twilight Princess on the Wii was only available during the launch window because it was a GameCube port.

  • Not interested in anything mentioned by nintendo at E3, BUT!
    That new Pokemon conquest seems like fun.

    A bit like final fantasy tactics meets pokemon.

    Yes please. (dammit do not own a 3ds and sold my ds)