NINTENDO
DIRECT:
Last week Nintendo
held another one of its informational/promotional videos called Nintendo Direct. In it Nintendo’s
President Satoru Iwata talked about what projects are in the works for the Wii U.
Some of the stuff they talked about is still a couple of years out at
least and others can be expected in the coming months. While the video itself was rather bland and
unexciting the announcements themselves are a pretty big deal and shows that Nintendo is really trying to bring a
quality lineup of games to the Wii U. There is a lot to get to so let’s begin.
Games coming
soon:
Nintendo will be
releasing some new first party titles starting this spring. No official release dates have been set as of
yet but Game and Wario, Wii Fit U, Pikmin 3, Lego City: Undercover and The Wonderful 101 are all scheduled to arrive in either the spring
or summer.
HD Remake:
Nintendo is finally
getting in on that easy money that is HD
Remakes with a re-release of The
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The
game is expected to be out by the fall, so late summer (potentially early fall
if delayed) seems to be when the game will land.
New HD
Zelda:
Nothing was shown of Nintendo’s latest Zelda game, which still is in a conceptual stage, instead the
project head informed us that they are experimenting with how different
artistic styles will look with the significant graphical boost and that they
are ‘rethinking’ the conventions of the franchise. Apparently they are looking at how the games have
always required players to complete dungeons in a specific order and how they
have all been so focused on single player, or at least the console iterations
have.
Nintendo
teams with Atlus:
Nintendo announced
that they will be doing a cross over game combining their Fire Emblem series and Atlus’s
Shin Megami Tensei (also known as Persona). Currently titled Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, no details, footage or screens
were revealed of the game. Persona is a more traditional turn based
JRPG series as opposed to Fire Emblem’s strategy approach, which
makes them a little strange for a pairing (also the whole, one is a bunch of
students and the other is about knights and castles). My assumption is that the game will take the
turn based strategy approach of Fire
Emblem, but I could easily be wrong.
E3 plans:
Nintendo spoke about
three more upcoming projects that we have to look forward to in the next year
or two; the next Smash Bros., a new
3D Mario, and a new Mario Kart. All of these games will be talked about at E3 yet Smash Bros. was the only one where it was specifically stated that
we would get to see screen shots, which is a pretty lame thing to tease months
in advance and then plan to reveal at the biggest gaming expo (in terms of significance
not attendance because that would go to Gamescom).
Screenshots I mean, not Smash Bros., I feel like a trailer or
something is more worth building to. Apparently they are still intending to
have Smash Bros. be on both the Wii U and 3DS, but no word on exactly how that will work just yet.
Monolithsoft’s
new project
The makers of Xenoblade Chronicles have a new JRPG
coming to the Wii U, simply demarked
as X for the moment. The trailer showed a lot of running around
and battling huge monsters in real time combat. It sort of made me think of Monster Hunter except this game also has
a big mech that is also a motorcycle. Here is the trailer:
Wii U Party
It is a new family party game like Wii Sports or Wii Play except now it is set up like a board game with a bunch of
motion and Gamepad based mini
games. Basically it’s like if Mario Party and Wario Ware combined into one game that had Miis instead Mario and
his friends.
Yoshi’s Yarn
A new Yoshi side scroller is coming out from the team that created Kirby’s Epic Yarn. They are sticking with the yarn aesthetic,
which I find to quite nice and unique, but aside from that not much was
detailed. No release window as of yet for
the game, despite the fact that it was one of the few announcements with
gameplay footage. Also I don’t know why Yoshi’s Yarn isn’t ‘epic’ or some other
exciting adjective.
Miiverse
updates inbound:
Nintendo
has 2 software updates planned, one for the spring and another for later on in
the year. Among the improvements meant
to be brought about by these updates are: the software will launch faster, you
will be able to return to the Wii U
menu faster, games will have more than one official Miiverse community, you will be able to create your own password
protected communities, a filtering function for comments, “usability
improvements” and the ability to view Miiverse
from your smartphone. This last feature
will start as something you access through your browser, but Nintendo is working on an app to offer
more options and make navigation more intuitive.
Virtual
Console
It will finally be available
after the spring update (the phrasing made it sound like it will not be
included in the spring update, which is weird, but will be coming very soon
after), unfortunately though it won’t be launching with the full library of
titles available on the Wii. All Wii
U virtual console games will allow for a back-up save for game progress,
connection to Miiverse and the
ability to play the game without the TV on the Gamepad. If you have
previously purchased the game on the Wii,
have transferred it to the Wii U and
want these features you will have to buy the game again, but luckily it will be
at a largely discounted price. Virtual Console games from the NES will cost $5-$6 or $1 if it has been
previously purchased and SNES games
will cost $8-$9 or $1.50 if you have already bought it. At the Virtual
Console’s launch it will only have games from these two systems; however, Nintendo does have plans to bring Game Boy Advance games to Virtual Console eventually. In addition, to celebrate the NES turning 30 this year, Nintendo is offering one game from
either the NES or SNES each month for just $0.30 and the
title will remain at that price for 30 days.
Due to the fact that the Virtual
Console isn’t up yet if you want to purchase one of the following games
during their promotional period you can do so through the Nintendo eShop.
Each
month’s offer:
January
– Balloon Flight (This offer is still
ongoing)
February
– F-Zero
March
– Punch Out
April
– Kirby’s Adventure
May
– Super Metroid
June
– Yoshi
July
– Donkey Kong
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