Nintendo at E3: Epic Yawn, for the Most Part

Fol­low­ing along with Nintendo’s E3 press con­fer­ence on Twit­ter, the live reac­tions were less than enthu­si­as­tic.  Well, it’s no won­der with a pre­sen­ter like this:

cammie-nintendo-presenter

Does she look excited about Nin­tendo to you?

For the most part, Nintendo’s pre­sen­ta­tion ambled along like an old woman with a bad hip.  The over­all expe­ri­ence was so blah, #nin­tend­o­fail was in dan­ger of becom­ing a trend­ing topic for a while there.

These were the lowlights:

  • Wii Fit Plus — Some minor improve­ments to Wii Fit, such as omit­ting wait-times between exer­cises and the abil­ity to tar­get spe­cific areas.  Riveting!
  • Wii Motion­Plus — Add-on hard­ware to make the Wiimote sen­sors more pre­cise.  Will run you about $20 for some­thing that makes the Wii func­tion the way it’s sup­posed to.  Oh and by the way, some new games will require it, like Red Steel 2.
    (notic­ing a trend here with the tack­ing “Plus” onto every­thing?)
  • Ter­ri­ble scripted jokes between Bill and Reggie.
  • Final Fan­tasy Crys­tal Chron­i­cles: Crys­tal Bear­ers — Yet another Final Fan­tasy title…
  • Women’s Mur­der Club: Games of Pas­sion — New “inter­ac­tive fic­tion” game series for DS, adding another nail to the cof­fin of real adven­ture games.
  • Style Savvy — Yet another brain­less pink-packaged game aimed at tweenaged girls.
  • DSi cir­cle jerk: over 1M units sold in less than 2 months, and DSi gamers will soon be able to share pho­tos on Facebook.
  • Wii Vital­ity Sen­sor — Periph­eral that mon­i­tors pulse rate, ner­vous­ness, etc. I don’t even know what the fuck to say about this…

I’m on the fence about:

  • Leg­end of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — Demo playable at E3 this week, but didn’t like the few screen­shots we saw.
  • Mario vs. Don­key Kong — Play­ers will be able to design their own lev­els, game­play looked kinda fun.
  • Golden Sun DS
  • War­i­or­Ware DIY — Gamers can design their own minigames from scratch & share with friends; kinda neat, I guess.
  • Res­i­dent Evil: The Dark­side Chron­i­cals — Another on-rails shooter from the RE franchise.

But there were a few sprin­kles of cool:

  • Wii Sports Resort — Bas­ket­ball, archery, sky­div­ing & more.
  • Super Mario Galaxy sequel — yes, yes, yes!  The demo looked awe­some, the graph­ics bright and beautiful.

And then, sav­ing the best for last, Nin­tendo made up for much of its E3 snorefest with the announce­ment of…

Metroid: Other M

metroid-other-m

Okay, seri­ously, I want this game NOW!

Update: Penny Arcade sums up my feel­ings exactly.

Related posts:

  1. Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly