E3 Nintendo: Focus on the old

Last up we have Nintendo and like last year they’re opting for a “Digital event” instead a press conference like the other big two. Essentially this means a series or pre-recorded announcements much like their regular Nintendo Direct events. Personally I see it as a cop out and as indicative of Nintendo’s attitude to gaming at the moment. The 3DS may be doing okay but the Wii U is most certainly not with some shockingly low sales and essentially refusing to turn up to E3 is not going to help. We begin with an actually quite funny robot chicken style announcement with Reggie Fils-Aime alongside some key Nintendo characters. A figure in the audience jokingly moans about Nintendo just announcing “another Mario game” pointing out another serious problem with Nintendo these days – an almost complete lack of any new intellectual property and almost no desire to innovate. Mario promises us though that this year there will be no new Mario game so surely this event should provide us with lots of new exciting games!

Unfortunately….not really. Within a few minutes we’re introduced to a new Yoshi game, a Captain Toad game and a Kirby game which all looked a LOT like Mario games. Heck even later on in the event they announced a new game called Mario Maker allowing us to design our own Mario levels. This latter game is sure to please the Mario crowd but it still just feels like a lot of the same. Super Smash Brothers was the key focus of the event which now includes Mii fighters. For the first time in the series you can use your Mii character with a decent amount of customisation in how they fight. We were also shown a series of Nintendo toys called Amibo which can interact with the game pad allowing these characters to jump into the game on screen. Essentially it’s already been seen before with Skylanders and Disney Infinity and I’m certain kids will love it. Interestingly the link works in both directions sending data from the game back to the miniature allowing your toys to potentially level up.

Speaking of Link we got our first look at the upcoming Wii U Zelda game. For the first time since the series earliest games the world will be fully open and fully explorable. Moreover you’ll be able to complete the game in any order you want rather than following a set path of ordered dungeons. The brief trailer was also pretty darn interesting hinting to a, dare I say it, futuristic spin on things. It was very fast and hard to really tell but both the enemy Link was fighting and his bow were quite….robotic. Also Link was wearing blue!!! Blue!! Happily Nintendo did introduce one new IP, a third person multiplayer shooter called Splatoon. The aim of the game here is to cover the battlefield with your team’s coloured ink before the opposing team does the same. Each player plays as a human who, for some unexplained reason, can transform into a squid. As a squid you can swim through your teams ink allowing you to quickly zoom across the map. The game actually looked really quite good, with players quickly switching from human to squid to first lay down ink paths and then swim along them.

And that really is pretty much it. It was by far the shortest of the three events shown at E3 this year clocking in at only 40 minutes. Aside from a nice look at Zelda and the potentially interesting Splatoon there really isn’t much else positive to say here. There was a very vague hint of a new Starfox game at the end but as of now nothing concrete. It’s hard to shake the distinct feeling that Nintendo has no idea what it’s doing anymore. Nothing really feels fresh or new especially the amibo idea. Also as with the first two press conferences practically everything shown today won’t be out until 2015. It looks like we’ll be having a rather dull gaming Christmas this year. Hey, at least we’ll be able to play GTA V again on our PS4s or Xbox Ones…..