Today’s Nintendo Press Conferences have done more for the hard-core Nintendo fan than this summer’s dreadful E3 performance. And while the casual juggernaughts Wii Music and Animal Crossing: City Folk were part of the show, the other announcement were successful in appeasing the Nintendo loyalists like myself.
Here are (in my opinion) the biggest highlights which would have made me feel alot better a few months ago.
1. Wii SD Storage: I know this isn’t a hard drive, but based on the 360 HD prices, I’ll gladly pick up another SD card to store some N64 games. This should have been in since the beginning, better late than never. The VC and WiiWare games aren’t terribly large anyway, and at the price of 1 or 2 GB SD cards, I think this is easily worth it. Now if I can bring my copy of Mega Man 9 to my friend’s Wii…
2. Club Nintendo: One thing the rest of the gaming world has lorded over North America was Club Nintendo. Basically you buy Nintendo stuff, you get redeemable points for free Nintendo goodies. And you can placate many unsatisfied Nintendo fans by giving them a free Yoshi plush.
3. The DSi: I’m still on the fence about this, and it doesn’t matter because we won’t see it outside of Japanese imports for a year. And that’s really the point, DS sales are slipping in Japan to the PSP, and they want to get back to the top while they can. It’s neat, but my heart still yearns for the iPhone for camera and surfing goodness. I plan on keeping my current DS Lite, I get my GBA slot and don’t have to go spending cash in the DS store. Although if they offered WPA support I’d find that useful.
4. Some ‘core’ titles: They offered some good hardcore games in the next year. The new Punch-Out is a nice reminder of the SNES classic. A remake of the original NES Fire Emblem is welcome by those who are fans of the series. A new Mario & Luigi RPG for the DS sounds great, as does releasing Sin & Punishment 2 outside of Japan! And in a surprising move, Nintendo is publishing the hardcore shooter The Conduit, the small FPS-that-could that has been looking for a publisher since it surprised everyone earlier this year.
Here are the other 2 major announcements from the conference.
Wii Speak: Coming free with the microphone next month, I’m not excited about just sitting around chatting about games we could be playing. There needs to be something more interactive for me to care. Also it’s “free” with their $30 mic, what about another microphone, how much does it cost then? It is nice to have some microphone support, if only they could put it in Mario Kart.
Play For Wii: This was announced only in Japan, so we’ll see if they bring it elsewhere. These are just remakes of Gamecube games with Wii waggle controls. While it’s not the complete ultimate of rehashing, I just don’t see myself caring enough to play Pikmin with Wii controls, unless the price is right.
So while E3 2008 was seen as a disappointment by most Nintendo fans, their Media Summit has shown some promise that Nintendo still cares about them.
