After Microsoft and Sony’s conferences both brought huge announcements, all eyes were looking toward Nintendo to see if they could match. While the overall conference was as fun as it was in years past thanks to Nintendo’s increasingly weird digital events as this year brought puppets into the fold, it was an unfortunately light year. Light on huge announcements and only elaborating on video games we’ve heard about already, it felt a little lacking. We got some new footage of the newly titled Starfox Zero, and it looks great. Platinum Games has their work cut out for them as Starfox looks gorgeous, but ultimately seems to have all of the play style ideas (like different vehicle missions and such) from the canceled Star Fox 2. It’s also got a stupid title. Miyamoto said he didn’t wan’t to number it or title it just “Starfox” since it’s not a reboot or sequel, but zero is a number. Either way, the fact that the Wii U Gamepad gives a cockpit first person perspective is pretty neat.
Afterwards, Nintendo showed off a trailer for Fire Emblems Fates (the new two version game), some new Legend of Zelda games for the 3DS, a terrible looking Metroid spin-off, more amiibo stuff, and basically showed off extended trailers for games we knew existed.
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The biggest push for the show had to be for Super Mario Maker and Mario’s 30th anniversary. There was nothing new here except the announcement of Nintendo’s help for a charity, but that and Yoshi’s Wooly World soaked up so much time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be happy to play these games whenever they release, but I look forward to E3 every year with the promise of new stuff to come. To hear about new Animal Crossing and Skylanders amiibo just rubs salt into the already wide amiibo wounds. There’s no way I’d be able to buy these at launch thanks to Nintendo really messing up the stock domestically, and thanks to that, I’d never be able to find them ever. I feel for the poor kid who wants a Ness amiibo, or a new K.K. Slider amiibo, and can’t get it because Nintendo’s essentially only made one batch. amiibo used to be harmless fun, but as the newest Splatoon amiibo show, they’re now a DLC delivery device that’s actually holding back the progress of the games they are attached to.
Then again, there’s a new Mario Tennis coming to Wii U so all is forgiven. Check out IGN for full Nintendo at E3 coverage!