E3 2015: Unexcitingly, Nintendo stays on its own course
Nintendo’s E3 effort uninspiring, despite celebrating Mario’s 30th anniversary.
Before we take a look back at Nintendo’s E3 digital event Tuesday afternoon, it’s worth reminding everyone that Nintendo is not competing with either Microsoft’s Xbox One or Sony’s Playstation 4 in any way possible. This has been a company that respectably has stayed on their own track, and done a great job at it.
With that said, during E3 Nintendo holds their event the day after both Microsoft and Sony, and do a separate, digital event instead of a live conference. Nintendo has done a good job getting Nintendo and video game fans alike excited for yet another Mario, Yoshi or Zelda game.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those years.
While the focus of this year’s digital event seemed to be on Mario’s 30th anniversary and the anticipated release of Super Mario Maker, Nintendo talked about and debuted their upcoming titles, while giving little hints of Mario Maker in between each game along with developer diaries and documentaries.
After a small skit in the beginning where all of the executives were in Muppet form, Nintendo opened with Starfox Zero, one of their more anticipated titles on the WiiU. (And no, none of the execs did a barrel roll.)
One of the “new” parts of this new Starfox title are the vehicles and their specific functions. The Arwing isn’t new, however with the push of a button, you can do several maneuvers from a U-turn to turning the jet into a walker. The pilot’s screen will be on the WiiU gamepad while the TV will be used for the more cinematic view.
More amiibos are reportedly on the way and Activision revealed a new tie-in with Skylanders: a turbo-charged Donkey Kong and a big Bowser, both with their own vehicles. They will both work as a skylander and as an amiibo, switching between the two by twisting the base of the amiibo.
While a new Zelda WiiU game wasn’t announced as expected, a Zelda game did make its way into the show. The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes was announced Tuesday morning, a co-op dungeon-crawler/puzzle game for the 3DS and looked pretty good. The difference between this Zelda game compared to others is that Nintendo is using this game to shift the franchise’s focus to multiplayer and cooperative gameplay.
They also announced Hyrule Warrior Legends, which’ll come out for the 3DS that includes all of the DLC characters.
Nintendo debuted their adorable side-scrolling puzzle game in Yoshi’s Wooly World, or Nintendo’s version of EA’s Unravel. The difference between the two is that Nintendo will have plush amiibos for their game. If you already have an amiibo, you can use it to turn Yoshi in a Yoshi-shaped version of that amiibo.
But after Zelda, and Yoshi’s Wooly World, the announcements of a new Metroid, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Animal Crossing and a few JRPG’s were not so impressive and it began to feel like Nintendo was going through the motions of their annual event.
The presser slowed to a halt almost when they announced Mario and Luigi Paper Jam, a Super Mario and Paper Mario crossover. It’s not exactly sure what they are trying to achieve with that particular title, however it’ll be interesting to play with Mario and Paper Mario at the same time. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
But, as most conferences have this year, Nintendo saved the best for last with Super Mario Maker.
Super Mario Maker allows players to create their own Mario levels with a lot of detail and share it among their peers. The game will also include the use of amiibos, allowing Mario to change Mario into a different form during gameplay, including the Wii fit trainer as an 8-bit character.
Overall, Starfox and Super Mario Maker were the highlights of Nintendo’s Digital Event this year. While they stayed on track with their titles and partnerships, there was nothing too impressive coming from Nintendo this year. Both Starfox and SMM add some hype to Nintendo’s upcoming lineup, but neither are going to blow anyone away.
When Nintendo begins to go into detail with their NX console next year, we may see Nintendo get back into the console war race and really make big strides forward with their “next-gen” console.
But for today, we just saw Nintendo being Nintendo, the quiet kid sitting alone in the corner.