Nintendo of America, Inc. proved that their Wii system is truly for all- both hardcore gamers and those who have never played before- by announcing various games and accessories at their keynote speech at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier today.
Company president Reggie Fills-Aime stated that Nintendo hopes to make video games the most popular use of people’s leisure time. Along with games for the portable DS system including a cookbook, a picross game, and a follow-up to Nintendo’s hit Brain Age, Fills-Aime also showed off various games and accessories for the Wii system, including a Zapper gun, a guitar, and a steering wheel. New games in popular franchises such as Mario Kart, Super Mario, and Super Smash Bros. were featured and given release dates for late 2007.
Nintendo spent most of its time on a new Wii game called WiiFit, a fitness game. WiiFit comes with a balance board and features various minigames such as heading soccer balls, moving a platform to get a marble into a hole, yoga, and stepping exercises. Veteran Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto showed the game off and challenged Fills-Aime to a soccer-ball heading competion, which Fills-Aime won. Miyamoto then showed off how the game also measures posture, center of gravity, and body mass index by using the balance board. The results showed that Fills-Aime was somewhat overweight, which caused him to quip, “Muscle weighs more than fat.”
Clips were also shown from some Nintendo games, including Super Mario Galaxy, a new platforming adventure featuring the famous plumber, his first since 2002. Mario was seen running around different planets and flying while wearing a bumblebee costume.
I lost 10 lbs. with Wii Boxing. This looks kickass!
It’s nice to see Nintendo making a comeback in the console wars.
Is this copied and pasted from some web site or news article?
It’s my own writing, actually, although it was written in the style of a news article. I wrote it first for some of my family in the style of a newspaper, then pasted it here.
Sounds really dull, actually.
Wouldn’t the last one be Super Paper Mario?
Super Paper Mario is a combination platformer/RPG, just as the previous Paper Marios were. There hasn’t been a full platformer Mario adventure since Sunshine.
Zapper: interesting. Metroid, interesting. Online Guitar Hero III? Kick ASS.
WiiFit. Probably very important. Not interesting… but it might make me shed this tubbage.
Bzzt! New Super Mario Bros. came out for the DS last year.
It is a platformer and it is GOOD.
Ah, I forgot about New SMB. Add “non-handheld” to the sentence.
Man, the lineup is still kind of a snooze. You’ve got Mario Galaxy, which was supposed to be out in May but is looking more like Christmas at the earliest, Metroid, which looks identical to the last one, and Smash Brothers, of which there have been no actual screens yet.
Count me in as someone with no interest in Nintendo’s “serious” titles like Brain Age and Fitness programs.
Why’s the DS such a SNOOZE right now? I haven’t bought a DS game in over six months.
Where are the real Wii games?
What did they announce aimed at hardcore gamers?
Sorry, what? You mean screenshots? Dig in.
As for Metroid, I don’t give a damn if they port over one of the existing games. I’m dying to play it with the new controls.
Aw, come on. Those are clearly pre-rendered.
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Mario Kart Wii
Metroid Prime 3
Brain Age 2
And the Wii Zapper!
Basically, everything they announced is aimed at “hardcore” gamers. Or are you using “hardcore” as a euphemism for “games with blood, boobies and guns”?
Brain Age is aimed at hardcore gamers about as much as the New York Times Crossword Puzzle is.
Metroid is the only one of the other four that really approaches that demographic.
That said, the number of “games coming out that any/all gamers will enjoy” expanded from three to four with the addition of Mario Kart, and the “gimmicks coming out that non-hardcore gamers will LOVE” expanded enough to make them more buckets and buckets of money. So Nintendo seems to have done pretty well at E3. Let’s try to refrain, though, from the… ah… overflow of lust… for everything Wii.
(For the record, my biggest hope is that at least three, and hopefully all four, of the key games mentioned - Mario, Smash, Kart, and Metroid - are playable in full with little to no use of the motion-aspects of the Wii controller as possible. Which, I think, makes me by default not-the-target-audience-of-this-thread. That said, if I could play all four of those with a GC controller or the ‘classic’ controller, I will buy a Wii as soon as they start coming out, for those four games alone.)
:dubious:
Yes, Virginia, the Wii can produce good graphics. It’s not a Commodore 64 or anything.
Is this the general E3 Big 3 thread?
Microsoft: The one bad thing about Assassin’s Creed coming out is no more Jade Raymond. But it did look pretty damn good. Mass Effect looked friggin’ awesome. But I planned to get both of those anyway. CoD4, which I had no plans to get or interest in, was sold to me by that presentation. Fantastic looking thing. And we’re getting Elites in Europe. Surprisingly little Halo, considering they have two titles coming out.
Nintendo; Very much focused on the casual/new gamer market, as they said themselves. The part on Wii Fit lasted about as long as all their other demos put together. The Shiggy/Reggie head-to-head was pretty funny though. Metroid looked good, but i’m not a big Metriod fan so I couldn’t really say how impressive it was. Mario Kart Wii, no surprise. And the Wii Zapper, Wheel, and Balance Board, packaged with the games, which is nice. I would’ve liked more Brawl and Fire Emblem, but that’s just me.
Sony: The beginning of this was brilliant in comparison. Microsoft - here’s some statistics on the 360 that make us look good! Nintendo - here’s some stats on the Wii and DS that make us look good! Sony - here’s some stats on the, uhm, PS2 which make us look good! But less time on stats meant more time for trailers, which was nice. Echo… something looked brilliant. A cross between Lemmings and Escher. Almost but not good enough to sell me a PSP, but if I had one it would be a definite sell on that presentation alone. MGS4 new trailer, again, brilliant, but not enough to get me to buy a PS3 (at the current price, anyway). Killzone 2, likewise. Sony had a bit of a problem in that their third-company title reel was essentially the same as MS’s one (although i’m less bothered about that since I plan to get a 360). A lot of focus on the Home system, which was pretty much just meh for me.
Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t see much of anything aimed at hardcore gamers. Not that I doubt some will be along shortly, but the OP should do a little reading on what sorts of games hardcore gamers are into maybe before claiming Nintendo has something for everyone just yet.
Mario Fatty Fitness World ain’t quite it.
Again, I confess- “veteran” would have been a much better word in that sentence than “hardcore.” My apologies.