Round Table: Wii U Nintendo Direct Reactions

Kyle England

Boy, this Nintendo Direct sure was a doozy. I barely had time to catch my breath between the game announcements, Wii U updates, Virtual Console details, and amazing trailers. Nintendo is very confident, pushing all of these cards out on the table so early. It makes me positively salivate to imagine what the follow-ups to these announcements will be at E3. Salivate, I say!

One thing that struck me was how humble Mr. Iwata was in the presentation. It’s kind of surreal, seeing a multimillionaire president of a multinational electronics company apologize to us for not having games in January and February. It’s good to see that Nintendo also answered our cries for GamePad support in the Virtual Console, and for slower load times on the Wii U system. Could these guys be any nicer?

Being that there’s always some anniversary to celebrate, this year marks the Famicom’s big Three-Oh, and the promotion for it is very interesting to me. Seven games for 30 cents? I can dig it. You know why? Because Super Metroid is the game of the month in May. I can experience this glorious paragon of game design on my Wii U GamePad for thirty pennies. Everyone should, because it’s great.

Speaking of great games coming back, I didn’t think that Nintendo would pull a move like the Wind Waker HD remake. Those screenshots are looking magnificent. Are we about to see a slew of Nintendo HD remakes? Part of me wants to see older games remastered, but another part of me is fine playing the original versions and saving the cash.

I’m also very interested in this new Yoshi game. The game looks beautiful, but why yarn again? Yoshi would go so much better with a crayon or pastel look. Kirby’s Yarn was the definitive yarn based game, so I wonder why they kept that same style. I’ll hold other judgments until we see more Yoshi, but it does look great!

And after not having any previous interest in the game, I think I am sold on The Wonderful 101 now. The monsters and action look very cool, and the water slide action featured at the end of the trailer is unparalleled by any console game.

However, the absolute show stopper of the whole presentation for me was the mysterious new Monolift Soft game. It looks simply incredibly. I was excited just seeing machine guns and dinosaurs, but then they brought out the mech. Holy crap. This is a great time to be a Wii U owner.

Andy Hoover

First of all, I want to thank Nintendo for being the first company to realize that it is perfectly okay to announce games well away from E3. Previous Directs have toyed with this concept, but never has there been so many big announcements so far away from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

As for the games themselves, I don’t know where to begin or even where to end, because I could probably go one for hours, so I’m intentionally going to keep this brief and stick to what really surprised me.

So, Zelda, we all knew it would be coming eventually, but a Wind Waker remake, I would not have guessed it. I personally believe it has aged incredibly well, thanks in no small part to the fact I loved the sailing mechanics and the gorgeous visuals. I would dare label Wind Waker as one of the prettiest games ever made and this will only make that argument stronger. But I’m really most looking forward to the incredible sense of discovery and adventure I felt whenever I saw a new island appear as a vague silhouette on the horizon.

The Wonderful 101, to be honest, I wasn’t totally convinced when I played it at E3; I could see what they were going for but something just felt off to me. Granted, I still haven’t seen how the gameplay is coming along, but what was shown off today seems to suggest there is a lot more going on than I initially expected. The experience looks like it will offer more variety, and getting to see the broader picture of the world and characters was spectacular. Regardless of what happens with the mechanics, I can already tell you that I love the atmosphere, energy, humor, and art style.

And then there is the game that nobody asked for but a lot of very nerdy people have already decided they need to survive, Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem. This is such a strange combination, a classic swords and sorcery themed strategy game mixed with a more traditional RPG often set in near future, post apocalyptic, demon infested Earth. However, what unites these games is actually pretty simple, the audience. Both series appeal to gamers looking for intelligent, challenging gameplay, combined with great storytelling and compelling characters. Now I’m just curious to see how this game will actually function. Will it be a strategy game or a regular JRPG, or some strange sort of hybrid?

Oh, and how can I not comment on Monolith Soft’s new game. I honestly don’t know if I have ever seen anything quite so spectacular, giant transforming mechs battling even larger monsters, in quite possibly one of the most gorgeous and massive environments I have ever seen rendered in a video game. Epic is too subtle a word to describe the scope of this game. And did you see the chat window along the side of the screen, I think that is pretty much a promise for some sort of online multiplayer, though I don’t want to speculate on how that will manifest itself down the road.

All of this just leaves one question burning in my mind, if this is what they are telling us now, what in the world do they have up their sleeves for E3 and beyond?

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