News: Nintendo Outlines Wii U Releases for Early 2013

LEGO City: Undercover, Pikmin 3, and more coming out in the first half of 2013.

By Kevin Knezevic. Posted 12/05/2012 15:00 3 Comments     ShareThis

News Desk Masthead - Wii U 3

As we’d previously reported, today’s Nintendo Direct presentation was dedicated entirely to 3DS and Wii U games that would be hitting their respective consoles in the early part of 2013.

Reggie himself kicked off the presentation, thanking fans for their fervent support of Nintendo’s newest home console. He then turned the proverbial stage over to a LEGO-ized version of President Iwata, who introduced LEGO City: Undercover, the open world action game coming exclusively to Wii U. Undercover puts players in the role of Chase McCain, a detective hired to track down the nefarious Rex Fury, a hard-boiled escaped con who is wreaking havoc on the eponymous city. As you’d guess from the game’s title, Chase will have to put on all sorts of disguises to hunt down his nemesis, each of which will give him unique powers and abilities. Undercover also makes extensive use of the GamePad’s features, turning the controller into a scanner that allows you to survey your environment and find hidden secrets and criminals. Fans of the actual blocks will be happy to hear that LEGO will even be releasing a tie-in set that contains unique codes for the game, which will unlock special missions and vehicles. LEGO City: Undercover is scheduled to hit North America and Europe early next year.

From there, the presentation segued into Pikmin 3, the long-awaited followup to the Pikmin franchise. Unfortunately, no new details on the game were revealed, but we did get to see a rather extensive trailer for it, which highlighted several new enemies and areas, including one that looked suspiciously like the first game’s Forest Navel, complete with bioluminescent mushrooms and fiery blowhogs. Pikmin 3 is slated for a painfully nebulous Q2 release, so until then we’ll just have to make do with the gorgeous footage we already have.

We also got another look at Game & Wario, the spiritual followup to the WarioWare series. Unlike previous titles, though, Game & Wario features 16 distinct mini-games, many of which support up to five different players with one controller. We got a brief demonstration of this with “Gamer,” which was reminiscent of the WarioWare games of old. Like them, this game features a collection of lightning-fast challenges that you’ll have to clear on the GamePad, all the while making sure that your television avatar isn’t caught playing video games past his bedtime. Other games will also make use of this type of asymmetrical gameplay, giving the player with the GamePad a specific task while your friends keep an eye on the television for you. More footage of Game & Wario will be posted later today on Nintendo’s Facebook page.

The final Wii U game covered in today’s Nintendo Direct presentation was Wii Fit U. This installment in the popular fitness franchise features 77 different activities, including many from Wii Fit Plus. The title also comes with its own Pokéwalker pedometer that tracks how many calories you’ve burned while away from your console. Wii Fit U will be released in the first quarter of 2013.

This was just a brief glimpse at the games in store for Wii U; Reggie promised an additional 30 would be hitting the console in the next couple of months, which would take us just about up to E3. With that in mind, what do you think of today’s announcements? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section!

3 Responses to “News: Nintendo Outlines Wii U Releases for Early 2013”

  • 690 points
    KisakiProject says...

    Pikmin 3 Q2 and no mention of 101…grrr..the Nintendo droughts and delays begin.

    Game & Wario looks cool. If I do get a Wii U for Xmas at least I’ll have that in the beginning of the year…but I can wait till P3 now for sure.

    • 192 points
      Robin Wilde says...

      I think we can expect a bunch of reasonably cool stuff spread throughout the year, preceding some of the best releases (Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros.) in 2014. If Nintendo have a problem it’s releasing everything at once and running out of momentum.

  • 261 points
    JasonMaivia says...

    The one thing I dislike how Nintendo’s handling their game announcement – that they’re waiting too close to the game’s launch to mention anything about them. They need to hook more players in by making more early announcements, so we know what to expect, and could be a more of a reason to actually want to buy a Nintendo console NOW instead of consumers waiting to see if they’d want one or not. In that time of wait, those who want to play good games may have already purchased or have made up their minds about purchasing another console by Microsoft or Sony.

    While the lineup for 3DS and Wii U are good, it’s still incredibly light. There isn’t much to look forward to in the future.

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