So, was it worth it?
The show began with Cammie taking to the stage to show off a Mario Montage, then they announced a 4-player New Super Mario Bros game for the Wii. Looks pretty good if you liked the DS version. The game is apparently coming out this holiday.
Wii Fit Plus confirmed as expected, it’s more or less what you would think. More exercises, customisable options and so on. Reggie then comes on to show off MotionPlus, which is looking damn good. Two demos of archey and basketball were shown and I was impressed.
Next came announcements that Kingdom Hearts is coming to the DS and a release date for Mario and Luigi 3: this fall. Then came the big shock that Golden Sun is finally coming to the DS. It looks sweet, I’m dying for that one!
Next came a bit of a lull in the form of casual games like Women’s Murder Club and Cops for DS, then the girly games.
DSi Sales were announced and in the first 2 weeks, 1 million were sold in the US. 400k DS Lites were sold during that same time period. It was then announced that a new Mario vs Donkey Kong game is coming to the DSi on Monday as a download on DSWare. In it you can design your own levels and share them with people over WFC. Pretty cool.
There was a quick glimpse at Wario Ware DIY, but no sign of any release dates. Then came the news that this summer you will be able to upload your DSi photos directly to Facebook.
Cammie mentioned how good the new Zelda game for DS is, but there was no footage and no immediate release date. Iwata-san then came on to show off a new gizmo called the Wii Vitality Sensor which clips onto your finger and measures things like heartbeat and stress. Weird.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 emerged next in a nice trailer, looking just great…despite no release date. It’s at this point where I knew that Zelda was going to be a no-show this year 🙁
Reggie came on to talk about Wii exclusives like The Conduit, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction. They look like good games overall, it’ll be interesting to see how they turn out.
Then the Team Ninja logo came on screen and I thought to myself….what could this be? You would think of Zelda, right? Wrong! Instead it’s a side-scrolling Metroid game called “Metroid: The Other M” and looks more cinematic and epic than ever before. Be sure to hunt the trailer down, because it was pure awesome.
And that was it. It’s a shame that we didn’t even get a small teaser for Zelda, but Metroid and Mario were great announcements. Time will tell if Ninty has done enough, what do you think?