E3 2009: Nintendo Press Conference

Ok ladies and gents, it’s time to check out what Nintendo had on show for their E3 Press Conference last night.

We all know that Nintendo are dominating the gaming market at the moment, but no one really knew what they were going to have on show this year. So let’s take a look at what was on display and what new announcements were made for both hardware and software.

All the information, after the jump.

4 Player 2D Goodness

To kick things off, Nintendo announced New Super Mario Bro’s Wii, which takes the classic 2D Mario gameplay but adds four player co-op to the mix. It looks like a lot of fun and will be available at the end of this year.

Nintendo Still Thinks You Are Fat

Next up, a new Wii-Fit was announced, called Wii-Fit Plus and takes the original Wii-Fit idea and adds to it. With so many fitness titles coming out now, it makes me wonder if the market is going to go for it or stop paying attention.

Old News

While we have already seen a lot about it already, Nintendo then went on to show off a lot of the Wii Motion Plus accessory. They showed off some live demos of Wii Sports Resort, with activities such as Archery and Basketball. It looks decent enough, but it feels like this is what the Wii should have been from the beginning, and definitely felt a little behind-the-times after the announcement of Project Natal from Microsoft.

The Motion Plus will be from July 26, and is also going the be bundled together with Tigerwoods.

Red Steel 2 was then shown off, with some really interesting sword play using the Motion Plus, and it was also then announced that Red Steel 2 will in fact require the Motion Plus, and not be playable without it. Another title announced for the Motion Plus is Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers, and seems to have a strong leaning towards combat, so keep a look out if you a fan of the series.

The DS Continues To Shine

For those of you who are more interested in the DS, the next segment should interest you a fair amount.

Some great DS titles were announced. Kingdom Hearts DS was shown, and is looking rather slick. Then the new Mario and Luigi RPG was shown, titled “Bowsers Inside Story” and actually has your characters being shrunken down and adventuring inside Bowsers body. Strange, but who knows.

My personal favorite DS announcement was that of Golden Sun DS. I was a big fan of the first two on GBA and the new one is looking great. The game has gone slightly 3D but still keeps the same great style that was seen in the original two.

Some new interactive novel games were also shown off, called Women’s Murder Club and shows that while it is an interactive novel, there are some interesting investigations that you will go through, in a way that looked a little bit like the CSI games from the glance I got, also with some possible puzzle solving.

A new IP for the DS was also announced, called C.O.P – The Recruit. It’s a third person shooter that takes place in an open world and showed off massive open areas of city and a lot of driving and gunplay.

Nintendo then showed off something called Style Savvy, but I stabbed my eyes out before I could find out what it was.

After I had repaired my eyes, I watched a short video about a nifty little application called Flip Note Studio, which allowed people to draw multiple pictures and make animations, in the same way you would do on your textbooks when you were in school.

The DSi is also going to have the ability to upload images straight to Facebook via Wifi, although it doesn’t look like any other Facebook abilities will be added.

Things turned really sour when Nintendo announced the Wii Vitality Sensor, which is essentially one of those little things they clamp on to your finger in a hospital to check your heart beat. Surely yet another peripheral can’t be a good idea and especially something that is quite frankly lame on multiple levels.

Mario is from Mars, Peach is from Venus

Nintendo then redeemed themselves somewhat with the announcement of Mario Galaxy 2, and from the look of the video will be very similar to the first one, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Wii Your Pants

Nintendo then just took a moment to show off some third party software that is coming and aimed more towards the “core” gamer. The Conduit, a new Resident Evil called the Dark Side Chronicles and Dead Space: Extraction were shown, and all looked pretty good, but will it be enough to satisfy gamers out there who want more from their Wii’s.

Didn’t See That One Coming

The final announcement was quite a shocker, and also made up for what was turning out to be a pretty lacklustre effort from Nintendo.

A trailer came up, and then in the trailer, the Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden folks) logo came up on screen. The next thing we knew, a new Metroid title was being shown, called Option M and showed off what seems to be a much different Metroid experience that we are used to. It looked like some sort of Ninja Gaiden/Metroid mix, with Samus kicking some serious but and looking very exciting.

See Me After Class

In the end, the Press Conference was honestly not enough from Nintendo, even though we all know that they will continue to sell tons of games and consoles. The DS stuff looked impressive but the Wii looks like it doesn’t know where it’s going and with Microsoft and Sony pushing so very hard to impress the gaming world, and especially the casual market, it feels like Nintendo really need to start thinking about their strategy for the upcoming year.

Last Updated: June 3, 2009