Earlier this week, Nintendo said it would be announcing new games during a Nintendo Direct presentation this morning. Many fans may have been skeptical since Nintendo hasn’t exactly shown a lot of exciting stuff for its new console since last year, but the company dropped some major bombshells this morning.
Starting off, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata announced that its internal teams are working on new Mario and Mario Kart titles for Wii U. He said that both titles will be playable at E3 in June. Both titles are being developed by their respective teams that have worked on the series for the past few iterations.
As for the new Smash Bros. game, Iwata says that development is moving along smoothly. Sakurai’s team should be able to show something by the time E3 rolls around. It won’t be playable, but we’ll at least get to see what the next entry in what is arguably Nintendo’s most popular franchise will have to offer.
Up next is a sequel to Wii Party, a party game that made use of Mii characters as they traveled across a game board playing mini-games. The sequel appears to be using the Gamepad as a virtual board game of sorts where players can toss dice, play roulette and perform other tasks.
The developers of the delightful Kirby’s Epic Yarn are coming back on the Wii U with a new Yoshi title. The game will be overseen by the director of Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Story. The game will retain the charming yarn style seen in the studio’s previous effort, but the gameplay will obviously be more in line with Yoshi’s Island.
After these surprising, but somewhat expected announcements, Nintendo pulled the rug out from underneath us with some announcements that nobody could have ever seen coming. The first is a collaboration between Atlus and Nintendo in a Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei crossover. It’s a strange combination, but it’s bound to be one hell of a strategy RPG.
Iwata later invited Eiji Aonuma, supervisor of The Legend of Zelda series, to talk about Link’s newest adventure on the Wii U. Aonuma said that the team is now rethinking Zelda and wanting to return to basics. It sounds like they want to make a non-linear game similar to the first Zelda on the NES. In the meantime, the team is working on a remake of Wind Waker that will be released this fall.
Finally, Nintendo showed off the first footage of MonolithSoft’s newest title. The game looks a lot like Xenoblade Chronicles, but it features all new characters and locations. The existence of mechs and the use of the “X” used in Xenogears makes it seem like MonolithSoft may be making a sequel to the classic PlayStation RPG.
