E3 2011: Nintendo Conference

Well, Nintendo did it again. They came back and out-shined everyone. There is a lot to take in so let's get to it.

Introductions

The press conference started with a celebration of 25 years of Zelda. An orchestra played Zelda music along with a video that ended in a great clip of Skyward Sword. The orchestra stayed out to perform popular sound clips from the series while Miyamoto acted goofy. He is a wonderful man.

Zelda Love

Of course, we get Ocarina on the 3DS next week, but we also get Link's Awakening as a downloadable title on the 3DS today. Us 3DS owners will also get Four Swords as a free download later. Skyward Sword will be out this holiday season.

3DS Games

We get a new Mario Kart this Christmas, Star Fox 64 this September (with optional tilt controls so meh), an all new 3D Mario game with the raccoon suit this year, Kid Icarus: Uprising (that also has multiplayer), and... LUIGI'S MANSION 2!!! It all looked fantastic. They then showcased the third party games with Resident Evil: Mercenaries, Mario and Sonic at the 2012 Olympic Games, Ace Combat 3D, Tetris, Cave Story 3D , Resident Evil Revelations, Driver Renegade, Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions, Tekken 3D, and of course Metal Gear Solid 3! Then then covered how the store will also get trailers and demos, as well as the stuff that's already available, such as the Pokedex.

Wii U

Then they unveiled the new console... err, the controller at least. But it all looked awesome. An example of what an HD Zelda would look like on the system put my jaw on the floor. The controller will have rumble, four shoulder buttons, touch screen, microphone, speakers, accelerometers, a gyroscope, and an inward facing camera. Yeesh... in a good way. A new Super Smash Brothers is being developed for the 3DS and the Wii U. Had enough? It ain't over. Then this happened.


Tech demoooooooooooooooo!

They then announced something called New Super Mario Bros Mii where you can play as your Mii if that's your thing. IT HAD BETTER NOT BE! There were some tech demos and the first officially announced game is apparently LEGO City Stories. Oops. But then they rolled out the third-party support. Ken Levine is interested, Darksiders 2 is coming out at launch, it's getting BATMAN ARKHAM CITY, Ghost Recon Online, DiRT, and Aliens Colonial Marines. Things seem very promising. John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA, then appeared for his first time ever at a Nintendo conference talking about how excited he was about the console. Reggie concluded the conference and I was left feeling quite satisfied.

So how do we feel? Well, after the Wii we have a right to be a tad skeptical, but so far things seem good. True, we don't know a hell of a lot, but what needs to be taken away from this is that the 3DS has a great line-up, the Wii U apparently looks amazing, and Nintendo finally seems to be getting back it's long lost third-party support. Nintendo wins E3. Time to wait and see what's in store for us tomorrow!