E3 Perceptions: Nintendo

Some of you are saying to yourselves “well, of course he thinks Nintendo won E3, he’s a self-admitted fanboy”. Well, your wrong. The past couple of years I liked what they showed, but I wouldn’t say they had the best offerings. This year, however, I thought they really hit back hard thanks to two factors: returning favorites that fans have been asking years for and a handheld 3D game system that doesn’t need glasses for the 3D effect. Clearly, going after Nintendo this year was not a benefit to Sony.

But let’s go through this in detail, and see where Nintendo finally went right during this year’s Expo.

How many fans think Link SHOULD work in "The Skyward Sword".

You have to give credit to Shigeru Miyamoto. He makes quite an entrance. (And where can fans get a sword and shield like that?) He may have had trouble with the controls on stage, but I’ve read reviews from people who tried the game at Nintendo’s booth, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword supposedly works rather well. I like the added tools, the whip and the beetle weapon that can grab things for you. Although I hope he still has his classic boomerang. Holding the sword up to charge it (what, is it solar-powered?) is a good feature, and hopefully won’t be based on your life meter like the early Zelda games.

So one game took up a full segment. What happens next segment? A new Mario sports game happens.

Reggie’s first line is pretty much why I’m still a Nintendo person; universal appeal, crossing age, gender, and cultural lines. Oh, if only the other game systems understood that, although a few companies are, like the guys behind Little Big Planet. For that matter, I wish the comics and TV/movie industries would understand that multi-person appeal. Maybe I’d be reading more comics and watching more television and movies.

That said, isn’t Wii Party just Mario Party using the Miis? And Just Dance looks cool and all, but I think XBox’s offerings we saw yesterday may be the better dance games. Golden Sun also doesn’t really impress me, but I’m not into RPGs, which is what this appears to be.

Because when I think realistic James Bond, I think Oddjob. But then my view of "realistic" differs from Hollywood's.

I also have to admit that I don’t understand the call for a new Goldeneye game. A new James Bond game in that style? Sure. However, Goldeneye 64 was based on the movie, itself based on the Ian Fleming novel. Why does it HAVE to be Goldeneye instead just be a James Bond game? Plus your getting the current James Bond, the more “realistic” version who doesn’t get all the cool hidden gadgets or over the top villains and flunkies with strange motifs. Is that really going to be as fun, or is the virtual version of Daniel Craig going to have the fun that the real version doesn’t? Just refer to the game as the spiritual successor to Goldeneye and that should be enough.

I wasn't going to put another picture in this early in the article, but can you blame me?

I said in my rambling post Monday that my initial reaction to Disney Interactive’s Epic Mickey didn’t impress me as much as I thought. I still stand by that, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s going to be bad, or that I might not want to play it. On concept, I think it’s a great idea. It’s a trip into Disney’s past, from characters that haven’t been seen in years (the cartoon Disney’s House of Mouse and what I’ve seen of Playhouse Disney’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse tries the same thing) to going back to cartoon characters knowing they’re made of paint (seldom used in fourth wall breaking since the old black and white cartoons). Also, there is a lot of varied gameplay and who can argue with that. I think it will do rather well.

So more old favorites arrive in part 3, as well as the debut of the new portable everyone’s talking about.

Will yarn do for Kirby what paper did for Mario?

Bringing back old favorites like Kirby and Donkey Kong Country is a bonus for the Nintendites. They’re both beloved franchises (although DKC does have its shares of detractors as well). Too bad they’re bring back the mine cart levels. I suck so badly at those.  Metroid has been around for a while, but combining the new FPS version of the past few games with the third person exploring of the original games may well be the right combination to continue the franchise. Team Ninja doesn’t seem to be bringing out their “boob physics” on this one, the biggest concern for the non-Justin Baleys in the fandom.

And there’s Mr. Iwata. In opera, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings. In Nintendo conferences, it’s in the final stretch when Satoru Iwata shows up on stage. And there’s the Nintendo 3DS, successor to the DS, DS Lite, DS I and the Game Boys that preceded it (and might still be around were it not for Virtual Boy, but that’s a story better told by the Angry Video Game Nerd). Having the 3D slider is a good idea, because I don’t know how non-3D games will look on 3DS, and some people may not want to bother with it. And from reports I’ve heard (for those who were able to see it, considering the long lines), it really does work great—so long as your looking directly at it. If I look over your shoulder to see what your playing, I’m not going to get the full 3D experience. Still, it does bypass the glasses, which is tough on people like me who wear glasses all the time anyway. The Pulfrich I’ve been going on about the past two reports go over them OK, but most of the pictures I see of the new stereoscopic ones don’t look like they will so easily.

This doesn’t bring up the price concern. Reggie noted that 3D TVs are expensive. Darn they right they are. We’re talking thousands of dollars! The regular HD TVs haven’t come down enough, my budget problems aside. Just about there, since everyone now buys HD instead of the regular TVs (are those even sold anymore?), but they’re still around $4-500. And nobody’s doing anything with 3D. There are…what, two stations right now? The 3D blu-ray DVD players are also expensive and there’s very little coming out in 3D at home anyway. And you need glasses not just for your family, but what about guests? How many do you get, and will the picture look terrible even if you don’t care if you can see it in 3D? I can honestly say that there will have to be some major changes in technology before 3D reaches the acceptance of HD.

But what about the 3D games, whether it’s 3DS or PS3? Movie theater prices are higher for the 3D version than the regular version, which is why I saw Up in 2D last year, and I don’t plan to see any 3D movies. It’s the story that immerses me in the world, not the 3D, and if you need extra glasses to see it, it doesn’t really excite me. Maybe when Holodeck technology comes along (hopefully without the “malfunctioning and killing us all” part that’s been in Star Trek since the Filmation cartoon, much less The Next Generation), you’ll get the immersion you want, but I’m happy with 2D, and I’ll cop to the HD being an improvement. If the 3D games are as higher in price than normal games as their theatrical counterparts, I don’t thing most people’s budgets in this economy are going to be able to pick them up.

At least the 3DS has some other bonuses. Look what else they announced. A 3D camera (don’t count on a lot of megapixels, mind you), still the one touch screen but that makes sense, it will still have the online features of the DSi, and can play movies (perhaps internet streamed, because I don’t think movies in game pack form is going to work any better and the UMD movies of the PSP–remember how that failed). If it still has the microphone, I was half expecting him to announce video Skype features or the return of being able to play Game Boy games, lost I think in the last DS version or two.

Then you have motion-activated gaming. If you thought that was just for Wii and cell phone games, I will remind games of the Wario Ware games and a few others that had that in their game pack. I wonder how those would work with the new gyroscopes and things in the 3Ds.

In the final part, we get to see more of what this 3DS will be capable of, and our mysterious “Project Sora”, although you probably know what that is by now.

And there’s your Kid Icarus people. People have been begging for a new one at least since Pitt showed up in the Super Smash Brothers game. I’ve also heard about a potential Starfox game, but with this announcement now you people can stop asking for it every blasted E3! Happy, now?

Listen to the applause for Kingdom Hearts, Resident Evil, and the Metal Gear Solid franchise on 3DS, as well as the applause for Kid Icarus. I think they’re happy, but I want to see what Batman will look like in 3D.

So if his name is "Pitt", then who is Kid Icarus?

One concern I do have is when Iwata says that the units will be downloading, uploading, and communicating with each other, even if you don’t know it. Considering how fearful some people are of things like that, and how internet rumors about viruses go, I hope that’s optional, or it gives some kind of bell to indicate that it’s happened or something. Otherwise, there is some potential there, like patches (do DS games use or need patches?) or if someone develops a Little Big Planet type game (not actually LBP, as Sony bought that company to keep the title a PS exclusive as they said in their conference), and I hope they do. (Perhaps the next advancement to Scribblenauts. I saw JewWario playing the new version. Looks like a lot of fun to play.)

Just be careful what kind of picture you take with it. 🙂

And that’s the Electronic Entertainment Expo. I won’t go into the other press events, unless you really want me to, since this isn’t primary a gaming blog. However, interactive storytelling is in tune with the site’s mission to examine the art of the narrative, and for my money (little of it as it is), Playstation may have the better community experience and XBox the prettier graphics and colors, but it’s Nintendo taking technology and finding the best ways to make it work as a video gaming experience. This year there were finally games for the hardcore (something they’ve been light on the past year or so), games for the casual fan, and while Sony and Microsoft are finally catching up with the potential of the Wii, Nintendo has pushed in the handheld market while still working on some great stuff for the Wii.

That’s why to me this year Nintendo took the number one spot of the big three conferences. I tried to be as unbiased as I could, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy with the results. Go Luigi!

(What, I like him better than Mario. So?)