Nintendo’s keynote address at E3 2011 was the most newsworthy of any of the three console makers, announcing a killer lineup of first party titles for release this year for 3DS, as well as the all new console WiiU.
1) The 25th anniversary celebration of the Legend of Zelda seems well done with games stretching across all Nintendo consoles. The re-release of Link’s Awakening, finally, was one of two new game announcements. The other is that Zelda Four Swords Adventures, would be available free in the DSiWare store.
2) The Zelda Orchestra was classy and presented Zelda in a really strong light. By highlighting not only the games, graphics and lore, but the music, it spotlights the best of Zelda and celebrates the silver anniversary in style.
3) Nintendo had five major 3DS first party games to show – Mario Kart, Super Mario 3D, Star Fox 3D, Kid Icarus and Luigi’s Mansion, the latter of which was a new game announcement.
4) Kid Icarus will not only be a single player action game, but also feature trading cards that act as AR cards to add battles to the game, as well as a 3-on-3 multiplayer game as well.
5) And the announcement – WiiU! It’s an all new system, with HD graphics and a unique new controller that has a 6 inch touchscreen.
6) The “new controller” as it was called thusfar has the ability to not only supplment gameplay like the Dreamcast VMU but also can display the full game for play on the controller screen, so the TV can be used for something else.
7) One seemingly awesome feature of WiiU is that the New Controller can be used table top to play multiplayer games without the TV screen. They showed a backgammon-like game.
8) There were a variety of core third party titles shown and confirmed for WiiU, including Batman, Ninja Gaiden, Darkstalkers and Ghost Recon.
9) Just when you thought Sony won E3 2011 with the worst new system name for PS Vita, Reggie and Nintendo return to give us WiiU. One has to wonder how many additional vowels Nintendo could add to future iterations.
10 After the developers of Kid Icarus rap up that game, Iwata announced that they would be moving next to a new Super Smash Brothers game, one that would release on both 3DS and WiiU and have some sort of connectibility between both.
Check out intial impressions of :
Mario Kart 3DS
Luigi Mansion 2
Super Mario 3DS
We’ll have tons more on Nintendo and all at E3 2011 all week long!
