E3 2014: Nintendo Edition

With the last conference finally done, we now have Nintendo's line up for the near future. Is it all it's cracked up to be, or will the Wii U struggle again this year?
If Nintendo needed to deliver on games to convince players to buy a Wii U, then they have succeeded with flying colors. A multitude of games were announced, revealed, and dated to cement that Nintendo has a line up for this holiday season, and a fairly hefty one at that.

To start off, Nintendo detailed the new Super Smash Bros once more, this time revealing a few features with it. Technically there were four newly announced characters, albeit it three of them in the forms of Miis. There are Mii brawlers, Mii swordsmen, and Mii gunners in this new game, but the latest character reveal is Palutena from the Kid Icarus franchise. We also were able to see Nintendo's new figurine system called Amiibo, where you can place figurines on your gamepad to transfer your fighting data to the figurine. The information is a bit scarce, so expect more info to come later from Nintendo. The Smash Bros segment came to a close with the 3DS version being released October 3rd and the Wii U version sometime this holiday.

Outside of that, there were a metric ton of Wii U games shown. Yoshi's Woolly World was shown off, and it looks like a Wii U Kirby's Epic Yarn, but with Yoshi instead, and it will release next year. Also releasing next year on Wii U is Kirby: The Rainbow Curse, which is a spiritual sequel to Kirby Touch and Go, Xenoblade Chronicles X was shown and looks phenomenal, also releasing next year, as well as Splatoon, a 4 v 4 online shooter, and the new Zelda game, which had a great reveal trailer and looks astonishing, but no demo.

Yup. This is Zelda Wii U

As for games releasing this year, we had the reveal that Hyrule Warriors, this Zelda/Dynasty Warriors cross over, will release on September 28th and have both Zelda and Midna as playable characters. Bayonetta 2 was also shown with a release window of October and will come with the original Bayonetta with it. Then we had the surprise reveal of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, which is a full version of the little Captain Toad minigames from Super Mario 3D World. Release dates were also shown for Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, both release on November 21st, but the 3DS was strangely lacking from the press conference.

The conference closed out with the surprise reveal that Miyamoto was working on a new Star Fox game for the Wii U and that more games will be announced throughout the rest of the day. With such a cavalcade of news announced, it's hard to deny that the Wii U has some really good looking games coming out this holiday and that they look like a ton of fun. Unfortunately there wasn't that much of a focus on the 3DS, but with the 3DS doing very well as opposed to the Playstation Vita, that can be slightly forgivable. Overall, very well done.

Also the press conference started with Reggie and Iwata beating the crap out of each other in an epic fight and had Robot Chicken shorts shown throughout the conference. Win.

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