Nintendo E3 2011

Looks familiar.

Hope it isn't heavy.

Oh, hecks yeah!

Those are the three best images to sum up this years Nintendo conference.


It started with a full Zelda orchestra.  Why?  Because Zelda Zelda Zelda, that's why!  Head Nintendo dork Miyamoto got up on stage to talk about Skyward Sword for the Wii.  We didn't get much new but that's OK.  We got the idea last year.  That game is coming out during the holiday rush.  We also got news about Zelda Ocarina of Time, Zelda Link's Awakening, and free Zelda: Four Swords for Nintendo's portables, but I wanted the show to move on.  I've played those games and frankly I'm starting to get ZeldaD-out.  (If you're new to Zelda, I'd recommend Link's Awakening for six bucks but you'd have to buy a 3DS first.)

That was the first 20 minutes.  Next up was a look at some 3DS games.  The 3DS has had a slow start so it needs some games to show off.  The ones shown were Mario Kart, Star Fox, Super Mario 3DS, and probably my favorite moment of the conference, Luigi's Mansion 2.  That is worth a purchase of that system by itself.

Blah blah blah, talk about 3DS.  I understand that they need to talk that portable up, but I think most people were itching to hear about the high definition Project Cafe.

So we got to the big moment.  So it turns out that the system name is Wii U.  Yep, "Wii U".  Than they showed off the controller.  It is a combination of a GameCube controller and a iPad.  I hope they're light, because it looks awkward.  It's going to be the biggest thing Nintendo has to sell to the public, because I'm sure everybody reacted skeptically to it.  Anyway, they showed off how it can be used to play games without the TV on it's six inch screen.   My favorite demo was the one that showed the tablet being used for golf.  It's not huge, but it was a neat idea showing the golf ball while swinging a Wii remote at it.  It also has a face-to-face chat feature.

After talking up the Wii U controller, we got a video of developers talking about how awesome they thought the console was.  I sure hope they're not lying.  Nintendo badly needs third party support.  We did get some news by an Electronic Arts guy that they are going to bring Nintendo's online support into the current century.  They showed a couple games, the best being Ninja Gaiden 3.  They didn't show any Nintendo Wii U games, but we'll see them at E3 2012 for sure.  (They mentioned Super Smash Bros for both 3DS and Wii U.)

Here's what we don't know about the Wii U after the show:  Wii U specs, specifics about their online service, what games we're going to see, what the friggen price is going to be for the controller and system, whether the system will have a Mario game to launch, and so forth.  But hey, we'll have a Super Mario Mii, which I was hoping for.  (It better have online.)


After the show, some nerds argued that Nintendo sucked and was forcing another gimmick on the industry.  Oh, nerds!