Nintendo's E3 Press Conference this year was one of the most anticipated events of E3 for many denizens of the gaming hobby. For people like me who play games for fun and not to champion some console like a knight of old in order to win glory and maidens, I resign to my fate of simply enjoying as many video games as possible and not giving a crap about who makes them. Instead, I watched E3 objectively looking for new fun things to do over the next year and beyond.
Nintendo's presence at these E3 conferences is always a big one and this year was no different. They had the massive task of broadening an install base for the 3DS which they sadly released with little to no support (just as they did with the DSi). It seems it was worth the wait for those who bought the system (these people do not include me) and a wide variety of new titles were announced including some surprises most notably Luigi's Mansion 2, the sequel to the much beloved ghost buster inspired Mario title that was a near launch title for the GameCube. Also, what appears to be a remake or sequel to Super Mario Brothers 3 with Mario Galaxy Style gameplay is in development. Along with this, there were several minor announcements for titles for the 3DS eStore including several Zelda titles due to it being the 25th anniversary of Zelda.
Although there was much rejoicing at this, there were other matters on Nintendo's agenda - namely the announcement of their new system the Café or as it is now known: the Wii U (Kung Pao jokes aside). It appears to be a console slightly above the level of the PS3 and Xbox 360 (being able to handle native 1080p resolutions) but with a controller with a touch screen on it that game content can be streamed to or used during play. This is interesting for those who do not already own PS3 or Xbox consoles supporting HD content and online multiplayer. A video was shown of several different ways the console could be utilized from aiming guns to Othello and an art tablet.
Although this controller may resemble the DS or a Tablet PC, in some ways Reggie, the President of Nintendo of America, reassures gamers that it is a peripheral. What does this offer to those who already own these established systems? For one, Nintendo teased new Super Smash Brothers games to be featured on this new system (and the 3DS) along with this were several tech demos including an extremely high resolution one of Link from Zelda fighting a massive spider. Nintendo also lauded support from many 3rd party developers which is not really a surprise because with this new hardware presumably, they already have at least a few years worth of ports that they could release of games that the Wii was unable to handle.
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