Well, after sitting through and tweeting about Nintendo’s 3DS conference in Japan, I thought I’d do a bit of a round up post and give some thoughts on the whole thing. They showed a lot of games, and made quite a few announcements, so what’s the best way to do this? Bulleted List time!
- They started the show off strong with Miyamoto coming on stage with his trademark Master Sword and Hylean Shield. He showed off a lot of game play footage of Zelda Skyward Sword, and it was frankly…really awesome. This was easily the most important part of the show for me.
- The 3DS conference proper started when Satoru Iwata came on stage. A lot of Mario related games for the 3DS were shown including Marioland 3D, Paper Mario, Mario Kart 7, Luigi’s Mansion 2, etc. Good stuff.
- Oh by the way, Nintendo needs to sell more 3DS to girls, so they’re making a pink one.
- The new game announcements started with a reveal of a new Fire Emblem, a new Dynasty Warriors game, a Square-Enix RPG called Bravely Default: Flying Fairy, and a new SD Gundam G Generation game featuring Gundam AGE.
- Being a Japanese conference, most of the games shown will clearly not see their way to the west. This includes an adorable Hatsune Miku game, Girl’s RPG Tsundere Life developed by Level 5, and a new Love Plus game from Konami.
- Kid Icarus footage was shown, along with an announcement for animated works based on Kid Icarus from Production IG, Studio 4°C, and Shaft to be distributed over Nintendo’s E Store.
- The biggest focus of the show went Monster Hunter. Tri-G was shown off in a rather spectacular trailer, and to the surprise of everyone was followed immediately by the announcement of Monster Hunter 4 for the 3DS.
So, as someone that doesn’t own a 3DS, what did I think of the conference? Overall, Nintendo showed off a decent line up of games, which is without a doubt the most lacking thing for the 3DS at this point. The relevance of this is cut down a bit considering that many of the games shown are clearly Japan exclusive. The first party titles look strong, particularly Super Mario Land 3D and Kid Icarus. Monster Hunter is clearly going to be a system seller in Japan, there’s no doubt about that, and that’s why the reveal of MH4 is such a big deal. Sony better convince Capcom to make it multiplatform if they intend to compete in Japan.
All that said, I still don’t plan on buying a 3DS anytime soon. I feel that for people that already own it, there’s a lot to look forward to. A disappointment for me was a complete lack of Zone of the Enders, which Hideo Kojima teased on his twitter feed some time back. Also surprising was the lack of any mention of the circle slider peripheral. You’d think they’d bring it up with how much pimped Monster Hunter. In any case, it looks like the first year slump the 3DS was in could soon be over, and with a decent library of games and the new lower price, I can see myself getting one…eventually. Vita is still at the top of my priority list.