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Nintendo's E3 2008 Presentation: A Review

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E3 has become a staple in gaming culture, evolving from a small convention where the gaming industry shows off their stuff to the press to a big convention where the old American practice of showboating and shock and awe takes center stage. Anything but a shocking presentation is considered subpar. Yesterday Nintendo delivered a presentation at E3: the one everyone waits for. Nintendo-- yesterday-- announced Animal Crossing: City Folk with Wii Speak (which we need to do something on), Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort while showing off the new Wii Motion Plus they announced the day prior to the presentation. This year the common consensus is that the presentation and what was presented for the most part was garbage, and I can say that I agree.


In my opinion this is not the worst E3 for Nintendo. It's far from it. There were times where Nintendo had absolutely nothing to deliver. This year they did have quite a bit to state, but the delivery was probably the worst it could have been. Out of everything in the presentation the most important item was the Wii Motion Plus. It and its companion game are the only two things out of the entire presentation that was unknown before E3 began. Nintendo made a HUGE mistake by announcing the Wii Motion Plus a day prior to their presentation. Even if Nintendo decided to do it a long time in advance because of a rumor of a Microsoft motion control gizmo it still is a huge mistake. It's much better for the Xbox fanboys to laugh it up for a day and then shit their pants the next because Nintendo brings up something to 1-UP them again. Microsoft had absolutely nothing of any interest to anyone to announce except a US-only Final Fantasy XIII release on their console, nothing Nintendo needed to worry about.

What the advance announcement did to their presentation was essentially taking away any shock and awe it would have had out of it. I made a joke yesterday that because they announced it early that anything except a virtual lightsaber duel on the stage between the Regginator and Miyamoto would have been subpar. The sad thing is that joke probably is the truth. Even a swordfighting duel between Mr. Fils-Aime and Mr. Miyamoto would have been an excellent show. Thankfully none of the demonstrations were too long. Mrs. Dunaway's laughs apparently are something you want to put up with in extreme moderation. Wii Sports Resort, like its predecessor did with the Wii Remote, looks as if it will show off the new capabilities of the Wii Remote with the addition of the Wii Remote Plus very well.

Animal Crossing is to many enplussers an excellent game. It appears to be a huge favorite of three of our mods as well: DotEd, CaptainSeagull, and Jayvee. I admit I'm not a huge fan of the series because of time constraints, constraints limiting the amount of time I have to play games. I might play a game for an hour or two at the most at a single setting, perhaps maybe once to thrice a week. Because of Animal Crossing's realtime nature I'd be spending the majority of my time "playing" the game pulling up weeds. I'm really not the one to be giving my opinion of the game. From what I could perceive it looked to be the original Gamecube game's graphics in a Wii environment with added in-game capabilities and method of voice chatting. For me the most interesting thing about the entire Animal Crossing demonstration was the speech attachment to the sensor bar. It was given only a small mention. That entire presentation could have been delivered better by giving a demo of the Wii Speak or mentioning that it wasn't possible to give a Wii Speak demonstration if there was no way to do it yet. For non-Animal Crossing fans this portion of the presentation was Boresville (Like my Pun? No? Bah.).

Wii Music is another game in the "Wii Whatever" line of casual games which shows off the many things the Wii is capable of due to its innovative motion control system. This part was in my opinion the best part of the entire presentation. Miyamoto despite having to deliver his entire skit through a translator gave the best delivery of the entire presentation even when it of itself wasn't even close to being his best. He demonstrated a lot of the game, but the audience was apparently already fatigued by previous botched deliveries to care a whole lot. Not being a fan of any of the button-pressing (Simon-like) "music" games, I find Wii Music to be a breath of fresh air. I think many of the more interesting and perhaps competitive aspects of the game that would make it more of a... well... game would have been a bit more necessary to show on stage. If I had it already it'd be something cool to show off to people who come over, but I'd quickly be finding myself playing a game of tennis or racing them in a game of Mario Kart. It's sort of like the Photo Booth application that comes with the Macintosh. It's a fun little program that you show off to people, but it quickly gets boring. Its apparent ability to teach you how to play an instrument looks to be an interesting aspect. I'd wonder how accurate it would be in teaching.

Reggie himself did promise a hardcore game for the holiday season this year. A definition of a hardcore game is something that's up for debate. For me in Nintendo's sake is a continuation of one of their many series of action and adventure games such as Mario, Legend of Zelda, or Metroid. Heck, it could be a new one. It just needs to have a challenging aspect of the game, something you have to work hard at to complete while having fun doing it. These casual games cannot deliver on that fundamental desire of a gamer. The new Wario game for the Wii would have been one to show off as a game like this if they didn't have anything new. It would have been fun to actually see someone play the game while showing off some of the hand animation sequences created for it. Captain Rainbow is new, however. It's a game they introduced that pokes fun at second rate characters Nintendo introduced. Sadly, the game by simple fact of a very stupid name choice looks as if it will be doomed to be a third rate game. Nintendo badly needs a library of hardcore games that aren't in the virtual console otherwise the Wii will be doomed to be just a fad as the Xbox and Playstation fanboys repeatedly iterate. Nintendo will be left to having their handheld market save them from doom as has happened for 10 years prior to the Wii's launch.

Delivery of a speech is everything. You can bullshit your way through a speech simply by delivering it magnificently. Reggie demonstrated this himself when he said the phrase he'd probably be most remembered for. That year's presentation wasn't that great either, but he had everyone's attention with that simple phrase.

It's Funny Because It's True #3Miyamoto: "We're Making Pikmin", New Wave Race Coming

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