Our E3 2009 Overview

After a brief introduction and flaunting of their staggering numbers, Nintendo quickly hinted at an imminent Mario announcement.  Dripping with anticipation, Nintendo reveals the bombshell that we were all waiting for. Actually, it was just New Super Mario Bros. with four player coop on the Wii. Like seriously, that was it. There wasn't even an announcement to whether or not it's going to be a WiFi capable game. Even so, after watching the on stage demo this is such an underwhelming package, even the inclusion of online coop wouldn't save it from hardcore gamer's scorn. However, I'm sure this game will sell about 98 billion copies its first week and sell upwards of that more than three years after its initial release.

Let's be honest, while there's nothing inherently wrong with either of these items, you spent your ENTIRE press conference last year touting them. Despite this, you still subject us to the lengthy demonstration. It's actually quite nifty to watch and does look to be fun. However, isn't it a sad statement that two of your consoles best games are going to be a collection of minigames, one of which is packaged with your console? Honestly, I also kind of get the impression that the motion plus just fixes the WiiMote and makes it do what the system was promised as doing in the first damn place.

So Iwata finally comes to the stage and boy does he let us all down. Hoping perhaps he is going to deliver a megaton announcement, he simply talks about the future and shows us the "WII HEALTH MONITOR." Seriously, one of those clamps you place on your finger to check your pulse. Seriously Nintendo? This is your future? What in the hell is going to be next, the Wii Fitness IV? What a joke.

Only a year and a half since the release of the first SMG, they're already announcing a sequel. I wasn't a big fan of the first, and can't help wonder why they're so eager to release a second one. A nice thing about the 3D Mario games to date is that they kept an amount of variety by changing settings and objectives. The real criminal offense here is that we're already announcing another Mario before we even acknowledge that a true Wii Zelda is in the works. Shame on you Nintendo!

Until this point, this press conference was a mere Ravi Drums appearance away from utter and complete failure. However, this little tidbit at the end gave it a glimmer of hope. Hailed as a cooperative production between both Team Ninja and Nintendo, this new Metroid appears to be a completely different beast from earlier entries. The trailer started out so cinematically, I was actually shocked that it turned out to even be a Metroid game. The gameplay snippets seemed to show it as a straight up action game, in the same vein of Ninja Gaiden. It certainly looks like it has a promise, and a more cinematic approach is what some of Nintendo's franchises are. I understand they're protective of their properties, but the distances they could go if they gave the development reins to someone with the brass balls to do something as simple as giving an iconic character a freakin voice. I think this one will be a game to watch when it surfaces in 2010.