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Nintendo Announces New Mario Bros, Mario Galaxy, Metroid
Nintendo's E3 press conference was an eventful one, with announcements for a new Super Mario Bros. Wii, a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, and a new entry into the Metroid franchise by Team Ninja. The new Mario Bros. game will be available for the holiday season, and the other two are scheduled for 2010. Nintendo also confirmed an updated version of the Wii Fit, called the Wii Fit Plus (trailer), due out this fall. A full list of Nintendo's announcements is available, which includes more games and new features. Live blogs of the press conference, with commentary and pictures, are up at Engadget and 1Up.
Golden Sun DS (not mentioned in TFS) is really what I'm most excited about. Golden Sun and its sequel for GBA were possibly my favorite RPG series for a long time. What a brilliant mixture of RPG gameplay with puzzle solving it was, with great graphics (for GBA) to boot! I've been waiting for a third for ages, as the second had a somewhat open ending.
WTF? Why can't add tags?
Submitter is right. This story needs emphasis.
Its nice to see Nintendo actually making an effort to appeal to gamers who want a game more involved than a tech demo, but can we please have something... fresh? Sure, Mario, Metroid, and Golden Sun are good, but it seems like Nintendo has really stagnated in good games that aren't gimmicks. Plus theres a bunch of old IP that isn't being capitalized on such as the old Japanese Fire Emblem games, Earthbound hasn't even seen a US release on the Virtual Console and Kid Icarus hasn't seen a new game in ages.
Nintendo needs to make more "hardcore" games so whenever they aren't in first place anymore they won't go belly up.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
As the type of person who despises media companies that crap out products having never-ending sequels (sims, guitar hero), Nintendo really brings out the hypocrite in me, as I feel compelled to always buy the canonical Mario games.
They had me at at Super Mario World.
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
... nintendo really needs 3rd party games badly. The fact they went with underpowered hardware really killed 3rd party companies ability to port their games to the system. Which means: No final fantasy 13, no Street fighter 4, No soul calibur 4, etc, etc....
Everytime nintendo learns from it's mistakes, it makes another one. It's also a shame that they fucked up starfox series so badly with Starfox Assault and Starfox adventures (was: Dinosaur planet)
I heard the starfox developer got in a tiff with Miyamoto on the direction of the starfox franchise and they went their seperate ways... shame, it appears that Miyamoto thinks he's gods gift, and he outrights ignores the fan's of the games themselves. Pretty awful in my opinion.
It's cool that Nintendo seems to be getting on the ball with Metroid, I hope Team Ninja's metroid is awesome, looks good from the trailers... I wish that they would farm out Zelda to team that does 3D combat well, I wonder what the god of war team could come up with working with Nintendo's own team.
Sure, everyone loves Mario but at this point it's obvious Nintendo is very stagnant. Most of the stuff on the Wii is pure shovelware garbage, and I've yet to be truly impressed with the uses of the Wiimote (although the device itself is fantastic and I even use it with my computer via bluetooth). The Wii is a stagnant system all-around for the more active gamer, and its "environment" is so sterile (less mature games, using the friend code system, etc) and the system is far enough behind the others in terms of graphical and processing ability to not allow for faithful ports of games on the XBox 360 or PS3.
You'd think Nintendo would at least ramp up 1st party games but nope. Most of what is coming out is unremarkable shovelware. The DS is definitely starting to lose some of its luster as only a few good games on it seem over the horizon--though I do think the DS was overall a success with many quality games.
Mario, Mario, and Metriod. And another gimmick, Wii fit. How depressing for us Wii owners.
As an aside, when is Nintendo going to come out with a faithful quality sequel to Star Fox 64?
I must be new here but again, please stop touching the pages guys.
Well that took a while to get fixed, but it all looks normal now.
Pokemon Gold/Silver's remakes: Now those are what many are anticipating.
With good cause too. I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Done
The title of the submission is missing a closing em tag after the word "Metroid", causing any non-styled text below it to appear italicized. This affects any page containing the title.
-- nolesrule
While there's extremely little information outside of "It exists", a new Wii Zelda has been announced. Supposedly more "mature", though that can mean many things to many people.
All in all, this is a MUCH better showing from Nintendo than last year's "Yay let's flail around faking music!" show. I almost wish they had split what we've see this year between this and 2008 E3s, so that we might see more of each thing.
Personally, I'm more excited for Golden Sun DS than anything else, though I'm sure to pick of SMG2 and Metroid. Too bad that rumored Metroid: Dread for DS never came about.
Instead of slashdotting a smaller site hosting a shaky-cam video of the trailer, how about a high quality direct-feed video on a larger site? Metroid: Other M trailer
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
In other words, Nintendo is continuing to beat a dead horse, and continue to reuse it's ancient copyright's
I agree that the 3rd party situation is abysmal, but I'm scratching my head when you say that they are stagnating. If anything, I'd say they are the only console manufacturer that has truly managed to innovate and break out of traditional "gamer" demographic.
And then there's this:
Translation:
So you want innovation... except when you don't?
If only they'd release Muscle March and similar Japanese games in Europe/US.
so as to not offend Wii owners but man does that Mario game look like something for the DS. I know graphics doesn't equal fun but it's hard for me to get excited over a game that looks like the SNES could have run it fine 15 years ago. It just looks like they went the easy route on this one. Slap together some 2D levels...charge $50.
The sad thing is that it probably is pushing the Wii to the breaking point processor wise. Needless to say I don't get the popularity of that system. The Wiimote too me works poorly and the games are gimmicky. This game will not make me drop $150 or so to buy a Wii.
Sorry if offended any Wii owners but I just don't get the hype.
I'm really wondering how Nintendo is going to resurrect Ridley this time. He's "died" in every game he's been in, and they're not going to tell me that killing him in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption didn't do anything. Again.
As much as I love the Metroid series, I know that it must some day end. For me, it'll never get better than Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. The way I see it, the whole adventure of finding new areas or trying to skip areas (at which I horribly suck, but the trying part is fun enough) is pretty much gone in the 3D versions. Time for Nintendo to leave the saga as it is, and create some new great idea.
I must be getting older because I just don't get too excited about "new" games. I wonder if I am leveling up in my Geekdom. I find myself caring less and less about video games and movies, and more and more about getting network jacks in every room in the house and getting all my DVDs ripped to a SAN so I stream them to the media room.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
The Wii really limits what you can do with a game, because there is just not the processing power or storage that you need for modern, sophisticated games.
I don't understand what you mean by "there is just not the [...] storage". Since Brawl introduced a dual-layer DVD format to Wii, Wii discs aren't any smaller in capacity than Xbox 360 discs. Or are you comparing WiiWare's 40 MB limit to Xbox Live Arcade's 250 MB limit?
Plus, the Wii is so much cheaper to develop for.
Once you have the devkit. But before Nintendo will even sell you the devkit, you must have a corporation or LLC with a leased office and a track record. That's a lot of overhead for a new business. Compare to Xbox Live Community Games: anyone with a PC, a C# book, and $794* can get started.
* Price of an Xbox 360 plus a 5-year subscription to XNA Creators Club.
What really breaks Wii Fit is the time spent navigating the menus between exercises.
What it needs is a way to setup a simple list of exercises in advance (like a songlist in Guitar Hero's quickplay mode), and then run you through those as quickly as possible (don't explain to me how it worked *every time*, thank you), and with as short load times as possible.
As it is now, you never really break a sweat...
That game looks incredibly entertaining. It is amazing that the side-scrolling games are still thoroughly enjoyed. Nintendo has been a great twist on these games by using nice graphics and throwing in 3D things from to time to. Just when you thought that Super Mario Bros was getting old like the Simpsons, they come out with games like this that redefine everything while still keeping classic aspects of the game alive. The whole reason I bought a Nintendo DS is for the New Super Mario Bros game. I was simply blown away with how entertaining that game was. It starts off nice and easy but gradually gets hard. You can rack up 99 lives quick, and you'll need every one of them when you get to World 8. But the reason I loved that game so much is because it is like they took the first Super Mario Bros for NES, and gave it all the cool functionalities that you got in later versions of Mario. Such as the Butt Slam, the Butt Slide, the ability to pick up shells and throw them, turning in to HUGE Mario and destroying everything in your path, the "double" jump thing (kinda) where you jump and grip on to a wall and boost yourself up even higher, and many other really cool things. I've been very happy with their newer Mario games and this one looks great.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
One is that the Wii limits the potential of the console as a platform, because they only have 512MB storage
You mean 2 GB per title. Games can save DLC to SD memory cards, you know. In fact, Wii Menu 4.0 upgrades this to 32 GB by adding SDHC support.
Yeah, how dare they not pander to the 1% of people that had a HDTV at launch
Granted. But look at what happened when Nintendo underestimated the number of people who would didn't have high-speed Internet access in 2001 but would get it over the GameCube's lifetime. The original Xbox ate GameCube's online lunch.
and the 10% (estimated) that have one now!
Google [ hdtv penetration ] links to this Engadget article that cites a Leichtman study claiming HDTV penetration has surpassed one-third of U.S. households.
How many people can be expected to buy a separate SD card to save downloaded content?
The same number of people who bought a separate memory card for PlayStation 2 or GameCube to save their progress in games. Or did most casual gamers on those consoles start over every time?
You can't base a business model around that
Which is why a couple GameCube games whose ordinary save files used an entire memory card, such as the first Animal Crossing, included a spare memory card in the box. A Wii game that relies heavily on WFC Pay & Play might include a 2 GB card now that 2 GB cards are cheap as chips.
Given the advances in solid-state media you'd think they'd have moved back to a cartridge format on a high-speed bus
Nintendo DS does this. But then to keep solid-state distribution media affordable, you have to keep the games down to about WiiWare size. Let me know when 8 GB SDHC cards (roughly the size of the DVD-9 media that PS2, Xbox 360, and Wii games come on) are as cheap as DVD-R media.
1985-to-1990 - NES - inferior to Sega Master System and Atari ProSystem/7800
SMS had more colors in a small space, but NES had a better sound chip, including three different tonal qualities for the square wave and hardware digital sample playback. As for Game Boy vs. Game Gear, Game Boy had the better sound and the better battery life and Alexey Pajitnov designing some of its games.
A price cut announced for the Wii console. It has been out for almost three years now, and still sells at the price it was initially released at.
Granted, the console is still selling fine at this same price - and hence demand seems to remain - but this seems like an unusually long time for the components within the system to have not fallen in price.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It seems to me you're not being fair to the Guitar Hero franchise.
Remember that all of the Guitar Hero games have been release in a span of four years.
The Super Mario Bros. franchise has spanned from 1985 to present and you're saying that Guitar Hero hasn't had enough innovation compared to Mario Bros.?!
I was going to point out all of the innovations that Guitar Hero has made in four years, but I think that including an entire band of controllers is enough to show that the Guitar Hero franchise is innovating at the same rate that the Mario Bros. franchise is when you consider that Mario Bros. has had a LOT more time to innovate.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
$15 for an 8GB SDHC
$17 for 25 dual-layer DVD+R discs at NewEgg
$9 for micro 4GB SDHC
$14 for 50 single-layer DVD-R discs at NewEgg
i would wager most PS2, Xbox 360 and Wii games could fit on a 4GB or smaller.
But you're up against 30 cent single-layer writable media, let alone pressed media which should be cheaper.
wake me up when you can ramp up sdhc production within days on demand...
I believe it's called PROM or OTP. They're manufactured blank and programmed with data before shipping. I seem to remember Nintendo signing a deal with Matrix Semiconductor (which SanDisk has since acquired) to provide OTP chips for Nintendo DS games.
I've seen a couple of rpgs where music was part of the plot (Rhapsody, Eternal Sonata) but *specific* music?
There's a lot of Beatles in Earthbound. Google [ earthbound legal issues ] brings up this page.
A truly wonderful game Eternal Darkness was hardly noticed or promoted. I only knew about it from an unusually positive review of the game I read online from a harsh critic like myself.
Nintendo has more games than they have time to make revisions for; in addition, they are somewhat constrained by those games in the new versions (not that it has stopped them from taking risks).
Plus they have new ideas which take LONGER to do. Design takes TIME and its much easier to copy existing stuff like most others do.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What intrigues me is how it's integral to the plot
The review and rewrite of the game's musical score would probably be so extensive that the game would need a complete round of play testing. Nintendo might not even still have the tools that were used to compose music for the SPC700 chip. And as the page pointed out, Nintendo doesn't want to defeat Michael Jackson in court as much as it wants to avoid getting sued in the first place. The return on investment for releasing a different Virtual Console title would appear greater.
I'm afraid Nintendo stopped a great thing with Retro Studios and started a strange amalgamation with Team Ninja for their Metroid series. When I played Metroid (every game minus the DS Hunters and pinball), the main themes involved exploration, discovery, and isolation. Those are very mature elements (see Myst).
Team Ninja isn't known for their dramatic story-telling, nor for complex games. When someone throws out Team Ninja, images of a dude in sunglasses, bloody gore, and fanservice physics come into view.
I fear Nintendo is turning their back on the generation that grew up on Metroid for the NES and are pandering to the gamers who drool over Devil May Cry, the new Ninja Gaiden, and Dynasty Warriors.
Nintendo will regret the day they release a Metroid title that includes a combo system.
How is this any different from Matrix Part 1 or Star Wars Part 1?
What do you mean "Matrix Part 1"...? They only ever made one Matrix film.
Bow-ties are cool.
Comparing WR to WR is not a valid analogy for comparing WORM to WORM.
Then what are the prices for WORM and WORM? I compared WR to WR because their prices are published on NewEgg. I'd be glad to use a solid-state WORM format for comparison, but I'd need a price quote first.
No HD = simpler graphics = less storage space needed.
It's more like "No HD = cheaper graphics chipset"
The Wii's graphics aren't a great match for the times. Everything is going HD, and with good reason: HD is becoming commonplace. So a gaming console that's not built with 16x9 and 720p (at least) as basic assumptions is a bit awkward.
Providing the exact same software on the Wii, but with an HD chipset would work. Granted, with the higher resolutions you'd be more likely to see the rough edges of the low-poly models, or the limits in the resolution of the textures - but on the other hand, there wouldn't be jaggies everywhere - even without antialiasing, going from 480p to 720p would reduce the apparent effect of aliased edges tremendously: 'cause you've got more pixels and 'cause the pixels are square at 16x9.
If you'd asked me what I thought of Wii not having HD a couple years ago, I would have said I don't care... Back then I was just getting my first HDTV, and hadn't gotten used to the idea that a TV picture (or video from a game console) could look as good as HD does. Now - I've seen various HD broadcasts, I've watched a few Blu-Ray, and I've spent some time playing PS3 games. It makes a difference. Even if the Wii is just rendering a bunch of textureless Mii characters, I would rather see that in HD.
Bow-ties are cool.
most WiiWare games (if what I'm thinking is correct that they're the console games from the past) would be a thousand times smaller or more unless they were made tremendously bigger by upgrading the graphic and sound effects.
Virtual Console games are the console games from the past. WiiWare games are the new titles (e.g. Mega Man 9; World of Goo) or the enhanced remakes (e.g. Tetris Party; Dr. Mario Online Rx). A WiiWare game can be up to about 40 MB, or a little bit bigger than Animal Crossing 1 or 2.
One of the largest conventional catridge console games prior to the release of the N64 was Super Metroid, and that was 3 MB.
Super Mario RPG was 4 MB, as were Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Super Street Fighter II, each of the Donkey Kong Country games, and plenty of others. I seem to remember S-DD1 games (Star Ocean and Street Fighter Alpha 2) being 6 MB. Neo Geo games were even bigger than that: up to 40 MB. And on top of that, you need to add the emulator, the game's instruction manual, and the emulator user interface to make a Virtual Console channel package.
Nintendo isn't just a developer they've become a producing and publishing house as well. They do some in house hire out some aspects, produce and publish games.
Metroid Prime for example, they produced it: contracted the whole thing out with as much oversight as they wanted.
Games are so expensive and complex to make now just about every game has a bunch of companies in the credits-- if not bugging you before the menu screen.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Tons of comments in this thread complaining that the Wii can't support higher res... problem is, the Wii's target audience doesn't really care. A couple of my friends own sick HD flat screens I would kill for, yet their only system is a Wii. They play Wii sports, Guitar Hero, etc. and love it. No use for a PS3 or Xbox - even with the quality picture.