Ramblings | The Wii U Direct Emotional Roller-Coaster

Nin­ten­do is one video game com­pa­ny I can always count on to sur­prise me when I think I know every­thing they have to offer.  Just a few days ago, they post­ed one of their Nin­ten­do Direct videos aimed at announce­ments for the Wii U.  Curi­ous as to what they could be announc­ing at this point, I decid­ed to take a look.  What fol­lowed was one of the biggest emo­tion­al roller-coast­ers I’ve ever rid­den whilst watch­ing a stream­ing video.  Let’s go through each of the announce­ments one by one:

Miiverse Explanation

Miiverse is one of the coolest and most unique fea­tures thus far on the Wii U.  I sup­pose this is why Nin­ten­do felt the need to make sure every­one knew exact­ly what the ser­vice is all about.  They took the time to explain all of the fea­tures of the online forum-type ser­vice and even showed off a new fea­ture that will be in Pik­min 3, allow­ing you to take in-game pic­tures and post them.  I’m not going to pre­tend like I was super-impressed by this por­tion of the video, but Miiverse is def­i­nite­ly an amaz­ing fea­ture that is worth your atten­tion.  They go on lat­er in the video to show off some more new addi­tions to the ser­vice includ­ing a smart­phone app and the abil­i­ty to have mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties per game.

System Updates Coming

Okay, I perked up a lit­tle bit here.  Wait­ing a lit­tle bit of extra time load­ing into the sys­tem menu and games can be annoy­ing, but it’s cer­tain­ly not a deal-break­er.  At any rate, I’m glad to see that Nin­ten­do is tak­ing the time to make sure that this issue gets addressed.

Virtual Console Coming to Wii U

Now you’ve got my atten­tion!  I’ve been look­ing for­ward to this ever since the sys­tem launched.  In all fair­ness, I’ve had access to all of my vir­tu­al con­sole titles on the emu­lat­ed Wii menu from day one, but it’ll be amaz­ing to be able to play them off-screen.  Being able to boot up the gamepad and launch straight into a game with­out even need­ing the TV makes the Wii U a real force.  The only thing that wor­ries is me is if they’re think­ing about-

Virtual Console Upgrade Price

To be per­fect­ly hon­est, I’m real­ly much more upset about the wide­spread back­lash this is going to cause.  I real­ly don’t mind fork­ing over the price, $1 for NES and $1.50 for SNES games, to upgrade my favorite vir­tu­al con­sole games to the Wii U ver­sion.  I under­stand that it’s set­ting a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for com­pa­nies to charge you mul­ti­ple times for dig­i­tal con­tent you already own.  This is not some­thing Nin­ten­do hasn’t been doing for quite a while.  I own The Leg­end of Zel­da on three dif­fer­ent plat­forms and it may not be stop­ping there.

Wii U Virtual Console Trial Campaign

For the 30th anniver­sary of the Fam­i­com, Nin­ten­do is releas­ing vir­tu­al con­sole titles every month for a while for the low price of 30 cents each.  The tri­al starts imme­di­ate­ly and they’ll release one game per month all the way through July.  Here are the games sched­uled to be released:

• Bal­loon Fight
• F‑Zero
• Punch Out! Fea­tur­ing Mr. Dream
• Kirby’s Adven­ture
• Super Metroid
• Yoshi
• Don­key Kong

Not the list I would’ve craft­ed, but I’m pret­ty sat­is­fied to be able to own each of these games for such a low price.

Please Be Patient

Ask any­one and they’ll tell you that I’m a pret­ty patient indi­vid­ual.  I love to hot­ly antic­i­pate new games, but I gen­er­al­ly don’t have any prob­lems wait­ing.  That being said, when you men­tion the fact that I’m hav­ing to wait over and over again, it becomes a lit­tle hard­er to deal.  I get it Nin­ten­do, you need a lit­tle bit more time before Pik­min 3 is per­fect.  Please stop apol­o­giz­ing, it’s real­ly not mak­ing it any eas­i­er on me.

Already Announced Game Trailers

Nin­ten­do then took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show off some trail­ers for The Won­der­ful 101 and Bay­o­net­ta 2.  Most of the stuff that they showed didn’t pro­vide much more infor­ma­tion than I already knew about each of these games.  I’m also not all that invest­ed in either of these games, but it’s good to know that some more exclu­sives are on the way for the system.

The Future of the Wii U

I love when­ev­er Nin­ten­do has the chance to be as self-aware as they were when they made these next announce­ments.  They came straight out and said that they are aware it’s obvi­ous, but they still want­ed to announce, that a new 3D Mario game, new Mario Kart  and new par­ty, not a Mario Par­ty, game are in devel­op­ment.  I agree with them on the point that it’s pret­ty much a giv­en that these games are in devel­op­ment, but it’s still nice to know for sure.

New Yoshi Game

Being a huge fan of Kirby’s Epic Yarn, I was delight­ed to see the art style that this new Yoshi game fea­tures.  I can only hope that they do even half as good a job with the music.  Play­ing that game was the most relaxed I’ve ever been play­ing a video game.  I’m also look­ing for­ward to see­ing how they use the Yoshi char­ac­ter along with this type of game­play.  This was where the video real­ly start­ed look­ing up.

Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem

While it seems as though these two series might cre­ate a pret­ty good crossover, this trail­er real­ly just cre­at­ed more ques­tions than it answered.  What kind of game is this going to be?  Which char­ac­ters are they going to use?  I sup­pose the answers to these ques­tions will come much lat­er, so I’m just going to let this one go for right now.  No sense in get­ting worked up about any­thing before there are any real details.

The Future of The Legend of Zelda

So, again, this one was kind of a giv­en.  This is espe­cial­ly true giv­en the video they had avail­able at the 2011 E3 show to show off what HD Zel­da would look like.  Here, they’re not giv­ing us much more infor­ma­tion oth­er than the fact that they’re look­ing at shak­ing a few things up.  It looks as though they’re con­sid­er­ing adding some sort of mul­ti­play­er aspect to it and mak­ing it a bit less lin­ear.  Let the spec­u­la­tion about a Zel­da MMO begin!  Seri­ous­ly though, they’re real­ly just teas­ing us at this point so we’ll have to wait until E3 to real­ly hear any­thing aweso-

Wind Waker HD Remake!!!

Remem­ber what I said before about being patient?  Screw that.  I want this right now.  This is the per­fect title for them to quick­ly do an HD remake for and I couldn’t be more excit­ed.  It’s one of my per­son­al favorite games in the series and I can’t wait to see what they do to tune up the game­play and the fea­tures they add with the gamepad.  I’m assum­ing that they’re going to make the search for the tri­force pieces a lit­tle more bear­able and the gamepad would be an excel­lent tool to include the tin­gle tuner.  It’s com­ing out this fall and I will be pick­ing it up on day one.

New Xenoblade Game?

After that last announce­ment, Iwa­ta real­ly could’ve just dropped the mic and left.  With one more trick up his sleeve, he shoed off a very impres­sive-look­ing trail­er for what appears to be an HD Xenoblade game.  Giant dinosaur bat­tles and robot suits are a hard com­bo to beat and the game looks drop-dead gor­geous.  Not quick as excit­ing, to me, as the Wind Wak­er remake, but I’ll def­i­nite­ly take it.

Wrapping it up

So that was the whole thing.  I hon­est­ly wasn’t expect­ing much out of this Nin­ten­do Direct, but I’m very glad that I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.  It wasn’t com­plete­ly sun­ny through­out the whole thing with their nom­i­nal fees and con­stant apol­o­giz­ing, but I’m pret­ty stoked about some of the stuff that’s in the pipeline now.  Then again, I sup­pose that was their intention.