Well I guess before I get to the Nintendo Direct, I’m gonna write my usual intro.

In-between my last post (the disappointing Squeenix direct) and this one, there’s been a few presentations, they weren’t good. Back 4 Blood got a bit presentation, it looks fine. PC Gaming Show was fairly boring but it had some interesting indies. The Future Games Show was pretty boring. Take-Two wasted everyone’s time with something WORSE than the Koch Media presentation. Capcom did nothing, might have been more useless than the Gearbox thing. Wow this E3 is bad.

And now it’s Nintendo’s turn. Literally only they can save this terrible E3. The bar is set so low.

Nintendo has a LOT of rumors going on. 2D Donkey Kong game by the Mario Odyssey team, a 3D Kirby, a 2D Metroid (this is a leftover rumor that ended up false last year lol), something Fire Emblem (so many different versions of this rumor), an exclusive RE game, new Mario Kart, and probably a bunch of other stuff I don’t recall because there’s so many fake rumors I can’t keep track. The big one is the Switch Pro… which won’t be shown in the Direct if it’s a real product Nintendo wants to release. I don’t know if any of those rumors will be true. The safe bet is to say they aren’t but some of them are certainly interesting and possible.

Outside of the rumors, there’s a lot of things we can assume will be there or not. BotW2 is almost definitely showing up though I believe it will only come out early next year. We’ll see at least one Smash character (maybe 2). Seems like we’ll see a new Monkey Ball, that got a real leak. Maybe we’ll see some Zelda 35th anniversary… stuff (I’m not counting on it). We’ll NOT see Metroid Prime 4. We’ll probably not see Bayonetta 3 but there’s a chance I guess. I don’t think we’ll see Splatoon 3. I don’t think we’ll see any Pokemon but there’s a small chance since there was no pre-E3 pokemon direct. Pikmin 4 has been “sort of” announced for years, a real announcement would be… a thing. And Nintendo generally does announce actual things at E3 so… I figure we’ll have one decently-big announcement maybe, whether it’s something from the rumors or not. After how bad the rest of this E3 has been, I’m not keeping my hopes up, but it would be hard for Nintendo to fail as hard as any of the other presentations.

As usual these are my “live” reactions to the event, I’m gonna edit those to make them readable and write overall thoughts at the end. The intro is written before seeing the show of course.

So anyways, let’s go. PLEASE Nintendo save this terrible E3. It really needs help.

Note: No I won’t do a post about the Treehouse stream, but I may talk about it in my “overall” E3 post after the event is over if there’s something shown there.

The Show

Dark clouds. Dead Ganondorf. He’s being dropped into magma… Wait, Kazuya? Okay I guess we have Kazuya in Smash, dropping people in volcanos. Literally no one was “leaking” this. I guess Tekken makes some sense, I really wasn’t expecting this. He looks okay, not a super exciting reveal for me but the gameplay for him looks solid, he has a shitload of moves. Tekken is not my fighting game of choice and there’s so many other more interesting characters for Smash. But hey, it’s a thing. In-depth reveal on the 28th.

Life is Strange. It’s the barely-remastered collection that was announced before maybe? Or not, this is 2D animated. Or not, this is just a 2D animation to say all the Life is Strange stuff is coming to Switch. I couldn’t care any less than I do now.

Seems like highlights of a few third-party things. Guardians of the Galaxy is also on Switch. Worms Rumble. Astria Ascending (not familiar with this). Two Point Campus. Nothing super interesting.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania is next (this was leaked and is actually a new reveal). Sure looks like Monkey Ball. Been a while since a real new good one. October 5 2021. (EDIT: fucking oops… somehow missed that this was a remaster of the first 3 games… come on, make a new one, jerks)

Mario Party? Mario Party Superstars. 5 boards from the N64 games, and there’s a bunch of classic minigames. October 29. Cool.

Metroid? Metroid!? Well of course it’s not Prime 4, we knew that already… METROID FUCKING 5! Hell yeah. This looks really nice visually. Oh shit this looks really good gameplay-wise too. METROID DREAD. Holy shit. I’m hyped. October 8 2021. It’s so close, oh man. This is REALLY exciting.

Another highlight of third-parties segment. Just Dance. Cruis’n Blast? Wait, a new Cruis’n? Interesting.

DBZ Kakarot getting ported to Switch. Okay. Haven’t played this yet, maybe I will at some point. Eh.

Mario Golf… Kinda surprised they’re even bothering showing this here because it’s about to come out and it, like, JUST got a trailer.

And ANOTHER Monster Hunter Stories 2 trailer. Again. Why? We don’t need to see SO much of a game before it’s released. This is like the third or fourth new trailer for it AT this E3. The game looks good but please stop.

WarioWare? It’s been a while since the last proper one I feel. I was never a HUGE fan of WarioWare. This looks okay, it seems they’re changing how the minigames work by having you controlling different characters with their own movesets. WarioWare Get It Together! September 10 2021. I’m pretty interested in that one.

SMTV time. The release date was already revealed by Atlus by mistake, but I’m happy to see this here. This is one of the most exciting games in a while. Cinematic trailer for now. Ah there’s gameplay. This looks really good visually. Combat looks great, push turn is back. Man this looks like a great game. Cannot wait. As we know, November 12 2021. Let’s fucking GO!

Danganronpa is next. I’m actually surprised this isn’t on Switch yet. This is a remake of the 3 main games. Called Danganronpa Decadence. And a board game is part of it as its own unique single player experience? Interesting. This year.

Fatal Frame? Whoa. Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water. I believe this is a port from the Wii U. Cool I guess.

DLC and other stuff that’s not DLC. DOOM Eternal DLC which is already on all the other platforms. THPS1+2, we know about this already. Strange Brigade, some third-person shooter with puzzles, it’s out today, not sure I’ve heard of this before.

Mario + Rabbids Spark of Hope. We’ve seen this at Ubisofts thing before… and on Nintendo’s website before THAT. This is largely the same trailer. Okay.

I.. what? Orange Star? What? Is this Advance Wars? Holy crap. So this is a weird 3D remake of both GBA Advance Wars games. That’s pretty fucking cool. Please buy it, I want more Advance Wars. Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp. December 3. Wow. Awesome.

Last announcement? That’s just… DLC stuff for Age of Calamity though. I’m not interested., hopefully this was a joke.

Well Aonuma is here. A few more things to say today. Skyward Sword. Whatever that game is balls. A Zelda Game and Watch. This has Zelda, Zelda 2 and Link’s Awakening. Plus it’s a clock! November 12. And then…

Breath of the Wild 2, new footage for it after 2 years with nothing. Link is part robot now (his arm). His powers look WAY crazier than in the first game, we saw him reverse time and phase through objects. This actually looks really awesome. And like I thought, it’s out next year. Cool to see something new for it. It looks fucking amazing.

Overall

Well fuck this was good. Wow. After all of E3 just being… pure trash… This was really exciting, so much great stuff.

I can’t choose one big highlight, because there were so many. It’s harder to find disappointments. So let’s try that… Say, Kazuya in Smash. Not a bad choice, but not a particularly exciting one (again, ALL “leakers” were wrong about this). Also Bayonetta 3 STILL not showing up is worrying, hard to not believe it’s vaporware at this point. And lots of the third-party stuff wasn’t too meaningful other than Monkey Ball.

I mean, highlights are wild here. Metroid fucking Dread? Advance Wars? SMT5? WarioWare? Fatal Frame? Even something like Cruis’n Blast was pretty cool (I was not aware of the arcade game before this), or a new Monkey Ball (first since 2012, series has been basically dormant). Heck even if we don’t have a date for Breath of the Wild 2, look at this fucking gameplay, it looks so fucking good, they’re doing some really awesome things with that gameplay. What the fuck. I was even forgetting about the Mario Party thing which should be pretty fun, that’s another highlight.

Take fucking notes, ALL OF THE GAMING INDUSTRY. This is how you do a presentation. No one is at Nintendo’s level. NO. ONE.

Gonna be watching the Treehouse stream, it’s 3 hours of… stuff… They have previously announced games here outside of the E3 Direct, so that might happen. I might mention that in a later post if something happens (nothing as of this posting).