Okay I did my GotY post, now let’s stop looking at the past and look at the future… Hopefully 2024 brings just a bit more quality than 2023 did.

I’m just gonna do the usual, just talk about my top 6 most-hyped-for-now games, and then big lists of games I have some level of hype for, and a slightly smaller list of games that might be popular but that I don’t have hype for (some because they’re bad, some because they’re not really my thing).

So let’s go!

There’s the usual February Nintendo Direct. I am gonna react to it. Whoa! So yes I am writing this intro before actually watching the Direct. It could be the most hype Direct ever, it could… not be. I have no idea, and I have no real expectations.

The rumor mill was a bit dry, but got a bit better… 2 hours before the Direct. There’s the Advance Wars rumors which are kinda dumb (the SKU changed on the eshop so people think that means it’s coming out right away, the other is a random wal-mart employee saying he saw a standee with a February 10 release date for it but provided no proof)… possible, but not likely based on why Nintendo indefinitely delayed the game. There was a bit of an “oof” rumor from Exputer saying they saw video evidence of a remake of Baten Kaitos, though this rumor is weirdly contradicted by this image just popping out a bit before the Direct showing a remaster collection of Baten Kaitos 1 and 2 rather than a remake of the first (could be faked of course). So either way, that’s possible. And that’s about it as far as anything interesting and new. There’s a Syluxhunter thing from last year about some F-Zero related thing, though no timing or details were given for that so… eh. Oh and there’s the whole TotK 70$ price and Metroid Prime 4 appearing/disappearing from online stores kinda randomly, I don’t think that’s particularly useful info as far as content… but it WOULD be bullshit if Nintendo upped the price of their games.

As far as expectations, I’m expecting Tears of the Kingdom to be shown very briefly, I feel it will be a bit more of a tease, leading to a separate Direct just for that game closer to release. I’m expecting something about Pikmin. I’m expecting to not see Metroid Prime 4. And I’m expecting DLC stuff for Fire Emblem, Mario Kart and maybe Splatoon. So that’s a good 5-8 minutes of the 40 that was announced accounted for, which means there’s a lot of time which could just be anything. And also Samba de Amigo since that popped up just a bit before the Direct started, no excitement for that.

So as usual, I’ll be giving short comments about everything in the presentation, and finish it off with my overall thoughts.

Let’s go!