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!

Well it happened. After recently predicting that Directs were a thing of the past because Nintendo replaced them with something I figured was better, Directs are making a comeback after not having any full-length ones since September 2019. I really liked the style Nintendo went with in 2020, with them doing shadow drops of game announcements 2 months before releasing the game, and having mini Directs for third-parties and indies. There’s many advantages to that, like keeping expectations in check (unlike, say, Cyberpunk, which had a fake “gameplay” trailer YEARS before release with a ton of features that weren’t even in the final game) and compressing the entire hype cycle to almost no time at all. It was just great seeing a game and knowing it would be in my Switch in just 2 months… even if Origami King sucked. I’d argue it’s objectively superior to announce games that way than having Directs and similar types of events. I mean, E3 is always just a pile of “here’s all these games you won’t be able to play for another 3 years and they’ll suck anyways”.

But I can’t deny the appeal of a Direct-style presentation. A bunch of announcements and such in one spot is fun. So even though I don’t usually post reactions to Directs… why not this time? The last proper non-mini Direct was literally in 2019, and this is a long boy with 50 minutes of content. Not gonna even attempt predictions, we just know about a Smash character (I mean, what else would they announce for Smash that’s worth even having the game in a direct for?) and… games for the next 4 months. Not much to go by and there’s not any rumors of note. My expectations are not very high, but it’s mostly because the Switch already has a lot of stuff announced for 2020, so who knows how much more it might get.

Note that I am writing this intro before seeing the Direct, and that I’m writing my reactions as I’m watching. I’ll include a more thought-out overall thoughts section at the end once the Direct is over (and I’ll edit my reactions to make sure this is readable).

Well it’s starting in a minute now, so let’s go!