The GHZ Forum

So it's come to this. Nintendo's press conference is still in progress but it's pretty clear that it might be the worst thing my eyes have ever beheld. Wait, no, they have a balance board now. I guess Nintendo has given up on actual gamers. Whatever. Thankfully, Reggie's catch phrases make everything better:

THAT'S A LOT OF SOCCER MOMS!

WHAT'S BETTER THAN WHACK-A-MOLE? ZAP A ZOMBIE!

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S MARIO KART!

THIS IS ONE GAME WHERE YOUR MOM MAY END UP SCHOOLING YOU!

MY BODY IS READY!

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO LOSE AT ROCK PAPER SCISSORS!

IT'S EVEN NUTTIER!

JUST REMEMBER MUSCLE IS HEAVIER THAN FAT!

THERE ARE 24 HOURS IN EVERY DAY!

This was by far the worst press conference ever, and the absolute best for stupid fucking catchphrases. This tops even Sony's legendary 2005 presser.

I'm a Nintendo fan but I thought that conference was horrible. The only real decent new announcement they made was Mario Kart. Wii Fit was a joke and making it their big showcase game was a really stupid idea.

That was definitely some of the most boring tripe I've ever sat through but there was a couple of interesting things at least. The Balance board looks like it has some potential if it ever fucking works properly (SORRY IT'S NOT RUNNING VERY SMOOTHLY JUST NOW), Mario Kart was good to have finally confirmed (even if visually it looks worse than Double Dash) and some hard dates for Brawl and Galaxy were much appreciated.

It's amazing how many Nintendo fans are fucking exploding over this though. I've already seen tons of "I'm going to kill myself" and "Nintendo is abandoning the gamers that made them what they are".

All the Mario Kart courses were from previous games. Plus Reggie never actually said how many people were going to be able to play online- he just sort of trailed off there at the end.

I think Wii Fit and the balance board look surprisingly robust for what they are, but I don't know what they were thinking by making them the focus of their E3 presser. Of all events, I'd think this is the one where they'd want to put the focus on their hardcore titles over their alternative stuff. Even if Wii Fit turns out to be great, it's still a freaking exercise program. Do they really expect an audience of gamers to get excited about that?

Still, they did the same thing last year. Their entire presser was about Wii Sports, while the freaking Smash Bros. trailer wasn't even shown at all until a day later.

And it's not like they're short of big traditional titles to plug right now, either. With Metroid, Mario, Zelda and Smash Bros all coming out in the next six months, it doesn't seem like all this weird alternative stuff is actually supplanting the development of actual games. But it's certainly getting the vast, vast majority of Nintendo's PR time. As long as they keep making regular games, I don't care if Nintendo keeps developing all this weird shit too, but MAN... that doesn't mean I want to listen to them talk about it for an hour. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Bee Suit Mario was the high point of this conference.

Other than that it blew and sucked.

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ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!!

Oh well! :/

I'm just going to blank it all out and pretend they actually gave this game the attention it deserved instead:

Latest Mario Galaxy trailer

It looks brilliant! It's such a shame Nintendo didn't give it more focus in their press conference.

Wow, this stuff has pretty much wiped out any doubts I've had about Mario Galaxy. It looks like the most awesome, surreal adventure ever.

Holy crap!

I don't remember the last time I saw a Mario title that looked so imaginative, or that had such amazing art direction. Maybe Yoshi's Island?

I could see myself getting Wii Fitness if I found it in a bargin bin for $20. And the foot controller has some potential. I wonder if Nintendo is going to come out with another goofy controller for Wii every year with Wii ____ for us to buy.

Last year when they showed us Wii Sports for the first time it was a big deal because we weren't too sure how well the controller would work. And it was free with the system. But this year....

Galaxy looks even more mindblowing every time I see it. Shame they're still using the music that was in the first demo though, it's nice but I'm a tad tired of hearing it.

I have a feeling Wii Fit is going to be pretty extortionate by the way. That thing really doesn't look cheap.

This has been the worst E3 ever, you know. Christ.

Mario looks great though.

Popcorn wrote:This has been the worst E3 ever, you know. Christ.

Mario looks great though.

I think that was the point in the whole downgrading E3 thing. So companies wouldn't have to spend money on it. Which is sad.

Mario does look amazing. I find it hard to believe its on the Wii sometimes.

I'll admit that Ninty's intial offerings were...erm, underwhelming at best (I also blame the E3 downsizing), but they DID have a few good bits among the fluff. Specifically Mario Galaxy, Brawl's release date, Mario Kart, and the Wii Zapper (IMO).

Concerning the conference, I tuned in right before they got to Metroid Prime 3, which is looking awesome as ever. Beyond that and Wii Fit calling Reggie a fattie, yeah, what a crock. Reggie's stiff Shatner-esque delivery was all but physically painful, and thank god G4 cut to commercial while Iwata was beating the accessibility point to a bloody pulp. Also, when Reg tackled the online issue...the lip synch wasn't right but i'm pretty sure what I heard was "Now listen here you numbnuts, we're ALREADY hardkore into that online thing! In fact, we r0x and here's some random news clips and big numbers to prove it! Have some Madden too!"

Wii Fit doesn't bother me nearly as much as Mario Kart Wii. I had heard this was coming, but I hoped it was all rumor. The day this releases, MKDS is obsolete, and for fucking what? Prettier ploygons, more players at once, and online play in the battle modes?

Mario Galaxy's trippy alright. I'm not yet convinced it won't be a bore after half an hour in later plays, because it's still using the Mario 64 mechanics, but it looks a lot of fun in motion. Bumblebee Mario is hands down their best powerup idea since the Tanuki Suit.

Finally: Hehe, Hideo Kojima's translator sucks.

I guess no one thinks this smaller e3 is worthy of any "big" game announcements.

I mean geeze, Nintendo only announced two new titles, and of those two, only Mario Kart is a 2008 title. Other than that, they said absolutely nothing about what they were planning to release next year.

Compare that to last year's e3, where they showed clips of tons of 2007 titles like Galaxy, Metroid, Smash Bros, Mario Party, Zelda DS, and so on. This year, they just showed those same games... again. Which is fine, they're nice and everything. But this is usually the time we get to see what's coming up in the next couple of years, not the next couple of months!

Microsoft was just as bad... lots of games we already knew were coming. (Even if some of them are looking really nice.) Sony was a little better, but other than Endocrome, the new games they did announce are not really the sort I ever get excited for.

What about that "E For All" thing that's supposed to be coming up?

It's possible. But honestly I just think we're going to see a shift to having "big" announcements spread out over the course of the year, rather than concentrated into one week like they were at the old e3. Maybe the industry has just grown large enough to make that kind of concentration unnecessary.

Sony's conference was pretty good to be honest. I don't own a PS3 and have no intention of buying one in the near future but they were showing off a lot of nice stuff. Haze looked incredible, MGS4 was as stunning as you'd expect and Killzone 2 was refreshing actually pretty breathtaking (I never really expected much since it seemed like the whole franchise was created as some mediocre attempt at a "Halo beater").

As a whole in a year where you're not getting any major new console announcements there wasn't anything particularly "wrong" with any of the "big 3" media events. Whether or not the show floor will be exciting is a somewhat different matter though.

Esrever wrote:It's possible. But honestly I just think we're going to see a shift to having "big" announcements spread out over the course of the year, rather than concentrated into one week like they were at the old e3. Maybe the industry has just grown large enough to make that kind of concentration unnecessary.

That's the main issue I think most people are having. They expected, nay, needed the sudden rush of news that E3 has traditionally entailed and were disappointed at the meager table scraps offered unto them by the big three. The fitness pad was especially offensive, as it wasn't even meant for the people that used to go to E3 or even watched it from afar. Even gaming sites built the event up like it was somehow going to be business as usual for people not actually attending (maybe even making for better coverage of new stuff thanks to a streamlined approach), so it's no surprise most everyone is reacting to milquetoast news with a fervor usually reserved for huge announcements (myself included!).

I'm mostly kinda bummed about the lack of something new from the Ico/SOTC guys. TGS, I pray for you.

Popcorn wrote:I'm mostly kinda bummed about the lack of something new from the Ico/SOTC guys. TGS, I pray for you.

Same here. Even though I'll never have a PS3.