Nintendo E3 2008 afterthought

To be honest, I am quite disappointed in this year E3 Nintendo conference(or should I say this is by far the worst Nintendo E3 conference?). There are nothing major(oh come on, Animal Crossing for Wii and Grand Theft Auto for Nintendo DS? You gotta be kidding me) for core gamers and mostly the news are mainly catered to the expanded casual audiences. But I guess Nintendo still has some interesting peripherals up its sleeves.

The first peripheral is Wii Motionplus that can be attached to the ends of Wiimotes. It will provide true 1:1 response and Wii Sports Resort is the first game that fully utilizes this peripheral. Have a look at Reggis and Cammie trying to beat the hell out of each other in Wii Sports Resort sword fight. Impressive huh?

This accessory will surely open up more possibilities in gameplay and more fresh and new ideas can be incorporated in games. I am definitely looking forward to what other game developers could come out with. This baby and Wii Sports Resort are slated for release spring 2009 and the bundle of this baby and Wii Sports Resort is priced at usd49.90. For more info regarding Wii Motionplus, please kindly refer here.


The second peripheral by Nintendo is Wii Speak which allows players to chat while playing games online. The first game that supports this is Animal Crossing City Folks. Unlike the normal headsets that you use while playing Xbox 360 or PS3 online, this accessory is placed on top of TV so it allows room to room conversation, not just person to person conversation. I see this as a fine protective move of Nintendo as the kids wont be daring enough to thrash talk at the living rooms or else the they are going to have a hard time with their parents. Kudos to Nintendo for figuring this out. Hopefully more and more games can utilize this accessory. Currently it is priced at usd29.90 and should be available along with Animal Crossing City Folks.

After talking about the hardwares, lets go into the software part. Before this, Reggis promises that they will announce games to satisfy core gamers at E3. So far, what did we get? Animal Crossing City Folks for Wii and Grand Theft Auto China Town for Nintendo DS. Oh my god, if he thinks that we, the long supporting Nintendo fans are going to happy with this, I can happily(or sadly?) say that we are not! First of all, I dont really consider Animal Crossing to be a game that could cater to hardcore gamers. And I think this game will mostly be gobbled up by many casual gamers, which leads to this game staying in the charts for month. Smart move huh, Nintendo? But sorry, I myself was having a hard time playing the Nintendo DS version and I have sold it not long after. This game is just not something for me. Secondly, Grand Theft Auto for Nintendo DS.... It is slated for release this winter 2008 but at the conference there is no footage of this game, no trailer or any test playing whatsoever. So how can they expect us to be excited of this game? Deep down in my heart I was thinking if the graphics are just like the GBA version, which dont really suit the sand box gameplay. Anyway, even if it is in 3d open world, I am still not going to get it because I have no interest in sandbox games. Gosh, the software lineup that Nintendo announced didnt impress me and I was left in disappointment hoping for more great games from third parties but still there are nothing worth mentioning Nintendo DS titles.

Aside from some interesting peripherals that Nintendo announced, the software line up totally fails and it would dawn to us, hardcore gamers that Nintendo is simply ignoring us hardcore gamers. Even Dead Rising for Wii is not announced at the conference and we only found out about this at Famitsu....... Gosh, Miyamoto told us that E3 will no longer be the place to announce games for hardcore gamers, so he better honours his words and brings us some good news later......