Nintendo Direct Topic

[Kong Wen]

Old Doom/Wolf, or new Doom/Wolf?

What are the arcade games?

[The Shoemaker]

Old Doom/Wolf, or new Doom/Wolf?

What are the arcade games?

New DOOM and Wolfenstien II.

They showed off arcade Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros vs, punch out, balloon fight, clu clu land, ice climbers, possibly a couple more I can't think of

[Kong Wen]

They showed off arcade Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros vs, punch out, balloon fight, clu clu land, ice climbers, possibly a couple more I can't think of

Is this a compilation, or are they coming individually as a kind of weird Virtual Console Arcade?

[The Shoemaker]

They showed off arcade Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros vs, punch out, balloon fight, clu clu land, ice climbers, possibly a couple more I can't think of

Is this a compilation, or are they coming individually as a kind of weird Virtual Console Arcade?

Called arcade archives, individually sold games. Looks like they are published by Hamster who does all the neo geo games on Switch.

[Jordan]

So Nintendo had a "mini-Direct" today. From the title, they conveyed immediately that it wasn't going to have huge announcements or anything super stellar. A lot of people are going to be disappointed by that, but they shouldn't be. It probably means they will have another direct in a month or two with more stuff. In the worst case scenario, they'll have a Direct in Spring. Most of this mini-Direct was devoted to ports and DLC. Let's run through the list:

-The World Ends With You Final Remix
-Pokken Tournament adds Aegislash and Blastoise as playable characters with several additional support Pokemon.
-Additional news about powers in Kirby Star Allies.
-Demo available for Kirby Battle Royale and Dragon Quest Builders
-The full version of Hyrule Warriors is being ported.
-Mario Tennis Aces coming out in March
-YS VIII Lacrimosa is being ported and will release in summer.
-New Luigi Balloon DLC for Super Mario Odyssey. It's free and adds a few timed challenges and costumes.
-A new SNK all-female cast tag-team fighting game called SNK Heroines. Additionally, they're porting some other retro fighting game.
-Donkey Kong added to Mario + Rabbids with a bananarang.
-Some additional DLC for Payday 2.
-Fe (not Fire Emblem; it's some indie game) coming to Nintendo Eshop.
-Celeste coming to Eshop; it's some quick-paced platformer
-Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze adding Funky Kong.
-Dark Souls Remastered

On one hand, I do feel a bit underwhelmed as I was expecting news of some big Nintendo release in this Direct. On the other hand, I came away from this with some good news. YS VIII is something I'd consider picking up on the Switch. I'm a fan of the series but I really liked the portability of YS VII. I couldn't really get into the YS games I played on Steam for some reason. Many games I haven't played got DLC which might incite me to go out and play them....maybe. I've played The World Ends With You at least four times. I know it's unpopular here, but it's personally one of my favorites. The new scenario will be the only impetus to get me to play it again. If it's considerably lengthy and makes the final remix version worth buying in of itself, I'll double dip. Otherwise I think I'll stay away. I never bought the Kingdom Hearts Final Remixes as I'm generally not a fan of enhanced ports with trivial added content.

Overall, I'd say this Direct was decent, but did not really live up to expectations. Nintendo's going to need to throw out some serious announcements within the next few months in order to keep up momentum. The ports are likely to do very well though. I could see Dark Souls and YS easily topping sales charts. I'm a lot less sure about SNK's female fanservice fighter, but it might do alright.

[Kong Wen]

Biggest news of the Direct for me is Sony news—Celeste and Dark Souls coming to PS4.

That said, I don't think this was underwhelming. Porting good Wii U games is good, and Dynasty Warriors and Tropical Freeze count. Ys VIII is on PS4, but it's good news for Nintendonly people. The World Ends with You is huge news, partly because it's a great game, and partly because it cements Nintendo's direction going forward with the Switch—an updated port of a DS game shows Switch beginning to take on the mantle of the portable systems.

[The Shoemaker]

As the first direct of the year, I was expecting more. As a mini direct, it was pretty good.

In terms of ports, there's a lot here I haven't played. I'm interested these ones in particular:
Dragon Quest Builders
Y's VIII
Dark Souls
TWEWY

I think I've played enough of Hyrule Warriors and Donkey Kong, great games though.

Kirby looks fun, I'll grab it for a good multiplayer experience. I'll stay optimistic for Mario tennis and it's story mode.

Surprised they didn't even mention bayonetta 2 that's coming out in February!

Anyways, hoping for a full Direct in march/April. Need to see some first party heavy hitters that will sell them 25 million switch's in 2018.

[Jordan]

YS VIII is also on PC.

Another thing about the TWEWY final remix that I like is that it gives some scant hope that they might continue the series. I hope it does well enough to warrant that.

[SkyPikachu]

I was disappointed mainly due to it just being all ports and no AAA titles or VC however hopefully we do get a proper direct soon

The World Ends With You - Looks cool I might try it out if reviews are good however again it's a remake

Pokken Tournament DLC - Huge FU to the Wii U community which sucks they could at least give Wii U owners a discount so they don't have to pay for full price to get the new content. Personally I don't really have an interest in the series.

Kirby Star Allies - Kirby is a weird series as it seems like it hasn't progressed much over the years I could be wrong and it might be really fun

Hyrule Warriors - Huge FU to the Wii U community which sucks they could at least give Wii U owners a discount so they don't have to pay for full price to get the new content. Personally I don't really have an interest in the series.

Mario Tennis Ace - It looks cool but not at $60 I'll wait til it's much cheaper.

Y's VIII - Idk what this really is and doesn't interest me

Mario DLC - Lol umm what atleast it's free.

SNK Heroines - Not my thing.

Mario + Rabbids DK DLC - Story Length will be really important here but it looks really really fun.

Payday 2 - Not my thing

Fe - It'll probably run better on PS4/XBone however it looks really really good

Celeste - Looks really really hard also coming to PS4 though this doesn't seem like the type of game that would run better or worse on the Switch/PS4. We already knew it was coming this month.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - Huge FU to the Wii U community which sucks they could at least give Wii U owners a discount so they don't have to pay for full price to get the new content. I enjoyed the game and won't be buying it again however Funky Kong stuff looks like a blast for speed running.

Dark Souls - This was the part where they were suppose to announce a AAA game in my mind so I was very disappointed when a 9 year old game was getting remastered if I wanted to play this I would have already sure it's fun to have on the go but seriously is not worth the final spotlight to me. If they're going to have a 3rd party game being the spotlight of the direct it needs to release the same time as the other consoles so 9 years late isn't going to cut it. Eg. Kingdom Hearts.

So looking at this it ends up being The World Ends With You and Mario + Rabbids DK DLC that peak my interest and even then DLC is DLC and a remake of a DS game could turn ugly.

Really hoping we get a proper Nintendo direct covering the following.

• Virtual Console
• What's coming in Q3/4 that's big
• What's happening with Online
• Are you going to thank the loyal fans for buying the Wii U or push us aside and pretend we don't exist (Eg. 3ds Ambassador Program type thing and having Virtual Console games moved over for free would be a nice start)

[Jordan]

I think the ship has sailed on Nintendo throwing any bones to the Wii U base. I agree with you that they're getting ripped off pretty hard, but I don't think Nintendo cares because they're looking to sell whatever they have to the "new" demographic of people who bought the Switch. A lot of those Wii U games on Switch are likely being put out because they think the games can sell better on a more popular platform; people who missed out on the Wii U versions of the games are probably their main target audience.