Nintendo Direct Megathread

[PC the Hedgehog]

We have us a leak via Nintendo's upcoming releases page, and eeee, I can't wait for the Direct to learn more! Click at your own risk.

Spoiler

NEW KIRBY

 

[Empire88]

18 minutes ago, PC the Hedgehog said:

We have us a leak via Nintendo's upcoming releases page, and eeee, I can't wait for the Direct to learn more! Click at your own risk.

  Hide contents

NEW KIRBY

 

Spoiler

The name of the game in Japanese is pretty much "Kirby Discovery". The series in Japanese is called 星のカービ　(Kirby of the Stars). And the subtitle is ディスカバリー which is just Discovery.

That being said who knows what the English title will be once localization kicks in. 

 

[KHCast]

Yeah, I’m getting that Nintendo 64 controller. Fucking annoying how this is a new subscription, but that’s pretty Nintendo at this point. I’ll get it, mainly cause majoras mask and OoT, but still, eh 

[Sonicka]

Nintendo: This Direct will show off Winter releases

Also Nintendo: 75% of the presentation showcases games coming spring & summer 2022.

It was pretty decent overall. My Main Hype is for the Kirby 3D platformer (at last!). 

I hope the subscription isn't at too much of a premium either. The service isn't worth the cost alone as it is (and I know it's cheap). This bumps it up to make it up to that current cost IMO. Also (not that I'm complaining... why Mega Drive?). Wasn't GameBoy the expectation? Trust Nintendo to throw a curveball. 

I don't know how to feel about the Mario Movie announcement either. I'm sure it's logical for story and Hollywood purposes... but... Poor Charles regulated to Cameos. I wonder if they are going to play Mario being an Italian Video Game Hero as more of an "in-Joke" in the Movieverse.  

[SBR2]

Ok while the cast is...not surprising but disappointing Alex Hirsch tweeted this not long after so maybe it'll actually be good?

 

[Your Vest Friend]

That casting will be responsible for me dying of laughter tbh.

[Empire88]

5 minutes ago, Son-icka said:

Nintendo: This Direct will show off Winter releases

Also Nintendo: 75% of the presentation showcases games coming spring & summer 2022.
 

In Japan the fiscal year ends in March and starts in April. So Q4 (Winter) is until March. That being said there are some likely coming after March, but the highlight was immediate stuff was this winter. 

And yeah, the Mario cast haha. 

[KHCast]

I’m unironically popping off to the cast for the most part lol. (Just about everything but chris Pratt has me interested) This is either gonna be a surprisingly good film, or a massive trainwreck. But I still put it above most game movies in terms of my interest since it’s not going the live action route 

 

Bayonetta 3 and 3D Kirby got me bopping hard, I need that shit now. 
 

Smash, that was pretty expected. seeing everyone on Twitter beforehand basically acting like it was confirmed the final character would be dropped today was fucking hilarious 

That card rpg has me also surprisingly interested, and since there’s a demo, may as well check it out 

[Rabid-Coot]

I've been wanting to replay the N64 Zelda games for a while so I guess I'll be throwing some money at that eventually.

[Milo]

showing up late, b/c i watched it late, so here are my rambles...

no donkey kong game but i'll take kirby going 3D and cranky kong having a role in the mario movie (!!!) as a consolation price. kirby and the forgotten land is probably my most anticipated game for next year, besides cuphead's DLC if that is released. it's just nice having new 3D platformers in general, especially new nintendo 3D platformers outside of mario (who has remained the only one in town more often not, despite the company's other platforming series).

speaking of which...surprised they actually revealed details about the mario movie in a nintendo direct, as opposed to just doing a standard PR release. wonder if this will be the route for future nintendo multimedia stuff, like the netflix pokemon show and future movie projects.

all i can say about the voice cast is that....yeah, that celebrity voice acting seems to be living up to usual route of blockbuster hollywood animated films. same goes for it being more dialogue heavy overall, even though that doesn't have to be the case. (points to the shaun the sheep movies). although i kinda like the casting choice of jack black as bowser. all i can hope for is that's as far as the animated film committee's checklist of Things You Need To Do To Sell This To A Mainstream Audience goes. but we'll see.

i guess it's cool that n64 games are coming to switch (awesome that we'll apparently be getting rare games too? honestly surprised when banjo-kazooie showed up in the coming soon docket). it and the genesis games being an higher-tier NSO subscription you have to pay for in order to get is whatever though. maybe i'd be more upset about this if i personally never bothered with the NES/SNES games as it stands. they're still no replacement for VC.

on the topic of genesis games as part of the NSO service though, i'm kinda surprised that is a thing at all. i'm honestly curious what sega gets out of having them added to the lineup in the same vein of the NES/SNES/N64 titles. really odd to me given the sega ages releases and the genesis mini weren't that long ago.

splatoon 3 looks pretty cool. part of me is still mad at myself for not getting back into the series proper (i really want to at least complete the first game's story mode among other things before getting into 2).

the last thing on my mind is though i will probably never bother with those games, i actually really like those wireless N64 and Genesis controllers. honestly considering buying them, maybe.

[KHCast]

Rewatching this trailer is making me laugh. Specifically the beginning segment. There is no way this wasn’t intentionally done in a tongue in cheek fashion to give Smash/Sora 4 Smash fans a heart attack lol

 

[SupahBerry]

It was swell, did help to keep my spirits up after dealing with unfortunate COVID related events, even if there's not a whole lot in there that appeals to me personally. 

Glad to see Horror Land made the cut for Superstars, but it's iffy this with how ND Cube's business practices work; throw the game out and that's it, no DLC or anything to help make their games feel less half baked, as they did with Super Mario Party. I'll just say this now in the event they do GCN DLC, or more like do a whole new game outta that: Please don't turn DK back into an NPC again

 

I do recall seeing footage of the original Choco Racing, so I was pretty surprised to see this off all games get a revivals. Yeah, maybe looks a smidge too Mario Kart-ish for it's own good, even by Kart genre standards, but I accept. Good to have another racer in potential rotation till it's time for MK9. I did do the double take when they said 64 racers and didn't catch that was meant for a tournament mode thing. Probably for the best for everyone's health 

 

Kinda figured Smash would save the last for later, but Nintendo's not too predicable, so I went in with that assuming that it still could. The one direct where Min Min was first teased, they did at least clue us in that it was specifically an ARMs character, so I thought this would do something similar, but I'm glad they did none of that. I'm halfway gonna watch this just to see the last batch of Mii Fighters which I fantasize could be the biggest one with all the big "dream crushing" picks too act like the consolation prize for all the runner ups. Any acknowledgement Sakurai of all the characters who couldn't make it at all would all I'd really need.

 

Kirby Odyssey: It's About Time was something I figured was coming any day now with all the teasing HAL set up. I don't mind if it looks too down to earth at first compared to previous titles since we just got four similar playing games in a row. And for the most part I feel it's doing it's job just fine, with no excessive floating islands or anything. No doubt King Dedede is kidnapped again, knowing that Kirby has to rescue his troops. There doesn't appear to be as many callbacks sticking out for now, but that's a good thing for me. Makes the series feel fresh again.

 

102% called Nintendo saying "yes ACNH is still alive, please don't sell meeeee", but even I never counted on them go as far as to make a whole direct to drive that point across. Highly doubtful it'll be anything substantial enough to draw me back in now that the novelty about "escape the stress of reality by taking everything a snail's pace" has long since vanished. But that all depends on what my family thinks, if we all like this enough, maybe a few more rounds with this thing wouldn't hurt. I'm now a smidge bit curious to see if they'll ever make another game that plays more like the other games with all the content NH is supposedly missing to this day. 

 

I wanna wait till my brother and sister get their own copies of Mario Golf before I indulge in it myself, but we're preoccupied with Marvel Alliance 3 right now. Bringing Ninji in the spotlight is killer though. I'm glad they've been going to town with all these Star Wars releases, too bad I already nabbed KOTOR and all the other ports on Steam before they ever started doing that. And lumping an update to a first party Nintendo game together with two tie-in video games in one section is kinda weird. 

I kinda wanted them to drop some sorta info on Prime 4 instead since Dread is only right around the corner, but it's fine. Make that along with Bayo 3 more additions to popular franchises I seriously should've tried by now.  And this is only the halfway point!

 

A lot of how they've handled the online service for Switch is as every bit as repulsive as I feared, and this "tier 2 premium" subscription is no different. And they've still not really all the good stuff from SNES yet. At the rate their going, by the time they get to GCN games, they'll have five tiers of subscriptions going up to $128.00 a month, as early as 2029 on Nintendo Switchcraft XL. I'm thankful to share a family subscription to take some of sting away, but it can only go so far. I still have my original N64 and a good few essentials collecting dust in the back storage, but maybe I'll indulge in the N64 stuff since online 4 player is a sweet feature. Also, Banjo. The other Rare games shouldn't be too far behind. ('Cept Goldeneye, yeah right) I think even Conker has a chance since Nintendo is so welcoming of mature games nowadays, even if previous Online libraries lack them.

Also hilarious to know that everyone who brought Mario FOMO All Stars wasted a third of their purchase for nothing. But that's okay, since the Switch Online version of SM64 doesn't come with upresed textures, just to "compensate". And hey! I bet the Banjo Kazooie port won't be as good as the Live Arcade/Rare Replay versions, but don't worry: At least you'll get all the Nintendo reference back. UwU  As for SEGA Genesis, it feels pretty redundant with the AGES versions and Sonic Origins already out there; they really should've done Game Boy like everyone speculated. (Can't believe how much of a 180 my expectations were) Having a Mega Drive controller made spefically for a Nintendo console is cursed however. Altogether the whole service thing overall is as lousy I'd imagined it would be from the moment this was announced, and I just know they'll just keep getting away with it. Stricker is right: this really is a boiling frog situation.

 

In a direct focused on games for the last quarter of 21 and first quarter of 22, I did not see dropping motion picture release dates for late 22 coming. The cast is absolutely bonkers, they're all growing on me pretty quickly, Chris Pratt less so. The Mario series was always so open with how it's characters can be interpreted, as indicated by all the parodies and fanworks, and I see this as Nintendo themselves throwing their red googly eyed cap into the ring. Donkey Kong alone was not someone I'd expect to appear for what's mainly a Mario world, but that's nothing compared to deep cuts like Foreman Spike and Cranky. It's just them picking Illuminations that leaves me cynical. I am morbidly curious on exactly what Miyamoto sees in these people. It's still possibly we me have another Peanuts situation on our hands, but it's just as likely they've got the power to rip this movie out of Miyamoto's hands allowing them to do it their way. Most of these actor's have likely been dragged into bad projects before and were able to bounce back just fine, so it's likely Miyamoto will too. It'd just be a shame, since it feels like Miyamoto must be proud enough of this movie for it to make it this far, only for him to have to sweep it under the rug and rarely mention it again. But till then, I anxiously await the first trailer before actually starting to wonder where this film went wrong, if it will. This film has some potential, and I can see it in the cracks. 

 

I hope to be more involved in Splatoon 3 since I've missed out the life cycles of the previous two. But there doesn't appear to really be anything truly significant for me to fully justify it's existence right now to make it seem more than just Splatoon 2 but new maps on the same console as Splatoon 2 vanilla. The idea of mammals and maybe even humans being the new enemy is wicked, although it feels a smidge undermined seeing that DJ Octavio's yet again an antagonist in some capacity. It's good to see Callie and Marie still on good terms after the shift to chaos, but I'm more worried of the fate of Off The Hook. And of course, who are the new idols? 

 

So nice to see Bayonetta back from the dead. With only Pikmin 4 to go, I feel much more confident in all the big development hell titles pulling through.

 

 

I've grown up of getting over hyped with these kinda showcases anymore, but this was quite a show for what was supposedly a limited window of release dates. Looking forward to the Sakurai Prestation!

[mayday2592]

Honestly hearing the Mario game cast voices used for normal speech in a 2 hr movie would have been just grating imo. Especially in the case of the Mario Bros and Peach, so I totally get why they chose other actors to do the vo's aside from the obvious reasons.

[StaticMania]

6 minutes ago, mayday2592 said:

Honestly hearing the Mario game cast voices used for normal speech in a 2 hr movie would have been just grating imo.

Literally just Mario...unless you think that type of energy could be sustained for even one full recording session.

[Zaysho]

I only wish I didn't know about the Kirby game hours prior because that was definitely the highlight next to Bayo 3.

I'm glad I didn't buy into the Xenoblade 3 rumors, and I pretty much figured it wouldn't be there when Manami Kiyota confirmed the OST she was checking was for something else last night, so I wasn't really too bugged it (or whatever Monolith's next project is) wasn't there like rumors suggested. Monolith isn't a developer I have to worry about, though.

[Teoskaven]

The real surprises from this to me were all from Square-Enix. Lots of presence for starters, even with projects they're involved minimally like Dying Light 2, but then they dropped both a new Chocobo Racing and a remake of Actraiser out of nowhere (wonder if this is the start of something that leads to re-releases of Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma), and that's not counting projects we had already knew like Triangle Strategy (much like wit Octopath, still not the best title they could come up with though) and Voice of the Cards.

The rest of the Direct was very good too, maybe one or two bumps like the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity DLC and especially the Mario movie cast (it's dangerously close to something you'd read in a fake copypasta), but the new announcements were really solid like the new Kirby and finally the return of Bayonetta 3. Shame about skipping DK's anniversary, but they did compensated for that, and as i imagined, the final Smash character is getting a separate spotlight instead of just being dropped and telling the audience to wait a week for more.
Also, the new subscription fee for N64 and SEGA games is bullshit, me and others speculated that it's there only to recoup losses from 2020 caused by the pandemic. I'll give them credit though, including also Banjo-Kazooie tucked in a corner during the showcase was cute.

[KHCast]

7 minutes ago, Teoskaven said:

The rest of the Direct was very good too, maybe one or two bumps like the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Wait, what was wrong with the Age of Calamity segment? It certainly looks more meaty than the first part of the pass, and looks to add a chunky amount of story.  It’s no BotW 2, but certainly looks like something that could breath some needed life into that game

[Salamander]

Well, that was worth staying up for!  But not staying up to comment for, I immediately went to bed straight afterwards.

What wasn't there: Very surprised not to see Advance Wars, honestly, as this is their last Direct to show it off before its release date.  Perhaps it's getting a delay in response to feedback.  Or possibly a mini Direct nearer the time?

What was there: The new Kirby looks rather exciting!  I'm also intrigued by Voice of Cards, by the abstract and gamey presentation; I'll have to try out the demo, because what I need is more RPGs apparently.  (I've been over a month in NEO: The World Ends With You.  Please...  I want to get back to Great Ace Attorney already...)  Hearing a little more about Triangle Strategy was nice, but what's not nice is that they're really going with that as the final title; they got away with "Octopath Traveler" because it actually sounded somewhat distinctive, but "Triangle Strategy" is too basic, and they had alternatives like "Scales of Conviction" right there.  Conspicuous gay marriage addition to Rune Factory 5, Castlevania Advance Collection shadowdropping even though I don't have time to play it yet - all good stuff.

"The part of Mario will now be played by Chris Pratt" and Cranky Kong being a major movie character was frankly surreal, but I think it speaks to the fact that it's really difficult to conceive of how to scale Mario up to a movie-length experience because his voice is exactly one cut above a Pokemon cry.  This result was at once inevitable, and yet at the same time really hard to anticipate, let alone get one's head around.  I'm reminded of the old Tom & Jerry movie where they can talk.

[Cube]

Some overall thoughts:

Chocobo GP, a Final Fantasy racing game. It looks fine, probably won't be as good as Sonic Team Racing for singleplayer, but probably fun in multiplayer. The Switch probably won't get its own Mario Kart, so these other ones will have to make do. 

Kirby looks incredibly charming. I've not really played a Kirby game before, but the style of the trailer and 3D movement has won me over. Definitely looking forward to it.

More Mario Golf stuff is great, especially for free, but just makes me want to wait longer to get the game so I can play it in one go.

KotOR is interesting, as it's only the first game. Including both games (and optional downloads for the main mods) would be great, but just the first isn't anything special, especially when it's very cheap elsewhere, plus a remake on the way.

The new Nintendo Switch Online stuff. The service for me always seemed low on value, so N64 and Mega Drive games could help with that...but then it's an unannounced increase in costs to access that stuff. On top of that, there's still no way to purchase games separately, they're all locked behind a subscription. I want to buy the games, not rent them. On top of this, I think N64 games haven't ages particularly well and need a bit more effort put into them than just emulation. Banjo-Kazooie on XBLA is a perfect example: it runs in a higher resolution, has widescreen support, better framerate, looks much nicer while still looking like an N64 game, the controls feel great on a modern controller (especially the camera) and it fixes an issue that the original had due to a memory limit on the N64 (remembering the notes you collect). When I recently played through Rare Replay, Conker's Bad Fur Day felt pretty bad to control as it was just the N64 version, while Jet Force Gemini got an update after release to improve the controls and was much better as a result.

Banjo-Kazooie is just one of the games which has a better version available elsewhere. Ocarina of Time and Lylat Wars have improved versions on 3DS, Super Mario 64 got a slightly improved version on Switch (which has been removed from sale), or a much nicer fan port can be played on PC (if Nintendo put that much effort into re-releasing games, I would happily pay for it). N64 games are wonderful, but they deserve more than to just be shoved into an emulator, they need some tweaks (especially to account for the C-buttons turning into an analogue stick), and to run better in a higher resolution. It's a shame that Nintendo have opted for a very low effort solution, and one you can't even buy.

Splatoon 3 has me very excited. The heavy focus on singleplayer has me very interested (I enjoyed Splatoon 1 online, but don't play online enough to pay for a subscription). The Octo Expansion for Splatoon 2 was brilliant, so if it can expand on that, it will be a wonderful game.

[tailsBOOM!]

The increase in price for NSO could very well have to do with some of the games already confirmed.  Up to this point, CAPCOM, Konami and Microsoft haven't put anything on it (That they own the rights to, anyways.  Rare DID develop DKC, but Nintendo owns the rights obviously).  Konami and CAPCOM thus far have preferred to do their own collections, and Microsoft is a whole other publisher.  Not to mention Nintendo doesn't exactly own the Genesis, so maybe this higher tier will allow for publishers who were formerly unwilling to put their games on NSO due to monetary reasons to have their games appear?

[Salamander]

50 minutes ago, tailsBOOM! said:

The increase in price for NSO could very well have to do with some of the games already confirmed.  Up to this point, CAPCOM, Konami and Microsoft haven't put anything on it (That they own the rights to, anyways.  Rare DID develop DKC, but Nintendo owns the rights obviously).  Konami and CAPCOM thus far have preferred to do their own collections, and Microsoft is a whole other publisher.  Not to mention Nintendo doesn't exactly own the Genesis, so maybe this higher tier will allow for publishers who were formerly unwilling to put their games on NSO due to monetary reasons to have their games appear?

A bit of both, perhaps?  Nintendo's genuinely shelling out more, but it's also an excuse for a price hike.  That would make sense to me.

Regardless, I personally have no interest in NSO, but I could see that one day changing if there was something there I really, really wanted to play.  That's pretty much also my attitude to Netflix, where I dip in and dip out.

[KHCast]

So are the controllers only gonna be available for pre-order once the new subscription is out? I know those things are gonna sell out fast, but want that wireless N64 one baaad.

[Your Vest Friend]

Okay, slightly bumping this for a retrospective thought. It's about the casting, so you can call it beating a dead horse if you want.

What's actually really killed me in hindsight is that Nintendo clearly misjudged how big the Mario Movie news would be. Like, there's a clear curve of excitement being followed by the last four pieces; you get the sizzle reel with the more minor games before it as a cool-down, Splatoon 3, afterwards, is a game that's known about but still has plenty of fans excited for more news, and then there's Bayonetta 3 news which is the literal show-stopper. The movie news seems like it was supposed to be a minor fun update for something more important to Nintendo than the third party stuff. Instead it stole a lot of Splatoon 3's thunder, and it even threatened to affect Bayo 3 (although Splatoon 3 was about enough of a buffer in the end).

[SupahBerry]

Movie announcements don't really have a place in a showcase for upcoming games, as the occasional movie trailer that played at E3, Game Awards, etc. will tell you. Maybe Nintendo realized this, and tried to keep the news briefer than a full blown trailer, treating it as a detour that's just goes by a little less quickly as the Smash and ACNH detours did, before returning to the main program. On the other hand, maybe it was thrown into the Direct at the last minute, so even if they did mean to make it a bigger deal, they had no time to do so.

 

I won't say Miyamoto literally did interrupt in the middle of the Direct and that wasn't in the script, but from the outside, it kinda felt like he did walk in late in production and asked that they put he and the movie update into it ASAP. He might've just gotten the word that the English cast had been finalized, and was probably overeager to share some concrete details on the project with the public for once. Why drop the bomb in a tweet when you could catch the Direct editing room right before filming wrapped and drop it there? 

[Zaysho]

They've announced theme parks in Directs before, having the movie news didn't seem out of place or last minute.

It's just that the news itself sucked and the majority of the audience watching these things don't care.