With Reggie’s recent comments about Nintendo’s E3 showing this year, stating that “we’re gonna have great new content maximizing all of our key franchises. It’s gonna be a good second half. There’s gonna be a big game for the holidays that the gamers will want.” speculation has been through the roof. What’s going to happen? Better yet, what’s going to be announced? Well here’s my two cents.
First off, their online plan has got to change. With the recent announcement of a “pay-to-play” feature enabled in certain games allowing for better online structure, I think Nintendo will announce Animal Crossing Wii as a title to debut this feature. Of course that would mean the rumor of AC Wii being an MMO would be true! And if this did happen, a headset would be needed, which would be another perfect announcement for this show. And to really show that the big N is serious about online, AC Wii would also be an excellent title to debut download content, which was announced along with the P2P setup. But since MMO data would take up a lot of the Wii’s tiny 512MB of flash memory, plus all the WiiWare downloads and VC titles means Nintendo almost HAS to announce a hard drive, because I’m sick of cleaning out the god dang fridge!
Second, I think they’re going to announce new Wii entries in many of there existing franchises, including F-Zero, Pikmin, Donkey Kong, and even a new Zelda. That’s right folks, I think the new Zelda is well in development, but its sure to be something completely new and un thought of since Nintendo has said they want the next Zelda entry to be new and innovative, mixing up the tried-and-true formula we’ve all come to know and love.
And remember Mario’s insanely successful sport line-up? Well there’s one sport that hasn’t been covered: Football. And that’s precisely what Retro-Studios is working on, I think. When Nintendo first visited Retro they had a game called “Retro Football” but Retro pitched the idea of making a Mario Football for the Game Cube, Nintendo shut that idea down in favor of a new Metroid. But now since Metroids done and Nintendo trusts Retro, I could definitely see Super Mario Insane Blitz Football Wii being announced this July, with Wi-Fi play and all.
But lets not forget the lovely Nintendo DS, which has been running on solely third-party software the past year or so. So right off the incredible success of New Super Mario Bros. comes New Super Mario Bros. 2! (or New Super Mario World, which I think would fit better!) another original Mario adventure on one of Nintendo’s most successful platforms ever. And since the DS has so far proven to be the king of platformers and revivals (New Super Mario Bros., Yoshi’s Island DS) a fantasy of mine (that most likely won’t be final) is Donkey Kong Country 4 DS. That’s right, an all new Donkey Kong Country game developed by the one and only Rare, since they still have the privilege to develop software for Nintendo’s DS. Though this is really a dream of mine, it would be awesome if it came true, and I really don’t see why it couldn’t! I mean, it seems so far that Nintendo announces one Rare DS game each E3 (’06 had Diddy Kong Racing DS, ‘07 had Viva Piñata DS, ‘08 will have DKC4 DS?) so all I can do is hope.
As far as Nintendo’s expanded audience games, I’m not really sure what they have up there sleeve since that area of games doesn’t interest me, though I don’t see Wii Sports 2 out of the question with Wi-Fi support and everything. And don’t forget WiiWare, as I suspect tons of software will be announced for it during the conference (a new Mario Paint please?).
Well there’s my “predictions” and I’d say take them with a pound of salt, there just one man’s ideas.
