[Brad]

Originally Posted by Robo Yoshi (tentative title) — a new Yoshi game was heavily rumored for Wii U ever since someone figured out how to access a debug menu in Miiverse, where they saw mentions of an unannounced game called Yoshi Land. Then, Best Buy Canada/Futureshop put up listings for a game called Yoshi Land. So, here it is. Like previous Yoshi games, it's a side-scroller, but this time the graphics are all in 3D, and it continues the needle-and-thread "crafty" look of Yoshi's Story and Kirby's Epic Yarn. (I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was developed by Good-Feel, Yarn's developer. They have no announced projects, the timing is right, and it really does look like a spiritual successor to Yarn.) This I think we'll see in Q3.

Although the first previews look a bit too much like Kirby's Epic Yarn, as if they just dropped a Yoshi model into some existing Yarn levels, both members of the Smith household loved Epic Yarn and played it to completion. So, I'm optimistic about this one!

Originally Posted by Robo The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD has always seemed like an obvious move for Nintendo, and they're making it. I think it really should have been a launch title, actually (it was the game's tenth anniversary and everything!), but that's another discussion. Wind Waker's graphics actually hold up surprisingly well, due to the art style, so it looks to avoid the weird "some things are sharp, some things are blurry" look of many HD rereleases. And Wind Waker actually has a feature that makes it an especially obvious to receive the Wii U treatment — remember the Tingle Tuner, that item that worked by giving you a second screen when you plugged in a Game Boy Advance? Well, guess which console has a second screen out of the box. Nintendo announced this for "fall;" I think it'll be Nintendo's September game.

I never played Wind Waker on the GameCube. Shocking, I know. I was in college when the GameCube was released, and I never got one. My involvement with video games, especially "hard core" games that required insignificant chunks of time, took a nose dive in those years and never really recovered (for better or worse… probably better). I only first played Wind Waker about a year or two ago when I got my hands on the ISO and downloaded the Dolphin emulator after seeing a NeoGAF thread with mind-blowing high-res images. Boy oh boy… I couldn't believe that I missed out on this adventure.

But about this HD remake: I'm also optimistic! If my Dolphin experience means anything as a baseline, the game is going to look gorgeous. The feel and gameplay are already solid. Not a whole lot needs to be done to relaunch this game.

Originally Posted by Robo That leaves 3D Mario and Mario Kart. Nintendo didn't really announce these games, just announced that they'd be unveiling them in full at E3 in June, where they'll be playable. Nintendo doesn't typically unveil games unless they're releasing that year, so that all eyes are on them that holiday season (which is one reason why Wii U needed game announcements so badly). This suggests that this holiday, Nintendo looks to be giving the Wii U the 3D Mario-Mario Kart one-two punch that marked where 3DS sales started rising to heaven in 2011. They'll need to bring out the big guns, too, if Sony and Microsoft are both shipping their new consoles this holiday.

My feelings are lukewarm on these. The last couple of Mario Kart games have been fun overall, but the ridiculous imbalance of the items really puts a damper on the gameplay. Obviously, I'm looking squarely at Blue Shell. The Mario platformers are always good, but I haven't felt particularly excited about them since the first Galaxy. I'm sure if I own a Wii U this time next year, I'd probably get these two anyway.

Originally Posted by Robo Nintendo also confirmed that Bayonetta 2 would also be at E3. Given that title's seemingly advanced state of completion (it was in development for the PS3 and Xbox for a while before Platinum's publisher dropped it, and Nintendo picked it up) I think we'll also see that this year.

Couldn't care less. Maybe someone can convince me otherwise?

Originally Posted by Robo Super Smash Bros. Wii U will also be at E3, but I have my doubts that it will come out this year. It's certainly a priority for Nintendo — it was pretty much the first game Nintendo announced for the Wii U, and they know it's a big draw for their fanbase — so maybe they'll try to rush it out, who knows.

Like the other Mario games, I think it's hard to go wrong with this formula. Brawl's single-player adventure storyline mode was a great addition IMO that both made the bizarre smattering of characters actually feel like they could share a common universe and added enjoyment to that game when you don't have other humans around. I really hope the new game builds on that.

Originally Posted by Robo This isn't big news for most people in "the West," but it's pretty big for Japan: Nintendo announced that they were collaborating with Atlus to make a Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem crossover. (People who know what those two series are are currently having an OMGWTFYES reaction around the world.) They announced absolutely nothing about the game besides that it's a Wii U game, so it's coming next year at the earliest. The biggest surprise of the event was a trailer for Xenoblade developer Monolith Soft's Wii U game, which seems to be a Xenoblade spiritual successor called X. Xenoblade is widely considered (by those who played it, anyway) to be one of the best games for the Wii, and the sort-of-sequel doesn't disappoint: it looks awesome, and maybe a little Monster Hunter-inspired. A common sentiment is that Monolith Soft looks to be making exactly what Square Enix has been trying to make with Final Fantasy Versus for seven years — a massive, gorgeous open world JRPG — and, at this rate, will likely beat them to release. This looks to be one of the Wii U's big guns for 2013; it's certainly not going to be GameStop-exclusive (like Xenoblade was in North America) this time.

These are a few more franchises I never got into, but when I read about fanboys coming to orgasm from the latest news about them, at least I'm intrigued. Where can I get some primers?

Originally Posted by Robo Iwata also talked about the next console Zelda game. While many loved Skyward Sword, its sales were disappointing, and many feel the typical Zelda formula could use some freshening up. Iwata said that the new game's development mission was to "rethink the conventions of Zelda," and that they wanted to make the world feel more open and nonlinear, saying that something they wanted to change was having to visit all the dungeons in a set order. He also used that you played by yourself as an example of a convention they wanted to rethink, hinting that maybe we can expect multiplayer of some sort. It's a ways off, though — holiday 2014 at the absolute earliest, and 2015 is more likely.

This is the announcement that has me most excited. Looking back, I haven't played Skyward Sword a second time after beating it. No hero mode, and I never even finished the trials to get the Hylian shield. Honestly, it's a good game, it has great sounds and visuals, and its level design is fantastic for a linear dungeon crawl, but some aspects of the game are annoying as hell (reiterating item descriptions, everything that Fi ever did or said, occasional unpredictability of the motion-plus controls) and the world never felt cohesive.

That Nintendo is considering pulling back from the linear nature of the recent Zelda formula is huge, IMO. Maybe this is just Old Man Smithy looking back on his childhood with rose-tinted glasses, but I feel like a major factor in the enjoyment and popularity of the first several Zelda games was that the worlds really were (mostly) open environments and you could explore and (sometimes) take on the challenges in different orders. I know that this added many many hours of replay value to the old games for me.

Please oh please oh please let's have more of that.

As for the hint at a multiplayer aspect? No idea. I wonder where they'd even start with that. The whole series is predicated more than anything else on the quiet hero out to save the world all alone (ignoring the chatty NPC tagalongs like Fi and Navi).

Originally Posted by Robo Does anyone here have a Wii U? If not, what sort of games are you waiting for before jumping in?

I haven't bought a Wii U yet because I haven't seen anything that really excites me. From this announcement alone, I see several potential titles that are seriously piquing my interest. Assuming Nintendo doesn't drop the ball, I'll probably have a Wii U a year from now. Almost all of my Wii catalog is populated by first-party titles. Nintendo knows how to make some damn good games. I really do hope that over the next year, though, we'll also see some quality third-party titles that aren't just ports of old Xbox/Playstation hits.