Cognition Dissemination: Nintendo Has an Actual Lineup Again

Nintendo’s presentation was the last big one from E3 2021, to, as it turned out, their benefit. This Electronic Entertainment Expo (aka “E3,” which you knew, right?) has been far from the best E3 in terms of surprises and announcements. The COVID-19 pandemic is a big part of the reason why, despite few publishers outright saying that. The bar was so low as a result that Nintendo only had to provide one big surprise in order to steal the show. Thankfully the combination of their upcoming lineup being largely and their uncanny ability to prevent leaks made this a good showing.

It’s just a shame they didn’t want to share it. The Damage Control staff here planned to co-stream it, as we did with the Xbox + Bethesda Showcase, but Nintendo’s Japanese arm put out a statement forbidding that mere hours before it started. It was never clear whether the American and European arms agreed with them, but if Twitch’s official channel didn’t want to risk co-streaming it, we couldn’t either. Thanks Nintendo.

The Direct started off with the much (?) anticipated announcement of the next Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character: Kazuya Mishima from the Tekken series. After he dropped poor Captain Falcon off the mountain like he did his father (which doesn’t mean Falcon is dead if Heihachi could survive it), Kazuya was primarily demonstrated in a two-dimensional view with 3D models, similar to the Smash Bros. and Tekken games. It’s nice to see that Smash Ultimate is the true Fighters Megamix after all these years, even though Kazuya hails from a franchise owned by this game’s developer, Bandai Namco. Sakurai will provide a (pre-recorded) longer demonstration of him on June 28th, and he should release shortly afterward.

Nintendo had a number of surprising announcements that so-called Nintendo Insiders didn’t blow beforehand — assuming they even knew anything. One among them was for the long-awaited (as long as people believed it existed) Metroid Dread, the fifth mainline 2D Metroid game, coming from MercurySteam. It retains a number of mechanics from Metroid: Samus Returns, the remake of Metroid II released late in the 3DS’ life, but looks far more aesthetically pleasing thanks to being in HD. The game will release on October 8th, marking another quick gap between the announcement and release. Metroid Prime 4 is also still in development at Retro Studios, but still isn’t ready to show yet thanks to only being moved to the studio not even two-and-a-half years ago.

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp was another surprising announcement, remakes of the first two Advance Wars games being developed by, of all studios, WayForward Technologies. WayForward is more known for their 2D titles rather than their 3D one, but this is one of their best-looking non-2D efforts yet. You have to wonder what Intelligent Systems is working on at the moment, but this should be a welcome return for a franchise that’s been dormant for over 13 years. It will release on December 3rd.

Mario Party Superstars is another one of the several Mario Party games, due for release on October 29th, with games bound to keep people playing all night — including the DC staff. Another party-ish game is Warioware: Get it Together that will arrive on September 10th, though it’s considerably and fittingly weirder. It turns out, Nintendo was legitimately teasing something when they released a survey not even two weeks ago asking fans if they wanted to buy a new installment.

There were a number of Legend of Zelda franchise announcements made by producer Eiji Aonuma himself to commemorate the 35th anniversary. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD releases on July 16, interestingly the only remaster coming this year. A Zelda Game & Watch including The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (which our own Drew Young recently streamed), and the Game Boy version of Link’s Awakening is coming on November 12th for $49.99. It’s a better deal than the Mario one last year, and it’s bound to become just as rare — if not rarer. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity also has downloadable content coming soon to expand the roster, enemy types, and weapons available.

The big Zelda showcase, of course, was for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game with a real title that Nintendo isn’t sharing yet. It looks great, easily prettier than the first already-pretty game. Link has a mutated arm that can apparently manipulate time, drawing comparisons to both the Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword with Link diving from the sky. I’ll save further speculation for the rest of the internet, including whether it might be running on an updated Switch model. The game will ideally and hopefully release sometime in 2022.

The first-party games were the focus, to no surprise for a Nintendo Direct. But a good number of third-party games were shown too. The biggest among them was Shin Megami Tensei V, the newest title in the mainline Megaten series. It’s a long-awaited title too, given how little info there’s been since its announcement at the beginning of 2017… until now. The game’s presentation will be a big upgrade from the Shin Megami Tensei IV games on 3DS, to have more in common with the recently remastered (for good reason, clearly) Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (the opening for which was streamed by our own Angela Moseley). The game will release on November 12th in western territories, the day after the Japanese date leaked when the website was accidentally updated a couple of weeks ago.

Also coming is Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, which publisher Ubisoft announced on Saturday — after Nintendo accidentally leaked it on their website first. Other third-party titles included ports like those for the Life is Strange titles, the Danganronpa titles, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Worms Rumble, Guardians of the Galaxy (via the Cloud), Worms Rumble, Tony Hawk’s™ Pro Skater™ 1 + 2, Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods – Part 1, Astria Ascending, and Strange Brigade.

The Nintendo Direct wasn’t quite good enough to “save E3” in the eyes of some too-online fans, partially thanks to rumors of games that didn’t appear, like that new internally-developed Donkey Kong game, anything from Monolith Soft, and others I don’t intend to spend much time on. But it’s good to understand that there was no “saving E3” from what it was this year. It is quite clear that the COVID-19 pandemic upended the game development sector. Nintendo is currently benefitting from emerging out of their pandemic blues, after the Switch lineup suffered between the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Perhaps future E3 events will be better with the pandemic ending (knocks on wood), but there’s no denying that Nintendo had a good lineup this year. Nintendo should have more to show throughout this year, including more software and perhaps hardware.

Feel free to watch the entire Nintendo Direct presentation here. Also check out the trailers and Treehouse demonstrations on their YouTube account.