Gamertell

In keeping with the overall theme of E3 2008, Nintendo’s press event was a little on the anticlimactic side. We had the usual “everyone’s a gamer” shtick, plenty of impressive sales charts, a few embarrassingly wacky Wii game demos, and a couple of big-ish announcements - so it was quite a bit like last year’s show, really. I’m going to give the whole event the “good, bad, ugly” treatment and highlight the biggest news of the show. Be sure to check out the live blog for the whole shebang.

The Good:
The official announcement of Animal Crossing: CityFolk looked impressive, with it’s Wiispeak communication system and ”Animal Crossing on steroids” approach. Also announced was the shocker of the show - a Grand Theft Auto game for the DS, a very fun-looking Wii Sports sequel (Wii Sports: Resort), and a demo for the very fun (if simple)-looking Wii Music. The big N showed off a few decent-looking third party titles in Call of Duty: World At War, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (all for Wii) and Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades and Spore: Creatures for the DS. We also got a look at the new Wii motion plus device, and Cammie Dunaway hinted at some very interesting DS functionality that has serious potential.

The Bad:
What was with all the lame teasing? Iwata hinted that the Mario and Zelda teams are hard at work on new titles, but there were no details - at all - to whet our appetites. Similarly, there were no truly surprising/amazing announcements, aside from Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Plus no mention of Wiiware, or any kind of storage device for the Wii’s downloadable content. And the entire presentation had a much more relaxed (you could even say “boring") vibe than years past.

The Ugly
There were so many awkward pauses for laughter or applause from Cammie Dunaway and even Miyamoto that even the staunchest convention-goer had to cringe. Also, Reggie referred to himself as “The Regginator” which is either ugly or amazing, depending on your views.

That’s about it - Nintendo is staying the course with their casual/new paradigms approach (you know, non-games and not-exactly-games like Brain Age and the upcoming Cooking Navi), mixed with core franchises. We all know they’re all but printing money, and they’ve certainly brought impressive innovations to the gaming world, but I can’t help but want a little more substance. I’ll say that until I open up Animal Crossing: CityFolk and require a court-sanctioned intervention to stop playing.

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