Saturday, 13 March 2010

FEATURE: Nintendo Media Summit 2010 Round-Up

A new Mario Galaxy 2 trailer and release date, a new Sin and Punishment: Star Successor/Successor of the Skies trailer and release date, a new batch of Metroid: Other M screens, 2 new Pokemon: HG/SS trailers, a Warioware: DIY release date and more WiiWare and DSiWare? If you don't think this year's Nintendo Media Summit was crammed full of new stuff then you sir are completely insane. Today I'll be talking about my opinions on last Thursday's event. Forgive me if it's a bit rushed, but I wanted to post this as soon as possible! Let's start with the big ones.


The Big One: Super Mario Galaxy 2
As I mentioned before, the summit has brought us a new Mario Galaxy 2 trailer and it has me highly anticipated for the game. As well as a cool new logo, the trailer shows off some new galaxies. The level design in these levels is extremely innovative and it really makes you think how Nintendo comes up with this crazy stuff. There's more snow themed galaxies and even a galaxy where everything is HUGE! Goombas 50 times bigger than Mario? WIN. Comparing the media summit trailer to the one we saw back at E3 last year, the game looks a lot better visually. I'm not sure if that's just the quality of the video, mind! Starry skies can be seen above around Mario and you can see much better effects on Mario, Yoshi and the enemies. Nintendo say they are really going all out with Super Galaxy 2; they seem to have packed much more into the sequel than the previous game and I'll definitely be keeping my eye on it. The release date for the UK is the 11th of june so hold tight till then!

Game of the Show: Metroid: Other M
For me, Metroid: Other M was the highlight of the show. Sure, we didn't get a new trailer but we've been shown lots of new screenshots and ONM say the game is AMAZING to play. We didn't get an exact release date but Nintendo has confirmed it will be out sometime in the third quarter of the year.
The game looks incredible. Nintendo and Team Ninja have said before that you will see a more emotional side to Samus Aran. The fact they've given her a voice really helps with that. The lass has also had a bit of a make-over too, she really looks like a completely different person! Whether you like Samus's new look or not, that doesn't change the fact that Metroid: Other M is going to be incredible.
If you look at the screens and compare them to the game's first trailer, you can see that the health bars and everything have a new design. The gameplay will hopefully be top notch too. I'm not sure if Other M will beat the brilliant Metroid Prime 3 which I just picked up. Let's hope that the game will end up as revolutionary as the leap from the original series to Prime was...

Hardcore Pleaser of the Show: Sin and Punishment: Successor to the Skies
Sin and Punishment 2 was another highlight for this years summit. Now under the subtitle Successor of the Skies, this action packed on rails shooter is still looking awesome. The game's been out in Japan for a little while now, and it's good that a UK release has been confirmed. About the name change, I'm not surprised they didn't end up calling this game Sin and Punishment 2, the original N64 game never saw the light of day here anyway! Thank god for Virtual Console I suppose. At the event we were shown the first batch of UK screens and a new trailer showing off our version of the game. It certainly doesn't look disappointing in any way. The only worry I have is that the game might be too short. Let's hope not!

The Hidden Gem of the Show: Warioware DIY
I'm very surprised that nobody has payed any attention to this game since Nintendo announced it would be coming to the UK. It looks amazing! If you haven't heard of Warioware, the basic idea of it is you play through a set of microgames, small challanges that can last anything up to six seconds. Past WW games have had loads of microgames stuffed into them, but the latest addition to the series only has 100. Why? Because you can make your own! The idea of making your own six second games is bold, since not everyone knows how to do programming. Fortunately, you don't need to know how to do that in DIY; all you do is draw parts of your game, compose the music (you can even hum into the DS mic and it'll turn the noise into notes) and write the instructions. It's kind of like Flipnote Studio, if you can draw, you can do whatever you want. Unlike FNS, if you don't know how to draw there are some ready made parts you can use in your games. These include retro Mario and Zelda sprites too! Now you can make the Mario/Link crossover you've always wanted to see! Warioware DIY doesn't come out for a while, but until it does I have my hopes up. The game also arrives in conjuction with a Wiiware channel where you can play your created microgames on the Wii, let's hope that's free.

That's all for now guys! Until next time, bye-bye!

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