Ohayou gozaimasu, Nintendo!

Hello everyone and welcome to Day 2 of the E3 convention. For those of you who were still in bed dreaming of a Video Game Christmas, Nintendo delivered their digital conference at 9 a.m. The digital style for their conference was similar to years past, and to me it is a little underwhelming. However, it also strikes me as responsible due to Nintendo slumping from poor sales of the WiiU.

Despite the future still seeming a bit uncertain for Nintendo, the digital event was quite the opposite. The conference got right to the point, showing off Super Smash Bros. for both 3DS and WiiU. Easily one of the strongest titles that Nintendo has to offer, my excitement level is through the roof as consumers will be able to play this on the 3DS come this November with the WiiU version available during the holiday season.

While I’m very excited for both titles, I’m happy to see that the bright and colorful side of Nintendo hasn’t vanished. I’m not a huge Kirby fan, so I wasn’t sure how to feel about the new Yoshi title. But, while the game play was streaming during the conference, I couldn’t help but feel like that gamer’s favorite green dinosaur just got even cuter. Seeing a yarn based version of Mario’s favorite pal is a good direction. Is it enough? Well, only time will tell. Yoshi’s Woolly World is scheduled for release in 2015.

Come for the games…

Stayed for the Amiibo. At first glance, Nintendo diving into the interactive collectible market may seem like a bad idea. I think it has potential… potential to drain a lot wallets as the market for kids who want this has been proven via success of Disney Infinity, and Skylanders. I know I’ll be buying a few and the idea that maybe you’ll be able to collect some like the trophies in previous Smash Bros. titles is cause for excitement. The fact that the figures can be used on both the 3DS and WiiU will hopefully sell better than their Disney competitors.

While both the highlight of Super Smash Bros. and the reveal of the Amiibo are two of the biggest things Nintendo had up its sleeves, getting details on two Zelda titles (Hyrule Warriors and a yet to be confirmed title tentatively called simply The Legend of Zelda) and a new Star Fox title are also some of the big news coming out of the company. Surprisingly, there was a new IP among this lineup, in the form of a squad based shooter called Splatoon.

From what has been revealed so far, you and your teammates control humans to shoot ink throughout a level and can transform into a squid to traverse the level through the ink that is splattered across the level. I wasn’t expecting this new IP and I think it’s the direction that Nintendo needs to take. Hopefully more information will be revealed in the next few days.

Overall, I think it was a modest outing for Nintendo. They were sticking with what they believe works: new ways to enjoy the characters gamers are used to seeing. With what looks to be the addition of Amiibo across multiple games, I think Nintendo may climb they’re way back.

Again, this is only my initial reaction for Nintendo today. Stay tuned and check back for more updates from myself, David, and Jon as we talk more E3!