E3 2019

[A Black Falcon]

Well, Nintendo won E3 again. I know I've almost always said that, but it was less close than usual this year. With a sizable lineup of mostly good-looking games releasing this year, including many from the next few months, Nintendo had a lot to show and they did well with it. There is really only one disappointment from Nintendo, that once again nothing was seen of Metroid. We know Metroid Prime 3 was recently rebooted with Retro making the game, but what baout the rumored Metroid Prime Trilogy port that Retro supposedly made? I guess if it is real Nintendo doesn't want to release it this year. That's too bad. Otherwise, though, this was a great show with some nice surprises. Perhaps foremost among the surprises, we finally got -- out now, digitally -- a translated, English-language version of Seiken Densetsu 3! It's called "Trials of Mana" now, so I guess that's now SD3's official English name. It's expensive at $40 for a digital collection of Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, and Trials of Mana, but... probably worth it anyway. Square also announced a full 3d remake of Trials of Mana, coming to Switch, PC, and PS4 next year. It looks a lot more ambitious than the apparently-poor 3d remake of Secret of Mana, which would be nice.

Also, of course, Nintendo closed the conference by announcing that a sequel to Breath of the Wild is in development. That's cool I guess, though it's definitely not really my kind of game. The trailer teases us once again with Zelda having a significant role, but they've done this too many times now for me to believe it. No, probably either she gets kidnapped right after that cutscene and you have to rescue her, or she'll follow you around as your AI companion. Playable Zelda? "But then what would Link do?" ... I hope I'm wrong this time, but sadly probably won't be...

Other than that, Link's Awakening's remake was also shown at length, as expected. And... well, it has great graphics with its unique 'toy' artstyle, but in terms of gameplay and design it's clear that it's a very, VERY faithful remake of the original. It looks like everything is in the exact same places it was before, so someone like me who has played the original many times probably won't get too much out of this apart from seeing the redone graphics. And as for new content, they've only mentioned one thing: the photo hut from DX has been removed (and the photo collection element too?), and a new customizable dungeon has been added there. Here you can use rooms from dungeons you've beaten, placing them into a dungeon to form your own custom dungeons. It's a pretty cool idea that might be fun to play around with for a while, though it's limited to just placing whole rooms, you aren't designing anything more detailed than that. And other than that, it looks like LA again. Of course LA is one of my favorite games, but I love the original, it doesn't need this remake for me to love the game!

They showed a lot of other games too, including Daemon x Machina (the demo wasn't amazing, but was fun), a newly announced No More Heroes III (I don't care at all), Mario & Sonic 2020, Pokemon, Mario Maker 2 (a definite must-have game!), Animal Crossing, etc... and, of course, not F-Zero, because that series never will come back. Truly unfortunate.

So, Nintendo's first day, including their Direct and first day of Treehouse streaming, were pretty good, with plenty of fun and interesting games to watch and learn about.