The first Nintendo Direct in a year and a half. Our first big gaming news of 2021. The biggest Nintendo press release since Super Mario Odyssey/Breath of the Wild.
There were a ton of expectations for yesterday’s 50 minute Nintendo Direct and holyyy fuck did they drop the ball on almost every single one of them. Like a giant mustache-clad plumber stomping on a weak helpless mushroom with eyes, there went our hopes and dreams for a big 2021 for Nintendo.
When did it all start going downhill? Well when they started out with two big tiddy anime biddys joining the Smash Bros roster.
Like, no one wanted these characters. Crash Bandicoot. Dixie Kong. Hell literally fucking anyone else other than weeb boys and girls with swords. There are SO MANY of these character in Smash already!
I feel like Nintendo over the last year or so is just drifting further and further into being a strictly Japanese RPG (JRPG) console. 70% of the Nintendo Direct was announcing some new or remastered JRPG title. They even made a Mii JRPG called Miitopia that looks like a free-to-play game that comes with a brand new console only it’s not it’s gonna be like $40.
Where are all the cartoony platformer classics we all grew up loving? The last Donkey Kong game came out 7 years ago along with the last REAL Mario Kart. I understand that 3D Mario and Zelda games usually take 5-6 years in between titles. I get that. But when you are sitting on huge franchises like DK, Mario sports, F-Zero, Earthbound, and even Wario and we haven’t seen any of those games for YEARS, you’re going to get what you got on the internet for the past 24 hours: disappointment.
There were some cool things shown off that I’m interested in seeing more of like the new Mario Golf that has a speed mode kinda like Mario Kart. That was probably the highlight of the show for me. I can absolutely see me and some boys crushing cold snacks while we play this.
There’s a new Star Wars game set in Mandolorian times that looks badass but it was just teased. Knockout City and Neon White intrigued me. Skyward Sword HD coming to Switch is awesome. And they ended with…Splatoon 3…which isn’t even coming out this year…
You cannot end your biggest presser in nearly 2 years with this. You just can’t. They should have ended with Mario Golf over this. Nintendo may think that Splatoon is a mega-franchise like all their other big IPs, but literally, no one else thinks that. And the fact that this conference covered a lot of games coming out this year and next, you have to wonder if Nintendo even has anything up their sleeve before 2022.
