SAN FRANCISCO – Super Mario Galaxy 2 will bring a wild new world and an old-school videogame feel to Wii on May 23, Nintendo said at its press event here Wednesday.
In the game's new Spin-Dig Galaxy, players can drill through to the other side of the planet to fight a globe-hopping boss, said Nintendo's Nate Bihldorff, who showed off tantalizing bits of gameplay to attendees at the media summit. Bihldorff promised that Super Mario Galaxy 2 (pictured) will feature new kinds of platforming and puzzle-solving challenges.
Metroid: Other M, another highly anticipated sequel from a high-profile franchise, will be released June 27, said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo vice president of sales and marketing. "When you finish playing this, you're going to feel like you know Samus in a way that you've never known her before," Dunaway said.
During the press event at the W San Francisco hotel, Nintendo also laid out plans to release several WiiWare titles in March, and said the DSi XL will hit the United States March 28. We'll be trying out the supersize $190 handheld and playing some upcoming portable games, including Wario Ware: DIY, America's Test Kitchen and the latest Pokemon.
Read the full live-blog archive below for more details on upcoming Nintendo launches. Hands-on impressions of many games unveiled during the event will go live on Wired.com later Wednesday.
Live-blog archive of Nintendo's Q1 Media Summit, Feb. 24, 2010
9:01 AM – There are a lot of people in attendance today. Lots of Nintendo's internal Treehouse developers, many journalists from all over, etc. Sitting in the very front row like a good student, flanked by 1up's Jeremy Parish and Gamasutra's Christian Nutt. Stalwart companions both. Maybe sitting a little too close. Stop touching me :(
9:06 a.m. – Lights just blinked on and off. That probably means "sit down, we are ready to turn this mother out."
9:08 – Nintendo PR director Marc Franklin takes the stage to welcome us. It is on. Get ready.
9:09 – They're going to have a cooking demonstration with America's Test Kitchen later! That was pretty much all I was hoping for.
9:10 – Dunaway takes the stage. Says that we'll be playing 15 Wii games and 9 DS games today, with the focus on the first half of 2010. "All of you hoping to hear something about the (holidays), you'll just have to come see us at E3." That said, she says, the first half is "absolutely packed."
9:12 – Dunaway going over sales records set by Nintendo in 2009 – 11.2 million units of DS sold in 2009. That sort of thing. Nintendo also set a new record for number of games sold for one platform in one month in December: 24.9 million units of Wii software (first- and third-party) in December 2009.
9:13 – Nintendo DSi XL coming out on March 28 in the U.S. for $190. You already know all about the Nintendo DSi XL, of course, since you read Wired.com.
9:15 – Dunaway talking about the America's Test Kitchen cooking app, showing it on the DSi XL. It looks quite a bit like Nintendo's last cooking title, just with new licensed branding.
9:17 – Nintendo bringing 100 Classic Books DS app to the U.S. It's a DS cartridge with books like Dracula, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc. June 14, $20. (Not ESRB rated.)
9:18 – Nintendo's Nate Bihldorff takes the stage to show off Super Mario Galaxy 2. We're going to be playing this today, he says. They jump right into the gameplay – showing a new galaxy called the Spin-Dig Galaxy, and you can pick up a drill and dig right through to the other side of the planet. This lends itself to new kinds of platforming/puzzle-solving, Bihldorff says.
9:20 – Continuing to show Super Mario Galaxy 2. He's doing a quick rundown of the gameplay mechanics for those in attendance who may not be familiar with the first game. Is there any such person here?
9:23 – Fighting a boss that runs around the planet – you have to drill through the planet, come out the other side, so you can drill him in the stomach. Looks like a great use of the feature, lots of fun, etc.
9:25 – Before we finish up this Mario demo, they're going to show us Yoshi. Moving around is the same as using just Mario, but the pointer turns into a little red ball, and this controls Yoshi's amazing tongue. You can click on enemies to eat them. Yoshi gains different powers by eating different things – one fruit is a Blimp Fruit and it lets Yoshi balloon up and fly around. The pointer on the Wiimote, Bihldorff says, allows for "pretty awesome control" – you can click on stuff as you're jumping around. There's a segment where you're running around on a 2-D plane, on a rotating cylinder – very old-school feeling, he says. Looks very complex!
9:29 – That concludes the Mario Galaxy demo. I'll be playing quite a bit of it later today, so look for hands-on impressions this evening.
9:31 – Dunaway back on stage. Launches on May 23. Wow.
9:32 – Long-anticipated shooter Sin and Punishment: Star Shooter for Wii will launch June 7. International online leaderboards.
9:33 – One more Wii game for the first half, called Fling Smash. You fling a hero around and smash him into things, I guess. Impressions later, naturally. Will be out in the summer.
9:34 – Pokemon for DS on March 14. Picross 3D for Nintendo DS on May 3.
9:5 – Dan Adelman, manager of the WiiWare and DSiWare businesses at Nintendo of America, is up to speak about downloads. 11 of the games here for us to play, Nintendo says, will be downloadable ones.
9:36 – Adelman announces Wario Ware: D.I.Y. for March 28. It's a DS game where you create your own mini-games, then wirelessly send them to a WiiWare game called Wario Ware: D.I.Y. Showcase, then play them on your TV. You already know about this!
9:37 – Two new WiiWare games in the Art Style series: Light Trax and Rotozoa.
9:39 – Talking about Mega Man 10 for WiiWare. Has a new "easy mode." Coming March 1. Max & The Magic Marker, recently released in Europe, coming to the U.S. on March 8.
9:40 – Finally, a release date for the anticipated indie WiiWare game Cave Story: March 22. March looks like a big month for WiiWare. Indie Games Festival finalist Super Meat Boy will also come out on WiiWare, Adelman says, this summer. So will indie cult hit And Yet It Moves, also this summer. Also Rage of the Gladiator, a one-on-one 3-D combat game that supports Motion Plus.
9:43 – DSiWare games: Metal Torrent and X-Scape, which is a 3-D shooter. Hm, didn't the Argonaut guys do a 3-D shooter called X on the Game Boy? Could that possibly be related to this? Hmm!
9:44 – Nintendo's Bill Trinen here to demonstrate Photo Dojo, a DSiWare game where you take photos of yourself and make a fighting game out of them. This has been out in Japan a while – cool to see it come to the U.S.
9:45 – Doing a pretty extensive demo of this. You take pics of yourself in a variety of fighting-game poses, record your own sound effects, then play what is basically a stripped-down Street Fighter with your pictures and your voice as the character.
9:46 – Just watching someone play this, a cacophony of recorded sound effects and ridiculousness, is pretty funny. "Bill Trinen PUNCH!" his avatar yells.
9:54 – We move on to third-party games. We're looking at a DSi-exclusive cartridge game from Majesco called Ghostwire, an "augmented reality" game in which you see the world around you, overlaid with OMG ghosts, through the DSi cameras.
9:55 – Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands coming May 18. Includes free bonus: NES console version of Prince of Persia.
9:57 – Big Disney game called Guilty Party, a Clue-style murder-mystery board game, from Alex Seropian's Wideload studio.
9:58 – Demo of Monster Hunter Tri for Wii. Will feature free online play when it launches in the U.S. (the online play is pay-to-play in Japan).
10:03 – April 20, 2010 in the U.S. They're doing a demo now.
10:13 – Sorry, been having some pretty massive technical difficulties on my end. They did a very extensive Monster Hunter demo, and now Dunaway is back for one more bit of news: Nintendo of America will publish Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS in the U.S. Not surprising, if you've been following along closely with Game|Life.
10:15 – DS cartridge game Game and Watch Collection 2 coming to Club Nintendo. Not available anywhere at retail. So is the Ultra Hand WiiWare game. These are both prizes for the Club Nintendo customer-loyalty program.
10:17 – Just one more thing, says Dunaway: She wants to talk to us about Metroid: Other M. "When you finish playing this, you're going to feel like you know Samus in a way that you've never known her before." This is a game that requires complete immersion, she says – private, enclosed gameplay areas on-site today. Yes: Metroid: Other M is playable today, launches June 27.
Image courtesy Nintendo
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