As a whole, the Nintendo Digital Event delivered as a perfectly paced entertaining forty-five minute show. It provided a great amount of new information on Nintendo properties people were most concerned about and wove it into a fun captivating presentation including smooth transitions, funny Robot Chicken skits and a steady pace. With all that said, the presentation felt pretty safe and underwhelming in this writer's humble opinion. Not to mean Nintendo's performance was bad, in fact it was better than last year's showing, however nothing truly surprised or caught this writer off-guard. Also this writer would of ended the event with The Legend of Zelda reveal instead of the Palutena character reveal for Super Smash Bros. Speaking of The Legend of Zelda reveal, the new game looks incredible with a cel-shaded anime art style and the futuristic technology mixed with medieval fantasy. A more substantial Zelda trailer or gameplay would have been nice yet what we got was great nonetheless.
Super Smash Bros. saw Palutena and Mii Fighters revealed as new additions to the character roster. Masahiro Sakurai took a bit of time to focus on the Mii Fighters as they look to be Smash's answer to create-a-fighters in other fighting games as you get to choose the Mii's style (brawler, sword-fighter and gunner), special moves and most likely appearance. That news was coupled with an excellent one-on-one fight between Reggie and Iwata and the introduction of amiibos. Despite the weird name, amiibos are Nintendo's answer to the collectable toy genre popularized by Disney Infinity and Skylanders and they allow you to store, transfer and unlock different data across multiple Nintendo games. Currently confirmed to work with Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8 and Mario Party 10 among others, the amiibos showed off at the event looked really well crafted. There were a lot more games covered in this event including Mario Maker, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2 with the first Bayonetta included on disc, Xenoblade Chronicles X and Yoshi's Woolly World. Sadly, most of them are coming out in 2015. Not much incentive to buy a Wii U this coming Fall, which is a mistake on Nintendo's part, but in 2015 the Wii U will be releasing games at a considerable pace.
Before the Palutena reveal, Nintendo ended off with a brand new property for Wii U called Splatoon. Splatoon is a third-person shooter where you play as a squid-human hybrid and the goal of each match is to cover the arena with the most ink. Ink plays a greater role than being your ammo as you can use it travel far distances quickly in squid form and slow down opposing players that get caught in it. While Splatoon looks more like a downloadable game rather than a system seller, it was nice to see Nintendo introduce a brand new property for the first time in what seems like years. Splatoon is hopefully a sign of more good things to come from Nintendo.
Although this writer did find Nintendo's Digital Event thoroughly entertaining, it was not the home run the company needed. Nintendo did a great job in developing a definitive lineup for the rest of 2014 with set release dates for all their titles except Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, giving fans confidence in the games further down the pipeline and wrapping it all in an entertaining package. Despite all that great stuff, this writer wanted Nintendo to make a much bigger statement this year and they fell short. The Wii U will definitely gain some much needed ground in 2014, just not enough to compete on the same level as Sony and Microsoft.
Grade: B+
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