The last few Nintendo Press Conferences have been pretty strong. With the first big unveiling, you would think Nintendo would pull all the stops in order to steal all the thunder away from Microsoft and Sony once again. Sadly this press conference did not live up the incredible expectations fans and the media put on it. By all means, it was a decent conference on par with Sony's Press Conference and better than EA's and Microsoft's showings. While the focus, other than one little segment, was on the Wii U, Nintendo did not do much to give a sole reason for gamers to pick up their newest console over the PS3 or Xbox 360, which will most likely seeing price drops to compete with the Wii U. The show did start off strong with Mr. Miyamoto and the very first look at Pikmin 3. Pikmin 3 looked great with all the new features like four new playable characters, a new class of Pikmin and the two different control styles. The Pikmin 3 showcase was easily the best thing about Nintendo's Press Conference. Reggie Fils-Aime followed Pikmin 3 by quickly summarizing features of the Wii U controller and the Miiverse, which both had in-depth showcases during the Nintendo Direct video from this past Sunday, before showing off New Super Mario Bros. U. Super Mario Bros. U was very interesting with a few tidbits at the connection with Miiverse and the asynchronous gameplay use of the Wii U Gamepad like creating platforms that other players can use to get to unreachable areas. Nintendo then introduced their renewed focus on third-party partnerships with two WB Games for Wii U, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition and Scribblenauts Unlimited. Batman: Arkham City did have some cool exclusive features for Wii, but the Scribblenauts Unlimited footage really took centre stage. We got a set of trailers, one for Wii Fit U and another for a new music game called SiNG, which was one of the low points of the show. Later in the show, we got some more third-party games now from Ubisoft. The Just Dance 4 demo was horrid while the ZombiU had an interesting trailer to say the least. That was followed by Lego City: Undercover, which looked like a very cool mix between the Lego franchise and the open world formula of a GTA, but a lot less violent and graphic. We also got a quick little rundown of three first-party games for 3DS (New Super Mario Bros. 2, Papar Mario: Sticker Star and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon) that could of easily been cut out of the conference to make room for more Wii U demos/reveals since there will be a hour long conference dedicated just to 3DS tomorrow evening. Nintendo ended off the show with Nintendo Land, a virtual Nintendo theme park that integrates with Miiverse and has 12 mini-games based on Nintendo's biggest franchises. Nintendo Land looks to do for Wii U what Wii Sports did for Wii. It is meant to get gamers accustomed to the Wii U's new features and controller and would be a great game to pack-in with the Wii U, Nintendo. The Nintendo Land demo was just okay, but in no way should it have been the final game Nintendo had to show off. Nintendo needed to end their conference with a bang. Be it a teaser of a new first-party game or a demo of whatever Retro Studios was rumoured to be working on. It was a huge missed opportunity and made this conference come out a little flat when everything was said and done.
Overall, Nintendo's E3 Press Conference was an okay showing. While it did fall flat with no real surprises, what Nintendo did offer was an enjoyable conference nonetheless. Just Dance 4, SiNG, Wii Fit U and Zombie Reggie were the only real low points of this conference and they did not drag on longer than a minute or two.
Grade: C+
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