I’m just going to go right ahead and say it: Monster Hunter 4 was announced at Nintendo’s 3DS conference. Although the series has never been particularly successful here in North America, its popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun is stratospheric. As of press time it is unclear whether or not the game will be exclusive to the 3DS (Give us a break – nobody here speaks Japanese.) but all signs point to it being so. Yes, Nintendo basically won back Japan with this single revelation.
Even someone like myself who has never had much interest in Monster Hunter has to admit that the fourth numbered game in the series looks flat-out gorgeous. Footage was shown of the monster Tigrex chasing after the player and the player scaling his foes in a manner reminiscent of a certain PS2 game from Team Ico. The animations are nothing short of astounding for a handheld title; actually, it looks better than most Wii titles.
Nintendo also focused heavily on Monster Hunter 3G (3DS remake of Monster Hunter Tri). Ryozo Tsujimoto of Capcom noted that it is largely a straight port. It will hit Japan at on December 10th for around sixty USD (4650 yen). It also looked wonderful running on the 3DS. A lot of underwater footage was displayed and then suddenly it turned into “I’m on a boat!” Aside from the boat footage, some sort of unbelievably oddball boat peripheral was shown with virtually no details whatsoever. It could very well be Japan-only.
A plethora of other third party software was shown or talked about, but much of it was so Japanese-centric that it will almost assuredly not make it over here. That makes sense, of course, seeing as this is Tokyo Game Show. More likely to reach our shores is a new Square Enix game called Default: Flying Fairy. Described as a “craft RPG,” the horrendously named title will overseas in 2012.
Biohazard Revelations was shown in brief and it is certainly looking like the most technically-impressive game on the system. Satoru Iwata announced a 2012 date for it, as expected.
Ace Combat Cross Rumble got a quick shout-out as well. Iwata-san explained that it will continue Star Fox’s tradition of top-notch space combat. This was really weird considering that Ace Combat has never taken place in space; it was almost definitely a slip-up on his part, but we can’t say for sure at this time.
Wondering about the first party front? Don’t worry, Nintendo showcased a multitude of their own games. Highlighting them was the announcement of a brand new Fire Emblem title. A brief video was shown that made it look like the best looking title yet in the franchise. It is hitting Japan next year and will feature two-on-one battles for the first time in the franchise.
Mario Tennis was also announced and it looked like, well, a Mario Tennis game. Expect it next year – like so many other games shown today. For example, the Big N gave us some new peaks at next year’s Animal Crossing and Paper Mario.
Not everything was reserved for next year, though. This fall’s twin heavy hitters, Mario Kart and Super Mario 3D Land muscled their way onto the scene. Expect the former on 12/7 in Japan and the latter on 11/3. Plenty of footage of both were shown with some platforming through a castle, encounters with Big Boo and Bowser being displayed for Land. Mario also has a roll move now, which Miyamoto-san referred to as “old.” I don’t ever recall rolling the plumber around in a platformer – unless you count on special slide levels, and even that is stretching it – but whatever.
On the Kart front, Peach was shown riding a monster truck and we got some looks at newer tracks (Wuhu Island) and older ones (Waluigi Stadium). There’s also a strange gyro-controlled first-person mode. But the kicker is playable Lakitu. Yes, that’s right; he’s coming down off of his cloud into a kart. That’s actually not entirely accurate, because his kart looks like the cloud. Sold.
Speaking of highly-anticipated first party games, Kid Icarus: Uprising was shown and it didn’t look any less beautiful than it had previously. We got to see Pit squaring off against Dark Pit, Medusa and a new tornado-shooting hammer weapon. It all looked pretty great. Nintendo promised a humongous arsenal and said that all of it would have its own AR cards. The game is coming out in Japan in January of 2012.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 (2012) was yet another promising Nintendo title game that was shown off. Footage included Luigi vacuuming up coins and ghosts left and right. Viewers were also treated to a scene in which he was broken down into little tiny 8-bit blocks. It looked supremely cool and appeared to be an animation for some sort of transportation system.
Over on the hardware front, the pink 3DS pictured at the top of the page was announced for Japan… for girls. Apparently the 3DS has not attracted the females like the DS did and Nintendo hopes this new color will make strides towards changing that. Finally, a significant revamp of the e-shop is on the way. Considering how terrible the thing is as of now, the new version can’t come soon enough.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
Oh, right, they also showed off a little game called The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii. You might have heard about that one. What Nintendo displayed was the wonderful little CG trailer you can see above. What’s more, the publisher announced that this will likely be the longest game in the series; clocking in at 50 – 100 hours (that’s a lot of wiggle room, there, Nintendo) when you factor in a newly announced boss rush mode and a “second playthrough.” The only other word on the title was that it will feature a hint mode similar to that of the 3DS remake of Ocarina.
Well, that about does it. Sure, I didn’t cover every single little thing in here, but those are definitely the highlights of the conference. Nintendo made some major strides towards solidifying the 3DS’ position in its home country and also showed off a number of titles that will enjoy popularity here in the US. Let us know in the comments if their showing changed your mind about the struggling handheld – for better or worse.
[Image via Video Gamer and Joystiq.]
[Video via IGN.]
