Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Nintendo Direct February 2022 Predictions

Nintendo Direct Logo

The year 2022 can finally begin for real with some Nintendo news. The Nintendo Direct will air at 11PM CET tomorrow, run for 40 minutes, and mainly focus on Nintendo Switch titles for the first half of 2022. See the announcement on Twitter.

A big topic will certainly be Splatoon 3, which feels like a good contender for a summer title, while the sequel to Breath of the Wild is probably set to be released in the late year or early 2023. Nonetheless, it's likely that Nintendo will show at least another teaser trailer to assure the fans that the game is coming soon. A big reveal of the game's actual name and what it's all about will probably follow later this year, however, like in June, so don't expect too much here.

I personally don't expect any major Zelda news at the moment, where I see the biggest chances in some crossover contents:

  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons could bring back the villagers and items for Splatoon and The Legend of Zelda in 2022, which originally were part of New Leaf, where this could go hand in hand with promoting Splatoon 3 and the sequel to Breath of the Wild.

  • There have been rumors about a new Mario Kart game, called Mario Kart X (or "Cross", see here), where this one will go further down the whole "Nintendo Kart" lane, with ARMS, Star Fox, and Pikmin as new additions. And this would also be interesting for Zelda as well, where we could get new tracks and racers based on the franchise.

Otherwise there is always the possibility of ports of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD, where those would be a good way of entertaining the Zelda fans during summer 2022 and would also make it so that all 3D Zelda games are playable on the system. This would also be a good fit for the Animal Crossing crossover contents, where Medli and Wolf Link are two of the Zelda villagers and also characters from The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

GREZZO has been working on some other project, so don't expect any news for more Zelda remakes from them (like the Oracle games) in the near future. And if it weren't for the recent interviews with Koei Tecmo, I would also list more DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity as a possibility here, but they made things sound pretty final... Still, you never know, so let's see.

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