Thursday, September 15, 2022

Nintendo Direct September 2022 Roundup

DS Peach Gardens with a Mario bush and a Chain Chomp

After the trailer for Tears of the Kingdom it's easy to forget that there came an entire Nintendo Direct attached to it. And there wasn't really much of interest, at least not to this blog.

They gave us a first look at wave 3 of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which will include DS Peach Gardens and Merry Mountain from Mario Kart Tour. This lines up with the data-mined leak that we got after the previous waves, so we already have a pretty good picture of what the other six courses are going to be. What's good to see is that Merry Mountain has some anti-gravity sections, so it feels once more like they are listening to feedback.

Otherwise there have been a lot of farming simulations for some reason and the new Fire Emblem: Engage, which was also leaked a while ago with an image of the main character with the dual-colored hair (which seems to be a popular thing in Japan right now judging by One Piece Film Red), so this wasn't a huge surprise out of nowhere. It has some Fire Emblem Heroes vibes to it, though.

Curiously, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doesn't seem to get any DLC. Since I haven't played the game (or Three Houses) yet, I have no idea of how complete it already is, but with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity they also didn't want to make any DLC at first and only returned to the project after fan requests.

It's quite weird, because this type of game really lends itself to DLC, but at the same time I also wouldn't want something like the first Hyrule Warriors again, which just kept getting too big. It's also admirable that they are aiming at something that's mostly complete at launch. Now, I suppose that Koei Tecmo has again simply moved on to the next project, which most likely will be a "Xenoblade Warriors" for 2024.

And what remains to be discussed are also things that haven't been shown in the Nintendo Direct. Those rumors around The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD coming to Switch later this year were seemingly wrong after all, because Nintendo would have announced those by now. The same goes for the supposed Metroid Prime remaster. To my understanding these rumors mainly came from the same guy, Jeff Grubb from Giant Bomb, who will probably keep repeating them until they come true eventually... As long as it creates headlines, it's just business as usual.

Well, I also keep saying that The Wind Waker + Twilight Princess HD will happen one day, but after the dismissal by Tantalus a couple of months ago it already seemed very unlikely for this year. I suppose that Nintendo really had planned for Tears of the Kingdom to be released in 2022, which is why we won't get our yearly Zelda release this time. They don't want to release anything Zelda too close to the new game to avoid the distraction and for a mid 2022 release it was probably too late when the decision was made. Even ports of already remastered titles will take some development time.

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