It's been a couple days, and game journalists are universally disappointed at Nintendo's E3 conference, which, despite month-old promises from Reggie, was targeted more to our collective moms than to us hardcore gamers. I'm guessing one of the most disappointed outlets is
IGN. The EIC of their Nintendo channel, Matt Casamassina, pretty much unofficially confirmed that a Factor 5 developed Kid Icarus would show up this year, and while he didn't exactly stake his reputation on it, he's probably more than a little miffed with the House of Mario right now.
Wanting answers, he politely but pointedly held Shigeru Miyamoto at journalistic penpoint, and the Nintendo guru had some cryptic answers. Miyamoto dropped some not so subtle hints about not only Kid Icarus, but the long rumored Pikmin 3, a sequel to New Super Mario Bros, a solution to the Wii’s miniscule storage space, and a new Zelda made just for Wii. His answers basically amounted to, "I can't confirm anything, but all those teams are hard at work on something..." When Matt flat out said he wanted a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, Miyamoto said “leave it to me.”
So where does that leave the scorned Nintendo fan? Well, according to Miyamoto there are some big projects in the works, but in my opinion, E3 was the place to announce them. When Nintendo devotes the big slam to Wii Sports 2 and Wii Music, and give us vague hints after the conference, that shows me where their priorities lie. I’m not sure if old school Nintendo fans (myself included) can wait another year for some real games—we’ve been burned by gratuitous minigames two years in a row. Are we getting any new game announcements before next year's show, or is this the beginning of a very long drought? I’ll keep Nintendo in the corner of my eye, but if textbooks are especially expensive next quarter, my Wii might be heading to Gamestop for a quick trade-in.
