Animal Crossing press conference '08

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 » gaming thought

Nintendo officially announced Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii this morning, and that was about the whole reason I tuned into their press conference. Even though I played Wild World obsessively, it's been long enough since I stopped that I'm getting pretty excited for the next version. Details about new features were pretty sparse, aside from there being a new urban area and an auction house, but even if it's mostly the same game with upgraded graphics (I never played the Gamecube version) and a bunch of new catalog items/neighbors/fish and bugs to collect, I'll be happy playing it for a long time. Of course, I'd still love for it to turn out to be my ideal next-gen Animal Crossing that I detailed here and here.

They talked about some other stuff, too:

New Mario & Zelda games for Wii

I would really love a new Mario game that's more in the vein of Super Mario 64, with sprawling levels that are fun to leisurely (for the most part) explore, with less of a feeling that I'm traveling along a preset path like in Super Mario Galaxy. Also, the new Zelda must be a cel-shaded Wind Waker sequel. The realistic style in Twilight Princess was so uninspired.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Weird.

Wii MotionPlus and Wii Sports Resort

So Wiimote 2.0? I don't really know what to make of this. It's sort of pitiful in that it finally provides functionality that people expected the wiimote to be capable of at launch. (At least Ubisoft did, HA HA.) I guess there's a lot of potential in 1:1 motion controls, but am I going to run out and buy one (or two)? Not if 90% of the games for it continue to be minigame collections.

...Which brings me to Wii Sports Resort. They're going to have to try harder to sell me on this, especially at $50 (plus the cost of another Wii MotionPlus so I can try the swordfighting). Without more to go on, I'm expecting this to be probably five more minigames that show off the new motion controls, with varying degrees of success. I don't know how well a jetski game's going to work, for example. And seriously, frisbee? The whole thing screams "tech demo" even louder than the original Wii Sports.

WiiSpeak

I'm glad this isn't getting bundled with Animal Crossing because I don't think I'm interested, at least not for that game. But, in the basically nonexistant likelihood that they patch SSBB and Mario Kart Wii to support this, I'll buy one right away. I'll admit the conference-call style is a perfect fit for the Wii.

Wii Music

I'm waiting to see a really good video of this before I make any judgements, and the only thing I turned up in a quick search was this, and while it may be extremely awesome, I have a feeling that—despite the what the title may say—it is not an accurate representation of the gameplay.

By the way, if anyone knows what song that is, please let me know so I can put it on my iPod and loop it forever and ever. I'm prepared for the inevitable embarrassment when it turns out to be the song from some level of Castlevania I never made it to or something.