Topic: Your Guess as to this year's surprise E3 Wii U Announcement(s)

I pity anyone who isn't able to enjoy the extreme, sheer quality and artistic value that is tropical freeze.

I'd buy it at twice the price and feel blessed. Honestly.

Yes, in fact, it is a big deal because it's not a 3D Mario game in the same way that all of the other 3D Mario games are 3D Mario games. It's another good local coop game which, while overpopulated on Wii U, is new territory for the series.

And 2D Mario needs to change the physics on its jumping and momentum to stay relevant. Moreover, stop making us hold down B constantly, too. Map run to a trigger so it's easier to run & jump precisely.

It seems I can't unwatch a thread unless I make a new comment, not that I don't like following the conversations going on in this thread, but simply that all the frequent updates are filling up my inbox.

Whatever Retro is working on seems to be a consistently brought up matter on this thread, and as I do believe we will still get a few 2016 games announced at this E3 (as it is merely focusing on 2015), I do think we will see a preview or teaser for whatever it is Retro is working on. Given previous comments by Nintendo, I would say it is most likely a new Metroid game, and while I don't have much interest in the series (particularly the entries made by Retro) I do think it'd be good to have a new Metroid game come out. I believe it's been noted that next year would be Metroid's 30th anniversary, and if so, that would be great timing.

Speaking of anniversary, though far from likely, this year does mark the 20th anniversary of Panel de Pon a.k.a. the Puzzle League series. I'd love to see an entry marking it's 20th anniversary, preferably starring Lip and the fairy cast, announced. I imagine if in the rare case that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems does actually remember this series, that any game would likely be a 3DS one, or even just an eShop title.

I wonder if they'll announce any new eShop titles, outside of Project Guard and Project Giant Robot (if kept separate from Star Fox U), which seem likely to end up as eShop titles. I'd rather like to see Dillon's Rolling Western get the Pushmo treatment and have an entry on Wii U.

This is like a game of telephone.

First, Miyamoto did not tell them not to write a story. He only questioned if it was needed. This was prompted by Club Nintendo surveys, in which less than 1% of those surveyed indicated that they found Paper Mario stories interesting. So Nintendo asked gamers what they wanted. Almost none of them said story. Nintendo interpreted that to mean that Paper Mario didn't really need much of a story. The game's director agreed.

"Personally I think all we need is to have an objective to win the boss battle at the end of the game. I didn't think we necessarily needed a lengthy story like in an RPG. Instead, we looked at the characteristics of a portable game that can be played little by little in small pieces and packed in lots of little episodes and ideas. I always did like putting in little ideas, so I actually enjoyed it."
-Taro Kudo

Secondly, Super Mario world. Small w. That's a huge cast of characters, including those introduced in previous Paper Mario games.

Thirdly, the artistic freedom was in IntSys deciding for themselves to scale down RPG mechanics and design puzzles and battles around the use of stickers. Miyamoto didn't tell them to do that. He just told them to do something new and interesting. IntSys were given the freedom to redesign the IP in whatever way they wanted.

Source: Iwata Asks: Paper Mario Sticker Star

Agreed on both points. For the former, Super Mario 3D World does differ from the rest of the 3D Mario games to an incredible degree. I for one am rather thankful for it, as it finally introduced a 3D Mario game that I actually enjoyed myself, having not been a fan of prior 3D entries.

As for the latter, given the simple controls of the Super Mario Bros series, I don't see why they don't allow you to customise the button layout as you see fit. As you note, It would have certainly been more comfortable in recent entries to have run mapped to the triggers.

Never has a statement been so divorced from reality. CLUB NINTENDO SURVEYS!?! Are you seriously citing that? I read the asks, but that is the worst metric this side of skull-measuring. No one fills out club Nintendo surveys. It's plain to anyone who has ever played a Paper Mario game that those games were the story, then the turn based gameplay. The fact that they didn't recognize that shows just how disconnected from the reasonable zeitgeist they are.

While Miyamoto probably pushed it in that direction, it's pretty obvious that Intelligent Systems took that seriously. I mean, yeah, obviously, I'm not saying that was smart but at the same time, if you are given any sort of sample of your audience and 99% of it says a notable part of it that you spent time and money on is pointless, I can't imagine a situation where any successful game developer is gonna just ignore that. If I was given information that my storytelling skills were treated like that, no amount of doubt about the credibility of those surveys would matter. I feel bad for when the writers found that out, that's gotta suck.

It's honestly confusing. I mean, we can say they don't matter, but I'm assuming much of the people that would actually bother to fill that out in the first place are hardcore Nintendo fans. Who are these people who would bother otherwise?

I don't think it was a trick but they may end up doing a U-turn simply to end speculation it will be for the NX instead and show it at E3.

I can't speak for soccer, as I don't enjoy it at all outside of playing it in person. I think watching it on TV is boring (and I enjoy watching baseball), and I think the games are boring.

But in other sports, I like chaotic action too, but I like chaotic action in the style of the NHL Hitz or NFL Street style, where you are still playing as real players and real teams, and the game is built around having an omniscient control over the whole game. Mario Sports games lack any of that experience.

Yes, I'm citing that. The sample size would have easily been in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, and most of the surveys completed by the more enthused Nintendo fans. It was enough of a factor that it persuaded Kudo, who was already leaning towards removing story elements, to just not bother.

Or that your opinions are not, as you have long suspected, actually facts.

Like you most people prefer having it the game licenced with real players names and that's how the largely inferior FIFA has always dominated over the likes Pro Evolution Soccer.

I feel like they are going to give us a release date for lucas and say "also Mother 3 will be available after this direct, sorry to keep you waiting."

^I wouldn't get my hopes up on that one, if I were you.

Also, I really doubt Nintendo will pull a U-turn on their decision to keep Zelda out of E3 or their statement about not being ready to talk about the NX until next year. Whatever the NX is, it's still quite a ways off. A year and a half at the least, and considering that that's generally perfect timing for a console reveal, but they aren't even /ready/ to talk, I'd say we shouldn't expect anything until Spring 2017 at the earliest, as long as you're assuming it's a new system, anyways.

Uncharted 5 . . .

2D Mario needs to change nothing whatsoever (At least from the point of view of Nintendo). Why risk changing anything when no matter how much effort they put in to the 3D entries the 2D ones sell better.

They could offer a less comfortable control scheme as an option I suppose. (Dunno why anyone would want to have their hands in that unnatural position though by choice. I would prefer Rayman with the Mario run button controls).

^LESS comfortable? The control scheme in 2D Mario games is decades old, and it's lack of comfort because of that shows.

Actions aren't independently mapped to buttons, so running also makes you grab items and do a Powerup attack. It's kind of ridiculous really. Mario 64 introduced a far better grabbing system where you tap a button to pick up and let go. No idea why 2D Mario hasn't picked that up yet.

Run buttons are great as an option, but it's high time Mario take a page from the current DKC playbook and offer analog run as an option as well. Fewer button presses, and less uncomfortably trying to manipulate two buttons simultaneously with one finger.

Also, like Haru said mapping run to a trigger could work too, as you have greater independent control between two fingers than between the knuckle and pad of just one thumb.

@Haru17 Hahahaha nice gifts!!! You understand how awesome Mario Strikers is!

Yeah, instead it's a 3D Mario game in the same vein as NSMB which makes it even less distinctive from other Mario games. Both 2D and 3D Mario are following the same formula now and it's beyond tiresome. Mario is overdue for a major change. Or at least a collectathon game to break up the monotony of having every Mario game be a classic style linear platformer with the exact same movesets and mechanics every time.

You just keep proving your ignorance. 3D World, aside from jumping over pits headed for a goal, plays nothing in the least like 2D Mario. The character controls are nearly identical to the of Mario 64, but they're tightened up a lot, which is anything but bad. You also act like Galaxy wasn't linear. One world may have multiple paths, but what path was present depended on which star you selected. Sunshine was the last non-linear Mario, as I recall, and it was kind of a broken, glitchy mess. A lit like a large number of Gamecube games, actually.

As for run controls, I find both schemes very comfortable. It's all about player preference. There's no universally most comfortable scheme. Personally, I prefer the simplicity of the A-B scheme, but some people prefer the trigger scheme. Which scheme better suits the game depends almost entirely on game design. Mario games are and have always been an exercise in simplicity, so mapping two or three commands to the same button makes a lot of sense. Also considering they wanted to suppirt the single Wiimote control scheme, there really is no other way they could've mapped the buttons by default (though an ability to customize controls would never go amiss.)

Oh please, it is painfully similar to 2D Mario. Both involve running and jumping through the level to reach the goals, more often than not involving basic jumps. Both have the same health and powerup system. Many of the enemies overlap between the two games.

Controls =/= gameplay. Again, this is a pretty technical, impractical difference between the two. You're not performing different actions between the two. You're performing the same action with slightly different physics. Not a lot of people are going to care about this difference.

True, Galaxy was linear. But it stands out more because you progress through the game differently. You're not trying to get to the goal ring and progressing from one level to the next. You're completing missions and progressing purely based on Power Star totals. And that's not even mentioning the moveset difference between Galaxy and NSMB/3D (Galaxy has spin and triple jump, and utilizes them a lot better than the modern games do. They also use moves like wall jump and long jump better too) or that Galaxy has antigravity level design.