Nintendo Press Conference: Not Torture?

(Also see: Wii Virtility Sensor)

Nintendo took the floor this morning and we all here at Geeksquisite held our breathe. Frightened that we'd get a repeat of their poor performance last year at E3. That tension didn't go away right away as they have Cammie come out. Thankfully they got off to a good start when they announced that "New super Mario Brothers" would be coming to the Wii. The game will include 4 player co-op which should be great. I don't know at the time weather it's online or offline co-op but I'm pretty excited about this game. The good thing about is that they aren't trying to introduce waggle into the game. They used the controller like an NES and the game seemed to work great. This wasn't the end of Mario announcements though as they announced many more. Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is coming to the DS, it's an RPG and looks wonderful. Mario vs. Donkey Kong for DSI looks great. Then the biggie came with the announcement of Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii. Sadly the game will not be coming until 2010 but they did show the return of everyones favorite dinosaur, Yoshi. The gameplay looked great, so it looks like the Mario franchise will be stronger then ever in the coming months.

They mentioned Wii Fit Plus but lucky for us they decided not to show any of it. Surprisingly Wii Motion Plus was not brought up with the title. They got off the fitness talk pretty fast thought luckily. Instead showing more "actual games" including a bunch of RPG's. Some of which will be more Final Fantasy games, Golden Sun for DS, Cop: Te Recruit, and Kingdom Hearts.

The Nintendo press conference hit it's low when Iwata came out and announced the new Vitality Sensor. Basically if you've been in a hospital or have seen one in a movie you have seen this device before. A sensor that goes on your finger and reads your pulse and some other things. We have no clue what this is supposed to work with thought which is kind of weird. Nintendo was doing dam good until this part too :(.

They got things back on track with the announcement of Super Mario Galaxy 2 as mentioned before. some 3d party titles like the Conduit and Dead Space: Exctraction were shown but neither really excites me. Silent Hill was mentioned which I've seen demoed in long form and looks really good.

Then the big end announcement came and it was a new game in the metroid series. A game being developed by Team Ninja the makers of Ninja Gaiden. The trailer they showed had some incredible moments which took everyone by surprise I think. If you think Ninja Gaiden with a Metroid skin that's the basic idea. Don't be worried though it looked fantastic and totally a fresh way for the series to go. Overall it was a good press conference that was greatly improved over last years.

Biggest Flop at E3: Wii Vitality Sensor

When Nintendo brought out the Wii Vitality Sensor, I recognized it in an instant because I had one on my finger during a trip to the hospital. And I thought to myself, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. In the bad way. 

What the heck was the President of Nintendo thinking?! If this device sells even one of these i'll be surprised. But lets consider an honest possibility. Perhaps they will make games where they try to scare you enough to make your blood pressure go over a limit and you lose. Or maybe they'll make future shooters where your heartbeat will be heard by nearby enemies the more your real heartbeat gets higher. That would be cool and demonstrate a new way to control the Zen of gaming. 

But none of this will work because I gotta wonder if people could play any games with the vitality sensor on one of your hands. No, the answer is no. So all they have is casual games focused on the ability of the vitality sensor to sense your heartbeat. Seriously, who cares about their heartbeat when they're going to raise their blood pressure playing video games. Could people with high blood pressure benefit from this? No, if they want to play games anytime during the month. 

So what is the point of the Vitality Sensor, theres no fun game for it. It's data, and god know's people hate looking at graphs during the Nintendo Conference. If anything the only good use it has the vitality sensor will tell you when your sooo bored of your Nintendo Wii; so basically this peripheral is basically a hardcore gamer test. When you see your heartbeat is flatlined when wearing that thing, you know its a sign the Wii has lost everything, especially with Microsoft topping its Wiimote with Natal.