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Health & Fitness

Nintendo Press Conference E3 2011 Round-Up

A brief overview of Nintendo's conference including the new Wii U console and a look at other third party games.

The first official day of E3 this year kicked off with Nintendo celebrating one of its flagship series, Legend of Zelda, 25 years of excellence. Nintendo had a full orchestra perform many of the trademark Legend of Zelda sounds. The company announced the 3DS e-shop release of Link's Awakening, the DSi store release of Link's Four Sword Adventure and showed a trailer for their upcoming Skyward sword game.

Next up, Nintendo went hard in the paint with tits  first party 3DS support. Up until this month's release of Ocarina of Time 3D, third party games dominated the handheld. Nintendo announced a new Mario 3D game, Star Fox 3D, Kid Icarus 3D, Luigi's Mansion 2 and Mario Kart 3D. Not much was shown of any particular game, they were all condensed into a trailer made to show some of the key features of each game.

The biggest announcement of E3, however, was the next-gen Nintendo Home console dubbed, Wii U. The successor to the Wii takes the key assets of the Wii and enhances them beyond belief. The new controller with a built in screen can either be used as an extra feature for the game (an inventory or map) or even allows the game to be transmitted entirely from the console to the controller allowing it to be played without a TV. Nintendo has a tech demo to demonstrate the graphical power of the Wii U and in my honest opinion, blew away everything that Microsoft and Sony showed at their respective conferences.

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All in all, Nintendo stole the show at E3. For years Nintendo has been criticized by many for having a focus on "kiddy" and family games, with the graphics expected of them. Nintendo showed that not only can they hold their own graphic-wise, but game-wise as well. Many of the prospective third party games they displayed were far from "kiddy." I have always been a Nintendo fan. I own all of their consoles/handhelds and all of the Microsoft consoles as well.  My Wii receives the least play out of all of them.

This conference greatly changed my view of Nintendo. For the past seven years I have been what I would call a hardcore Microsoft gamer. Sure, I still played the heck out of my DS but it never got the attention my original Xbox or Xbox 360 got. The Wii U could very well be my console of choice next generation.

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Aside from the Nintendo conference, there have been other debuts and new gameplay footage from third party developers. If I were to give the top third party games to look out for this year, keep your eyes on Batman: Arkham City (Oct. 18), Battlefield 3 (Oct. 25), and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Nov. 11). These games will all be Game of the Year contenders, and I will be picking up every single one of them without a doubt.

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