NIntendo’s Nintendo Direct: E3 2018 Notes

Nintendo’s skipped out on any kind of fancy stage show for a minute, so they’re back with this pre-recorded Nintendo Direct. It’s a hair under 43 minutes long, which is a wonderful thing.


Daemon X Machina
You can start the show off with a bang, or you can start it off with mechs destroying buildings and other mechs in this striking trailer for Daemon X Machina from Kenichiro Tsukuda, Marvelous, and First Studio. Some time in 2019.


Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country
This sure looks a lot like Xenoblade Chronicles and other modern Japanese action-RPGs. It’ll be out this September.

A Moment With Reggie Fils-Aime to Discuss Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee



Fils-Aime is talking about the Switch, and introduces the already announced Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee. Which are remakes of the original games in the style of Pokemon Yellow, where the title character follows you around. The game’s Pokemon capturing mechanic looks similar to the Pokemon Go mobile game, where circles line up on-screen to tell you how successful your attempt will be.

We’re told that for the first time Pokemon Let’s Go will have the ability to do single-system multiplayer.

It’ll also be possible to transfer Pokemon from the Pokemon Go mobile game.

Files-Aime also discussed the Pokeball Plus, the new peripheral just for these Pokemon games that has a single analog stick and can transport a single Pokemon. It also has an exclusive Pokemon loaded onto it, Mew.

All that is out on November 16th, just for the Switch.


Super Mario Party
The multiplayer mini-game collection on a virtual board game overworld is back on October 5th. There’s something particularly interesting during this trailer when two Switches are linked to form a larger virtual playing field. The battle field for the ensuing tank battle takes on the arrangement of the consoles. It’ll be out on October 5th, it’s an exclusive.


Fire Emblem Three Houses
Where is Advance Wars? Three Houses looks a little like Valkyria Chronicles. This is out in the Spring, 2019.


Fortnite
Epic wants to tell us that their battle royale game with building and cartoony graphics is out on the Switch now. As has been reported widely, you can’t play with an Epic Games account that has ever been used on Sony’s PlayStation 4. That stinks.

An Indie Moment With Reggie Fils-Aime
Fils-Aime introduced the next few independently developed games.


Overcooked 2
The Overcooked 2 trailer embedded above is a bit different from the gameplay that Fils-Aime speaks over. The sequel is coming out for the Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox 1, and Windows, on August 7th.


Killer Queen Black
Previously exclusive to arcades, the home version of Killer Queen is coming out this Winter for the Switch, Windows, and macOS. It looks like a sick version of Joust.


Hollow Knight
It’s the Switch version of the metroidvania that’s been out for some time on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s out today for the Switch.


Octopath Traveler
Square-Enix’s tilt-shifted RPG is out on July 13th, there’s a new demo out now. It’s exclusive to the Switch.

Montage Time
No E3 presentation is complete without a montage of games that didn’t make the cut. Here’s everything in this one, with any related trailers I could find:


Montage Time: Starlink: Battle for Atlas is out on October 16th. It looks a lot like Starfox. The in-game ship is adjusted by plugging plastic crap into a special Joy-Con mount.

Montage Time: Arena of Valor is out some time this Fall. It’s a MOBA from mobile platforms.

Montage Time: Minecraft It looks like there’s some new Nintendo stuff coming to Minecraft on June 21st. The game has been out for a year on the Switch and much longer on other platforms.


Montage Time: Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido It’s already out on the Switch. It looks like a quick action puzzle game.


Montage Time: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle: Donkey Kong Adventure It’s an expansion out on June 26th.


Montage Time: Pixark hey I heard those Minecraft folks made out like bandits. Here’s one of those and it’ll be out this Fall for the Switch. It looks like it’s already out on other platforms.

Montage Time: Just Dance 2019 is out on October 23rd.

Montage Time: Dragonball FighterZ will be out some time later this year.


Montage Time: Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion is out now.


Montage Time: Captain Toad Treasure Tracker continues the great migration of under-appreciated Wii-U games getting brought to the Switch on July 13th.

Montage Time: Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy remembers when Crash was kind of the Sony mascot. Mascots never really took off after Sonic and Mario. It’ll be out on June 29th


Montage Time: Ninjala has Baby Metal in their actual trailer and will be out Spring 2019.

Montage Time: Carcassonne the infamous German board game is out late this year.

Montage Time: FIFA 18 World Cup Update it’s been out.

Montage Time: FIFA 19 is out on September 28th.

Montage Time: Ark: Survival Evolved will be out this Fall.

Montage Time: Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut out this Fall.

Montage Time: Paladins: Champions of the Realm is out now and holy shit does this look like they straight-up ripped off some of the character’s actions from Overwatch.

Montage Time: Fallout Shelter is still free-to-play, not worth your time, and out now.

Montage Time: Dark Souls Remastered: “Summer 2018”

Montage Time: SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy September 7th.

Montage Time: Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate August 28th

Montage Time: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus hopes you’ve got plenty of storage space on a Micro-SD card because it’ll be out on June 29th.

Montage Time: The World Ends With You: Final Remix is out this Fall. The logo is impressively difficult to read in this montage for this re-release of an ancient-but-popular Nintendo DS game.

Montage Time: Megaman 11 is out on October 2nd.

Montage Time: Mario Tennis: Aces is out on June 22nd.

Shinya Takahashi
Direct from Japan, Takahashi reassures us that there are plenty more games coming as well.

Masahiro Sakuraiis here to talk Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
It’s still just Smash Brothers for the Switch, this time it has every character that has ever been in the game. Here’s the trailer:

The only important part of this is that (Spoiler) Solid Snake is back, and voiced by David Hayter.

I’ve only ever played Smash a few times, and I’ve never enjoyed it, but I appreciate how ridiculous this series is.

Apparently there are new characters and stages as well, like the Splatoon Inklings and the Great Plateau Tower from Breath of the Wild.

The GameCube controller adapter will work with the Switch, and all of the old Smash Amiibos will work as well. Apparently they’re still just bot characters that level-up in-game.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is out on December 7th.

Overall
I didn’t really care that much about any of these games, and that actually made this the weakest presentation I watched from this year’s E3. The Pokémon games were the most interesting to me, and mainly because I never really got past the first games in the series way back when they were just Red and Blue. That Pokéball controller accessory really looks like more plastic crap I don’t need or want.