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E3 Nintendo Pre-Show 2002
by Jolex Del Pilar

Tuesday, May 21 2002

Although many titles made a return from 2001, some big key titles took center stage at this year's Nintendo Pre-show.

Nintendo's E3 2002 Pre-show started out where it left off last year, literally. The show started sort of on a sour note as when we arrived there was just standing room only, as the Biltmore Hotel's showcase lounge seemed just a bit too small for all the media attending the show. However, given the space situation, most of the staff managed to find seating when people vacated their seats. Use it or lose it was our dogma (*chuckle*).

Once the show started, Nintendo Satoru Iwata began to speak about Nintendo's situation in the gaming world. He spoke about the company's commitment to online gameplay, and he also spoke about the company's growing library of titles that is was expected to hit 150 titles by December of this year.

However, regardless of all the propganda involving a multitude of buisness stats (who really cares about how many Gamecube were sold in Taiwan?), the real show stoppers were the games being shown at the pre-show.

The first game to be displayed was Animal Crossing. The game's basic premise is about building a life. You can do odd jobs such as chopping trees, farming crops, and completing missions to get currency in the game. With this currency, you can buy furniture and other luxuries for your home in the game. Unique to the game is the ability to save your house in a memory card and combine your house into the village of a friend's. This feature will surely inspire many towns made from friend's houses in the game. Another cool feature was the ability to design clothes for your characters in the game by using the Gameboy Advanced. Cool indeed.

The next title to be shown was Metroid Prime. The game series, which once was an action platformer, now has a first person look all its own. What we saw at the show was impressive, however, many may have a difficult time accepting Samus in this form. The bosses in the game were huge and detailed, hopefully Retro can get this game perfect by November 18th, 2002, the game's release date.



Mario Party 4 was announced at the show today. When it's released in October, it should serve as a good party game for all ages.

Mario Sunshine was the first big title to be shown and Shigeru Miyamoto himself played through the game and displayed it to the crowd. Mario Sunshine is perhaps one of the best incarnations of a Mario game yet. Mario showed off that he has much more moves than his previous incarnation, Mario 64. He can now use the "water pack" to hover for a few seconds. Also, the water pack can be transformed into a "water gun". This helps clean mud in many levels which affect Mario's movement. The graphics and music are different from previous Mario titles and feature a distinct "tropical" look. Most of the crowd in attendance seemed extremely pleased with the game. I can't say I blame them.

Zelda Cube was perhaps one of the biggest enigmas coming into the Nintendo Pre-show. Perhaps it was the controversial cel-shaded look that Miyamoto has chosen to develop the game with, or maybe it was just something in the air, however Miyamoto showed off the game and managed to calm the fears of at least this journalist. Miyamoto stated before he presented Zelda that he "has never insisted that Zelda be concerned with realism, but it should be based in reality." The game itself showed some interesting promise. Most interesting was the ability to pick up enemy weapons which gave Link certain abilities. For instance, beating a pig soldier might get you a very big sword. With this sword, you gain the ability to break through barriers you might not be able to with Link's smaller sword. A lot of the basic gameplay mechanics from Ocarina of Time are still present, and some surprises are planned if Miyamoto is to be believed (we know sometimes he acts and says crazy things), however we'll have to play this on the floor for ourselves to give our final opinion.



An interesting part of Zelda Cube was the revealing of Link's boat.

Overall, Nintendo's pre-show was a sigh of relief for many who believed that Nintendo has been dropping the ball since their launch in November of 2001. Rest assured, Nintendo, although not #1 in the industry any longer, is still a force to be reckoned with. Good luck Mario!

--- Jolex Del Pilar, E3 Lackey