Hello fellow BlargNauts, KitsuneKyon here. As many of you know, today is Valentine’s (or Single’s Awareness) day and Nintendo’s President, Satoru Iwata celebrated the romantic holiday by delivering the company’s usual Nintendo Direct. Entitled Year of Luigi, a Luigi cap wearing Iwata started us off with a brief history lesson of the younger Mario brother, and his many supporting (and starring) roles in various games over the years. Being the loving holiday that it is, Nintendo showered our beloved number two player with lots of love by announcing what they had in store for him.
The first title discussed was the 3DS exclusive, Luigi’s Manson: Dark Moon. Appearing to discuss the game for the first time ever on Nintendo Direct was Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of many beloved Nintendo franchises such as Mario, Zelda and Pikmin. In this segment, he gave us a developer’s view on what they wanted to do with the title and how they approached it. Notable inclusions he talked about were the upgrades to the Poltergust 3000, the newly added multiplayer mode and of course, the fact that there will be multiple mansions to explore. Luigi’s Manson: Dark Moon will hit store shelves March 24th.
Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
The next title discussed was the grand unveiling of the next installment of the handheld Mario & Luigi RPG series. Entitled Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the game will be centered around a sleeping Luigi, and presumably the majority of the game will take place within his dreams. The only feature shown for the upcoming title was the ability to play around with Luigi’s face on the bottom screen in order to solve puzzles within his dream, a nod to Mario 64′s title screen. As always, more details about the game will come in due time, but until then, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team will have a release date of sometime this summer.
Mario & Luigi Dream Team
Being the ever talented Mario Bros, the next game discussed was another unveiling of the Mario Sports series: Mario Golf World Tour for the 3DS. Although this doesn’t specifically star Luigi, he is nevertheless a main character in it. Not much else was revealed besides the title, and a tentative release date of sometime this summer.
Mario Golf World Tour 3DS
To the surprise of many, Iwata also announced that New Super Mario Bros U will be getting its first major DLC. Entitled New Super Luigi U, the DLC will transform the 80+ levels into an entirely new game for our lanky green plumber to explore. Given that this is the first DLC of its kind to make such drastic changes, Iwata noted that it is being treated as a new game, and is currently slated for release on the Wii U eShop sometime this year.
New Super Luigi U
As is accustomed in their Nintendo Direct, Iwata took some time out to unveil a new feature that will be implemented in the Wii U starting today. Noting that there were no communities for unreleased games, Iwata announced a Legend of Zelda open community, a community which is not tied to a specific game, but instead, a brand in general .
Despite Luigi being the main star of Nintendo Direct, other notable mentions were made for the remainder of the broadcast.
-Animal Crossing for the 3DS stars the player as a mayor of their own town. A few new features noted during the conference were the home showcase, and the ability to customize even further than previous installments of the series. The game comes to retail June 9th.
-Lego City Undercover for the Wii U will come to retail March 18th. Similarly, Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins (which features the same world, but different story) for the 3DS will come to retail April 21st.
-Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, the action-puzzle game series, comes to the eShop in the near future
-Donkey Kong Country Returns will be heading to the 3DS sometime this summer
Sounds off below or within the forums on what you thought about Nintendo Direct’s latest installment!
