Vooks 2009 News in Review – Part One

Join with us for a moment as we reflect upon the year that wasthe years big games and the news that defined Nintendos performance in 2009.

The holidays are upon us, the presents have been unwrapped and there is still a post-Christmas buzz of giddiness from all our new toys. Kitchens across Australia are stuffed full of leftovers in the wake of BBQ’s, picnics and hot roast lunches scoffed down in the sweltering summer heat. The year’s big games have hit and aren’t going anywhere soon, with Nintendo games wiping the floor with the competition for the last few solid months.

Needless to say, the past year has been a rewarding one for Nintendo fans in Australia—the DS enjoyed one of its strongest line-ups of new releases ever, and the Wii was graced with the instant-classic New Super Mario Bros. Wii while third-party games enjoyed moderate success. Heavy-hitting first-party releases on Wii may have been lacking, but 2009 offered plenty of big announcements from Nintendo for next year. So grab yourself a big plate of rum balls and join us for a look back at the biggest Australian and international Nintendo news of the year.

2009 may have gotten off to a slow start for gamers, but the picture was looking bright and rosy for Nintendo- having demolished the competition over the holiday period with strong sales on the Wii and the unkillable titles, Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii. In January, we got our first whiff of the ’New Play Control!’ series of games—Gamecube titles re-made with Wii controls. The New Play Control games were effectively Nintendo’s only first-party offerings for the first part of the year, but gave some classic titles a new lease of life, and in some instances (i.e. the Pikmin pair) proved to be the definitive versions. Nintendo capitalised on their growing success (despite a dropping share price amidst the global economic downturn) by buying up a heap of land in Japan for the development of a new research and development facility—an encouraging sign that future, as-yet unseen technologies will grace Nintendo’s hardware line-up.

While even Nintendo admitted that their own contribution to new software was lacking, third parties stepped up to the plate, with EA announcing Dead Space: Extraction and renewed support for the Wii as a primary focus for games development. The announcement, paired with the release of SEGA’s MadWorld, was viewed as a hopeful sign for those lusting for more mature-focused thrills on the Wii, although 2009 would eventually prove to be a haphazard time for adult-oriented gaming on Nintendo. EA showed further commitment to the Wii when it was revealed that their two biggest sports games on Wii would make use of MotionPlus—Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods 10. Both games would later demonstrate some of the best utilisation of the peripheral. Nintendo announced only one new first party Wii game that quarter, the excellent but under-sold racing game ’ExciteBots,’ which unfortunately never saw a local release in Australia.

In the hardware realm, a date for the Australian release of the DSi was set at April 22nd at an RRP of $299. In Japan, a nifty new Classic Controller ’Pro’ was announced—in both black and white—although Europe is the only western region to see it being sold as of yet.

After a long overdue wait, the Club Nintendo Australia site was finally launched on the 12th of March, giving gamers the chance to cash in their star points for Nintendo themed goodies. The catalogue provided slim choices and we have yet to see the store be updated with anything new.

By March, things were looking a bit better, when Nintendo celebrated selling 50 million Wii consoles to date before finally offering some juicy announcements at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. A new Zelda game was announced for DS, but the biggest news was for Wii owners. Timed perfectly to coincide with Satoru Iwata’s keynote address at the event, the Wii Shop Channel was temporarily shut down. Not long after Mr Iwata had finished, Wii consoles around the world were updated with a new and much-wanted feature—the ability to boot WiiWare and Virtual console games straight off the SD card.

The news was much appreciated by those who felt that disk storage space was lacking. The firmware update also allowed the Wii to make use of higher-capacity SDHC cards, effectively lifting the Wii’s storage capacity to 32 GB, nullifying the need for a then-rumoured hard drive attachment. Also announced during Iwata’s address was the introduction of Virtual Console Arcade, giving retro gaming fans the chance to relive many classic arcade games from legacy publishers such as Tecmo and Namco Bandai. Finally, it was revealed at GDC that DSi-only and DSi-enhanced games would eventually be released, leading many to believe that the DSi would be around for quite some time before a true successor to the DS is revealed.

April started off with a bang, with the DSi launching here the day after April Fool’s day. We had the best online FAQ covering the details of what to expect from the new handheld. Sales were strong early on, instantly beating the DS Lite and remaining the number-one sold handheld in Australia every month since. Overseas, the handheld was just as successful, clearing 600,000 units in Europe and the US in only two days. April also marked the start of noticeably lagging hardware sales in Japan—a trend which continued throughout the year. The news didn’t seem to phase Nintendo, who were likely still clearing a profit once we learned that the cost of manufacturing the Wii had dropped by almost half since the console launched in 2006.

With the global economic downturn painting a grim picture for the gaming industry, things started to get a little shirty between the big console companies. First, Sony wrote off the Wii as “owning the closet,” implying that many owners were no longer playing with the console. Satoru Iwata struck back with the raw facts, highlighting that the vast majority of Wii owners had set up their console on the main TV in their household and that many were frequently connected to the internet.

Locally, Australians had plenty to cheer about. The first batch of goodies redeemed by Club Nintendo members was shipped, showing up in mailboxes late in April. Cricket fans pining for a chance to live their favourite sport on Wii were also rewarded when Codemasters announced the very first Cricket for Wii, a title which has performed admirably when it was launched later in the year. Nintendo also launched the two month long ‘Connection Tour’ across mainland states and New Zealand, giving shopping centre visitors the chance to get some hands-on time with Wii and DS games. Pokemon fans lucky enough to visit one of the events took advantage of picking up a special item for their DS copies of Pokemon Platinum.

But undoubtedly the stand-out news event of the year was Nintendo’s series of new game announcements at this year’s E3 event in Los Angeles. Overall, this year’s E3 was a much-appreciated return to form, with developers and publishers once again opening the show-room floors to gaming writers and laypersons alike. 2009 marked a return to blockbuster-style announcements in a fresh change from 2008’s more low-key presentation.

 The Nintendo press conference may have lacked the zing and sizzle of E3 events of old, but no-one can deny that there were plenty of new games to be excited about. New Super Mario Bros. for Wii was a welcome surprise and proved to be year’s number one big seller. NSMBWii was the first we heard of Nintendo’s plan to introduce a ‘Star Guide’ function in their future games—an in-game option that allowed players to by-pass levels they found difficult by automatically controlling the game.

Zelda fans waiting for a new Wii release may have come away disappointed, with only a piece of artwork to keep them happy, but it was more than made up for by the announcement of Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the biggest surprise of the year—Nintendo’s collaboration with Team Ninja to create ‘Metroid: Other M’ came completely from left field and redeemed any shortcomings the Nintendo presser may have had. Also announced was the dubious new ‘Vitality Sensor’ for Wii. The device was unveiled without any software to properly demonstrate how it can be used, and we’ll have to wait until next year’s E3 to finally see it in action. The biggest non-surprise was the announcement of Wii Fit Plus, which completely replaced Wii Fit and effectively killed the old title, which was on track to break a ton of sales records.

DS owners were knocked for six when it was revealed that a sequel to Golden Sun would eventually grace the DS. Looking to capitalise on the casual market, Nintendo used E3 to unveil integration of Facebook with the DSi’s firmware, giving owners the ability to upload photos taken and manipulated with the DSi straight to their Facebook accounts. E3 was also the time that a little game called Scribblenauts came from nowhere and grabbed the attention of everyone with its inventive ‘write anything, play anything’ style of gameplay.

Third party support for Wii at E3 was encouragingly strong, with Ubisoft stepping up to the plate to show off Red Steel 2, Rabbids Go Home, Pele’s Academy for Champions, more Shaun White snowboarding action and the announcement they would distribute Grasshopper Manufacture’s much-anticipated sequel to No More Heroes.

We topped off the end of June with our own ‘Best of E3’ awards, and looked back on a pretty healthy first half to 2009. We also got our hands on the fantastic new MotionPlus peripheral, which launched early alongside EA Sport’s Grand Slam Tennis. However, we would have to wait until later in the year for the MotionPlus showcase title Wii Sports Resort to be released in Australia. With all the announcements made, the end of the year would be marked by some pretty big releases and we were champing at the bit to play as much as we could of this year’s batch of new games.