This morning, Nintendo delivered another installment of “Nintendo Direct,” the company’s series of charmingly goofy online newscasts. While there wasn’t any huge news, Nintendo did announce several unexpected, weird games and hawked some of its upcoming wares with new trailers. The biggest and almost weirdest news is that Nintendo is teaming up with the makers of the long-running and long-mocked Dynasty Warriors series of frenzied melee action games. The project is tentatively titled Hyrule Warriors for the Wii U, and it will bring the relentless hacking and slashing of Dynasty Warriors to the Zelda universe. Other than a release window of “2014,” not much more was announced on the Hyrule Warriors front.
The weirdest reveal was a new 3DS game called Chibi-Robo! Photo Finder, based on the 2006 cult GameCube title Chibi-Robo!. In Photo Finder, you play as a cute tiny robot—or chibi robo, if you will—who helps a curator fill his museum with “nostaljunk,” the seemingly meaningless items that surround us in our everyday lives. In practice, this means running around and taking pictures of stuff with your 3DS, like toilet paper rolls or electrical outlets, which are then transported into the game. It’s coming out as a downloadable 3DS title on January 9.
For the Wii U, Nintendo announced NES Remix, a game that reimagines scenes from 16 classic NES games as new micro-challenges. Some examples from the trailer include squaring off against a giant Bowser at the end of a Super Mario Bros. level and playing through Donkey Kong as Link. That game is available right now on the Wii U.
After that, it’s mostly scrimps and scramps. Nintendo confirmed that the new Kirby game is called Kirby Triple Deluxe, which sounds like both a fun game and a delicious item on the Wendy’s menu. Cranky Kong, the cantankerous ape from the Donkey Kong Country games, will be a playable character in the new Wii U Donkey Kong Country game, which is out in February. Cranky can use his cane as a pogo stick, a trick he totally didn’t pick up from a certain aristocratic duck. Rosalina, the space princess from Mario Galaxy, will be a combatant in the new Super Smash Bros. games. Mario Kart 8 (which John Teti described in an instant message today as “looking pretty badass”) got a new trailer that showed off the game’s gravity-defying courses and expanded cast of baby racers. (Princesses Peach and Daisy come in baby form now too!) And finally, Nintendo will keep the Year Of Luigi alive to the last hour by releasing Dr. Luigi for the Wii U on December 31. Dr. Luigi is a re-skinned and slightly modified version of the Dr. Mario puzzle game. It features Luigi.