Nintendo Announce Sonic Partnership With SEGA and Confirm Summer Release Dates

We weren’t expecting to hear anything new from Nintendo in their latest Direct broadcast, which just finished moments ago, due to E3 being just around the corner (about three weeks left!) but due to Nintendo skipping the press conference this year and instead focusing on their Direct broadcasts, they did a nice early Nintendo Direct to confirm release dates and tease new games, saving themselves about twenty minutes for the main event. They will be focusing on new titles in special streamed Direct videos around the time of E3, however.

Focusing on Wii U games, Satoru Iwata kicked the broadcast off with an announcement of a new Sonic and Mario Winter Olympics game which has had a graphical overhaul and features new events which harness both Wii Motion Plus and the GamePad. It all looks quite fun, with some of the racing events seemingly akin to the extremely enjoyable Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed, switching between skiing, snowboarding and bobsledding as you play.

He went on to announce that Nintendo had entered a partnership with SEGA for an upcoming Sonic game – titled Lost Worlds – which will release exclusively for Wii U and 3DS later this year. There’s not much information right now but Iwata promised we’d learn more in a few weeks at E3.

Game and Wario is set to release on June 28th – it will feature 16 games which use the GamePad heavily. It seems like a much more expansive version of WarioWare with more robust games which can be played multiplayer without the use of additional controllers.

Resident Evil Revelations is set to release on May 24th for Wii U. There’s a demo out now and it’ll be available from both stores and the eShop. There’s some nifty Wii U exclusive features, including off-TV play, Wii U Pro Controller support, Miiverse features such as “death message” and GamePad features similar to that of the 3DS’s touch screen in the original.

New Super Luigi U is looking really good – it’s essentially a complete overhaul of New Super Mario Bros. U, so much so that Mario doesn’t feature in the game at all. As well as being available as DLC for NSMBU, it’s getting a limited standalone boxed release in stores. Due to Mario’s absence, he will be replaced by Nabbit in co-operative play. The former villain can’t power up in the same way as Luigi or the Toads can, but can instead collect items for more points and won’t take any damage, essentially creating a youngster friendly mode for a different experience.

Luigi’s game release on the eShop as DLC on June 20th and the boxed version will be available in stores just over a month later, on July 26th. The Wonderful 101 was also mentioned and is set to release on August 23rd.

Finally, after a rather short broadcast, Iwata detailed Pikmin 3’s gameplay even more. It seems to be taking an approach similar to GTA V, in that it’ll have three new protagonists (Alph, Brittany and the Captain, Charlie) – which means no Olimar – and be considerably more open, with the ability to explore the planet from Dawn until Dusk. It seems to be focused around each day but it’s more accessible, as you’re able to replay days or revert to an earlier section if you do a bad job.

The GamePad becomes the ‘KopPad’ and allows you to see the map fully including the location of other players, as well as transport the players across the map by dragging them. The core gameplay with both the GamePad and Pro Controller will be similar to that of the GameCube version, although the WiiMote can be used which offers gameplay comparable to the Wii version of Pikmin 2. The game is set to release on July 26th.

So, that’s it – we weren’t expecting much since E3 is very soon but we did get some release dates locked down and the announcement of a new Sonic game, which is more than I had expected.

Thanks to Peter for his assistance.