Agumen

Pikmin was one of the top-5 games for the cube; I've always wondered why it's not considered alongside Mario and Zelda etc. as one of Miyamoto's best and most original inventions. Animal Crossing is fun, but for me it's not even on the same level as Pikmin in terms of quality and depth.

Pikmin Wii has an absolute ton of promise, but one thing bothers me. Pikmin on the Cube was very difficult to get into, it was an hour or two until I 'got' what the game was about in terms of the flow of each day and how to best manage your Pikmin resources to explore and battle etc. After that, the game was a dream. My point is, though it's much simpler than your average RTS, this still ain't for the Wii Sports / Wii Fit crowd. And if they attempt to make too many concessions towards that crowd, they may end up ruining the game.

Another point is that Pikmin 2 didn't expand upon the original enough. Instead of more carefully crafted outdoor areas, they padded the game with multi-level caves that, while fun, had none of the sense of exploring a brutally inhospitable alien world (Earth) that makes Pikmin so fascinating. In fact, they were kinda bizzare abstract settings like a children's playfloor and abandoned bathrooms. (seriously) So if they do what they've done with the new Animal Crossing and only add a couple of features to the last two games, I'll be a little disappointed.

Still, it's now my no.1 most anticipated game for the Wii.

Animal Crossing, obviously. I'm thinking that since Animal Crossing became somewhat of a cult game among Nintendo fans, I guess they miscalculated and imagined it was a 'hardcore' title, and that AC would hold the core gamers over for this Christmas. I think that's a pretty big misunderstanding right there.

Animal Crossing was only ever popular with a certain section of Nintendo fans. It became popular back when relaxing casual games were a novelty, as was the quality of the dialogue in the game. Now that we're swamped with casual games, AC seems like more of the same, and loses a lot of the appeal it had.

We're not asking for sequels or specific franchises, just one quality AAA title from a recognizable traditional game genre that will hold us over for the holiday period. They think that game is Animal Crossing. They fail.

It makes me sad that the hardcore have funded Nintendo's push towards the casual market by being early adopters and purchasing a ton of VC titles only to be (apparently judging by the conference) forgotten about. It's not a question of hardcore vs. casual, it's a question of Nintendo appearing to break their tradition of delivering deep and engrossing traditional games every year, a tradition that was probably a huge part of many gamers' decision to buy a Wii. Now they are more interested in cheaper software that relies on clever marketing and pushing a ton of peripherals to make money. Does Wii Sports Resort look great? Yeah. But in terms of gameplay that's all they showed. I love Animal Crossing, but it was already a little stale by the time it was ported to the DS,so to have what could be mistaken for a GCN port + voice chat and a new area is just shockingly lazy. Poor show Nintendo, very poor show.