The firm hosted its first Nintendo Direct presentation of the year on January 10, four days after launching Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It was a big one, with surprises including a portable version of No Man’s Sky, the return of Super Mario Strikers, and a Wii Sports revival. Oh, and Mario Kart 8 is about to get much larger.
Nintendo Direct 2022
If you didn’t catch the whole thing, here are the key moments:
SUPER MARIO STRIKERS
After a long absence, Mario’s soccer spinoff is back. Nintendo unveiled Mario Strikers: Battle League, a sequel to the GameCube original that appears to include similar wacky gameplay as Mario Kart but for soccer. It also supports up to eight players on the same console or via internet connection. It will be available June 10th.
MARIO KART 8
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe isn’t Mario Kart 9, but it does have a lot of new features. Over the following two years, 48 more tracks will be added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as part of a gradual rollout. When all is said and done, the paid downloadable content (DLC) will nearly double the size of the game. The initial wave goes live on March 18th.
WII SPORTS
The Resistance series isn’t the only one making a comeback. Nintendo also unveiled a new version of Wii Sports, which it called Nintendo Switch Sports. It has familiar and new sports, motion controls (of course), and will be available on April 29th.
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3
The third main entry in the massive sci-fi role-playing series Xenoblade Chronicles is returning soon, and it’ll be available on the Switch in September. We don’t know much about it yet, but it does appear to be quite pretty.
FIRE EMBLEM WARRIORS
With a new game set in the same period as Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ sequel, Fire Emblem Warriors 2 is on its way. It’s called Three Hopes, and it’ll be out June 24th.
ADVANCE WARS
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, a remastered bundle of the first two games, was delayed late last year. But now we finally have its new launch date: April 8th for the Switch.
NO MAN’S SKY IS COMING TO THE SWITCH
Since its debut in 2016, No Man’s Sky has seen a number of changes, from regular content updates to a virtual reality mode. Now the space exploration game is making the move to portable, as it debuts on the Nintendo Switch. We don’t know much else about the port at this time, but it will be available this summer.
KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND
CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION
EARTHBOUND IS COMING TO SWITCH ONLINE
When it comes to classics, the iconic video game company Nintendo has a new online subscription service that features Earthbound and its prequel Earthbound Origins, which will be available later today.
TRIANGLE STRATEGY
Square Enix will be releasing a demo of Project Triangle, an intriguing strategy RPG, today. The best news is that when the full game debuts in March, save data will migrate over.
METROID DREAD
There’s good news for fans of Metroid Dread who thought it was too easy or difficult: a free update today will add both a “rookie” mode for novices and a “dread” mode with one-hit deaths. In the coming months, the game will also have a boss rush mode.
