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Nintendo at GDC 2006 – Brain Age and Zelda:DS

Oh, Nintendo. Why must you tease us? All week, people have been buzzing around, whispering rumors of super ultra huge news coming from Nintendo at their GDC keynote. Revolution release date? DS Lite stateside release date? Revolution official name [since "Revolution" has always been stated as nothing but a codename]? Some news about Twilight Princess?

No. It was none of these. Instead, we got 20 minutes of Brain Age. Here's the highlights:

• Brain Age is an upcoming DS game that's been getting a lot of hype due to being a "brain training" game, and has become a major hit in Japan. Brain Age is . . well . . it's a game full of memory exercises and other small activities. It also has Sudoku built in, which could really probably do well on its own. Iwata brought up several prominent developers up on stage - including Will Wright - to play a Wifi match and then re-match which managed to eat up 20 minutes of the keynote. Thanks, Brain Age!
• Legend of Zelda - The Phantom Hourglass was announced for the DS. A trailer is available here. It's a mix of Wind Waker's art style [and possibly Wind Waker's world, as it features sailing], a traditional top-down Zelda viewpoint, and a touchscreen input method. The touchscreen stuff is really what sets this apart, the trailer shows some of these types of interaction, from basic attacking to boomerang paths to a fully interactive map you can write notes on. There's no solid release date yet, but Nintendo says it'll be playable at E3 and on sale by the end of the year.
• Non-Nintendo games will be available for the Revolution's 'Virtual Console' System. Ever since the 'Virtual Console' system was announced, there's been a big question of if it'll be limited to first-party nintendo titles. Now we know that not only will it not be limited to first party titles for classic Nintendo consoles, but it will even feature Non-Nintendo Consoles. Specifically confirmed were the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16. Iwata clarified to say that the entire libraries won't be made available, but the games that matter will be. This is amazing, and I hope more classic developers hop on the bandwagon.

So that's it from Nintendo. Looks like we'll be waiting until E3 to see the Revolution really in action.

Sources: 1up, digg

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