Nintendo shows off Mario Maker and Zelda U at Game Awards 2014



While the awards show held tonight may or may not be your type of event to watch, it definitely had its strong merits. The show itself opened with Koji Kondo playing Super Mario Bros. music on a piano, that alone made it worth watching to me.

Shortly after, however, Reggie Fils Aime came out on stage and introduced a video of Shigeru Miyamoto talking about Super Mario Bros. as well as Mario Maker, which looks a lot better than when it first came out. Boasting the ability to switch between Mario 3 and Mario World tilesets in addition to the Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. tilesets, it also demonstrated a lot of creative freedom. No longer being restricted vertically as in the original SMB, the amount of things you were shown to be able to do was a bit hard to keep up. Bullet Bill cannons shooting coins, ? blocks with Piranha Plants, flying Spinies shooting projectiles everywhere effectively turning the game into a bullet hell, they caught up with my expectations and were very clearly concerned with making something with a lot of options in it.

At the end of the night, Reggie returned to the stage to introduce another video of Miyamoyo and Eiji Aonuma sitting down and playing a bit of Zelda U. The screen was slightly hard to see but the game looked breathtaking either way, it's absolutely gorgeous. One of the things the two noted is that as the game is extremely large they desired to create a lot of high places to look out on the environment. They showed off a tower in the distance, marked that area with a waypoint and jumped off the enormous cliff, using Skyward Sword's sailcloth to descend. They also pulled up the map, and while slowly zooming out, made it look incredibly large. Epona was shown and is apparently controlled automatically now. The two rushed and weaved through a light wooded area without even touching the control stick. The area is apparently lush with insect and animal life, such as the wild horses shown during play, and it's also possible to find fruit trees to pick and eat the fruit.

While the gameplay shown was very welcomed, it didn't leave a lasting impact or show off a great deal of focus, as the game is most likely still very early in development. However when asked about Star Fox, Miyamoto responded by saying that it would be released before Zelda U, if that's any indication of their progress. The event ended off with Imagine Dragons with Kojo Kondo on piano, playing the Zelda fairy fountain theme, the Song of Healing and the main theme together, before Koji and Imagine Dragons played It's Time together to close out the awards show.

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post