Grab your backpack and headtorch, and prepare to set off on a charming puzzle-platforming adventure in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, coming to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS family systems on the 13th of July, 2018. The game includes Levels based on four of the Kingdoms from Super Mario Odyssey, with the newly released Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Overview Trailer (above) offering a sneak peek at them. Players who can’t wait to meet the sometimes nervous but always courageous Captain Toad can now download a free demo version of the game – available for both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS. 

As a platforming game, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a little different from the rest.

For starters, the Captain’s heavy backpack means jumping is not possible – so in order to guide him past the various enemies, traps and obstacles that stand between him and the precious Power Star in each course, players will need to take a different approach. Rather than rushing in head-first, it’s important to put some thought into plotting Captain Toad’s route, and even more important to use the adjustable camera to carefully observe the surroundings from all angles. Each Level is a compact and lovingly-crafted diorama in its own right, designed using the same “miniature garden” concept – called “hakoniwa” in Japanese – that inspired much of the Level design in Super Mario Odyssey. This means that lots of charming details, along with plenty of surprises and hidden collectibles, are packed in to what at first glance might seem like quite a small space. 

With more than 70 Levels to conquer, there’s plenty to keep even the most intrepid explorer occupied for a long while. As seen in the Overview Trailer, four of these are bonus Levels based on Kingdoms featured in Super Mario Odyssey: Metro Kingdom, Sand Kingdom, Cascade Kingdom and Luncheon Kingdom.

These bonus levels can be unlocked through regular gameplay, but they can be accessed straight away by scanning one of the Super Mario Odyssey amiibo figures: Mario (Wedding Outfit), Peach (Wedding Outfit) and Bowser (Wedding Outfit). Scanning the Toad amiibo figure will cause a powerful Invincibility Mushroom to appear, while scanning any other amiibo will provide the useful bonus of a 1-Up or two. 

The Nintendo Switch version of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is available now for digital pre-load via Nintendo eShop, and by purchasing the game now and pre-loading it to their Nintendo Switch consoles, keen players can be among the first to access the game when it is released at 00:00 local time on the 13th of July, 2018. It’s also worth remembering that digital purchases earn Gold Points worth 5% of the total amount paid, which can be spent on future purchases of Nintendo Switch games and downloadable content in Nintendo eShop.

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Nintendo debuted a new Nintendo Direct Mini video presentation today spotlighting a selection of first and third-party titles coming to Nintendo Switch early in 2018.

Following a strong holiday season, Nintendo Switch owners will see a variety of new games and content arriving in the next few months, including DARK SOULS: REMASTERED, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Mario Tennis Aces and Kirby Star Allies for Nintendo Switch, and a certain green-clad brother bringing a new mode to Super Mario Odyssey.

DARK SOULS, the first title in the genre-defining action role-playing franchise, is coming to Nintendo Switch as DARK SOULS: REMASTERED, including the Artorias of the Abyss DLC as well as improved framerate and resolution from the original DARK SOULS game for an exhilarating return to Lordran. This marks the franchise’s debut on a Nintendo platform, and now for the first time ever, this revered (and challenging) game can be played on the go. The game launches on the 25th of May, 2018. 

Mario Tennis Aces will bring a new level of skill and competition to Nintendo Switch when it launches on Nintendo Switch. Mario steps onto the court in classy tennis garb for intense rallies against a variety of characters in full-blown tennis battles. New wrinkles in tennis gameplay will challenge your ability to read an opponent’s position and stroke to determine which shot will give you the advantage. And this time the game adds the first story mode since the Mario Tennis game on Game Boy Advance, offering a new flavour of tennis gameplay, with a variety of missions, boss battles and more. The game launches for Nintendo Switch this autumn.

Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong and Cranky Kong return for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Nintendo Switch. This title includes all the fun and challenge of the original game, plus a brand-new beginner-friendly mode that lets new and novice players play as groovy surfing simian Funky Kong. Funky Kong can double jump, hover, perform infinite rolls and even perform infinite underwater corkscrews. Thanks to his sturdy surfboard, even spikes can’t slow him down. The game launches for Nintendo Switch on the 4th of May 2018.

Players will be able to download a free update for Super Mario Odyssey in February 2018 that adds a new mini-game called Balloon World. 

Once players download the free update and complete the main story, Balloon World will become available. To get started, players just have to talk to Luigi. In “Hide It” mode, players have a limited amount of time to hide a balloon. In “Find It” mode, players have the same period of time to locate balloons hidden by other players from around the world. Players can move up in rank by finding hidden balloons and becoming expert hiders. The free update will be released in February with new Snapshot Mode filters and new outfits.

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When the E3 festivities came to a close, we spent the last day on the floor at the Los Angeles Convention Centre attending our final hands-on sessions and meetings with PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox, before spending the rest of the day as true gaming fans rushing across the various booths and stands to take in the full experience of the E3 Expo.

Our morning with PlayStation was fairly short as we spent about fifteen minutes with one of the developers from Santa Monica Studio as he walked us through the upcoming God of War game. It was absolutely refreshing to hear from the developer as he was incredibly passionate about the game and didn’t feel irritated or unenthused at having to repeat the same sentences over and over to different members of the media.

God of War (2017)

This new iteration of God of War looks to be a game changer, with gameplay that includes a very compelling storyline and superb graphics. The game sees a more mature and controlled Kratos, who must overcome his raging temper to guide and teach his young son the ways of becoming a warrior. In this way, the game appears to be similar in narrative to The Last of Us, which of course, means a whole lot of new fun for God of War fans. Though the narrative will undoubtedly be the highlight of the game, the thrilling new combat mechanics and the ability to play as Kratos and also control his son, albeit through limited movements, will be interesting.

After a thrilling experience with PlayStation, our next hands-on was with Nintendo, who stole the show with their surprising announcements, including Metroid Prime 4, which fans have been waiting more than a decade for. Though our hands-on didn’t include Metroid, we did have a great time playing Super Mario Odyssey and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle.

Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is exactly as we imagined. Fun, colourful and with old school 2D Super Mario aspects, the game was a blast to play through, especially with the introduction of Mario’s new abilities, including the ability to possess people and items, as well as throw his little red cap, ‘Cappy’, around to essentially knock out enemies and claim gold coins. The new, upgraded, 3D art style makes the game far more visually attractive, which made the experience of gameplay all the more enjoyable. Of course, seeing Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario himself, walking around the Nintendo stand made the experience all the more memorable.

Mario + Rabbids was pleasantly surprising. At first, I didn’t think that it’d be a game that I would enjoy, mostly because I’d never been a fan of the Rabbids animated shorts. A small part of me had always thought them as silly and utterly childish and something that no adult would pay much attention to. How wrong I was. After a short time of hands-on, playing the game on the Nintendo Switch console, I was converted. Mario + Rabbids is a super adorable, strategy based game, with elements of X-Com 2. It is a game that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike and gets progressively more challenging throughout each level, which was definitely welcome.

Ashen

With Nintendo out of the way, even though we wished we had more time there, our next appointment was with ID @ Xbox, which was a nice change of pace. Instead of a hands-on, we watched the developers of Ashen, consisting of a team of three from Aurora 44, who surprisingly are a New Zealand based game development company, play through their game whilst explaining to us the background of Ashen and the style of gameplay. The game definitely has a unique art-style and has a Dark Souls III feel to it in terms of difficulty. The highlight of the game is its cooperative aspects, which will bode well for those who enjoy co-op games. Unfortunately, our time was cut short, but from what we saw, Ashen is certainly an indie title worth picking up.

Upon conclusion of our appointments, we spent the day roaming the expo hall and attempting to get some hands-on time with titles we missed out on, such as Sonic Forces. Though we had to wait in line for more than half an hour, we had a lot of fun with Sonic Forces and certainly can’t wait to pick it up for more game time.

Sonic Forces

The rest of our time on the E3 floor was essentially just taking in the environment of the convention. Thankfully the last day wasn’t as crowded, so we were able to breathe more easily and move around without stepping on any toes.

E3 certainly is on a whole other level compared to the local conventions we have both here in New Zealand and Australia. With the convention being open to the public this year, there were many complaints that the organisers hadn’t taken the amount of people into consideration and changed the layout of the convention or even the location. Hopefully next year will bode differently and will allow both members of the industry, media and the public to fully enjoy the fantastic awesomeness that comes with the biggest video games convention worldwide.

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Nintendo Australia have informed us at StG of their E3 2017 plans.

As part of Nintendo’s global plan to deliver news about upcoming games throughout the year, the company will provide a packed week of activities at the E3 video game show, which runs from the 13th to the 15th of June in Los Angeles. Proceedings will be headlined by the first-ever opportunity to play Super Mario Odyssey, Mario’s upcoming sandbox-style adventure for the Nintendo Switch console, as well as other Nintendo Switch games. Additional activities at the annual show include a Nintendo Spotlight: E3 2017 video presentation announcing new details for Nintendo Switch games launching this year, the return of Nintendo Treehouse: Live @ E3, and tournaments for ARMS and Splatoon 2 livestreamed from the show floor.

Nintendo’s E3 activities kick off on Wednesday the 14th of June at 2:00am AEST with its Nintendo Spotlight: E3 2017 video presentation. This will be able to be viewed live at Nintendo’s E3 2017 website, this presentation will offer more details about Super Mario Odyssey and other Nintendo Switch games, with a focus on games launching this year.

Immediately following Nintendo Spotlight: E3 2017, Nintendo is once again bringing back Nintendo Treehouse: Live @ E3, a livestreamed showcase of upcoming games for Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. Gameplay for all the featured games will be streamed from the E3 show floor from 13^th to 15^th June via Nintendo’s Twitch channels,. In addition to gameplay, the livestream will include behind-the-scenes info and commentary from game developers and members of the Nintendo Treehouse.

When Nintendo’s booth space opens at noon L.A. time on the 13th of June, show attendees will be among some of the first people in the world to get their hands on Super Mario Odyssey as well as other games for Nintendo Switch. Super Mario Odyssey is Mario’s first sandbox-style game since Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine.

In addition to all of these activities, Nintendo will also host game tournaments that will be livestreamed from the E3 show floor. The 2017 Splatoon 2 World Inkling Invitational splats onto the scene on the 13th and features Splatoon 2 for Nintendo Switch. Composed of four pre-qualified squid squads from Europe, the U.S., Japan, and Australia / New Zealand, the tournament will find teams participating in the first-ever international Splatoon 2 competition. The second tournament, the 2017 ARMS Open Invitational, takes place on the 14th and will feature Nintendo’s upcoming ARMS fighting game for Nintendo Switch.

To keep up to date on Nintendo at E3 2017, stay tuned to us here at StG and Nintendo will be updating their activities at E3 aswell as what’s being planned closer to the event. Be sure to check Nintendo’s E3 2017 website in the coming weeks.

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