Fire Emblem Fates is a long game. So much so that it’s the longest entry in the entire series thus far with 28 chapters. That tidbit of information was just shared during the Treehouse Live segment!
The quotes below come from Scott Moffitt, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, who spoke with GamesBeat…
On the surprises he’s seen now that the conferences have aired…
Scott Moffitt: From a Nintendo standpoint, our goal this year, our objective, was to showcase how we can leverage the power and imagination of our developers to transform how people are playing on our platforms. With iconic franchises like Mario, like Star Fox, or new franchises like Amiibo, you combine that with the imagination of our developers and you get magic.
What emerges are games like Star Fox, a new and exciting version of Star Fox that fans haven’t seen before. It has walker capabilities, two-screen gameplay, the drone capability. That’s an exciting game that fans reacted well to and they’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a big seller this holiday.
You take Amiibo. We’re transforming what consumers have come to expect in the world of toys-to-life. We’ll be the first with Amiibo Cards in Animal Crossing and Happy Home Designer. You’ll see how you can leverage smart cards, Amiibo Cards with the same NFC read-write capability. You can use that to energize or re-imagine a game like Animal Crossing that people have loved in the past.
On how it seemed like a lot of information that could be conveyed through cards, as opposed to toys…
Moffitt: They’re going to be easy for consumers to trade. We’ve announced 100 of them coming so far. There’s a great breadth of cards out there for fans to buy and to collect and trade. You’ll be able to do great things with them. There are special cards and regular cards. You can save your home design to that card and then bring it to someone else’s game. That’s an interesting application of the technology. We’re transforming what people have come to expect in Amiibo.
With Super Mario Maker, we had a great reaction. It’s a game we’ve shown before, but now it’s on the precipice of coming to market. We’re all about showing things that will be playable this year. We have 14 total games that we’re launching between now and the end of the year. That’s a lot of exciting content for fans – eight on Wii U, six on 3DS. The imagination of creativity, the transforming power of all those franchises, is spectacular.
With Super Mario Marker, for the first time, gamers are going to be able to play game designer and design their own levels and challenge others to complete their level. They can play other people’s levels. Celebrities, fans, YouTubers—you may have levels posted by people from all walks of life — kids, adults, pros, non-pros. We think people are going to have a lot of fun building imaginative and creative gameplay of their own with Mario. It’s transforming what people expect. You have a 30-year-old franchise in Super Mario, and now it’s re-imagined with user-generated creations.
Asked Nintendo. They said the puppets were made by Henson, which we all assumed. https://t.co/94vJ4fMj0Z
— Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard) June 17, 2015
So it turns out those Nintendo puppets were actually made by The Jim Henson Company and directed by Brian Henson. Brilliant stuff.
— Chris Scullion (@scully1888) June 17, 2015
– 10 worlds
– 4 levels apiece
– The Mystery Mushroom levels “Body is Ready” (with Wii Fit Trainer) and “Adventures of Link” include nice touches like WFT’s voice coming out of the GamePad and Link drawing a sword when he comes to a stop after running
– “10 Mario” mode makes you clear eight random worlds (complete with a requisite Peach kidnapping cutscene), within 10 levels
– The quick test the representative did before the demo had the Adventures of Link, then “Automatic Mario 4”, and the tech got 1-ups when he completed the second level without getting hit
– “Leap of Faith” level: sets up a death jump unless you can fit through a one-block wide gap to hit the flagpole
– “Beetle Surfing”: sets you up with a Buzzy Beetle helmet, then has you jump on another Beetle and ride it for half the level
– Other demos feature speed challenges
– In one level, a Star was provided and had you sprint to the finish in under 10 seconds,
– “Swim Faster!”: swim through a field of the Jelectro from Super Mario Bros 3 and get to the end in 50 seconds using Super Mario World physics
– Fact sheet says you’ll be able to unlock more characters by “completing 100 Mario Challenge mode”
– these only show up in Super Mario Bros.-style levels
– Aqua is Garon’s daughter
– Garon and Mikoto seem playable in both campaigns, but this might be a mistake
– Conversations are definitely returning
– The ones show suggest the conversations are unique and not like the travesty that was Radiant Dawn’s support conversations
– Fire Emblem amiibo can be used to unlock special items in addition to battling and recruiting that character
– The screenshot shown has the player receive “Marth’s Tiara” from Marth
– Sakura can heal exceptionally well, has a personal skill that causes all allies within a 2 tile radius to receive 2 less damage
