Nintendo's Revolution Is About to Begin

At this point, the latest build of the much anticipated Mario Kart DS was shown on-stage running in real-time, supporting eight players at once. The potential for making DS hardware perform Wi-Fi connections across the Internet is also looming in the background, so it will be entirely possible that Nintendo DS owners will be able to hook up with players around the world and play against each other. In fact, it was revealed that Animal Crossing DS is now being developed specifically to be Wi-Fi enabled for global play. Nintendo is set to launch its worldwide Wi-Fi service later in the year.

Iwata then returned to his innovation standpoint and referred the audience to two new upcoming games for the DS that he said personified a different and necessary approach to broadening the appeal of video games beyond the core user base. The first game was Nintendogs -- read GameSpy's new preview here -- but the second title was more of a mystery.

Electroplankton was described as an interactive musical composition experience, rather than a video game. Using the DS' stylus the gamer can interact with the touch-screen and create unique musical patterns, and ultimately soundtracks. The software has the ability to record sound samples through the system's microphone and also let's you remix classic Nintendo theme tunes. While the title is not yet complete, it really did seem to offer something quite unique and definitely something that is different from what the average gamer or non-gamer might perceive to be a video game.


After the DS section of the presentation had concluded, Iwata went on to talk about the top secret next-gen system from Nintendo, the Revolution. The big news here for gamers is that Revolution will fully support Wi-Fi connectivity again, allowing gamers to connect to each other around the globe for more meaningful online game experiences. Also, Revolution is going to be backwards compatible with the entire GameCube library, something which Sony and Microsoft have yet to comment on for their new systems.

Brief hardware specifications for Revolution were also commented on; the with the main processor chip from IBM being dubbed "Broadway," and the upcoming GPU from ATI being dubbed "Hollywood." GameSpy expects more concrete information regarding Revolution to be revealed at the upcoming E3 show in a few months from now.


But the absolute highlight of the whole keynote was the brand-new video and gameplay footage shown from the upcoming GameCube The Legend of Zelda title. A full one-and-a-half minutes of exciting action featuring Link and the world of Hyrule received a rapturous applause from the crowd. See the movie for yourself along with brand-new images right here on GameSpy.com.

So it's safe to say that the future of Nintendo as both a player in the hardware platform field and also as a developer of fine first-party software titles is safe for the time being. It'll be rather interesting to see that Sony and Microsoft have up their sleeves in time for E3 2005 because it's a safe bet that Nintendo will be giving up juicy details about Revolution and its plans for the future of gaming.