As has been much rumored over the last couple of weeks, an hour-long Nintendo Direct has now been officially confirmed for September 12. That’s Friday of this week, if you’ve lost track of your calendar. It’s timed to fall the day before Mario’s 40th birthday (well, the 40th birthday of Super Mario Bros. at least, Mario himself did exist prior to that), so it seems likely that’ll be at least part of the focus. Of course, there’s also a lot of expectation around Metroid Prime 4.
It’s obviously a very big deal for Nintendo that the franchise that turned Mario into a superstar and that coincided with the company invading Americans’ homes with the NES is turning the big four-zero, so it’s enormously unfortunate that this should have fallen on a Saturday. Presumably the console company has at least something cute to announce for the occasion, even if it’s not the next big Super Mario game we’re all hoping for, but it would get lost if announced over the weekend. The next choice would then be Thursday, Nintendo’s preferred day for Directs, and close enough that it could still create enough buzz for the big day. It’s just, this Thursday is September 11, and pretty much everyone knows it’s a disastrous day to announce anything as people will find some sort of negative association with the events from 24 years ago. So that pretty much left the company with Friday.
As for what will be revealed, we have very little idea. Obviously what everyone wants to hear is news on a follow-up to Switch launch game Super Mario Odyssey, but given the team behind it was responsible for the just-released Donkey Kong Bananza, that doesn’t seem enormously likely. Possible, though! Nintendo is notoriously secretive, and if the team was split into two, or a whole new group were given responsibility for the aging plumber, there might be something to reveal for this holiday season? I’m just wildly hoping at this point.
Of course, Nintendo has approximately 32 million different Mario franchises, and it would be ridiculous if there weren’t something to reveal for at least one of them. Hopefully not yet another remastering, but maybe a new 2D Mario platformer? Maybe a new Paper Mario? That’d be sweet.
The other big game about which we’ve heard almost nothing is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. We know the game is close to done, because it keeps getting rated in various countries around the world, but there’s not been an official word on a possible release date. I bet my bottom that this gets revealed on Friday, perhaps with an announcement for a forthcoming Metroid Prime 4 Direct, given that seems to be the current approach. If it weren’t to be mentioned in this week’s Direct, then everyone will start to get extremely squirrely.
Given the Direct has no given theme, it’s possible that there could be all manner of holiday game announcements. Let’s hope so! In the meantime, you can camp the live stream right now. It’s all due to start 9 a.m. ET on September 12.
