Friend finder

It's no surprise that Katsuya Eguchi, the creator of Animal Crossing and hardware producer on Wii U, is already thinking about how to combine the two. Speaking at last night's developer roundtable, Eguchi mused on how Wii U's Miiverse social network could enhance Animal Crossing's community.

Eguchi said in the past people have had a hard time finding friends to share Animal Crossing with, and we'd agree: unless you know them in real life or frequent online messageboards and social networks, your Animal Crossing: Wild World probably feels more wilderness than Wild World. Now thanks to Miiverse, you should have a much easier time making friends and expanding your online community.

Eguchi said Miiverse is "a reliable and easy system to find friends online and become friends with them" thanks to each game having its own messageboard accessed during gameplay. A built-in friend request would certainly make adding new friends much easier, letting you share your Animal Crossing Wii U town with others around the world.

As the series' creator, of course Eguchi understands the fact you need to know who you're dealing with before you let them tread among your carefully planned town:

You want to be able to trust somebody before you become friends with them.

Sounds like AC's walled garden online will survive, but at least you'll be able to find more people to invite.

Nintendo Land has an Animal Crossing minigame called Sweet Day where four players try to gather (or 'steal') sweets while running away from Booker and Copper. You also get to dress your Mii as Tangy, which is good enough for the Animal Crossing nuts in the Nintendo Life office.

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Crash course

Nintendo's registered domains for some of the minigames we'll see in Nintendo Land as well as a domain for September Wii release Kirby's Dream Collection Special Edition.

Here's what the domain Bokoblins at Nintendo have been registering this week:

animalcrossingsweetday.com
donkeykongscrashcourse.com
gameandwario.com
kirbydreamcollection.com
kirbysdreamcollection.com
legendofzeldabattlequest.com
luigisghostmansion.com
luigismansiondarkmoon.com
papermariostickerstar.com
takamarusninjacastle.com
thelegendofzeldabattlequest.com
wiiuexperience.com
wiiufitmeter.com
wiiupanoramaview.com

It's interesting Nintendo registered a domain for Game & Wario considering it's said to be a temporary title, but then again so is the Wii U Panorama View, so Nintendo may just be covering its bases here.

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So what happened to Acid Ghost and Eminem appearing on stage, then?

All white on the night

We saw a whole lot of the black Wii U console during yesterday's E3 conference, but according to a Nintendo representative the dark shade might not be available at launch.

Destructoid reports a booth representative as saying the system will launch in white, with the black option available "someday".

It took years for the black Wii to follow its white counterpart, but hopefully we won't be waiting quite so long for a dark Wii U. Let us know which colour console you prefer in our Facebook poll.

[image:1]White...[/image]
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I love my job.

Keep it flowing

Nintendo's confirmed it's working on a system to transfer Wii save data, WiiWare and Virtual Console purchases from your Wii console to the new Wii U.

The good news came during last night's developer roundtable in a Q&A section, a Nintendo producer saying:

We are readying the system to be able to transfer saves and everything you've bought.

The producer didn't say anything about the logistics of the transfer — so we don't know if you'll have to keep your Wii console to send your content to Wii U — but at least Nintendo's working on it.

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Thanks for the kind words on our #NintE3ndo coverage - we have much more coming your way today and tomorrow!

Just saw the traffic stats for @nintendolife yesterday. All I can say is "wow" and "thank you"!

Rejoice!

Nintendo of America has confirmed you can transfer your Wii Virtual Console purchases to the Wii U.

Executive Scott Moffitt told ABC News you'll be able to move across past VC purchases and play them on the Wii U. Moffitt said there'll be a lot of restructuring necessary — Wii U will support multiple online user accounts for instance — but at least you won't need to shell out on buying Super Mario 64 for the fourth time.

We imagine the Wii U GamePad will be enough to play your collection of classic titles, but as Wii U uses all Wii controllers you might want to hang on to your Classic Controller all the same.

Thanks to Daniel for the tip!

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7/10?

The dust has settled on Nintendo's E3 2012 press conference. Here in the Nintendo Life offices the pizza boxes have been pushed to one side and we've taken a few minutes to collect our thoughts and summarise how we think it went.

James Newton, editor

I wouldn't say this was a classic show for Nintendo — a lot of the right components were there, but they didn't all click for me. Nintendo Land looked interesting — it's a Nintendo theme park with Zelda and Animal Crossing! — but the presentation lacked spark and didn't leave me on a high. Don't get me wrong: Wii U looks great and I'm very excited to try it out next week, but overall the show was more of a glancing blow than a knockout hit.

I have to keep reminding myself that in the bigger picture, today is really just a reintroduction to Wii U. The system's fate doesn't hang on a single day's media coverage, and as it's not out for a good three or four months Nintendo has plenty of time to show us more. Keep the faith, Nintendo fans!

Anthony Dickens, technical director

To me Nintendo had arguably the best press conference of the week, concentrating on games and gaming unlike some other companies. First party titles seem solid, but perhaps not as varied or ground-breaking as some probably were hoping for. Additionally a number of popular Nintendo IP's still haven't been mentioned in today's briefing — we were all expecting to hear what Retro Studios are working on, or news on a Zelda 3DS game.

That said, Nintendo has developed a system that looks like it builds on all the fundamental principals of Wii and should bring the company forward — Nintendo games are now in HD.

Tom Whitehead, features editor

It's been a frantic and, in some ways, strange day. If I think about the Nintendo press conference and its overall E3 efforts today my instinct is that it's had a strong showing. Pikmin 3 finally became a reality, there's yet more Mario on the way, and there's a thoroughly decent third party line-up, with the highlight in my eyes being ZombiU. It's also good news that two GamePads will be supported, even if there's a hit in frame-rate performance.

The only negative, in my eyes, was the way Nintendo put its conference together. The structure and tempo was all wrong, with a terrific start and reasonable middle, before momentum got lost in the slightly ponderous Nintendo Land reveal. While it's understandable that Nintendo targeted an accessible potential system seller at the end, it lost its flow and culminated in a rather poor fireworks ending. That was a shame, as looking at the content of the conference and information that's followed, I think we're looking at a concept with great strength and a real variety and depth to the launch period line-up. To get that positive feeling, I've made the choice to move beyond the conference alone.

Overall, Wii U is exciting, and could be the success story that Nintendo seeks.

Mike Mason, assistant editor

Nintendo's E3 presentation wasn't a bad one, but it was perhaps a little muddled in its message. Everybody was more or less equally looked after when you look at the list of games on show, but the way the presentation was weighted, offering Nintendo Land up as a big final announcement, gave off a slightly different impression.

Put that aside, though. Wii U looks like a fantastic console from what we've seen, but there's a feeling that there's much more left to come. Particular highlights for me were Rayman Legends, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Pikmin 3 and ZombiU, which actually looks like it may have a chance of setting itself apart from all the other zombie games on the market. And let's not forgetLEGO City Undercover — it's LEGO Grand Theft Auto where you play a cop, an open world game filled with all the tongue-in-cheek fun that the toy franchise is known for. What's not to love about that?

What do you make of Nintendo's E3 conference so far? Speak your mind in the comments below. Remember the comments automatically refresh so have at it!

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