Topic: Nintendo Direct Sept. 9, 2026 Thoughts

[Khushrenada]

Who needs 3D Mario? 3D Kirby is here!

Boy, 2027 has the potential to be one heck of a year for the Switch 2. I'm hyped up for Metroid Ravenous and Kirby and the World Beyond which are coming early. Pokemon Wind/Water will likely launch in the holiday season but could be sooner. Maybe Mario does get a new game in the back half. If so, that seems to me like 4 big games even if Metroid and Samus don't do the sales numbers Mario and Pokemon can.

On top of that, the third party support is there are as well. FFVII Revelation, Persona 6, and Tomb Raider plus other previously released games on XBox X/S and PS5 are being ported on over. Feels like the Switch 2 is just picking up more and more steam now and game overload is on its way.

One other thing thing, I'd never heard of Meccha Chameleon before but that game stood out to me as something I'd like to try. That was a neat spin on just the simple game of hide and seek.

[Evan_B]

I liked a lot of what I saw in the Direct but this did feel like “Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” a bit and I’d be lying if I said Nintendo didn’t have the best showing here.

Some RPGs to get me excited, sure, but Metroid and Kirby were the stars for me. I’ve been dreaming of a 3D Kirby game that focused on copy abilities for traversal since I I was a kid and I always felt that collect-a-thon gameplay and structure made a lot more sense for Kirby than Mario. Metroid just looks like Dread cranked to 11, especially in the aesthetics department, and I loved that game.

Marvelous’s new RPG Eternal Anima looked very neat, so I’m tentative about it. Same with Bloober’s Onyx: The Dark Grip, if only for those unique controls and mania mechanics. Outside of that, some cute Nintendo Switch 2 editions that don’t entice me all that much as someone very lukewarm on Pikmin 4 and who did not finish Age of Calamity, though I’d welcome the performance boosts. I want to support Capcom the way that they are supporting the Switch 2 but these multi-drop Resident Evil packs that are close to/over 100 dollars are hard to stomach.

Zelda is growing on me slightly. Hoped for Xenoblade Genesis news, I can’t imagine it will be close to next holiday, but Xenoblade 2 occupied a similar slot. Man, there’s a lot of open world games out there to enjoy.

[Khushrenada]

Talk about out of sight, out of mind. How could I forget about Xenoblade:Genesis? 2027 really is shaping up to be one heck of a year. I can see Genesis being a middle of the year game being released around June/July.

I was talking about my missed predictions with Level-5 but even though I was wrong about Layton being delayed, I'm glad to see it is coming out. (It better not be digital only like Fantasy Life 2). World of Steam is the game I'm probably most hyped for in regards to 2026 releases still to come. I do wonder what the puzzles will be like without the touchscreen and stylus that the DS/3DS could allow for in design. Likewise, I assume the tapping around for hint coins and other points of interest will be changed or will they just have us move a curser around screens with the analog stick? I'm hoping it'll be designed differently from that.

[Evan_B]

I missed the boat on Layton and my previous postings on The Outer Wilds, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, etc should be proof enough that the furthest I’m willing to go in the realm of puzzles (or logic sequences) is Sokoban or Picross. But, I’m glad that the new one is finally releasing (and that Curious Village is getting a modern remake!).

I would assume they want to get all the Xenoblade Upgrade Packs out of the way before they start talking Genesis, and boy, the new modes in each of these games are… something. Maybe I’ll go back to the old Monolith Makes Worlds thread to give my impressions of these things but a part of me loves that Monolith has decided to try out new game genres by building them into old games and another part of me thinks these modes might be seeds sown for future systems and ideas in Genesis. I can’t imagine things like XCX’s new Skell, mounts in XCDE, and enemy wave encounters are things that they want to use again in the future. On the other hand, we never saw Tiger, Tiger! reappear.

Kirby’s transition to 3D has been a long time coming but it’s occurring rather smoothly with Triple Deluxe/Robobot, Forgotten Land, and the World Beyond. I do wonder if they’ll have multiple “Truman Domes” or if Kirby’s just going off into the wild blue yonder, and how progression works in a more freely explorable Kirby game.

Looking at the upgrade pack for Age of Calamity is making me Calam up- I’m a bit surprised they decided to make it so steep. I guess it is technically the price of the original game’s DLC + your standard Switch 2 upgrade pack, but even so. I don’t like how Pikmin 4 really removed all traces of Dandori from the environmental exploration (and caves, which have limited resources but no real time constraints) and instead leaned into Dandori challenges and this new mode as the only means of encouraging economical play. Maybe that’s just me.