Announced as the "surprise" title at the end of Nintendo's Wii U press conference on Tuesday, the mini-game filled theme park title, Nintendo Land, definitely shows a lot of promise. Much like Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort showcased what the Wii Remote was capable of through a series of well-designed and accessible mini-games, Nintendo Land looks set to do the same thing for the Wii U GamePad. With a variety of solo and multiplayer games for up to five people, you'll be tilting your way around obstacle courses, racing to eat as much fruit as you can and sneaking up on people as a ghost - and much much more, across twelve different attractions housed in the Nintendo Land theme park.
Nintendo perhaps have one of the most varied and well known back catalogues of any games company today, and have decided to draw on that to make a whole bunch of attractions designed around some of their key franchises. For each mini-game, your Mii will don a different suit - hopefully plenty of ones as daft as Wii Fit's Penguin Suit. Only five of the twelve attractions that fill up Nintendo Land have been announced so far, and are as follows:
Donkey Kong's Crash Course
By tilting the Wii U GamePad, you'll need to navigate a fragile cart through an obstacle course heavily influenced by the original Donkey Kong arcade game, in this single-player challenge. With switches, lifts, and other obstacles scattered around the course, you'll need to pay close attention to the course, shown in it's entirety on the TV screen, and as a zoomed in section on the Wii U GamePad, being careful you don't build up too much momentum, otherwise you might destroy your cart and have to start again.
Luigi's Ghost Mansion
This one's a multiplayer game, where the player holding the Wii U GamePad becomes a ghost, and is therefore invisible to the four other players, who are wielding torches wondering round a maze. As you do. The ghost basically needs to sneak up on and catch each of the human players - but needs to watch out for their torches too, as every time they get caught in the beam, they'll lose some of their health. Should the ghost's health reach zero, the human players win - but should the humans all get caught, it'll be a victory for the ghost.
Animal Crossing: Sweet Day
Another game for five people, this one sees four players with Wii Remotes dressed up as a selection of animals, who are rather partial to the sweets that grow on the trees in town. As such, they need to work together to collect a combined total of fifty pieces before the fifth player, who controls a pair of guards (one for each of the analogue sticks on the Wii U GamePad) catches them three times.
The Legend Of Zelda: Battle Quest
In this game, up to four players can work together to take on a wide variety of enemies from The Legend Of Zelda games - all made out of cloth. The player who wields the Wii U GamePad becomes an archer, who can aim and shoot arrows by using the built-in screen as a view finder, while the remaining three players use their Wii Remotes like swords to defeat all the enemies.
Takamaru's Ninja Castle
You probably haven't heard of Takamaru, samurai star of Japanese-only NES title Nazo no Murasame-jo (and in fact, until today, neither had we) - but that doesn't mean you won't be able to try your hand at this cute single-player game. You'll need to swipe the Touch Screen on the Wii U GamePad to launch ninja stars at the ever-growing army of ninja assassins - and if the Ninja Dojo mini-game on Kirby's Adventure Wii is anything to go by, it'll be awesome.
So that's five of the minigames you'll be getting your hands on with in Nintendo Land - but what about the rest? Well, we know one of the games will be a Metroid game, while another has your Mii racing round a course in one of the trademark ship/car things from high-speed racer F-Zero. In fact, from a photo of the twelve logos tweeted by Nintendo Of America, a fair few other potential games could be identified - our final guesses would be as follows:
? Could be a Shy Guy, Birdo, one of those Octo things, a depressed elephant... We really have no idea...
While we have no official confirmation to base it on, we're expecting Nintendo Land may well be the pack-in game for the Wii U console, much like Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort were with the Wii. Seeing as it seems to have been designed to showcase the various uses for the Wii U GamePad and is filled with a number of inoffensive, simple multiplayer mini-games to entice the entire of the family, it would definitely make sense. We hope you're listening, Nintendo.
We don't have any concrete release date for Nintendo Land, except that it's due out in the same vague 'Holiday 2012' time as most other Wii U games. But according to Nintendo of America's President, Reggie, there'll be no waiting for Nintendo Land to open, as it will launch at the same time as the Wii U console, another thing that suggests it may be the Wii U's bundled game. We hope so, anyway.
