I'm still here in semi-sunny California at the GDC, so I figured that I'd just check in with you guys again because I love you so much. Anyways, I went to Nintendo's CEO, Satoru Iwata's press conference earlier today, where I got to see in-person, the new Zelda trailer. It was pretty cool. Not quite as cool as the one that was released last year at E3, but still pretty cool. Actually showed off a bit of new gameplay mechanics, like Link riding a horse, and also Link picking up cats. Don't really know what that's about, but Iwata promised that everyone would know more at E3.
Also, if you've been looking around the web, you've probably already seen the new confirmed facts about Nintendo's new console, codenamed: Revolution. In case you haven't though, Iwata said that Revolution would be backwards-compatible and that it would be WiFi-enabled. Not only that, but he announced that WiFi gaming would start for the DS very soon, starting with games coming out later this year, like Mario Kart DS, so that's very cool.
I also got a chance this morning to attend a talk given by Katamari Damacy creator, Keita Takahashi. This guy was hilarious. He showed off the prototype of Katamari, as well as a lot of the projects that he worked on while he was an art student doing sculptures. All of them were really funny, but it was amazing to see how little had changed between the prototype and the finished version of Katamari Damacy. Takahashi-san really said that he wanted total control of his vision, and that's basically what he had, and he followed 3 simple rules while he was designing the game: Roll, Absorb, Grow. Simply Brilliant.
But anyways, I'm heading back to Kansas tomorrow, and I'll be able to tell all of you all about my glorious experiences here at GDC on the show on Sunday, but for the most part, GDC was great, and I can't wait to come back next year.
-Jack
