The Tendo Project – Daily Nintendo News

One of the common criticisms levied against Nintendo platforms is that they don't get enough third-party support. Instead, the majority of the best-selling games on both the Wii and DS are made by Nintendo. The company is looking to change all of that, however, with its recently unveiled 3DS.

"One of the major objectives of our E3 was to stress that it's important for Nintendo that we get this level of support from partners," Nintendo of Europe's Laurent Fischer told GamesIndustry.biz. "Of course we're happy about it, but it's more than we would have dreamed of with such support from our partners at this new time for consoles."

With the 3DS, Nintendo is looking to attract both consumers and developers.

According to Fischer, there are currently around 70 games—both first and third party—in the works for the new handheld, including titles from Konami, Capcom, Ubisoft, and Activision.

"For hardware that started its public life only days ago that's amazing, and what I was pleased with was you can see very, very strong support from everyone. You can see from the line-up that we have huge titles that no other publisher is doing, without us thinking twice about it. I couldn't see any publisher that isn't very motivated by the console so we're really pleased by that."

The Nintendo 3DS still doesn't have a release date, but you can check out our hands-on impressions from E3 for further details.

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It's official: StarFox 64 is going to be re-released as a 3DS title. It's unclear what exactly will be added—Shigeru Miyamoto said he was still talking to the teams behind the game to explore what can be updated—but we were able to play the first few sections of the game at E3. Yes, the 3D effect adds some extra punch to the experience.

The Arwing flew and spun around the level, and lining up shots was made easier by the illusion of depth. The ships that attack from behind also seemed to exist in the physical space behind the plane, and flying around and in between the obstacles was thrilling. The game looks much improved from the Nintendo 64 days, and it was confirmed that this is in fact a retail product in active development.

Unfortunately, images of either game were verboten: the system was quickly turned off when I took out my camera

We were also able to play a two-stage demo of Pilotwings Resort, a new title in the series that takes place on Wuhu Islanding, the setting of Wii Sports Resort. The first level has the player flying the rocket belt and popping balloons around the island, while the second puts you behind the stick of a plane to fly through the loops. Neither section was very hard, but both put the 3D effect to good use, and they also looked good when the slider was used to play in 2D.

We couldn't get a confirmation of any release time details of either game, other than a promise that the system will be flush with great titles upon release, whether or not these particular games make it in time. 3D effects need to add to the gameplay instead of feeling tacked on, and both of these titles were improved by the effect.

On the other hand, this is like most Nintendo news: fans of the games will be ecstatic, and skeptics will cry foul over the company once again dipping into its vast store of previous hits. My vote? I landed my rocket belt on the platform used for sword fighting in Wii Sports Resort. That's a pretty good day.

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