Nintendo Direct E3 2021: A recap of every major announcement

Mario + Rabbids – Sparks of Hope

I know this game was already revealed at the Ubisoft E3 presentation after Nintendo already leaked it themselves but screw it, I’m hyped for this game and I wanted to talk about it.

This sequel to the amazing but criminally underplayed original, has the Mario crew (now with more characters like Rosalina and Bowser) teaming up with the Rabbids as they return to their XCOM style turn-based tactile gun combat the likes of which you’d never imagine Mario committing to.

The game not only looks a lot prettier than the original but they showed off the fact that they did away with the grid-based attacking and movement of the first game in favor of free-running draining an energy meter.

The sequel is said to come out in 2022 but I have a Spark of Hope that it’ll hopefully be EARLY 2022 as I want to get my hands on this ASAP.

Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp

Oh my god my baby. Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp takes the first two Advance Wars games and completely rebuilds them from the ground up. The graphics are cleaned up and given a more 3D appearance, the characters themselves are now fully animated and voiced. The world itself just seems a lot more alive.

The Advance Wars games were a lot of people’s gateway drug to the world of grid-based battle systems and I welcome this series back. I don’t even care if there’s a new one, the originals were so good I’d love to go through them again.