We had another Nintendo Direct recently. I was hoping for news about any potential Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom DLC, but I wasn’t expecting any. The current official word on that front is that Nintendo has no plans to release any DLC and while we’ve been misled in the past (and I hope we’re being misled now), I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no DLC coming. After all, the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom was founded as a bunch of ideas for DLCs for Breath of the Wild, so it would be a bit recursive to start getting DLC for what was simply too big, complex, and complete to be a mere DLC add-on to another game. Plus, the DLC was basically announced from the get-go for BotW and there was nothing at all announced for TotK, so some reservation seemed wise (I’d be happy if we only got a Master Mode, so even my hopes for any DLC are pretty tame). Other than that unlikely reveal or the eventual announcement of the next entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise (which I’d be surprised to see so soon after TotK’s release), I wasn’t really expecting there’d be much for me. All the things I’ve been anticipating either had release dates from previous announcements, had come out already, or where just for different platforms, so I kept my expectations low in defense against the likelihood that there’d be anything of particular interest for me.

Thankfully, I still got some pleasant surprises. It was mostly small things, such as prompts to look into getting the special Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 controllers for the Switch (which I’ve wanted for years but have been out of stock every time I’ve looked since 2019), reminders of upcoming amiibo releases (gotta keep an eye out for my TotK Zelda and Ganondorf amiibo), and the revelation that there would be physical copies of the Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars remake (which had also been revealed many months prior but I’d somehow entirely missed that there would physical copies of the game). The focus was on a lot of indie titles, remakes, and side entries in main franchises, all of which certainly looked interesting or fun, but none of them really grabbed my attenion as the kind of thing I wanted to play. I might take a look at the Princess Peach game or Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD when we get closer to their release dates (especially LM2, since I LOVED the first one and completely missed the bus on the sequels), but what really caught my attention was the final reveal that I almost didn’t watch.

I was planning to duck out of the video since I’d missed the live broadcast, hadn’t seen anything particularly ineresting (by the time I actually sat down to watch it a couple hours after it aired, I knew there was no TotK news since all of my social media accounts would have blown up if there had been), and was too exhausted at work to keep splitting my attention, but I saw there was a portion of the video dedicated to doing a quick review of upcoming game releases and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a quick recap in case there was anything interesting that I’d forgotten about. Turns out there was, since I’d entirely forgotten about the release of one segment of the Pokémon Violet DLC and had missed the actual release dates of a lot of the stuff that I was interested in checking out later on. It also turns out that, thanks to me being a bit slow to close the tab once the review was done, I hear the first notes of a familiar song and hesitated long enough to remember that it was from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which kept me watching my blank screen long enough for the final segment to come up. This final reveal was nothing other than the HD remake of one of my favorite video games (the aforementioned Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door), coming sometime next year to my favorite gaming console. It more than made up for the midly disappointing lack of any TotK news.

Now, it’s a bit too soon to be properly excited for the rerelease of my favorite Paper Mario game (plus I’m a bit too exhausted to be anything but actively interested in anything), but it was a nice way to end a rather lackluster string of announcements. I’m sure there were a lot of people who we incredibly pleased with what they saw and I suspect I’d be more excited if I wasn’t just absolutely drained (a suspicion that was later confirmed by watching the new Final Fantasy VII remake trailer and release date announcement and being too tired to even mention it to anyone), but nothing was able to shake me out of the exhaustion that has come to dominate my week. I’m hoping that once I’ve gotten some sleep and had time to rest this weekend, I’ll be able to get a bit more excited about it, but for now I’m just happy to see a bunch of different stuff that all seems pretty interesting and that maybe I’ll check out. I mean, I need to save up enough money to buy a new computer, so I might not buy anything that isn’t strictly necessary or incredibly exciting for a while. That said, a lot of the “new computer” urgency has faded now that I’ve seen how disappointing Starfield looks. I’m a lot less bothered by having a computer below the minimum requirements for that game now that all my desire to play it has basically shriveled up.

At least none of these new games look like they’ll have the problems that Starfield did. None of them promised more than it looks like they can deliver. Except maybe the Paper Mario game. I’ve never gotten to replay it post high-school (which puts it only a couple years behind the Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages games in terms of what I’ve gone the longest between initial play and replaying of), so it’s entirely possible that it won’t stand up to my sense of nostalgia for it. It was an important game for me, after all, since it was one of the main things some of my high school friends and I initially bonded over. That’s a lot of personal mythos to live up to. I’m sure it will at least be adequate, though. The original Paper Mario sure was when I replayed it recently and I remember this game as being much better.