Spaceworld update
They tell us one thing, then go and do another. New Mario, Zelda and Kirby games spotted amongst other things.
Hats off to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto for concealing the development of the Mario and Zelda GameCube sequels, but perhaps a clip round the ear is due for his bewildering comments to the press yesterday. Either he was on another planet entirely, or sarcasm doesn't carry well from Japanese to English. Needless to say this is ultimately good news. Nintendo is producing two new games based on its most popular franchises; Mario Sunshine, the official sequel to Super Mario 64 will be developed by internal Nintendo boys EAD studios, and the demo at the Spaceworld press conference showed Mario running over rooftops and jumping off walls. On the other hand, the new Zelda game seems to have taken a leaf out of Paper Mario's book, going one step further indeed and opting for a completely toon-shaded look, ala Jet Set Radio. One of our observers thought it could have been ripped from the Cartoon Network. Link is also said to look significantly younger, although he didn't exactly look elderly in his last. The date for the sequel seems to be Christmas 2002. One of the things this writer has always done is evangelise PlayStation 2 snowboarding spectacular SSX. Although it's about a year old, your humble correspondent is, uh, still playing it. I've unlocked everything of course, but it's just good fun to try and tot up the most absurdly high-scoring tricks ever and revel in their glory for fun. Needless to say the thought of SSX Tricky on the GameCube gets me going, but even more so, the latest screenshots of 1080 Snowboarding 2 act like a jaw-stretching device for me. Someone said it looked like SSX. Personally I think it looks like snowboarding. One to watch. Elsewhere, Nintendo announced another game not seen on yesterday's list; Kurby's Tilt 'n' Tumble, or Kuru Kuru Kirby. If the name sounds familiar, it's because the game will be the first to show off the GameCube link feature that can be used to communicate with the Game Boy Advance. You control Kirby with a tilt function cartridge, rolling him around on the screen Marble Madness-style and popping the system to make him jump. We've heard that the game's worlds are slightly reminiscent of those seen in Sega's Super Monkey Ball 3D. It is thought that the game will interface with a new Kirby or Kuru Kuru game on the Game Boy Advance, not the original one. Our personal question is over the developer. We haven't seen beloved first party HAL Laboratory mentioned for a while! The device for connecting the GameCube to the Game Boy Advance by the way, gives the handheld a Bowser-esque pair of dinky horns! We're not sure whether this was a design decision or not. Related Feature - GameCube delayed in USA