Being a moderate Nintendo fan — i.e. someone who enjoys Zelda and Mario but who wouldn’t die on a hill for Kirby — is a difficult task. The one minute you’re engaging with a like-minded community who agree that the Nintendo Labo is a bright spark of creativity, the next you’re being slandered by an anime avatar on Twitter because you thought Breath of the Wild‘s weapon durability was annoying. The Nintendo E3 2018 presentation is set to come with its own highs and lows, but what if there were only lows? What if E3 2018’s Nintendo Direct was so abhorrently awful that it made you promptly pop your Nintendo Switch in the bin?
In reality, Nintendo is likely going to pull out one of its best E3 presentations ever, with the Switch riding high in its second year and a bunch of highly anticipated new games on their way. But reality’s a terrible place where things like cholera and The Walking Dead season 8 exist, so let’s hop over into a (hopefully) fictitious, alternative universe and give our worst possible E3 2018 predictions.
Pokemon Switch is Pokemon GO but with a mandatory Wi-Fi connection.
Early rumors suggest that Pokemon Switch is going to be titled Pokemon Let’s GO! and that it’ll borrow a few things from Niantic’s Pokemon GO. But what if it’s a straight-up console port of the mobile game, only with the Switch’s lack of built-in wireless internet connectivity ensuring that a Wi-Fi connection is mandatory?
Pokemon GO is reliant on players walking around and uncovering new Pokemon in various outdoor locations. However, Pokemon Let’s GO! would be limited by the Nintendo Switch’s online capabilities, meaning that players would need to hook up to a Wi-Fi connection in order to catch new critters. Spotted an Eevee down the road? Well, you’re going to need to knock on someone’s door and sit in their living room in order to catch it. Hear shouting outside your window? That’s just your neighborhood youths yelling at you to open your front door because you’re unwittingly sitting on a Gyarados.
Pokemon GO was initially pitched as a social game, though with trading and PvP battling nowhere to be seen, it was a pretty solitary experience. At least a Wi-Fi-only Pokemon GO would force social interactions, even if those interactions involved you being carried out of an elderly woman’s house by police after breaking in to catch a Jigglypuff.
Reggie says F-Zero is canceled forever and then he catches a flight to your home and spits on you.
God, this would be the worst, right? Not only is F-Zero, a series that everyone is certain is going to make a comeback every single E3, canceled forever, but then Reggie Fils-Aimé takes the time out of his busy schedule to travel all the way to your home and spit on you.
You’d think he’d have better things to do, but your completely unfounded belief that Nintendo is working on a new F-Zero game, coupled with your crippling disappointment that the game you’ve created in your head isn’t being developed, has enraged him so much that he immediately concludes the E3 2018 Nintendo Direct by launching a ball of saliva at your forehead. You’ll never get to see Captain Falcon in his Blue Falcon again, and the Nintendo of America COO hates you to your core. All-in-all, not a good day.
The entire Nintendo Direct is presented by YouTubers.
You can’t have a Nintendo Direct without YouTube videos of people screaming over the announcements, and what could be worse than a bunch of over-excited Social Media Influencers presenting the E3 2018 Nintendo Direct? Imagine the scene: Ice Climbers are announced for Super Smash Bros Switch, and then the camera pans to a floppy-haired dork screaming indefinitely. Nothing intelligible is coming out of this sentient Instagram account’s mouth; just an endless barrage of “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD” whenever a vaguely interesting announcement is made.
How do these people exist in the real world? If they get this excited over video game announcements, then what happens when genuinely meaningful things happen in their lives? How do they react when they’re told that they’ve got the job they applied for, or that their partner is pregnant? Do they try to crawl inside her womb during the birth and yell at their unborn baby until it subscribes to their channel?
While it’s highly unlikely that Nintendo is going to purposely give its audience migraines by hiring a bunch of YouTubers to present its E3 2018 Nintendo Direct, the unfortunate reality is that it’d probably get a ton of new viewers if they did. That is also why we don’t deserve a new F-Zero.
Every Nintendo game you love is now mobile-only.
Nintendo’s new president wants to prioritize mobile gaming, so what if E3 2018 sees the company think “fuck it” before transforming all of its intellectual properties into mobile games? Star Fox is now an endless runner; Kirby gets shoved into a Flappy Bird clone; Earthbound becomes one of those strategy games that has a shouty man as its app icon. Nintendo revives all of the old franchises you wished that they would revisit, but instead of giving you a sequel, they’re now pocket-sized and make you hate yourself for playing them.
Mobile games are profitable because there is rarely any investment required to play them, so even a game you moderately enjoy can profit from you if you spend enough time deciding whether or not you give a shit about it. As such, why bother giving you a new Earthbound for you to scrutinize over if Nintendo can instead shove Ness into your iPhone and he can “PK FIRE!” his way into your bank account from there?
When a Nintendo property makes its way to mobile, it’s greeted with a universal shrug from people who will nonetheless invest an indefinite number of hours into it. We’re a part of this problem, but with Nintendo not having released a new Animal Crossing game since 2012, who can blame us for becoming obsessed with Pocket Camp‘s furniture management? If Nintendo veers completely into mobile gaming we’ll be there to help financially justify the situation, though we’ll still complain about it online afterwards.
