September Direct! Finally! (Thoughts on the Nintendo direct on September 12, 2025)

     Well friends, another September Nintendo Direct has come and gone, and this one felt significantly meatier than some others that we've had in the past few months. Of course, we've had a few recently over specific games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kirby Air Riders, and a Partner Showcase as well as an Indie World, but there's something to be said about a true Nintendo Direct. We got an hour of new games and announcements this morning (at time of writing this), and I'm so happy to report some of them to you all if you didn't have time to watch!

Pretty Packed Presentation!

    The Nintendo Direct began this morning by talking about Super Mario Bros' 40th anniversary. The original game came out 40 years ago as of September 13, and they had a lot of things to show off to celebrate! Miyamoto came out to announce some new exhibits being put out at the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, as well as sharing the fact that Nintendo is sponsoring the Kyoto Marathon. He then showed off a teaser trailer for the new Super Mario Bros. movie, now called the Super Mario Galaxy Movie! I love Super Mario Galaxy a lot, I would definitely put it in the category of some of my favorite games of all time, so I'm really excited to see what the new movie holds. We didn't get any word on new cast for this movie, only that Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, and Kamek are all returning with the same voice acting cast. Donkey Kong is a noticeable exclusion here, but there have been a lot of rumors of a Donkey Kong movie recently, so that could be why he's not here (or hasn't been announced yet at least). Obviously the big question on my mind is who is voicing Rosalina? We'll just have to wait for more information. Back on the game front, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are being released in a bundle and also being released separately on the eShop starting on October 2, so I'm pretty excited to have Mario Galaxy 2 on modern hardware again, though it's definitely weird that they didn't rerelease it five years ago with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars Collection.

     Mario Tennis Fever was announced, packing a massive roster of 38 characters and 30 gimmick rackets that activate different powers. They announced an adventure mode where all the characters are turned into babies except for Donkey Kong for some reason, but at least we get Baby Waluigi for what I believe is the first time. I'm hesitant to be excited for this one, just because on the Switch, Mario Sports games were pretty sloppy for the most part, but Mario Tennis Aces was better than the others, at least. I really hope it'll be good when it comes out on February 12. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is getting a Switch 2 edition, which is exciting, but most of what they showed was multiplayer focused material, I'm not sure if there's a lot of single player in there, but I certainly didn't play Mario Wonder to play minigames with friends. I loved the base game, so I'll keep an eye on this, but I'm not sure. If nothing else, at least we do see something to do with Captain Toad, which is exciting, but I'm curious to see how he would work in a 2D space. To finish up the Mario 40th Anniversary portion of this direct, they announced a new Yoshi game, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, and I'm immediately sold. The artstyle is very cute, and actually seems to be made up of two different ones. The game consists of Yoshi jumping into a magical book to help the book understand what is written inside of it, so Yoshi outside of the book looks really nicely polished, while the artstyle inside the book is much more choppy and animated like a drawing may operate inside of a book. In terms of operation, it reminds me a bit of how Yoshi's Story played, but the objective isn't about just getting all the fruit, it seems you have to do different objectives depending on what the page is about in the book. It's really good looking, and honestly this may have been my favorite game shown off in this whole presentation! It's coming out in Spring 2026, so we still have a while to wait. I should mention that along with these games and movies, they're releasing Rosalina's storybook in physical form, and I have to pick that up when it comes out. I love Super Mario Galaxy and I feel like that would be a really cool collectible to have. They're also making a toy out of the Talking Flowers from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and I think it's a neat little product that could be fun to have at some point.

    I would be here all day if I continued talking about every announcement in the same detail as the 40th anniversary plans, so I'll try my best to contain my excitement to just the things that really caught my attention. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is looking great, it's coming out in Spring 2026, and while I never played the one on 3DS, I've heard good things about it and I'm definitely interested in this new one. Hades II is coming out in just a few weeks, on September 25, and while I don't care about it because I was admittedly terrible at the first game, I know a whole lot of folks who are very excited, and I'm happy for them! Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is coming out for Switch 2 on January 22, and I've heard some pretty solid things about it from people who have tried it out. I would say especially if you haven't played the game on any other console already, it's worth a play, it's a really good game. Kirby Air Riders is getting two Amiibos, one of Kirby on a Warp Star, and one with Bandana Waddle Dee on the Glide Star, and you can swap the riders between the two different vehicles, which affects what the character is riding on in the game. It's a really neat concept, but it also costs 50 dollars for one of those, so it seems a bit pricey to me considering if you were to buy both of the amiibos, you'd actually be paying more than the game costs. Pretty crazy, but I am excited for the second Nintendo Direct on Kirby Air Riders sometime in the near future, which was also announced during this presentation. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment looks good, and it's coming out on November 6. I think it's such an interesting idea, because even though we got bits and pieces of the plot from the Imprisoning war, we didn't get to know any of the warriors of that time very well (with the exception of Minoru, of course). I'm really interested to see just how it goes, and I'm happy that the frame rate looks to be fairly stable on Switch 2 after Age of Calamity had such a hard time on the original Switch. They're remaking Dragon Quest VII which is coming out in February, so I'm sure fans of that series are happy!

    The weirdest announcement that Nintendo has ever made came during this direct. The next console for the Nintendo Classics line is Virtual Boy. The console only ever had 14 games released in North America, 22 games being released across the entire time it was out. They made the weird announcement that if you have the expansion pack, 14 games will be released over time for you to be able to play, but you have to use this special peripheral that they made which is just a plastic shell that looks like the old Virtual Boy. This is all well and good, but the peripheral is also 100 dollars, and I just don't really see any way I could justify that purchase, or even the cardboard alternative which they're selling for 25. I have heard that Virtual Boy Wario Land is pretty good, and this finally gives me a chance to play it, but not for that much on top of paying for the expansion pack. Powerwash Simulator 2 was shown off here for Switch 2, and I'm really excited for it. I don't know if I'll play on Switch 2, but I'm going to play it somewhere. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond had a cool new trailer which began with Samus riding a motorcycle, and I am all about this! It'll be a cool switch-up for the gameplay, and I hope that people will be excited for that section of the game. It's looking incredible all the way around, and it's finally coming out on December 4th! They've said before that it's coming this year, but it's just nice to see the official release date. 

    Donkey Kong Bananza got DLC immediately following the direct where you can go to DK Island from Donkey Kong 64, even playing a new orchestration of the theme from DK64, which is really great. Also the DLC comes with a new mode, Emerald Rush, which seems to be a roguelike of sorts where you have to pick up as many emeralds as you can in a short period of time, picking up fossils and banandium gems to give you upgrades. Pokémon Pokopia is a new game coming in 2026, and this was another big highlight for me. You play as a Ditto in the form of a girl and you work with different Pokémon to build up a nice community. It's basically Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders but with Pokémon, and it looks like it could be a cool time. In other Pokemon news, We got another trailer for Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which continues to look cool, and it's coming out October 16! We also got a trailer for DLC for Legends Z-A called Mega Dimension. We didn't see much about it other than it will involve Hoopa, and Raichu is getting two different Mega Evolutions, X and Y forms. Resident Evil 9: Requiem is coming to the Switch 2, and it doesn't seem like a cloud version this time, which makes me happy! Along with this, Resident Evil 7 and 8 are also coming over in native Switch 2 ports, even though they're already on there in cloud version which I don't think anyone should really play. More Resident Evil is almost always good. The final announcement of this direct was for a new Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. I don't know enough about Fire Emblem as a series to talk about it with any sort of authority, but it seems like this game will be a continuation or have some form of connection to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, because Sothis (a goddess from that game) showed up at the end of this trailer, but she looks older here. Either way, Fire Emblem fans I hope are excited about it.

    Wow, that was a lot of stuff to cover, and I hope you didn't get too overwhelmed. Did you see anything that you were interested in? I'm interested in quite a few things myself, as I always am, though there wasn't one huge amazing announcement that really got me excited. Thanks so much for reading this post friends, I hope you'll let me know if there's something that you were interested in from this presentation or this reading. I hope you're all doing well also, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a few weeks, my schoolwork is keeping me really busy right now. Thanks for understanding! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a self-proclaimed Nintendo fan, and I'll talk to you later!