The long-awaited first Nintendo Direct of 2023 was streamed live last week on the 9^th of February. Nintendo’s previous Direct event was streamed on November 23rd of 2022, so after months of suspense, fans were very excited to see what Nintendo has in store for 2023.

The Nintendo 3DS game Tomodachi Life, a game where players can create avatars similar to “Miis” from the Wii, was expected to be one of the main talking points in this Direct. Unfortunately, there was no mention of Tomodachi Life in this Direct, but fans are still holding out for news on the game in future announcements.

This Direct also made headlines after a Nintendo fan inadvertently caused their university to increase security measures after a vague threat. A student at California State University Fullerton sent an email to a professor asking them to cancel class (during the time of the Direct) “for the good of humanity.” There was no mention of the Nintendo event in the email or any additional context, so it was taken as a threat by the professor and reported to the authorities. After questioning the student revealed the true meaning of the email, saying that the Direct was the “once-in-a-lifetime event” they had mentioned, as stated on the CSUF police notice. The student has admitted that this was in poor taste.

Another one of the most anticipated announcements from this Direct was new screenshots from the new Legend of Zelda game Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, set to come out May 12^th of this year. This game was announced in September of last year and fans have been eagerly awaiting more content. The cost of the game was announced to be 70 US dollars, making it the most expensive single-player Nintendo Switch game. An additional collector’s edition and new “Link” amiibo will also be released on the same day.  

An expansion to Splatoon 3 was also announced which will add more story elements to the game. This will be the first extra content added to the game since it was released last year so fans are pretty excited.

Another big announcement from this Direct was that a remastered version of Metroid Prime was released for the Switch. This remastered version of the popular GameCube game will feature HD graphics and dual stick controls to greatly enhance the player’s experience. 

 There will also be several Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games coming to the Switch this year. Some of these titles include Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins; Tetris; Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening; and Kirby’s Dreamland.

We also got a much more in-depth look at what Pikmin 4 is going to look like; during the Direct fans were treated to a gameplay trailer detailing certain mechanics of the game. There is also now a solid release date, set to come out July 21^st of this year. 

Though the Direct didn’t necessarily have everything that fans were hoping for, die-hard Nintendo fans are still very excited about everything that was announced. It is important to remember that this is only the first Direct of the year, there could be more news of remastered games in the future.