Nintendo fans, circle those calendars and cue the hype train because September’s about to drop more bombs than a Bullet Bill in Mario Kart! Ah yes, the autumn leaves haven’t even started falling, but you can already feel the anticipation in the air. Nintendo’s making its annual pit stop in September, and trust me, you’re gonna wanna jump on this warp pipe straight to Nintendoland.
Universo Nintendo is dishing out anonymous intel that points to a Nintendo Direct event between September 11 and 15. Whether this Direct’s gonna be a Mini appetizer or a full-blown General feast of reveals, remains shrouded in mystery. All we know is, get those Joy-Cons ready for some high-impact action as the gaming giant will likely unveil killer news about its first-party titles, all the way from the zen gardens of Kyoto.
No official announcement has been dropped yet, but since when has Nintendo ever played by the rules? The silence will only make the reveal sweeter, like a Yoshi egg hiding a power-up.
Before anything else though, we’d like you to hit the breaks and dial down the rumors surrounding new hardware, shall we? Sure, some of you might be crossing your fingers for a Switch 2 reveal. Spoiler alert: Don’t get your hopes up.
Nintendo’s hardware launch strategy is simple: keep hardware announcements out of a Direct showcase. The Switch, the Lite, and the OLED, were all revealed in independent if out-of-nowhere announcements, like Luigi winning by doing absolutely nothing.
So, if you’re fantasizing about a new console launching, maybe wait until the start of the next fiscal year, which starts in April. Nintendo will want to pump those holiday sales for the OG Switch, OLED, and Lite versions before putting them to pasture for a next-gen console, possibly in Holiday 2024.
As for what we could see at the next Nintendo Direct, all bets are off. The Super Mario RPG remake was completely out of left field, so who knows what Nintendo is cooking up for the remaining few months of the third-best-selling console of all time? We wouldn’t even rule out a Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remaster.
Keep in mind, Nintendo shadow-dropped Pikmin 1+2 right before announcing Pikmin 4 for some reason. So, why not go full Mad Hatter and drop another RPG Mario game when a Mario RPG remake is already in the works? It’s so Nintendo, it hurts.
While we’re all understandably jittery with excitement, possibly prepping our bodies for a full-on Nintendo overload, let’s manage those expectations. Keep your speculation in check, but keep those hype levels sky-high. Because if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that Nintendo loves to bring the house down when we least expect it. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and we’re all wearing Mario and Luigi hats, waiting for that golden block to hit us with some 1-UP magic.
Fingers crossed, the “return” of the Super Smash Bros. will be revealed by then, but we wouldn’t mind if Nintendo put this off for until much later.
For now, fans can look forward to this still-unconfirmed Nintendo Direct and the release of the “Mario Red” Nintendo Switch OLED.
