Dreaming of a Twilight Christmas

Despite assurances by Nintendo prior to the event that this year's E3 would not be the venue for a full unveiling of the Revolution, many fans still left the conference disappointed. Such is the mystique generated by the industry's oldest hardware designer that some delightful rumours are doing the rounds. Our favourite is the 'Megaton' announcement - a conspiracy theory which holds that Nintendo plans to storm the floor of E3 with Revolution controllers and playable software. Many Nintendo fans were convinced that Thursday the 19th would be the day this happened. Thursday came and went. Now the same people are still desperate to believe that it will happen today. We'll admit that reading some of the threads regarding this yesterday, we wanted to believe. But as dramatic and satisfying as it would be, it wouldn't make any business sense.

The real reason that Nintendo didn't show as much of the Rev as we would have liked on Tuesday was that the Japanese giant has learnt from experience not to show its hand too early. The Big N trumpeted its analogue stick and rumble pack for the N64 to the rooftops, and Sony wasted no time in following suit. Now both features are industry standards. Nintendo have said they would be interested in setting up a platform to talk about the Revolution some more later this year, at an as-yet-unannounced Spaceworld in Japan, for example. But it also said that shows like these are exhausting for the execs involved, and expensive to boot. It's altogether possible that no more details about its next-gen efforts will come to light until next E3. Some suggest that it's naivety on Nintendo's part to be third out of the blocks for the third generation running, that the company will be making the same mistake again. But, if the Revolution lives up to its name, then an unveiling at E3 next year would make it impossible for major revisions to the 360 and PS3, as both machines will have been launched by then.

But we digress. That's what wasn't exciting about Tuesday's conference. What was exciting was Zelda. The emotionally manipulative music, the lush new look, the horse riding and lycanthropy. It looks great. It's said to be huge, too - the reason Link now starts off with a horse from the beginning is apparently because the world is so big that he needs one. But how long do we have to wait? If the Revolution isn't out until the second half of next year at the earliest, might we have to wait that long before the Twilight Princess is released? Never fear. Perrin Kaplan, in response to the question of whether we'll see Zelda across all three territories by the end of the year, answered in the affirmative.