After the tragedy of Microsoft's showing yesterday, It's Nintendo's turn to take the stage. They were better, but is that really a compliment when Microsoft was so bad?

Of course, they talked up the 3DS, which looks much like the DS but with a larger top screen and a stick in addition to the D-pad. Not a bad system, though I'm still on the fence. Wii Party was announced, and I must admit that I'm surprised they haven't done this cash-in sooner.

The rest of the show was dedicated to mining nostalgia. Miyamoto dressed stupidly while demoing the Wii Motion Plus swordplay in the upcoming Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword. Of course, the WMP had a “malfunction,” but the Giant Bomb liveblog said it best:

[9:15 AM] A little interference is messing with the Wii Motion Plus. In my experience, this isn't interference. This is the Wii Motion Plus. Also, dude made a Steve Jobs joke. Jobs can here you, sir. He can hear everything.

Anyway, we saw a new Mario sports mini-game compilation being hinted at. Golden Sun. Activision's cheap exploitation of GoldenEye, which even LOOKS like it's not getting the lion's share of Activision's attention. Kirby, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, yada yada yada.

Really, the only thing in that conference I care about is Epic Mickey, and I'm not exactly jumping up and down for that one either.

The thing that rubs me the wrong way with Nintendo is that the only thing that they seem to know how to do anymore is mine nostalgia. I keep hoping for something new, something creative, instead of just iterations on decade-old franchises for the fan boys. After all, it's Nintendo that always talks about innovation, why don't they ever get held accountable for never doing anything truly new with software?

And the worst thing is that their fans eat it up. Even now, people are jumping up and down, happy to have their nostalgia senses tingle. Nothing new? Who cares! We're getting Kid Icarus!

I get that not everything is going to be for everyone, but I felt so deflated. At least the 360 still has many games I want to play even without that Kinect garbage. With this conference, Nintendo and I move further apart. I'm fully convinced now that the Wii and DS are my final Nintendo consoles. I don't love their mascots enough for their systems to matter anymore, and that's really all Nintendo has to offer.

Here's hoping Sony makes me at least somewhat excited, because I'm all but set to slit my wrists here.

I don't think it's accurate that there's "nothing new." While Nintendo is constantly relying on a lot of fanservice (see: Super Smash Bros. Brawl), Super Mario Galaxy was a huge innovation compared to other Mario games. That game could have starred anyone, and it still would have been fantastic; it just happened to be a Mario game.

" I still think MS's conference being "tragic" is a bit of an overstatement.  It had lame parts, sure, but it showed good games as well.  It was as middling as Sony's is right now. "