Well this is a lovely surprise. In a miniaturized Nintendo Direct video posted by Nintendo earlier today, Bill Trinen of Nintendo Treehouse (hey, you can’t expect Reggie to show up for every little thing) revealed that the long awaited and heavily requested re-release of beloved SNES RPG Earthbound is coming to the Wii U virtual console. Well actually, it’s not just coming – it’s already here. You can go download it right now!
The announcement was made at the very end of the video via trailer, with no introduction from Bill other than “To finish, please take a look at this.” Then, BAM. Earthbound for Wii U is here. It was a classic “one more thing” moment, and Nintendo stuck the landing.
The trailer is actually really well thought out and nicely put together, so be sure to take a look below.
There were some other noteworthy bits dispersed throughout, such as a genuinely entertaining trailer for The Wonderful 101, talk about how pleased Nintendo is with Animal Crossing: New Leaf‘s reception, and a general rundown of how ridiculously inundated with great games the 3DS is. Mario and Luigi: Dream Team is well on its way for an August 11th release date, and I haven’t even picked up my Shin Megami Tensei IV pre-order from GameStop yet. I’m going to be very busy.
Additionally – and it kind of snuck up on me – Bill spent some time discussing the Wii U’s upcoming software lineup. If the Wii U is planning on bouncing back then it may be do or die this Fall, and if the likes of The Wonderful 101, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Sonic: Lost World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Super Mario 3D World between September and the new year aren’t enough — well, let’s just hope that they are.
The whole Direct Mini is pretty entertaining, but if you don’t have a spare half hour of time then at least watch Bill Trinen shake apples from a tree while you wait for Earthbound to download. It’s right at the beginning!
Published: Jul 18, 2013 12:54 pm