[E3 2015] Nintendo World Championships 2015: Blast Ball, Earthbound Beginnings unveiled

Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 2.29.47 PM

It’s been quite a day for Nintendo.  E3 hasn’t even started yet, and in the span of a few hours we’ve already been given access to leaked playable characters, among other things for Smash 4.

Their day continued with the Nintendo World Championships, the company’s revival of a popular tournament from the early 90’s that featured the worldwide unveiling of Super Mario Bros. 3 in the the Oscar-nominated film, The Wizard.  Just kidding, it would never win such an award.

Hosted by Kevin Pereira, the tournament began with eight participants, who each won the preliminary rounds at eight Best Buy locations across the United States, along with another eight contestants handpicked by Nintendo, competing in rounds of Splatoon (Wii U), The Legend of Zelda (NES), the newly unveiled Blast Ball (3DS), Mario Kart 8 (Wii U), Balloon Fight (NES), Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (Wii U).

The finals consisted of John Numbers vs. Cosmo competing in various Nintendo Treehouse-designed levels in the new Super Mario Maker, which will be playable at various Best Buy locations during E3. After the final round, both competitors were presented with the New Nintendo 3DS, signed by Shigeru Miyamoto himself.

In the end, John Numbers emerged victorious, and in addition to his newly signed Nintendo 3DS, John was awarded with a Golden Mario trophy.

Check out Nintendo’s video below for the event in its entirety.

Were there any announcements?

Nintendo definitely did make a few announcements!  The first of which is Earthbound Beginnings, the first game in the Earthbound, or Mother, series.  The game originally came out on the Famicom and played very similarly to RPG’s in the 8-bit era.  Though it’s not as critically acclaimed as Earthbound or Mother 3, it’s a step in the right direction for Nintendo, especially with it being Earthbound‘s 20th anniversary.  The game will be available to download on the Wii U eShop in a couple hours.

Here’s a video.

During the tournament, another game by the name of Blast Ball was unveiled for the participants to play.

1297366036282100513

Nope. That’s not Metroid.

Blast Ball is a competitive first-person team game for the 3DS where the object of the game is to blast the alien sphere into the goal of the opposing team.  The game’s visual style is eerily similar to Metroid Prime: Hunters for the original DS.  No release date was announced.

Nintendo’s E3 Digital Event will be on Tuesday morning at 9AM PT.  We’ll be live-tweeting the event on @SmashPad.