Wii Warm Up: The (new) hype machine
57 days divided the announcement and Japanese release of Wario Land: Shake It!. For Captain Rainbow, the gap between unveiling and launch was just 50 days. Disaster: Day of Crisis is a slightly different case. While it was originally revealed at E3 in 2006, it was only late last month that Nintendo acknowledged it still existed, before announcing this week that Disaster would strike ... next month.
We don't recall it always being like this. We still remember the agonizing wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (period from announcement to store shelf debut: 35 months), and the constant brooding over screenshots and tidbits. This still happens with some Nintendo releases, but increasingly the company is announcing titles close to release. It may sound bizarre to criticize this tactic (because hey, less waiting time is better, right?), but now we barely have a chance to get excited. In fact, we nostalgic old fools sort of miss the days when we'd get hyped up for a game for years. Are we weird?
