6. Nintendo
Put down your torches and pitchforks, I’m not saying Nintendo’s E3 conference was bad, just that it wasn’t buck wild. The presentation was colorful and full of games audiences are looking forward to (especially Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), but considering this is a list ranking who was the flashiest, Nintendo was definitely lacking. It was missing…something else. In the past, Nintendo has demonstrated it is capable of this “something else.” Remember 2015 when Nintendo’s video conference featured Muppets? How about Nintendo’s E3 2014 presentation with Robot Chicken skits? Now those were E3 presentations.
While the games presented in Nintendo’s E3 conference were full of charm and imagination, the same couldn’t be said for the conference itself. It would have been fine had it been any regular Nintendo Direct video, but it wasn’t. It was a presentation for E3, the be-all and end-all in gaming news and announcements. Nintendo needed something like a video of a live actor/actress dressed in Samus’ Power Suit fighting off a giant animatronic Ridley constructed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Yes, that would have required a ton of effort and special effects, but that’s the point of E3: to turn video game announcements into spectacles gamers fondly remember for years. Oh well, more importantly, we’re getting every single Smash character ever, so we’ll get over it.
