I wasn’t expecting much from Nintendo this year at E3, but there were a few thing shown off that did surprise and impress me. Then there was the new peripheral announcement that made me audibly groan when it was revealed. Were they able to pull off a decent show? Read on, my friends.

Cammy Dunnaway took the stage and immediately announced New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which looks to bring some solid four player Mario action to the casual game space. They then announced Wii Fit Plus, which I’m sure will sell millions. Wii Motion Plus was shown off a bit more, but it was nothing mind blowing. One quote stood out to me: “Every mistake you make in the real world will be accurately reflected in the virtual world.” Reggie Fils-Aime gave examples of slicing the hell out of your 3 wood in golf. If I’m playing a video game version of golf, I don’t feel like going out there and playing like shit. Just my two cents.

Moving on the DS portion of the program, a few trailers were shown off that looked good, including Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Mario & Luigi – Bowser’s Inside Story, Golden Sun DS, and COP The Recruit. The DS should have some solid titles, as always. For the DSi, Nintendo announced Mario vs. Donkey Kong coming next week as well as a future firmware update that will allow uploading photos taken with the DSi camera to Facebook.

Then, things went dramatically south. Sarato Iwata announced the Wii Vitality Sensor to monitor your hear rate and such… which caused me to audibly groan and more than half the conference to laugh out loud. Seriously, Nintendo… why?

After that downer moment, Nintendo turned things up a notch for the final stretch by announcing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for a Holiday release. The trailer looked good, but very much like the first title (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Some big games for the core gamer were shown, including The Conduit, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space Extraction. Finally, the conference closed out with the reveal of Metroid Other M, being developed by Team Ninja. The trailer looked amazing and I can’t wait to play this one in 2010.

I was fully expecting Nintendo to neglect the core gamer in this press conference, which wasn’t the case. It wasn’t the best event ever, but it certainly wasn’t a bad one either. The Wii and DS will continue to sell at astronomical rates and Reggie will continue making snow angels in piles of cash. I’m working on getting pictures of that actually happening.