Nintendo fans were able to get a sneak peek at an unannounced Wii U bundle featuring The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD – but the surprise wasn’t in the form of a leak or anonymous source spilling the beans. In fact, Nintendo accidentally included the image of a Zelda-themed Wii U GamePad in a promotional trailer for the upcoming game’s “Hero Mode.” In this new mode, “only for the truest heroes,” enemy attacks will inflict double damage and recovery hearts will be nonexistent throughout the entirety of the game.
Nintendo quickly removed the video from its official site, but the original video can be found here.
“At around the 50-second mark, we can clearly see the black Wii U console pictured below, which features golden Hylian scrawl around its edge and shows the HD version of the game playing on its built-in touchscreen,” said RocketNews.
The special console is said to have an upgraded 32GB hard disk and retail for about $350.
Although the Wii U has been slow to catch on with consumers and third party developers, Nintendo’s hand-held 3DS has been performing extremely well – outselling all other gaming hardware in the U.S. during the second quarter.
Thanks to popular gaming franchises such as Animal Crossing and Pokemon, 3DS sales are up 14 percent year-over-year.
“That increase is an anomaly amid overall continued decline in gaming hardware, software and accessories, as gamers await the ‘next-gen’ rollout this holiday season,” said AllThingsD’s Eric Johnson, according to The Globe and Mail.
The 3DS’s stellar performance is a stark contrast to the weak sales that forced a price reduction in 2011. Nintendo cut the handheld’s price from $249 to $169, worried that developers might give up on the 3DS – although, as is typical with Nintendo, in-house titles continue to reign supreme.
One such franchise – Metroid – was poised to get the “Hollywood treatment” when a diehard fan took to Kickstarter in order to fund a film project based on it. However, Nintendo did not endorse the project and filed a copyright claim – effectively killing the indie fan flick.
“Metroid: Enemies Within (A Metroid Fan Film) is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable,” says the project’s official Kickstarter page.
