Today at E3, I had a chance to check out some of Capcom’s offerings in their meeting room, behind closed doors, or at least doors blocked off by Capcom employees. There was a large room that was dedicated solely to arcade versions of Street Fighter IV, but that wasn’t my main focus. As a Nintendo gamer, I had only one title on my mind - the upcoming WiiWare title Mega Man 9.

Hardcore Mega Man fans can start getting excited now - Mega Man 9 plays, looks, and sounds exactly like the games of old. It’s quite difficult - I couldn’t manage to beat either of the levels I tried, thanks to some annoying level and enemy combinations. The music is pretty good as well, reminds me of the old games but is also quite catchy. They weren’t talking about the Robot Masters yet, which is odd because Nintendo Power has already revealed all the names, but it didn’t matter, I couldn’t have made it to a Robot Master anyway.

I asked some questions about exactly how hardcore this game was going to be, and the answer is "very". My first question was whether or not the difficulty was being compromised for the casual crowd, or any other part of the game, and I was answered with a simple "no". The general idea here is that this game is pure fanservice; no casual gamers were considered in any step of this game’s development. They even programmed in some of the glitches of the old games that were caused by the limits of the NES; you can turn on something called V-Sync tearing, or whatever it was. I don’t even know what kind of hardware limitation he was talking about; that is how hardcore we’re talking. This is a gamer’s sequel through and through, and gamers are going to love it. It’ll show up later this year on WiiWare for a pretty low price, and Mega Man and Mega Man 2 should show up on the Virtual Console around the same time.

The next title I played that will be coming to a Nintendo system was Neopets Puzzle Adventure. This game is basically Puzzle Quest with the Neopets IP thrown in, and I personally was familiar with neither. I was familiar, however, with Othello, which the main game is based upon, so it was somewhat accessible to me from the beginning. It seems like these fellows are making good use of the two licenses, and I don’t see this game being a piece of shovelware. There’s focus on taming and training your Neopets for use in battle (they take the place of spells from the previous titles), and doing these things involves playing some fairly fun mini-games, of which there are between six and ten. When I asked how the main game and mini-games will make up the game, I was told it was about a 80-20 split.

I didn’t get a chance to see the mini-games play out in the main game, as that feature was apparently removed from the E3 build, surprising me and the person who was showing me the title. When I checked out the mini-games from the main menu, though, there were things like Memory Match and Minesweeper; I was told that on the DS, Minesweeper was replaced with a shape-tracing game. It seems that the mini-games especially will make use of Nintendo’s unique control schemes; I was playing the PC version of the game, though the title will be headed to both the Wii and the DS.

Lastly, I managed to watch Moto GP 08 in action a little bit, though it was the Xbox 360 build. I didn’t get a long look since E3 was closing shortly, but it seemed like a fairly straightforward game. One thing that caught my ear, though, was the inclusion of an Arcade mode that would be a little easier on newcomers to the series. One example: in the normal mode, if you turn too tightly, you fall off your bike, but notso in arcade mode. Moto GP 08 should hit the Wii this year.

After checking out the Nintendo offerings, they showed me a few other games that were in development for the 360. The first one I tried out was Age of Booty, a pirate-themed RTS (and yes, that’s the real name; the Capcom executives were very proud). It seemed pretty pick-up-and-play; the objective of the mission I saw was to capture several towns, a seemingly straightforward procedure. Apparently, though, in order to have enough stamina to do so, you’d need to collect resources from the open sea or other attacking ships, and how you decided to upgrade yourself would change your approach of a certain stage. It was pretty entertaining, especially playing together with the Capcom representative.

Next up was an upcoming XBLA title called Flock, which tasked you with herding sheep into your alien mothership. This was very much puzzle-driven; in order to herd sheer, you needed to guide a smaller alien spaceship toward them, which they in turn wold run away from. Puzzle elements included knocking out scarecrows so they don’t scare the sheep into the ocean to their dooms, making crop circles to guide sheep on a certain path, getting male sheep to follow a female around, or breeding more sheep to meet your quota. The demo concluded with a Rube Goldberg-esque level wherein fences were being knocked over like dominos, cows were being flung all over the place, etc. Flock is supposed to allow for the sharing of user-created content, always an exciting prospect.

Lastly, before I left the meeting room, I managed to snag an empty chair for Resident Evil 5, which is normally  appointment-only, a fact I discovered once they kicked me off. I had adequate playtime, however, to see that the game controls a lot like RE4 did. The big changes, I think, are in the game’s atmosphere; when an enemy grabs you this time, it’s a much creepier experience, and I think players will be scared for their virtual lives more often than in the previous iteration. This is a game to look at as well.

If I get any hands-on time with other Capcom products on the show floor, I’ll update this page with the new impressions. Otherwise, stay tuned for further impressions as NintendoGal’s E3 coverage continues.