The latest Nintendo Direct announcement video ended with a monstrous bang, as Nintendo finally confirmed what fighting-game fans have been hoping to hear: the Super Smash Bros. series is coming to the Nintendo Switch. Even better, fans won't have long to wait, as the new game's trailer ended with a promise of "2018."

The trailer showed Splatoon characters, known as "inklings," running, jumping, and trying to shoot each other with ink until the screen turned to black and a massive Smash Bros. logo appeared. Standing in front of the burning logo were a bunch of apparent Nintendo characters, including clear shots of Mario and Link and silhouettes of Donkey Kong and Samus Aran. This was followed by a flash of "2018" and a Nintendo Switch logo. No other information, including a specific title or details about how the upcoming game may differ from the previous Wii U and 3DS versions were confirmed, but it's easy to assume that this means the next game in the series will include inkling fighters.

This exciting news was a sharp detour from an otherwise pedestrian Nintendo Direct that was notable for emphasizing the company's continued 3DS support. Nintendo announced five first-party games coming to the aging portable system both this year and next, and it's doing the bare minimum to keep that promise of continuing 3DS support. That's because the five games in question are all sequels or remakes of existing games.















The most notable of these may be Wario Ware Gold, if only because the 3DS has existed for this long without a Wario Ware game yet. The "gold" in the title refers to the game's dip into series history. Wario Ware games typically serve a frantic series of three-second mini-games to players, and Wario Ware Gold will combine old mini-games with new ones—though the ratio of old to new wasn't clarified just yet. Wario Ware Gold will launch for the 3DS this August.

The rest of the upcoming 3DS content newly announced today includes Bowser's Inside Story (a 3D-ized port of the DS game with a new chapter), Luigi's Mansion (an apparently straight port of the GameCube original with a new "boss rush" mode), Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers (a tower-defense tweak to the portable-exclusive Dillon series), and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (a Wii U port, now with new Super Mario Odyssey-themed levels and a new two-player mode).

The latter is perhaps the most exciting because Captain Toad will launch simultaneously on Nintendo Switch on July 13.























Speaking of ports on Nintendo Switch: gosh, are we getting a lot of those this year. Third parties are jumping on board en masse to cash in on Switch hysteria, including unlikely entries like Crash Bandicoot: N'Sane Trilogy (marking the first time Crash's original trilogy has ever appeared on a Nintendo platform), South Park: The Fractured But Whole (which was hilarious to hear the family-friendly Nintendo announcer say out loud), and Undertale (the indie RPG darling that owes a huge debt to Nintendo's underappreciated Earthbound series).

We also learned more about previously announced Switch games like Dark Souls Remastered, which will get its own "praise the sun" Amiibo figurine on the same day as the game's May 25 release date, and Travis Srikes Again: No More Heroes, which finally has real gameplay footage. TSA:NMH will work as a top-down brawler in which series hero Travis Touchdown kicks, punches, and slashes through a variety of fake video game worlds. If the game includes cameos from existing indie games, as its developers previously hinted, Nintendo didn't leak those twists just yet, but it did confirm a two-player mode and a pretty sexy aesthetic. However, the game still doesn't have a release date beyond "this year."

Previously announced games like Mario Tennis Aces and Project Octopath (now named Octopath Traveler) received release dates (June 22 and July 13, respectively) and lengthy descriptions of gameplay, while Nintendo announced the first paid-DLC expansion for Splatoon 2, launching "this summer." Splatoon 2's "Octo" expansion, which will cost $19.99, will send players into a new single-player level campaign with a new "octoling" character as a hero.

Listing image by Nintendo