Link to the Past, Yoshi's Island, Earthbound and more familiar faces.

Nintendo has been milking its impressive stable of mega-popular franchises for so long now that we really shouldn't be surprised that today's Nintendo Direct online video presentation was devoted almost entirely to sequels, remakes, and rereleases of popular franchises. Still, it's a bit incredible how much Nintendo is leaning on established properties, rather than new game ideas, to populate the software market for the 3DS and Wii U.

Enlarge / It's Link to the Past, but a little shinier than you remember!

Of course, a generation of fans who grew up on these Nintendo games aren't likely to care too much. Nintendo announced a direct sequel to the SNES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the 3DS today, using the same familiar overhead perspective and established Hyrulian world, while infusing it with new mechanics like the ability for Link to become a 2D drawing and scoot along walls. There are precious few additional details about the game, but I'm willing to bet a good portion of those reading this are ready to preorder for the holiday release right now just because, hey, it's a freaking Link to the Past sequel!

Many Nintendo console owners will likely have similar feelings about the new portable Yoshi's Island game Nintendo announced today. And the new 3DS Mario Party title, the new Mario Golf: World Tour game, the new entry in the Mario and Luigi RPG series, the new Mario and Donkey Kong: March of the Minis game, the new Professor Layton game, the 3DS remake of Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Atlus' new Shin Megami Tensei game. Not to mention the new Wii U Pikmin games, which are now set for August 4. And the new Wario mini-game collection, Game & Wario, now set for June 23.

Then there's Nintendo's continuing focus on rereleasing older games as downloads for newer systems. Earthbound is finally coming to the Wii U Virtual Console in North America and Europe this year, fulfilling the long-delayed dreams and frothing demand of a large and loud sub-niche of the gaming world. It's a great game, and we're glad Nintendo is finally working to expose it to a much larger audience, but it's pushing 20 years old at this point.

Similarly, the Game Boy Color Zelda games that are coming to the 3DS Virtual Console in May, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, are almost old enough to be teenagers at this point. Oh, and we'll "soon" have the opportunity to rebuy select Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Advance games on the Wii U. Is this why we buy new Nintendo hardware? To be able to buy older games we might have missed the first time around?

Enlarge / Remember Yoshi's Island? Well it's back... in 3DS form.

The only truly new games Nintendo announced during its nearly 38-minute presentation were three titles from independent developer Level 5, including  Bugs vs. Tanks, which was designed by legendary Mega Man developer Keiji Inafune. The brief glimpses of these titles showed a lot of the inventiveness and sheer off-the-wall craziness that Japanese game development used to be known for back in the early days of console gaming. But such titles were a depressingly small portion of Nintendo's presentation.

It's easy to understand why Nintendo relies on its established franchises so much. The company barely has to lift a finger to sell these games on their merits—the familiar name and concept will pretty much do that for them. Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of brand signalling as far as it goes. Nintendo has a reputation for treating its franchises with care and bringing out quality updates on a slower schedule rather than just cranking out a new, uninspired sequel every single year like some publishers. But that reputation only goes so far; the last Yoshi's Island remake on the DS, for instance, was merely mediocre.

No matter how good these familiar titles are, though, it's highly unlikely that any of them are going to show us anything truly new and unique. While there may be cosmetic differences and tiny gameplay tweaks to the established formulas, you basically know what you're getting when you go in to one of these countless Nintendo franchise titles. Usually you're getting something good, but rarely are you getting something really surprising or innovative. That's probably enough to sustain the 3DS and Wii U on its own, but it's not really enough to get us truly excited about the future of games on Nintendo hardware.