TGS 2011: Nintendo dates Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, teases 2012 releases

Last night’s Nintendo 3DS press conference was a letdown for many fans. There weren’t any huge game announcements (with the exception of a new Fire Emblem and Mario Tennis) to speak of, and the 3DS slider-pad-thing ended up being just as awkward as we feared. To make matters worse, Nintendo confirmed that Kid Icarus, one of the 3DS’s flagship titles, had been pushed back yet again, slipping into 2012. Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and Nintendo has given a few of their remaining 2011 games solid release dates.

First is Super Mario 3D Land, which has always been given an amorphous “November-ish” release window. Whenever Nintendo refuses to give a game an actual date we get worried that they’re just in a holding pattern for a delay, but it seems that it wasn’t the case this time. According to Nintendo, we’ll be jumping on goomba heads on November 13—a few days after the release of Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and a week before The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword hits US shelves. Meanwhile, Mario Kart 7 gets a slightly less trafficked launch date, releasing on December 4, letting gamers catch their breath before gliding around and riding karts underwater.

Looking into 2012, Nintendo plans to release Paper Mario, Animal Crossing, Mario Tennis, and Luigi’s Mansion 2. They aren’t giving more details or saying what part of the year we can expect them, but considering how little they’ve revealed about those games we’d be shocked if anything happened before E3 2012. Then again, hitting the holiday season in 2012 with those games alone would definitely give Nintendo a strong line-up, even without any third-party developers pitching in support.