Fire Emblem: Awakening and LEGO City: Undercover details in latest Nintendo Direct

Today's North American Nintendo Direct stayed on mostly familiar territory with a few surprises, including a release date for the next Fire Emblem. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime guided us through the proceedings with a little help from various versions of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

LEGO City: Undercover, landing in "the first part of next year," will let players the Wii U GamePad to scan the open-world city for collectible items. Protagonist Chase McCain will swap between several costumes to perform different tasks, and kick brick in a combat system that looks to be inspired by Batman: Arkham City.

Wii Fit U will also arrive in the first part of 2013 (how many "parts" does a year have?) with balance board support and a gaggle of new fitness-centric minigames. It comes bundled with a Fit Meter, a small pedometer-type gadget which keeps track of activity in your day away from the balance board. Tape it to your Pokewalker for twice the strolling fun!

Those are just a few of the highlights from the half-hour-long Direct presentation--check out the archived stream for more on the games, and our previous coverage from the Japanese presentation on Pikmin 3 and Wii U's spiffy Google Street View features.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.