Everything you might've missed from yesterday's Nintendo Direct

Nintendo Direct April

The standards weren't set very high for today's Nintendo Direct. With its disappointing announcement last week that the next Legend of Zelda is getting pushed back another year, few expected the company to show up to its monthly video meeting with a lot to show.

Thankfully, we were wrong.

Goin' retro

Fans of retro games will be pleased to know that both Nintendo 64 and original DS games are finally coming to Wii U, starting with Super Mario 64 and Yoshi's Island DS, respectively, and will either cost $9.99 for first-time buyers or $2 to transfer them from a Wii account to a Wii U.

It seems Mario Maker will release in time for our favorite plumber's 30th anniversary by coming in September, and will be followed closely by Yoshi's Wooly World, which got a release date of fall 2015.

Nintendo also announced two new streetpass games, Ultimate Angler and Battleground Z and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, an add on for the titular Animal Crossing New Leaf and be the first game to use NFC-enabled cards. More important than the add-on content for Animal Crossing, however, was the announcement that the Nintendo 3DS NFC reader officially got a North American release date of fall 2015.

All-in-all it seems that this autumn will be one of the biggest yet for Nintendo, though E3 2015 will surely confirm this hunch one way or another.

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.