Nintendo kicked off the Tokyo Game Show tonight in its usual fashion: by snubbing the event entirely and holding its own press conference. While the hour-long event was slim on game details, it did feature plenty of announcements and narrowed down Japanese release dates for some of its known slate of games.

The bad news? Almost everything shown off tonight is coming next year, and that's not counting localization time to bring those games to the west.

Kotaku reports on the evening's happenings. The showpiece of the event was Monster Hunter 3, which came at the end of the conference with a lengthy new trailer. Nintendo confirmed it will release in Japan on December 10, 2012, but oddly made no mention of the second thumbstick that Famitsu revealed last week. Fears of a redesigned 3DS announcement have been put to rest as well, for now.

A large portion of the conference was devoted to rapid-fire name dropping. A few notables include Biohazard Revelations, Ace Combat 3D: Cross Rumble, Tekken 3D: Prime Edition, a new Fire Emblem, Rocket Slime, and Fatal Frame. Biohazard Revelations is aiming for early next year, but the other release windows weren't as specific.

Nintendo's own properties got some of the spotlight. Kid Icarus: Uprising is due in the first quarter of next year. Paper Mario 3DS, Animal Crossing, and Mario Tennis will be coming to the system next year alongside the already-known Luigi's Mansion 2. Meanwhile, the previously announced free copy of Four Swords is coming September 28, though its US and EU dates may vary.

We also received a deluge of Japanese insanity that will probably never reach our western shores, like a Dynasty Warriors-styled game from Square Enix called Bravely Default: Flying Fairy, Gals RPG: Cindere Life, and SD Gundam G Generation 3D. Those ranged from the quirky to the downright terrifying, but "Bravely Default" might be the best title of the year. Or any year, ever.