Switch 2 Release Date, With Games I'm Excited About

 I've had every Nintendo home console since the Super Nintendo, so it's more a matter of when rather than if I get a Switch 2. However, looking at the line-up of games that is coming, I'm thinking it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.

The console launches on June 5th (a few days before my birthday) and looks to largely try to repeat the successful formula of the original Switch's mobile/home console hybrid approach.

Of course, any console is only as good as its game library, so what do we have to look forward to? There are a lot of games coming out - many are ports and remasters, of course, and as someone who has a PS5 as well, in a lot of cases I already have them: it's awesome that Nintendo-exclusive players will be able to play Final Fantasy VII Remake (evidently not yet Rebirth, though I imagine that's down the pipeline) and Elden Ring (which at this point is probably the game I've put more hours in than any game other than World of Warcraft,) but here are the games I'm eager to get my hands on:

Donkey Kong: Bananza (get it? Bonanza and Banana?) looks to be a 3D platformer with a whole lot of destructible environments - we see DK smashing through the earth, digging tunnels and finding gems and gold. Interestingly, DK's visual design has been changed from the version we've been familiar with since Donkey Kong Country, with a look that seems more in line with the even older design from those old Donkey Kong arcade cabinets (that I actually think I've never seen in person).

Mario Kart World is a brand-new Mario Kart game (which I don't think we've gotten since Mario Kart 8, which released originally on the Wii U). There seems to be some sense that the tracks will be a lot more open.

The Duskbloods is the game that most surprised me, which is a FromSoft game led by Hidetaka Miyazaki, which seems to be a vampiric, gothic-themed game in a setting that looks a lot like Yharnam from Bloodborne if the city had undergone the Industrial Revolution, complete with trains and steampunk jetpacks. Given that Bloodborne is a Sony exclusive, this might more or less be the unofficial Bloodborne sequel we've all been wanting for a decade, so I'm hyped as hell. (This one doesn't come out until 2026).

Naturally, we also have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which is another one of these games we've been waiting for for a long, long time.

So, cool stuff. I hope that the Switch 2 is as good as the Switch has been, and may it have a vast and high-quality library!

Nintendo Announcements at E3 2019

As you might be aware, there's a big gaming convention going on. I'm not going to go exhaustively into every announcement - I recommend checking out whatever your preferred gaming news site is, but I figured I'd mention some things that caught my eye from Nintendo.

Zelda:

First off, there was a tease for a sequel to Breath of the Wild. While I don't know if it will be the same mechanically, it does appear to be a new Zelda game with the same graphical style.

BotW is a game I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I appreciate the sense of play and exploration, and the sweeping majesty of its game world. But I also think that its game world fell into a bit of a "samey-ness" trap that open-world games often suffer from. It's all well and good to go from deserts to forests to snowy mountains, but when every dungeon and shrine looks the same once you go underground, it kind of takes the fun out of it. Also, I think if every sword, bow, and shield had about ten times the durability, it might have felt less annoying to see them break.

I'll be very curious to see if they keep the survival/resource feel of the previous game or give us a more traditional Zelda experience.

Also, the remake of Link's Awakening will have a custom dungeon editor.

Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighters:

As someone who very eagerly got the Smash Pass, I'm pretty happy to see two new fighters announced as DLC.

First, and to me, more exciting, is Banjo-Kazooie. This Bear with a Bird in his backpack debuted originally in Diddy Kong Racing, a game that took Donkey Kong's sidekick and then gave us a bunch of potential new IPs for Rareware back when Rare was one of the greatest video game studios. Among the roster, only Banjo and, hilariously, Conker (whose initial kid-friendly game was scrapped in favor of an irreverent one that was more Fritz than Felix) wound up getting their own 3D platformers.

Additionally, they'll be getting "The Hero," which represents the various protagonists of the prolific Dragon Quest series (which I think has been around as long as Final Fantasy but for some reason I've never talked with anyone who has ever played them.)

Mana Collection:

Secret of Mana holds a very special place in my heart - my oldest friend and I used to play in endlessly when we were in middle school, the only Squaresoft RPG that you could play co-op. Three of the games in the Mana series, including Secret of Mana, will be getting released as a collection, including one previously never released in America. Additionally, that unreleased game, now given an english title of Trials of Mana, is also getting a 3D remake coming next year.

Luigi's Mansion:

I've actually never played any of the Luigi's Mansion games, but there's a new one coming to the Switch. Cool! It apparently lets you turn into, at points, "Gooigi," which is a Luigi made of goo that can slime its way along walls and such.

Anyway, there's way more news even from Nintendo, but those are the highlights I'm most interested in.

Super Mario Odyssey

After experimenting with a return to more linear "get to the end of the level" design in Mario 3D Land for the Wii U, Mario Odyssey goes back to the established 3D Mario design of having you track down items held by bosses or hidden in puzzles.

Odyssey is a very fun game, and one that is filled with charm. Attempting to stop a wedding that Bowser has planned for himself and Peach (of course against her will - there's kidnapping involved, as always,) Mario finds himself stranded in the Hat Kingdom and befriends a hat-spirit-creature named Cappy who becomes the main mechanical conceit of the game - you can toss your hat at various creatures in order to inhabit them and use their abilities - something that recalls, of all things, the now-obscure Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64.

With a hat-shaped ship provided by the Hat Kingdom, you travel the world to various different Kingdoms that each have their own inhabitants, ranging from friendly Mexican skeleton people to tree-growing robots to realistically-proportioned humans who all wear suits and hats.

Along the way you collect Power Moons to allow your ship access to the next Kingdom. Each of these Kingdoms has a "main story" that you can play through first to get a good number of moons (often getting three-moon clusters that also look weirdly like bunches of bananas) but along these paths and after finishing these stories you'll have plenty of stuff to find.

Coins, oddly enough for a Mario game, actually function as a currency. You'll be taxed a very modest 10 coins if you die (I think you'd have to actively avoid coins to run out of them, as it's pretty easy to get into the thousands) but otherwise you can spend them in the shops in each kingdom for various costumes and stuff you can decorate your ship with.

Each Kingdom (with one or two exceptions) also has its own currency that is finite and can be used to purchase a limited number of local items including costumes, travel stickers (like the ones you'd find on an old-timey suitcase, only these go on your hat-airship) and other cosmetic rewards.

It's a great entry in the series and feels inventive and charming in a way we haven't seen since the first Mario Galaxy game.

I also want to take a moment to talk about my favorite area in the game: the Metro Kingdom. Here, in its capital of New Donk City, Mario gets to return to the place he bested Donkey Kong and rescued Pauline, who is now mayor of the city. And she is also a singer in a band! Granted, when I was a kid Mario was from Brooklyn and Donkey Kong was set in New York, but... New Donk City is a very Nintendo-ized New York City. Every car on the street is a yellow taxi that looks like it's from the mid 80s, and everyone there dresses like it's the 1940s. One would think its inhabitants, being realistically-proportioned humans speaking some strange nonsense (the exception being Pauline, who is cartoonish like Peach and who actually speaks, and most notably sings in English,) would be off-putting, but the place is actually very charming (the music, exuberant as any Mario music tends to be, helps.) There is a kind of innocent urban aesthetic the feels like something from my childhood that this seems to embody.

Anyway, this a great core-franchise Mario entry for this console generation and definitely recommended to anyone who likes the classic Nintendo offerings.

Smash Bros. Ultimate

It's funny to think that 20 years ago (holy crap I am old) the original Super Smash Bros. was a kind of low-budget, experimental game. Two years later, on a new console and with graphics that were about a million times better, the first sequel, Smash Bros. Melee, really cemented the series as an every-generation mainstay of Nintendo's brand.

Since then, we've had Brawl, the split "for Wii U" and "for 3DS" entry, and now, Smash 5 or 6 depending on how you count the previous two wisely went with the very accurate "Ultimate" as its subtitle.

The premise this time around: Everything. Every single fighter they've ever had is in this, and possibly every stage (though I feel like there's a Metroid one from the last entry I don't see.) Even the N64 ones are there (ooh! Not the Starfox one, though that would be pretty redundant with the Starfox one from Melee.)

But every fighter is back. There has been a bit of shuffling: Charizard is now once again simply one third of the options the Pokemon Trainer uses and they've made Zelda and Shiek as well as Samus and Zero Suit Samus into separate fighters (a change that came last time, I believe.)

They've included all of Wii U's DLC fighters (including Cloud, one of my favorites - who ironically made his Nintendo debut with that game) as well as adding a few more. My best friend always felt it was a huge oversight that we never got Simon Belmont in there, and well, guess what? Also, we've wanted Ridley ever since seeing the cinematic intro for Melee. Now he's there. Also, King K. Rool!

Ultimate doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it has definitely polished things to a bright sheen. The fact that there are over 70 fighters (and more coming with DLC!) means that, yes, you'll have to search through piles of Fire Emblem heroes you've never heard of when selecting your fighter (one of them is voiced by Matthew Mercer, though, so that's fun!) but the main philosophy of this entry in the series (and I think the franchise itself) is "the more the merrier," and it works quite nicely that way.

Like Brawl, Ultimate's adventure mode is ludicrous, and like 4's Smash Tour, it introduces a ton of new mechanics. But thankfully, they've streamlined unlocking fighters. You begin with only the first 8 fighters you started with in the original game (not even the four unlockable ones) and as you play, every ten minutes a new fighter will challenge you (waiting for you to finish whatever mode you're in the middle of.) The only downside is that you might feel hesitant to try out fighters you're less comfortable with in case you get a challenge after that match. If you fail one of these challenges, you'll actually be able to get rematches in the Games and More menu (there's a little symbol of a... gate, I think?) though losing a rematch will require you to play a bit more before that fighter pops up again. I think Cloud took me three tries to get.

One cool thing is that Classic Mode now has a set of fights built around a theme for each individual fighter. For example, Samus is sent after various space-based characters. Some characters will face alternate final bosses instead of Master Hand or Crazy Hand: for example, Link fights Ganon (not just Ganondorf, but fully-powered evil pig-god Ganon.)

Another feature I really like is that you can set up your Smashes (standard fights) to have "Stage Morph," where periodically the stage shifts between two selected arenas. Also, if you want a Final Destination or Battlefield-level simple stage but want more visual variety, all stages now have those modes.

And naturally, along with new fighters we have new stages and music. There's a Gerudo Valley stage with an awesome flamenco guitar version of the Gerudo Valley theme.

If you're a fan of the franchise, you'll want this version. It's got essentially everything you liked from previous games and more. And it's on the Switch, so you can take it with you!

Switching it Up!

Right! So for Xmas, and for the first time in my 32-year-old life I actually got a video game console as a gift (to be fair, the chores I did to save money for the SNES and N64 were rather generously rewarded.) I now own a Nintendo Switch.

So far I have two games for it - Smash Bros. Ultimate (obviously) which I downloaded because A: I didn't want to try to find an open store on Christmas and B: I figure that's the game I'm going to go back to the most.

The other, which I got a week or so later, is Super Mario Odyssey.

I think I'll do separate posts for them, but both have been great.

The console itself is a really clever system. Until I got back to LA I was using it basically as a mobile device, unlocking Smash Bros. 70-some-odd fighters at an embarassingly fast rate.

Sitting in its dock, the Switch simply becomes a standard console to hook up to a TV. I got a second controller for Smash Bros. purposes, this one a wired one that is almost identical to the Gamecube controller. As such, by leaving the Switch's Joy-Cons attached, it allows me to take the Switch out very easily and use it in its mobile function.

It feels a little funny that we've circled back around to cartridges, but the funniest part is that Switch cartridges are basically just SD cards - they're tiny, so I'd still recommend you keep the game cases to store them. Of course, with one downloaded title and one cartridge, I simply leave Mario Odyssey in there at all times.

My one complaint so far is that the power cord is rather short, which is tough given that we have a rather tall TV console and the only reasonable place for the Switch is on top (in front of the Wii U gamepad.)

The Joy-Cons can be configured in a number of ways - when taking the console with you, they can simple stick to the sides. Alternatively, you get a little more ergonomic grip that will hold them in more of a standard controller configuration. You can also just hold them separately, and there are sliders to put on their flat edges that include wrist straps and sort of "button extenders" to allow you to hit the buttons on the inside of those edges.

The main purpose of those buttons is to serve as shoulder buttons if you wish to use each Joy-Con as its own SNES-style controller. You can thus play multiplayer games like Smash Bros. even if you don't have any extra controllers, though the ergonomics of this configuration leave something to be desired.

Obviously any console lives on its library. So far I think one of the Switch's strengths is its ability to give existing games mobile flexibility, but I don't feel the need to buy Dark Souls again or Skyrim a third time (a couple years ago the "deluxe edition" was cheaper than buying the DLC separately.)

Given that I also got Breath of the Wild for the Wii U, I am unlikely to get one of the Switch's flagship titles (I hope no one throws rocks at me for this, but to be totally honest I wasn't crazy about BotW - I like a little more structure and also would have liked more enemy and environmental variety.

Anyway: the Switch is clearly doing many of the things they wanted for the Wii U. I hope we see some really classic games come out for it. I'll have to talk about the ones I have just after this post.

Nintendo Switch: The Big N's New Console

So I'm one of a relatively small number of Wii U owners, and I'll be honest, I've been a little disappointed. I think it's a good console and the games I have for it are good, but there has been so little that I eventually got a PS4 to supplement it (though to be perfectly honest, I haven't been playing a ton of PS4 games either, which might be due to a recent World of Warcraft expansion.)

For that reason I'm a little mixed on my reactions to the announcement of a new Nintendo console, though I realize that, as it releases next year, it will have been about four years since the Wii U, which isn't that unreasonable for a new console.

The Switch's most important feature is that it is a hybrid mobile/console. At home, the Switch will sit in a little stand by your TV and you'll have a conventional controller to play games on the TV. However, you can pull the Switch out of its stand and attach controller-like extensions with joysticks, d-pads, and buttons and then use the console as a mobile device.

Likewise, it appears you'll be able to set up the console on a desk and use a separate controller if that's more comfortable.

In terms of console power, I'd expect this to, as usual, be a step or two behind the other major players. One of the games in the announcement video they showed was Skyrim, which at this point is five years old and two generations behind (still an awesome game.) Still, we've gotten to a point where the difference in graphics is kind of hard to tell from one generation to the next, so I'm not actually that concerned about that anymore. (Also, I'm getting older, so the Xbox 360 still feels pretty current to me even though it's been officially obsolete for a few years now. Jeez, has it really been eleven years since that came out?)

Personally, I'm going to be a little more hesitant this time to pick up the new console (though let's be honest, at some point I'll probably get it) given how disappointing the Wii U library has been. I know that Nintendo is starting to work with other companies a little more (they've got an app coming out for iOS) and perhaps if they can start playing nicer with third parties we might see them reclaiming some of their old territory, but I think that for now, as it has been for a while, Nintendo machines are best for getting Nintendo games, and that means a smaller library.

Still, I'll be following the console closely.

Nintendo NX Coming out Next March, Along with New Zelda

The Wii U had a ton of potential - I bought one a few months after it came out, and I was excited that Nintendo was planning to try to get back into the top-line gaming that it had ceded to Microsoft and Sony during the Gamecube and Wii era.

It did not succeed at this.

The Wii U has some fantastic games. I think its version of Smash Bros. might be the best yet (though I'd bet most people still consider Melee to be the pinnacle.) The problem is that there really just aren't that many games for it.

As someone who's approaching 30 pretty soon, it's also true that my taste in games has shifted over time. I'm more interested in complex stories and mechanics, and of course novelty. I love Mario games, but I'll admit that Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros. U kind of melt together in my mind even though they're not even in the same number of dimensions.

But given that I invested in the Wii U, I do feel like I got burned.

For one thing, a general rule with Nintendo is that you can expect one and a half Zelda games per generation. Two for the NES, one for the SNES, two for the N64, and then practically one and a half for the Gamecube (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and again for the Wii (Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.) Now, the new Zelda game will not be launching until the NX does, which means that you can be certain it will come out on the NX, likely with a Wii U version, meaning the Wii U only gets, effectively, half a Zelda.

There's also the fact that it will have been only four years since the Wii U came out, with very little produced during the time.

It's a real shame, because I felt that the return to traditional controls might have meant more 3rd-party titles. But this is the big problem for Nintendo:

I grew up primarily with the SNES and N64 era, and at that time, Nintendo was a place for 3rd-party studios to show off their stuff. Now, however, for technical and also business-politics reasons, Nintendo is treated more like the American Politics version of a third party - people forget they exist.

What keeps me buying Nintendo consoles has been their 1st party games, but maybe it's me or maybe it's Nintendo, but I don't really see that many exciting things coming out from them these days.

The Wii U didn't have a Metroid game, it will only just barely have a Zelda game.

I'm assuming the strategy here is to cut their losses, hoping that the NX will be at least on a technical level on par with the PS4 and the Xbox One, but I'm going to be a lot more cautious about buying this new console than I was with the Wii U, given how recently I did so.