Sad Horn noise

So the Switch 2 reveal happened! The direct was less-than as it skirted around the big issue on everyone’s mind, the price! How much is this thing going to cost? And of course, the biggest bitch of the bunch is the fact that on the same day, the great wave of tariffs was announced, shrouding what should have been an exciting day of learning about a new Nintendo system and talking shit about it on the internet into a tidal wave of political discourse and fear! Fear that our stupid little lives won’t be able to afford our small treat because someone decides to do a pump-and-dump with the world economy, but, and this is a big but, we still talked shit, we still checked out the new system, we still got treated to two days of demonstrations on the Nintendo Tree-House, so let’s talk about cyberbuffalo’s feelings on the whole matter.

MONEY ON MY MIND

Before anything else, I have to say how confounding I find the entire video game price situation. Nintendo can be a world class leader in branding - to me anyway! I know there is a theory about the mishandling of the WiiU, that it was not branded properly - Nintendo should have known better than to put a big letter U after the name WII but it’s been shown that there were a lot of factors that lead us to the low sales volume of the WiiU. Whether you can agree with me or not, it’s hard to refute that they have picked it up in the past 7 years with the incredible branding and marketing of the Nintendo Switch. Everyone has a Switch, but not in the same way everyone had a Wii, they play games on it. And those games all cost up to 59.99. People who interact with more than just Nintendo games know the Switch has the cheapest games on the market, and that more modern consoles cost 69.99 for a game. BUT NOT ANYMORE! As the Nintendo website updated there were some revelations released out into the world that game pricing was no longer following an industry standard model. 79.99! is what Mario Kart: World is going to cost, and that feels outrageous. Even before we get to whether or not little Timmy and Tonya’s parents are going to be able to afford to get this under the Christmas tree, before we try to navigate the murky waters of how or if or when or why these prices are impacted by the tariffs (or not impacted by or if the tariffs exist or if we’re all just being mashed into proverbial protein balls in an alley and forced down the gullet of some rich turtle hurtling through space and time ahhhhhhh)…

BEFORE ALL THAT we have to really let ourselves understand that Nintendo pulled a pin on a grenade and tossed it, live, in slow motion, into the lap of the entire video game industry. Seventy Nine Ninety Nine plink - dunk dunt bunt… hisssssss BOOM! There are no rules anymore, if Nintendo can charge you 80 dollars for Mario Kart, Playstation can charge you 100$ for Last of Us 2 Remake - Remastered. I am not smart enough to predict how this ripple will be felt through the industry that has been struggling with acquisitions and closures or with a general public that is dealing with a looming global recession, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be great!

The bigger point of interest here to me, is that Nintendo completely lost control of the narrative. Do an internet search for $90 Nintendo games and you’ll see no shortage of youtube videos, articles, reddit posts and social media comments saying “Nintendo is charging 90 dollars for switch games!” And that’s not even true, they’ve completely lost control of this narrative and it is going to be hard to get it back in line, if not damned near impossible. Mario Kart World Costs 79.99, digitally and physically, in the United States (pre-tariff, though, so subject to change) but in the UK they could be charging more for physical games (also pre-world wide trade war, so YMMV) but if you want to buy Tears of the Kingdom with the Switch 2 upgrade pack that’s 79.99 unless you own the base game on Switch then it costs 9.99 digitally but if you’ve got the Nintendo Switch Online with Expansion Pack service than it is included in your 49.99$ subscription (or 79.99 for the expanded family subscription). This is NONSENSE - IT’S COMPLETE NONSENSE AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THIS KIND OF PRICING STRUCTURE NEEDS TO REEVALUATE THEIR LIVES.

It was bad enough to try to decipher the Xbox Game Pass and Sony PS+ Subscription models, which games come with which tier, which games are coming and which are being pulled. Up to now the Nintendo services have been pretty clear, and the games were 59.99 or less. This new pricing structure is going to alienate a lot of people, not because they can’t afford it - because no one should have to live like this!

Gimme a Gimmick

Now that’s out of the way I can talk about the games, the hardware and the features. Really my main take-a-way is that it’s strange living in a timeline when Nintendo can offer games that run, on console, at 4k60fps. My Series X does not do that with most current-gen games. For Nintendo to bring this as a feature, almost as if its the consoles main gimmick, to bring this front-and-center is a bit of a different Nintendo than we’ve seen in the past. I’m for it, give me well designed games that are fun and interesting while looking and playing great? That’s a win-win-win. They’ve built this up so much I really hope they can continue to deliver on this.

The game sharing and Zoom-style streaming is cool and a unique way to bring the on-console party up to a new standard, it feels like a no brainer now that we’ve all lived through the pandemic and have adapted to video conferencing as a standard form of meeting. To me, though, this isn’t a remarkable enough gimmick for Nintendo to hinge it’s entire next-generation console on. The camera peripheral is intriguing, if only because it gives me hope for a revival of Xbox Arcade Kinect titles, possibly even reviving some long forgotten titles or rescuing them from the clutches of obscurity. Yes I’m talking about Diabolical Pitch, no I’m not even remotely trying to hide it.

Lastly but certainly not least - the mouse functionality - is very cool and I hope that it gets supported in the most aggressive, wii-era-like ways with strange games coming out of the woodworks in massive shovelware collections. I also hope that games like Knights in the Nightmare and Mario Paint get brought over. It does feel like this would be a great way for them to bring some of that DS magic back to the console but I’m not sure its enough to spawn an entire gaming revolution.

Games-o-rama

So the meet of it all, the games! What good is all this hardware without anything to play one them? To be perfectly honest this is the part that is almost the least interesting to me. The games haven’t been super exciting, save a few entries. I’m not going through them all but here is what I found interesting.

Tears of the Kingdom & Breath of the Wild Upgrade Pack

Seeing the improvements to these games is so jarring. They did a side-by-side of BotW and it almost didn’t feel real. I think sometimes you lose a bit of the cartoon/ghibli look when you apply mom & dad’s Thanksgiving day motion smoothing, but it still felt pretty. I do think the phone integration feels like a proof of concept for things to come and aren’t a thing that people are going to use en masse. Before the 1st Nintendo Switch was officially revealed, I predicted that we’d be hooking joy-cons up to a grip with a vertical phone in between and they would extend the game capabilities to this second screen. It really felt at the time that Nintendo wouldn’t be abandoning the dual screen gimmick they’ve been pushing since the inception of the DS - well really, since the cable that let you hook up the GBA to the Gamecube. But that never came to fruition outside of some veiled voice chat and a few specific game tools that gave you information. Now we can see some realtime information and data being passed back and forth. To me this is the thing to keep an eye out for as it could become the systems most interesting feature, but it could also be left by the wayside.

Mario Kart: World

Before the reveal of this game and it’s core features, I really didn’t know what they could possibly do to top MK8D. 68 Million copies of 8 Deluxe have been sold, it has 96 total courses and an extremely vibrant online community. What could they do to top this? Well they reinvented the game and I am excited to see how it plays out!

Donkey Kong: Bananza

It’s Bananza, like banana, not bonanza like a burning map and a jaunty cowboy tune. Look, this game looks fun as hell and will honestly be a system seller for me, personally. Pulling chunks out of the grown and blasting through a mountainside? Digging holes STRAIGHT DOWN FOREVER? COMPLETELY DESTROYING THE MAP WITH PERSISTANT DAMAGE?? It just looks great. DK’s redesign is also a nice surprise, he looks so cool, just like a Nintendo trading card from the 90s or from the Game Boy game. It takes the same approach as BotW or many other revived or updated Nintendo IPs from the Switch era - let’s boil the game down to it’s core, give you a new kind of freedom or an abundance of feature and then let you run wild, and Donkey Kong is the perfect subject for this approach.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Psychic abilities! It seems like a really great hook for this series. The opening section they showed off on the Treehouse really showed off the power of the console. There was a big group of enemies attacking and a big group of soldiers fighting alongside samus (i’m sorry I don’t know Metroid lore very well). It looked EXCITING and GRANDIOSE! Samus isn’t starting off the game in solitude, she’s helping fight a war. I will get this, and I will be playing it with mouse controls!

NEW AMIIBO!

Fuck yeah, new Amiibo! This may not be common knowledge but I’m an amiibo freak. I have built special shelves in our living room in order to facilitate all of our little buddies. While I haven’t been going for a complete set, I’m sure as hell like to pick up the random third party ones. So I will more than likely get these chonky Street Fighter 6 amiibo. I might let the cards go by the wayside but it all depends on how they will be sold. I will also be getting the new Tears of the Kingdom amiibo. I’m happy this was in the Switch 2 announcement - it feels like it was an announced commitment to the line. While I would love to see them begin to let third parties experiment with using Amiibo in ways they may not have thought about, but for now I’m just happy there are some official, mostly affordable, cool little action figures of some of my favorite video games, and that our only options are not 2500$ statues.

Gamecube Games

I am honestly surprised about this. The gamecube is ripe for revival, for sure, but that library could be upscaled and sold as a remaster or a re-release. I’m happy that they will continue to expand their Nintendo Classics line-up - please don’t take that as a wish for being sold more games with changes as opposed to letting us play games the way they were intended, emulation not-withstanding. As for the games, I love Wind Waker but I guess I would have preferred the HD release, just because it was such a solid release. F-Zero seems cool, though I’m not really a fan of that series, merely for lack of exposure. I was happy to see Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on the scroll-by, that game is expensive and I feel like it’s overlooked. I’ve played a bit of it in the past and I think it’s a solid entry. Soulcalibur 2 is cool, that’s a fun one especially with Link being playable. I’m also excited to see Chibi Robo in the conversation, I think more people should get to play that Happy Simulator.

No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES

I liked thie first game, I never played the second game (though I do own it), but I’m excited to see this series continue on! It is a surprise that it was the lead game of the series, honestly good for them! This seems like a cool game and it was exciting to see it included.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion

WHAT THE…? THE MECH FROM DAEMON X MACHINA, FROM THE JAPANESE PUBLISHER MARVELOUS… AN ARSENAL?! After this part in No More Heroes 3 I really wished I had bought and played a copy of Daemon x Machina, it looked cool and I was excited when it came out but I just never got around to it. It kept getting pushed further and further down the list until I forgot about it. I’m glad that it got a sequel, a sequel that I will probably be picking up.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

I’m going to be shouting this from the mountain top please PLEASE buy and play this game. You will be rewarded with a really great and unique experience. This is going to launch with the system on June 5th.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

I have enjoyed every entry into the Hyrule Warriors series and I cannot imagine this will be any different. The first game is the most game for your dollar a Zelda fan could come across. It’s got an insane amount to do in it and it’s all skinned to really reward you for being a Zelda fan. The second was a really great romp through the world of Breath of the Wild, a what if…? style story that opened up even more. Like a friend of mine waxing about any entry into the Star Wars franchise, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s just nice to be able to spend time in that world, in that universe again.

Kirby and the Forgotten Lands: Star Crossed World

I really enjoyed this secret character action / hack & slash game, but I’m not sure tacking on a DLC and calling it a next-gen game sits right with me. Does this DLC really do anything with all of that extra processing power? Probably not. I guess, ultimately, who cares? because we get more Kirby. I’ll play this DLC.

Kirby Air Riders

Another Kirby game! I never played the original on Gamecube so I don’t really have any expectations. Sakurai is a great dev so I’m more interested in playing his game than whatever that game may be!

Final Thoughts

Besides the murky waters of the release and prices and postponement of pre-orders and the towering threat of tariffs troubling the release over all, I guess it was pretty exciting. Until I sat down with this write-up I wasn’t too sure if I was happy or excited, discontented or despondent with the news. It’s hard feeling hip-hip-hooray over much these days, which is why I would be setting up in the grandstands for a marketing presentation to begin with, it’s a great distracting. I have liked seeing the callouts to gamergate assholes who have been screaming for years to “Keep politics out of games” as Nintendo literally had to pause their launch because politics have directly affected video games, some of the more wholesome games to boot. Of course they’ve never been inclined to keep their politics out of games, just things they want to suppress or oppress.

Will I pre-order this? If i’m allowed, I’ll certainly try. Honestly my main motivation might be trying to lock-in a pre-tariff price, but who knows if that would even be effective. I like the expanded video chat functionality, but I think this would have suited me better a few years ago. If the camera peripheral works well and brings back a forgotten Grasshopper Game (or other lost Kinect titles) then I’m all for it. And obviously we’re going to get some Mario Paint and that’s very much a good thing.