Rundown (4/06/2025) Swiitch 2 – 4 Mii & U

Post published:04/06/2025
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:74 mins read
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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Swiitch 2 – 4 Mii & U

How many times have I gassed myself up for the Switch 2 and the end of the Switch 1 era? Too many!

The Nintendo Switch has been a magnificent success of a system. It revitalized Nintendo’s place in gaming, and broader culture. It was home to some of the best games in the past decades, including a staggering number of 10+ million seller exclusives. And while it ended dedicated handheld systems beyond emulation novelties, it ushered in an era of ‘hybrid gaming systems’ which is a growing market eyed by every major hardware manufacturer around. It was a fantastic system by most metrics, introduced a countless number of games to people, and it turned millions upon millions into dedicated lifelong real game-likers.

However… There are many criticisms that could be levied toward it. Many of its ‘major’ titles were just re-whatevers of pre-existing Wii U and other Nintendo games, including its biggest game, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017). While the system was seen as revolutionary for offering ‘console quality’ games on a souped up tablet, the limited power of the system became a burden that stirred a divide between people who care about performance and more tolerant folks. And for as much good as there was in the library, there was also a lot of missed potential. From the decision to release certain games when they were released, to the generally subpar DLC practices that let games like Animal Crossing 5, Super Mario Maker 2, and the Mario spots games all stop before reaching their full potential. Which is before getting into the Joy-Con drift issues that… I never encountered, but I also barely used those dinky little things. Oh, and the eShop blew donkey chunks because they opened up the stables to everybody. Including talentless horse molesters who just wanted to resell some store-bought assets and publish games without an ESRB rating. Which I still don’t think should be allowed, as this is a measure to prevent people from farting out spam.

It was far from a perfect era, but it was probably the best run Nintendo has had since the Nintendo DS, and the sales have reflected that, easily becoming the most popular dedicated gaming device in the modern world. One that could potentially topple the great PS2… assuming Sony doesn’t just make up another five million units.

However, the dominance of the Switch is going to fall by the wayside as millions are set to upgrade to the creatively entitled Nintendo Switch 2 when it comes out. A direct continuation of the prior branding, and one that has been appointed with a lot of pomp and circumstance. The games industry is in a rough place at the moment, suffering from a decline in emerging markets, competing entertainment platforms, and the dominion of super games, whose owners are lining the coffers while other studios suffer. And with Switch 2 poised to be the only capital-N New platform coming until 2028, if not later, a lot of people paid to have opinions are hoping that this will save gaming. Well, a combination of this and Grand Theft Auto VI.

…All of which people decided before we knew much tangible information about the Nintendo Switch 2. There was that trailer in January, leaks, and a few snippets, but Nintendo has been deliberately coy and careful with the system. So, without further faffing about, let’s delve into the Switch 2 Direct and see if this Chosen Son has what it takes to be a mass market hit, or if it’ll be another 3DS level hit.

Preamble over, leg’s go jack in!

Switch 2: The Main Deets
(Summary of the System Level Stuff)

This past week, Nintendo announced a bevy of details about their hotly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 Video Game Computer Entertainment Apparatus along with a deluge of games, so let’s go over them. Starting, of course, with the price and release date. The Nintendo Switch 2 is launching on June 5, 2025 worldwide, where it will cost $450 USD in the United States. A bit higher than the expected $400, but due to the tariffs announced just a few hours later (which I will get to soon), this is reasonable. Not good, but Nintendo’s job is to make money, not be your friend.

On that note, this price increase is also being paired with an increase in game prices. Nintendo has remained the last holdout of $60 games after PS5 and Xbox Series X|S began adopting $70 as the standard price for major AAA releases. Many anticipated Nintendo to join the $70 club, but instead they are quoting Switch games as costing up to $80 digitally and up to $90 physically. …Which is a drastic price hike, and something else I’ll talk about in the Switch 2: The Money Zone segment.

Both of these price announcements were ‘wisely’ revealed following an hour-long showcase that was… honestly quite polished, well-paced, and conveyed a lot of information, even if they waited a bit too long to just announce the release date. However, it revealed oodles of tidbits about the system itself, so allow me to indulge in them first. Starting with the new controllers, the Joy-Con 2s.

One feature that has puzzled Nintendorks for months has been the introduction of a new C button to the Right Joy-Con of the Switch 2, and it turns out that it is for their new GameChat feature. One of the biggest shortcomings of the Switch was its utter lack of any social features, not supporting headsets in most games and not allowing for any sort of screen sharing features. For better or for worse, mostly for worse, it was a system that only built around playing games. This led most people to just use Discord to play with their friends, but with this new system Nintendo has decided to… try.

Firstly, the Switch 2 allow people to share their screen and enter virtual chatrooms with a group of other players, likely limited to their friend list. They will be able to communicate to each other via a built-in microphone— something that the Switch strangely lacked after becoming a staple with the Nintendo DS. Even the Wii U had a mic! And they will be able to share their faces, reactions, and full body using a $50 Nintendo Switch 2 Camera accessory. Or you can use another compatible USB-C camera. None of this is revolutionary, though I find some of the claims and uses of this technology to be interesting.

Nintendo, makers of the notoriously terrible Wii Speak accessory, is convinced that the Switch 2, even when docked, next to a TV, and several feet away from the player, will be usable. That it will not only avoid picking up the TV audio, but it will filter out any background noise, as loud as a blender, and only pick out the player’s voice. None of which I believe will actually work. While their implementation of a camera is… interesting. Game consoles getting cameras is nothing new, but Nintendo seems to be the first one to really embrace the aesthetic of video streaming. The camera is able to pinpoint the user’s face, filter out the background, and overlay it onto the shared screen of their friends, or incorporate their faces as part of a game’s GUI.

This is something that I’m sure appeals to a certain generational subsets but… how do I word this gracefully?

…I don’t know, so here’s a list of things I don’t like about this.

I do not like it when streamers watermark their streams with their faces.
I do not want to look at people’s faces as they are playing a game, I just want to look at the game and hear their voice.
I vastly prefer voice chats with screen sharing over any kind of video call.
The screen sharing feature of GameChat appears to run at 480p and at 8 frames per second, which is so much worse than what you can achieve on Discord.
I have worked mostly remotely for about 4 years and I have avoided hooking up a webcam to my computer to show my face. Simply because I just do not like the idea of someone looking at me as I am doing something.
I am autistic, and struggle to use the right facial expressions sometimes.
I have a terrible complex over my face that not even getting $30,000 facial surgery and years of HRT could address. It’s not even gender dysphoria, I have just trained myself to not like my face over 30 years, and I’m not willing to change this stance.
I generally am not the biggest fan of looking at human faces, often preferring to look at a cartoon or abstraction over a flesh and blood person, as I am good at picking up tone from voice alone.

However, some people are very much into showing their faces, capturing it, and treating it as their IP, their brand, the thing that they use to sell and represent themselves. And I think those people will be psyched to see themselves in a game, represented on their screen, in their game. I do not get these people, but I know they exist.

GameChat is a system-level feature that can be used in all games, and I’m sure it will be popular amongst friend groups and teams. I know it will not replace Discord for people who bought a capture card, but not many people have done that. Certain games will use it in more unique ways, such as an updated version of Mario party Jamboree (2024), where players’ cameras will capture their reactions as one plays.

Enabling it or disabling it is as simple as pressing the new C button, but using it requires people to pony up for Nintendo Switch Online. There will be an Open-Access Period for the first year, à la the first year of Nintendo Switch 1, but that is simply just that. A trial to dupe people into using a feature and making them pay for it after using it for months. Do I think it will work? Eh, only for casual people and children who aren’t allowed to open a Discord account, because their parents don’t want them to be talking to random Nazis.

The next new feature is something Nintendo has been dabbling with since the GBA days, the ability for one person to locally share a portable multiplayer game with various other people. I’m sure that someone reading this have memories of playing Mario Kart DS (2005) with people on the school bus, going through Waluigi Pinball as a Shyguy. The Switch avoided this via its detachable controllers and split-screen function, but Nintendo has decided to adopt a system-level way to share multiplayer games with others, dubbed GameShare.

GameShare lets players with a Switch 2 share a game with up to three other people, locally or online, though the compatibility is a bit complicated. Switch 2 can share games with other Switch 2s online or locally. And a Switch 2 can also share games with a Switch 1, but only locally. While the Switch 1 is incapable of sharing games, only receiving them, and only locally. Additionally, GameShare only applies to certain games, and some games can only be shared locally or only shared online. Like I said, it’s confusing, but I guess it will let people play Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (2020) and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (2018) together. So there’s that.

This was then followed by the miscellaneous system features, and they are about what one would expect, if they were following the leaky trails.

The Switch 2 is a considerably bigger system. Which is great for men with big hands, but as someone who struggled to play the Switch 1 in handheld mode for more than an hour (I have weak wrists), this seems like it will be a problem for a fair number of people. Well, at least until the dock-less handheld only budget version
The screen is 1080p, 120 fps, and will support HDR. All good things, and I think this will serve as many people’s first experience to a high refresh rate and/or HDR display, though I am horrifically out of touch when it comes to display technology. (I still use 1080p monitors from 2012 and an iPhone XS.)
Joy-Con 2s underwent a bunch of small revisions. The tiny shoulder buttons are bigger. The thumb sticks are bigger. They connect via magnets rather than plastic sliders, which should reduce wear on the devices.
Joy Con 2s can be used as mice, allowing developers to harness the power and fluidity of a new generation of movement precision. Hopefully, this will urge developers to make a lot of Libble Rabble (1983) likes, but little else, because hardware exclusive features are just begging for irrelevance.
The Switch 2 will have 256 GB of built-in storage, allowing for more than two games to be installed on the thing, but it will also require the more expensive MicroSD Express cards. This is different from Ultra, Extreme, and other variants, while costing the most of the bunch. As in, currently $200 for a 1 TB card. Damn. And we are past the era where storage will drop in price every year…
The Switch 2 Dock will support output up to 4K and also feature a fan, which… the first Switch did not have. It should have had one, so the system could perform better, but they didn’t. And now they have learned their lesson!
Switch 2 Game Cards are red rather than black, and feature a downright terrible logo. Nintendo is committed to making the Nintendo Switch 2 logo a square, but refuses to treat it like one, choosing to cast this square logo in the middle of a red banner, with borderline illegible text. So you just see the Switch 1 logo and a big old 2 next to it. Why not just take the old horizontal Switch logo, shrink it slightly, and affix a two to the right side? Does Paul Marketing really think people don’t know what a 2 looks like?
Data can be transferred from Switch 1 to Switch 2, which is good, but I will NOT forget how Nintendo refuses to let people access or back up their save data. Even for games like Pokémon, where players are expected to invest hundreds of hours into team building, farming, grinding, and exploring. I would hope that Switch 2 would remedy this, but of course it isn’t.
The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller will cost $80 and include a C button awkwardly shoved between the D-pad and right stick, which looks like an awful arrangement. Just put it between the home and capture buttons! Though, the controller get bonus points for having paddle buttons on the back, GR and GL, which the player can map however they please. It also has the standard feature of a headphone jack, allowing people to game with a wired headset without a stupidly long audio cable. If I still had my Switch under my desk, I would be excited about this, but I replaced it with a label printer for work two years ago.

Next was the compatibility and Nintendo Switch 2 will be incompatible with over 150 Nintendo Switch 1 games, though the majority of them should be fixable using via a patch, excluding the one incompatible Nintendo published game, Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit. Because of course that would not work. However, a few major games require the use of the Switch 1 Joy-Cons. Namely Ring Fit Adventure, 1-2-Switch, Everybody 1-2-Switch!, Game Builder Garage, Nintendo Switch Sports, WarioWare: Move It!, and the other three Labo kits. That’s understandable, but I would be surprised if they didn’t do something with Ring Fit Adventure and Nintendo Switch Sports at some point. They made too much money to avoid a re-whatever.

Most of the compatible Switch 1 games will play as they would on the original hardware. Though, certain Switch 1 games will have purchasable upgrades that boost the frame rate, resolution, load times, do color HDR stuff, and add in some miscellaneous features or expansions. These “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Upgrade Packs” are the sort of thing that I think should just be included as a freebie. That is the standard established by Xbox’s Smart Delivery, where you get to play the best version of a game by owning the last generation. Sony, while less formal, had is Sony’s PS4 to PS5 upgrade program. And modern PC games basically let your remaster a game after you get new hardware. Unfortunately, Nintendo REALLY needs to profit off of games that, in many cases, sold over 10 million units, and plans on selling $10 to $20 next gen upgrades. Admittedly, some of this could be done through Nintendo Switch Online membership, but kindly piss off with this. How about you give players free upgrades because you want them to upgrade to your new system for better performance. Otherwise, Yuzu and RyujiNX are still around if you know where to look for them.

The list of Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Upgrade contenders are as follows:

Super Mario Party Jamboree (2024), which includes a new Switch 2 exclusive sub-mode, dubbed Jamboree TV, which will demo the myriad tech of the Switch 2 and incorporate its camera in more robust ways. …Okay, that is fine for DLC.
The Legend of Zelda XIX: Breath of the Wild (2017) will include some weird app that has its own collectible finder and social sharing system, because I guess that was a scrapped idea?
The Legend of Zelda XX: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) will also include some weird app that has its own collectible finder and social sharing system, because I guess that was a scrapped idea?
Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World includes a remixed expansion pack where the world gets covered by crystals and more horrors await. It is a fair enough premise for a DLC expansion, so, again, sure.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (2025) will come equipped with both mouse controls for aiming (dope), a 4K mode, and a 120 fps mode.
Pokémon Legends Z-A (2025) actually looks dramatically better due to HDR and better lighting, but still has the worst buildings and window layouts that I have seen in game built for Switch. No, I will not get over that.

Bizarrely, only some games are being offered this ‘upgrade pack’ with other games will receive free upgrades that enable Switch 2 enhancements. …What? Why go about things in this uneven manner? Either be full scumbag or be reasonable.

Currently, the list is as follows:

Arms (2017)
Super Mario Odyssey (2017)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (2018)
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (2019)
*The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Remake (2019)
Clubhouse Games 51 Worldwide Classics (2020)
Game Builder Garage (2021)
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (2021)
Big Brain Academy Brain vs Brain (2021)
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet (2022)
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024)

Outside of the Direct, we learned about Game-Key Cards a new form of e-waste pioneered by Nintendo, and something that should not exist. Nintendo fans have been very critical of developers who released ‘physical’ games that contained little more than an empty case and a download code. It was a waste of plastic, a way to confuse customers who did not know any better, and they had to affix game cases with a warning that may as well say ‘don’t buy me.’ Well, Nintendo has decided to innovate on this boneheaded thing they should have never permitted. A game card that only contains an access key allowing the user to download and play a game only when the card is inserted in the system.

So… there is some logic to this. By making this a game card, it is something that people lend to friends, maybe even sell to others, and a means of having a physical representation of a game. But it is not a game, it is a damn product key that lets the user download a game. A form of physical DRM that is worse than regular DRM, as you need to shove something in the Game Card slot. Oh, and remember the Virtual Game Card sharing they announced last week? The thing that lets people lend digital copies of select games? Isn’t this just another version of that? Except this one involves trading around something that cost several dollars to produce, ship, and stock on a store shelf. These snuck into the Switch library over time, but some developers are already planning on polluting store shelves with this garbage.

You guys know you can just make physical games and charge an extra $10 for them. How much does it cost to upgrade an e-waste card like this to an 8 or 16 GB card? Probably about $10! But noooo! Instead they just need to waste everybody’s time with raw, valueless garbage. Thanks, I hate it. I hate it when good things get bogged down with this type of bullshit. Like, why not have a compressed version of the game on a game card, and let the game card allow the player to download the HD version of core assets as a patch? The Switch is dope in that you can share patches with people via local communication, so that is a form of physical preservation. No, no, just stop Natalie. Nina Tendo is never going to listen to you.

**Which of these looks the best? There is one right answer!**

Continuing this angry note, let’s talk about the game cases! Because Switch 2 game cases have some pretty terrible product design. Rather than the simple console logo in the upper left covering 2% or 3% of the box, the Switch 2 banner covers a about 12.5% of the game case, squishing down the art down and considerably limiting what can be shown. Furthermore, the use of red game cases and this tall red banner just makes the image of a Switch game distractingly red. How much more red could it be? …Actually quite a bit. They could make the entire thing red and white if they wanted nobody to ever buy physical games.

Then there are the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition packaging, and this… this just looks claustrophobic. Not only is existing artwork clearly cropped down to fit a smaller canvas, but the bottom… 11.7% of the game packaging is devoted to a disclaimer, complete with a QR code to Nintendo’s official website. This looks like something you should have printed out as extra packaging, like a sticker or piece of paper or something. A blurb that belongs on the back of the case along with all the legalese describing the game and so forth. There is a giant Switch 2 logo up top, the title says Switch 2 Edition, the game case is a different color, yet Nintendo thought the cover had to be smeared with this eyesore that would look wrong on any collector’s shelf. Ugly packaging is a great way to discourage people from buying your games physically, and I know Nintendorks, namely Scott the Woz, are gonna have a damn FIT over this packaging. (Scott really should start a topical Nintendo podcast with other Youtuber Nintendorks. I’d listen to it while doing taxes.)

How did Nintendo, who came up with the surprisingly intuitive Nintendo DS to 3DS box design transition, screw this up? Just take the Switch 2 logo, and put it on the opposite side of the case. The system square can have the same dimensions as the Switch 1, but the different logo placement, along with the case color, would tell even a casual customer that one of these things are not like the other. Cripes I hope they redesign this, because this is just an unnecessary blemish in The Canon of Gaming.

On that note, let’s finally get on with the games!

Switch 2: The Race World
(Mario Kart World Announced)

The showpiece title that kicked off the Switch 2 Direct was its killer app launch title, the next Mario Kart, and this is a field where I am out of my depth. I enjoyed playing Mario Kart 64 by myself as a 7-year-old toddler. I had a lot of fun with Double Dash as a sentient child, taking delight in its rich audiovisual splendor and quality animations. However, I fell out of the series after not liking the single-player chaos of Mario Kart Wii (2008) and its frankly bad color palette. I sold the game a month after buying it, and never looked back, going a trim… 17 years without playing a Mario Kart game. Which probably sounds insane, because it is. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Nintendo game of all time at 67.35 million units, and I would not be surprised if it was seen as an ‘essential’ Switch game in the same way Melee was an essential GameCube game. But I did not know how to play these games properly. I didn’t know what drifting was, what CC actually meant, and just played through the games as single-player affairs.

Akumako: “Damn girl, how do you live with yourself knowing you’re so out of touch?”

Eh, I’ve managed so far.

Point is, I am not the person a new Mario Kart would target. But I like to think I can admire and appreciate when a developer puts a lot of effort into a game, and gets the resources to make something impressive. with that disclaimer, Mario Kart World is damn impressive. Not only is it a big leap forward in terms of detail, depth, personality, and flourishes, with the cast looking better than ever, but the game is going beyond the structure of a standard racing game by going open world.

Open world racing games have been a thing for a while, see Ubisoft’s delisted The Crew (2014), Burnout Paradise (2008), and Fuel (2009) for just some examples. However, they really became a core pillar of the genre with the Forza Horizon series and its vividly detailed worlds that you could get lost in as you drive for hours, seeing the sights, and finding cool new mini sections to race in. It is something not typically associated with kart racers, but who’s to say that Mario Kart can’t be the bridge between these two? That it can’t be an open world built for multiplayer racing with friends, where they can compete in complete with massive tracks aplenty or head off in a random direction to explore.

It’s definitely a shift, but it’s something bold, new, and paired with a scattering of creative ideas. Like rail grinding go karts, wall jumping to get bursts of speed, the ability to play as a fat little cow on a motorcycle that looks like a boombox, and truck possession. Standard power-ups return along with a scattering of new ones, alternate outfits obtained by eating various food available throughout the world, including some that are quite fetching. Laps as they have been established are gone, replaced by longer more elaborate courses. Weather and time of day alter, giving tracks far more variety and replay value, as things look different during a rainy morning and a cloudless night. Oh, and the racer count has been upped to 24, and expanded with some wild-ass choices, including random enemies from prior games. Which I just love to see, as everybody should be invited to Mario Kart. (Yes, even Greninja.)

Clearly, Nintendo is putting a lot into making this game a system seller, and after the lukewarm tease in January, I am honestly impressed by how much is being packed in here. It all makes me dearly happy. Because I know how much Mario Kart means to some people, and after playing the same game for a decade, I want them to get something new and exciting. Like many of the big games shown off here, Nintendo released some livestreamed gameplay this past week, but we will get even more details when Mario Kart World has its own Direct on April 17, 2025.

Mario Kart World will be released as a lunch title on June 5, 2025, where it will retail for $80, physical and digital. …Or if you buy a bundle, you can get a digital copy and a Switch to for only $500. …Just get the bundle.

Switch 2: A Familiar Fable
(Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster Announced)

The fact that Bravely Default never got a remaster for Switch is one of those things that just does not add up to me given how much hype was levied toward Bravely Default II (2021). A re-do sequel that was… not great. It was a game that failed to capture the highs of the original. It lacked the same quality of life, the same personality, and a generally compelling story with a nice twist, or at least more tension. It still did well though, getting enough sales to pass Square Enix’s franchise viability test, meaning I fully expect to see a new game, but first, we have Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster.

When I think about Bravely Default (2014), I think of playing that game, grinding up job classes for passives, while dealing with the worst headache of my life. This was right after I rearranged my bedroom to an awful set up that did not work and my mother destroyed my rug, replacing it with one that smelled worse than raw sewage. I don’t even know HOW it smelled that bad, I guess they just kept it boxed up for months, allowing the new rug smell to fester into something Satanic. And whenever I think about playing Bravely Default, I smell that godawful smell, and get an echo of that headache.

Needless to say, I did not like that Bravely Default. I played it for 60 hours, wrote a scathing review that was probably terrible, I’m not going to check, and wrote off the series as something that I should avoid. However, I have come to appreciate and respect the original Bravely Default, recognize why people like it, and generally see it as a gem that came out during Square Enix’s so-called ‘dark age.’ It’s a game that warrants a re-release, while also being a game that’s not really ideal for a re-release.

You see, the original Bravely Default was part of a dying breed of mixed 2D/3D low resolution games that often relied on the low resolution to enhance its look. The way backgrounds were laid and arranged, the assets used, and even how characters were designed as these stylized semi-chibi blob folk. It is an aesthetic that is hard to scale up and here… it really looks like they had to kitbash full HD quality backgrounds with ones that were compressed for far lower resolutions, or had to be upscaled to 1080p after being scaled down to 240p, the 3DS’s resolution. However, you can tell there was some effort here. I mean, all of the UI has been revised to fit a single screen, without compromising the information or look of the game. Just seeing this takes me back to when I was lusting for this game’s localization in 2012.

In addition to this, the game has an even faster battle system for the impatient sorts. A widely revised online function for the city building subgame that did not get to use, as I was a friendless weirdo back then. (Now I’m a weirdo with friends in other countries.) And mouse controlled mini-games that… I think were in the 3DS game but used the system’s gyro. Though, they do seem like shoehorned in inclusions to justify this being a Switch 2 launch game, and an exclusive at that. I just said platform exclusivity is not smart, but who knows how Square Enix wrote this contract and if it will get to come to PC or other consoles.

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster will be available for Switch 2 on June 5, 2025.

Switch 2: A New Zelda, Technically!
(Zelda Musou – Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment Announced)

As someone who basically stopped with Zelda after not liking the direction of Breath of the Wild and did not play Tears of the Kingdom, I do not know what the current deep lore of Zelda is. So I did some slight wiki hopping and apparently the Rauru, the old guy sage from Ocarina of Time, was not only also Kaepora Gaebora— that slow-talking bastard— but he was a deer man who doubled as the first King of Hyrule, way back in the era following Skyward Sword and before Minish Cap. He eventually oversaw and helped guide the Hero of Time Link to defeat Ganondorf, the reincarnation of demise, because I guess he died and became a guardian, somehow. As we all know, the Zelda timeline splits in three with Ocarina of Time, and one of those sees Ganondorf, somehow, kill Link. I thought that there was just a missing timeline branch where Link pisses off to take care of the Well mini-dungeon, but that’s not how time travel works in Zelda. Apparently.

This in turn leads to the events preceding A Link to the Past, known as the Imprisoning War, where seven sages seal away Ganondorf into the Sacred Realm until some bastard of a wizard decided to resurrect the destroyer of worlds. This war was only vaguely detailed in the A Link to the Past introduction, but I guess it is a major place of importance in the story of Tears of the Kingdom. I thought was just about Ganondorf banishing Zelda to the past where she met with some brand new magical deer man who founded Hyrule, did something, became a dragon, then got sent back to the future, where she is Ganondorf’s minion. I did not play the game or watch a story recap, so what do you expect from me?

Zelda Musou – Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment is a prequel that, surprisingly, focuses on the BOTW Zelda after she gets sent back in time to the Imprisoning War, where she, along with Rauru, his wife, and four masked sages, need to fight to seal Ganondorf way so that ALttP Link can try killing him. Cool idea. Not sure how that can constitute a full Musou game, and I really hope they do not do what they did with Age of Calamity and turn it into a what if storyline where the heroes get isekai help from the future. I demand canon spin-offs! Otherwise, what’s the point?

Anyway, very little gameplay adjacent stuff was shown, but it’s the third game in a series. They can justify that. Zelda Musou – Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment launches exclusively for Switch 2 this winter.

…Also, if this game is not part of the Zelda canon, there should be a letter writing campaign. …Those letters should be attached to bricks and hand-delivered to Nintendo’s offices.

Switch 2: A FromSoftware Multiplayer Switch 2 Exclusive
(The Saga of Souls Chapter IX: The Duskbloods Announced)

It’s funny how much FromSoftware has grown in the public Gaming™ consciousness, where every new game from them is treated as an event and opportunity for people to pre-emptively crown a GOTY sure-fire. I certainly respect them, but I lost my membership card years ago. Currently, I’m not sure if that’s something I would even want, given how Tencent is trying to carve out more and more control of them. I would hazard they are planning on making a Chinese-centric online variant of their games, and FromSoft is trying to cater their desires by experimenting with online ventures. We saw this last year with the announcement of the… three-player multiplayer co-op battle game, Elden Ring Nightreign (2025). However, they are now working directly with Nintendo on an exclusive, that’s technically a new IP, and a fully multiplayer experience, dubbed The Duskbloods.

Details on the game are sparse, but it seems like the closest From can get to Bloodborne without actually making another Bloodborne, barring some clear aesthetic differences. Like trains and jetpacks. I’m glad that FromSoftware is able to experiment and expand what their games can be while retaining their same immediately recognizable style. Though, I do worry that console and multiplayer exclusivity could turn off the diehard PC Gamer™ audience who they have fostered. I know they have increased their development capacity in recent years, but the studio is in a delicate position where excellence is expected, and anything less could result in some highly vocal backlash.

Anyway, The Duskbloods will be a 2026 title, launching only for the Switch 2.

Switch 2: Sakurai’s Next Big Game!
(Kirby Air Riders Announced)

…Damn dude, this is what you moved onto after Smash Ultimate? Heh. Alright, I guess.

I love Kirby Air Ride (2003). It and Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), were my first two GameCube games, and I would spend hours upon hours with it as a stupid child who barely knew how to play video games. I loved the freedom and aesthetic of the City Trial map, the way you could so freely hop onto vehicles with so many properties, and soar through a world that, having been weened on Donkey Kong 64 (1999), just felt massive. I enjoyed the linear, deliberate, and evocative main race courses, filled with critters to suck up, outfits to snag, and shortcuts to uncover, all while soaring through the sky if I chose the right kind of Warp Star. I even enjoyed the top-down Top Ride mode, which eschewed spectacle in favor of being a very toy-like approach to racing, completely with vividly modeled courses, full of little animations and interactive elements.

It is a game that just makes me happy, and I would love to see it get revived some way, some how. However, the game is also very… aesthetically distinct from the saturated poppy look of modern Kirby. This was when they were still experimenting with how the series should look in 3D, and I will be the first to admit that the game is way too desaturated for its own good. Any revision of the game would need to see a long list of changes to fit in with how the series has evolved. Plus… I think people only really like specific aspects of the game, and when they voice love for Kirby Air Ride, they are talking about it in a more casual or nebulous sense.

As such, a sequel to the title would make the most sense, but who would handle it? Modern HAL Laboratory would probably do a great job at it, but the game was lousy with what became Masahiro Sakurai-isms. So who could they bring to lead this vision? …Sakurai himself, of course!

Yes, 20 years after developing a Kirby game (assuming you don’t count Brawl, which is a Kirby game), Sakurai is back developing a Kirby Air Ride sequel, dubbed Kirby Air Riders. We know nothing about it beyond a vague concept trailer, but I have blind faith in Sakurai and his curated team of brilliant developers to deliver something special. …Will it be as special as the new Mario Kart? Hell no! But you cannot have one game dominate an entire genre. But can you have too many racing games in one year? Yes! Of course! Do you remember what happened with Blur, Split/Second: Velocity, and ModNation Racers, which came out in the same dang month? No? Well I remember!

Kirby Air Riders is slated to come out in 2025 as a Switch 2 exclusive.

Switch 2: A Banana Bonanza
(Donkey Kong Bananza Announced)

There have been rumors about a Nintendo developed Donkey Kong game for years at this point, and it was always nebulous what that could be. Nintendo proper has not touched Donkey Kong since the bonkers Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (2005), which just felt like an opportunity for a team to go ape with ideas before making Super Mario Galaxy (2007). There exists less standard for what a Donkey Kong game is or could be, and if Nintendo wanted to, they have plenty justification to do something drastic. So… they did just that with Donkey Kong Bananza!

Well, rather than build on or within the mold of Donkey Kong Country, as has been the case for 30 years, Nintendo is instead completely reimagining Donkey Kong. Just from a strict visual standpoint, all the familiar iconography of the series is cast aside in favor of something new. Well, except for bananas, because monkeys, and some of the Kong family. Instead of a vaguely grounded jungle, the world is vast and painted in impossible colors, populated by creatures of stone and a wide array of new animal critters and foes. It genuinely looks like it could pass as a new IP, as the only familiar constant is Donkey Kong himself, and even he looks considerably different.

The most familiar version of Donkey Kong was designed for the attitude era of the 90s, meant to look cool, tough, a bit silly at times, but also a gorilla who could kick some gator ass! This new Donkey Kong though? He’s a full-on cartoon character with big expressive eyes, a giant mouth, an eyebrow ridge thing that helps him assume a more diverse array of expressions, and adorable cuddly tufts of fur. He’s a cartoon money who looks like he would make for a great stuffed animal, but they also managed to make him cool. It’s similar to the design seen in the 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie, but further refined and tweaked into something that… I just think looks better.

This change in design also changes how Donkey Kong moves throughout this world. He is fast, wildly acrobatic, able to climb about any surface he finds, but he also has huge arms that are capable of destroying anything in his path. And I do mean anything. Enemies can of course be smashed with a good roll or punch, but this Donkey Kong can smash through walls, through the floor, and pick up whatever’s beneath his feet and use it as a weapon. I would make a Red Faction Guerilla reference at that, but Guerilla was a game with no terraforming, just destructible buildings, and everybody else already made that joke. The ability to break everything, opens up a door of opportunities for level design, secrets, and design challenges, but if there is one developer I trust to make the most of this concept, it’s Nintendo.

I also need to stress that I think this game is simply gorgeous. The way enemies burst into bits when defeated, the delicately crafted animations of Donkey Kong, and even the careful use of slowdown to sell the impact of certain actions. The colors are so vibrant on my non-HDR monitor that I have to wonder just how good they will look on the system itself.

Looking at some gameplay demos released over the past week, the game reminds me more of Super Mario Odyssey (2017) than anything else. Not strictly in how one interacts with the world, but the philosophy of world design. Of creating these densely packed levels gushing with secrets and micro-diversions. Bananas are analogous to moons in their placement, frequency, and even presentation, with the protagonist posing upon obtaining each one. Most worlds are semi-linear with a bevy of diversions. However, the game appears to be more geared around a generally linear experience, which I think could circumvent the biggest flaw of Mario Odyssey. The way the journey forward is broken up by diversions and novelty, making it far less replayable than the set piece and mission-based structure of the prior games.

On the subject of petty observations, there are two more that I want to add. One, they gave Donkey Kong a pair of overalls so you don’t need to stare at monkey butt all game. I completely understand that decision, and agree with it, overalls are commonly associated with Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi— basically all the major male humanoid Mario characters. (Toads aren’t humanoid, be honest with yourself.) Do I have a better alternative? No. And does this really matter? Nope!

Two, Donkey Kong is consistently collecting giant gold nuggets in this game, as he is portrayed as a miner. I’ll agree that just having Donkey Kong collect bananas, coins, and emblems is a bit limited, but the Mario character I associate with Gold before anyone is Wario. And I could also imagine Wario wrecking everything around him, throwing huge rocks, and butt-slamming through terrain. Because I played Wario Land 5: Shake It! (2008) and Wario World (2003).

Donkey Kong Bananza— that title is going to be responsible for 80% of all future misspellings of bonanza— will be released exclusively for Switch 2 on July 17, 2025.

Switch 2: The Riffraff
(Games I Have Only A Paragraph of Stuff To Say About)

Those are the heavy hitters, so onto the small fries!

Astro’s Playroom (2020) for PlayStation 5 was the most Nintendo-ass thing not made by Nintendo, and I have to imagine that someone at Nina’s pad was pissed that they did not think of that first. Making a cute, short, mascot platformer full of reference to company history that shows players and developers all the things their new system can do, and including it for free? Well, Nintendo is going about it a similar idea, their way, with Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. An interactive series of tech demos and antics where players can explore a giant Switch 2 and learn all there is to know about the system. It’s not something someone would play more than once, but a great marketing tool and a way to make Switch 2 buyers feel like they are part of the future. All available for the low-low price of free— wait, it’s a PAID game? Okay, Nintendo is just being flat-out GREEDY with that move. Charging for a damn tech demo! How much? Probably only $10, but it’s the principle, damn it!

Drag X Drive is definitely a game that was pitched and imagined by a small team as a tech demo that was a bit too ambitious to not release. It’s a game that is designed around using both Joy-Cons as mice in order to play a three versus three game of wheelchair basketball. Drag the Joy-Cons to move, raise and flick them to shoot off a ball. It’s a cool idea I’m surprised hasn’t been done before, and I think that it is great that Nintendo is casually embracing something so novel and clearly pro-accessibility. Though, the aesthetics of the game are a bit odd. Every character is a person in a darkly colored jumpsuit and helmet with giant gauntlet hands. They have no faces, just visors that change colors spending on one’s team. And the environment shown is… just a concrete stadium with fading paint and ramps so that the players can make trick shots and dope dunks. I think the control scheme is neat, and I like the premise, but boy does this aesthetic not really capture much of… anything. Like, at least make them Miis or something. Regardless, it should be a neat little eShop offering when it launches in Summer 2025.

Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition is, as expected, a port of Elden Ring for Switch 2. The game was a massive hit, people loved it and the DLC, and with this release, it will have legs for years to come. Perfect for the system, and a key third-party title to be released in 2025. …Wait, we’re seriously getting this before a QLOC port of Dark Souls II or III? Something that has been expected since 2018? Color me surprised.

After Street Fighter largely skipped Switch 1 beyond retro rehashes— not even getting a port of Street Fighter IV or something— Street Fighter 6 is headed to Switch 2 at launch, including a the full year 1 and 2 contents for good measure. While I doubt the system will be preferred in any aspect, it feels right to see the latest Street Fighter game on a Nintendo platform. It’s even getting the golden carpet with Amiibo figures… and Amiibo cards. Huh. Weird that this was the only reference to Amiibo here. Street Fighter 6 will serve as yet another launch title.

Daemon X Machina 2: Titanic Scion was shown off here in a move that I think was just right. Daemon X Machina (2019) was a quintessential Switch game to me, if only for how Nintendorks with no taste were annoyed at its presence. And this sequel… looks far different than the standard high-speed mecha action of the first game. Being a space game, trading in the large 8-meter-tall mechas for mech suits, at least sometimes, and featuring alien enemies. While the first game had a bit of ‘first game from a new studio jank’ this one looks like a deeply passionate action game from people who were embolden by the success of the first one, and want to combine all their favorite things into one. And I love to see that. Also, it’s expanding past Switch and PC this time, coming to PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC on September 5, 2025. Because in this world, platform exclusivity just ain’t smart. …Unless you are Nintendo, where it is an asset!

Sports games, including EA Sports Football Club, EA Sports John Madden American Football, 2K Visual Concept’s WWE, and 2K Visual Concept’s NBA are all coming to Switch 2. I do not care about any of these, but it is good to know that the Switch 2 is powerful enough to warrant ports of these games for the system, unlike the Switch 1, which never got a Madden, period. Now, the big question is if it will get a Call of Duty, like Microsoft promised the courts. Well, they were American courts, so I guess you can just ignore them.

Like A Dragon: Yakuza 0: -Director’s Cut is something that sounds silly after Yakuza 0 came out in 2015, took two years to localize, came out on PC in 2018, and then got an Xbox release in 2020. The game was spread widely, is often considered the best in the series, and made the series a global hit big enough to get a worldwide release and an English dub. However, I guess Sega wanted to make a splash with the Switch 2 and decided to port the game over while adding three new features. A full English dub, something that I understand the appeal of, but don’t think is right for Like A Dragon. It’s too Japanese, too realistic looking, and an Asian person in Asia talking like a smelly White just ain’t right. New cutscenes have been added for this release, which is unnecessary but fair. Those who do not care can just watch them on YouTube. And a new Red Light Raid multiplayer co-op mode where you and up to four friends take on various random characters and battle random thugs and dastards while making oodles of cash. Something that sounds like a prototype for a feature that they want to include in a future game. Here, it’s a fine little bonus in an already stacked game. It’s currently a Switch 2 exclusive, and it’s arriving on launch day to boot.

Actually, launch day is pretty crazy when it comes to quality titles:

Deltarune is getting its much anticipated chapters 3 and 4 included in a premium release launching with Switch 2. Meaning Switch 2 and Deltarune are now married. Somehow, that does not surprise me.
Civilization VII, despite being a dud of a sequel according to most sources I’ve seen, is also getting a Switch 2 version at launch.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (2024), the Capcom mid-budget tower defense like action game, is also coming over. Which seems perfect, as the game was very GameCube flavored based on the demo I played. (Maybe this game was Dead Pheonix all along? …No, of course not. That would be stupid.)
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, a version of the game paired with the Phantom Liberty expansion, will be there acting as a technical showcase, showing just how powerful and capable the system is of handling AAA hotness. …By running at a blistering 40 frames per second. Wowzers!
Fast Fusion, the latest racing game from Fast RMX (2017) developers Shin’en, and will serve a similar role as their last noteworthy title as one of the few hyper-speed racers hitting the market. (I miss Wipeout.) Still shocked that Nintendo hasn’t hired these people to work on an F-Zero game.
Ridge Racer (1993) is getting a port from the lovely Hamster, and while it is just an old-ass one-track early 3D racer, it is a game with a high skill ceiling, a glorious presentation, and was a major technical showcase back in its day. Plus, there was a long history of Namco positioning a new Ridge Racer as a console showpiece at launch. They did it with PS2, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, 3DS, and Vita. And Ridge Racer 8 was canceled years ago, so getting this is… acceptable. Hopefully they do Rave Racer (1995) in a year or two.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S is just an excuse to release what is probably the best puzzle game ever released with some paltry new mode on top of the dozen other ways to play the game.
Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition will offer Sengoku style strategy and… I’m going to be honest, all I know about this series comes directly from Pokémon Conquest. Though, it is good that it is coming out as a launch title. The series needs to grow its audience to continue, and is seldom discussed outside of its motherland.

As for non-launch titles, there were only a few that stood out to me as being remarkable enough to remark on.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was given its first trailer in quite some time, but no release date, much to the dismay or people who insist Hollow Knight is the peak of the genre. …Despite having only played, like, twenty games in the genre.
Final Fantasy VII Remake: Integrade was announced for Switch 2, and should hopefully give the remake trilogy some extra gas as it revs up to its final third installment. Also, seeing a game like this on Switch 2 really sells the fact that it is a legit ‘modern’ system. I doubt it’s truly as strong as the PS4 Pro, but I don’t think people would be able to tell without Digital Foundry.
Wild Hearts S is the Switch 2 version of EA and Koei Tecmo’s Wild Hearts (2023), a PS5 and Xbox Series hunting game in the style of Monster Hunter. If you forgot this game existed, that’s because it passed without any major impact, and did not make a dent in Monster Hunter’s market share. Frankly, I blame EA for being bad at marketing it. Will this release help? No. Probably not, but it is coming out early in the console’s life, on July 25, 2025, so maybe.

…Also, Nintendo accidentally revealed that they are planning on porting over Yoshi’s Woolly World (2015) by including it in a background element, and nobody caught it. Meaning that the Switch may finally have three good Yoshi games. Yeah, I said it. Yoshi’s Story (1997) is good. Deranged, but good! And on the subject of old games, well, did you think they weren’t going to bring that over to the Switch?

Switch 2: The GameCube
(Dolphin At Home!)

As should be obvious by now, I love the GameCube. It was the first game system whose library I really dug into, the first one that felt significant, and the one where I learned to broadly love video games as a whole. But in my mind, the idea of playing GameCube, on original hardware, or to original specs, is just outside the realm of reasonable thought. Because I think that the games emulate so well that they just should be played that way. They look better, they perform better, and you can just make them widescreen. When I have thought about GameCube games being on Nintendo Switch, I imagined them being akin to the Pikmin 1 + 2 Switch ports. I think those are great for what they are. Clean, non-transformative upscales of older games, but with just enough polish to make them feel modern-ish.

…But then I remembered that Nintendo does not do that for their Nintendo Switch Online games. They just run them with no bells, whistles, or quality improvements beyond save states, fast forward, and button remapping. Frankly, I do not like that. I would rather see them sell lite HD ports that exist just to make the games look crisper and run in widescreen. Neither of which should be hard. It would make them into ‘definitive versions’, and not ‘remarkably inferior’ next to an unofficial release. Which was my first concern when I saw the first game they were bringing to this service. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002). The original GameCube version, not the enhanced 2013 Wii U upgrade that addressed more than a few design criticisms at the cost of a questionable artistic shift.

This means that instead of delivering an enhanced version of a beloved title, or making it better, they are just repackaging the original release. It’s a move that almost feels disrespectful of the work done by the team behind the remaster, and those who played it, just erasing it from history. Sure, they can eventually put it out later, but I doubt it if they are opening with it as the main GameCube game. Then again, we are in the post-everything era of humanity, so who the frick knows?!

Similar disappointment and frustration strikes when seeing other games on this lineup.

I was really hoping for a souped up version of F-Zero GX (2004) after Liam Robertson did some delicious teasing, but it’s just a port, not even one with stuff from the arcade version. Though, it does have widescreen mode, which is at least something. I just wish that was a mandatory feature for the whole console.

Soul Calibur II (2003) is a port of a game that received an HD online remaster back in 2013, and rather than just re-release it as a classic fighting game, because they did the bulk of the work already, the original is just being repackaged. Yes, I know NSO’s online multiplayer makes an online re-release redundant, and SC2 was one of the few GameCube games with widescreen, but it’s the principle, damn it! They could made it better than ever, and thrown in Heihachi Mishima and Spawn, making this the definitive version of SC2!

Super Mario Sunshine (2002) makes no sense being here, as Nintendo already remastered it with Super Mario 3D All-Stars, but I guess they delisted that release, out of avarice and disdain, so… how am I supposed to interpret this? I can already play Mario Sunshine on my Switch, and it’s a better version than whatever this will be!

Luigi’s Mansion (2001) is just odd, as they tried to make the game better via a 2018 3DS remake, but it was only better in spots, and after Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (2024) sold over a million in under a week. I thought a full HD remake of the original would make all the sense in the world. Instead, they are just putting out the original. Can they still do a remake? Sure. But they didn’t put out Super Mario RPG (1996) on NSO before remaking it, now did they?

Now, the other games on the list? Those are all generally fine as basic re-releases. Pokémon Colosseum (2003) and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness (2005) were never going to get remasters. Same with Super Mario Strikers (2005), as it just got a, poorly conceived, new entry. Chibi-Robo! – Plug Into Adventure (2005), my beloved, absolutely deserves to be on Switch, but Switch 2 is good enough in my book. Though, I will miss how the game looked in widescreen. …Which I say, having played the Chibi-Robo! in 4:3 back in 2014. Yeah, no, I just only remember games being in widescreen.

…Anyway, my most anticipated GameCube title for Switch 2 is Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes (2004), because there is no way it is ever coming out on anything else ever again. Make it happen Konami. That, and Eternal Darkness (2002) would just be funny.

Switch 2: The Money Zone
(And the High Prices Brought to You by Trump Tax)

Alright, now that we had fun going over the system and the games, it’s time to talk about the sour note of this whole affair. The price. The Switch 2 will debut on June 5, 2025 for a scattering of different regional prices. $450 USD, $630 CAD, £396 GBP— because £400 GBP would be too much— €470 EUR— because VAT tax— and 49,980 JPY. …One of these things is not like the other! And that is, of course, the Japanese price, which equates to roughly $330 USD. A price cheap enough to warrant picking up a few Switch 2’s for the family during one’s next trip to Nihon, but Nintendo is preventing this by launching two SKUs of the Switch 2 in Japan. The 49,980 JPY version is Japanese-only and its language cannot be changed. If one wants a version with multi-language support, it will cost 69,980 JPY, or $466 USD.

After the rousing success of the Switch 1, especially in Japan, Nintendo is selling a version of this console to a Japanese audience for a relatively low price point. (Based on international currency value, as the yen has been doing poorly the past few years.) Nintendo would not sell the Switch 2 for a loss, or at least not a significant loss. So this indicates that the Switch 2 may very well cost only about $300 to produce and manufacture. So why is it $450 instead of, say, $350 or $400?

Because of the fucking tariffs.

Right after Trump got elected, I became terrified of his threatened tariffs increasing the price for just about everything by a trim 10% to 25%. It’s why I bought a NAS, a backup monitor, and other tech stuff that I wanted to have before it became too expensive. (I did not buy enough stuff though.) Everybody in every business involving America would be affected by these in some way, and Nintendo is no different. They anticipated tariffs going into effect when planning the price point of the Switch 2. That is why it is so expensive in America. …And why it is so expensive everywhere outside of Japan.

Rather than just be an Trump Tax applied to stupid Americans, this price hike is being applied to pretty much everybody else. Why? Because of Nintendo’s global supply chain and how they foresee Trump’s destructive actions as damaging the international economy, and value of international currencies. America’s fuck up is fucking up things for Europe.

Oh, and the price issues do not just end with the console itself— which I think is a fair enough price, close enough to the $400 estimate. This issue carries over with the increased prices of the games. I fully expected Nintendo to adopt the $70 retail title as a standard going forward. However, there has been a growing animosity towards this price cap amongst people who talk to games publishers and perform rigorous analysis of the games industry. Often highlighting inflation and always ignoring the changes in statistically relevant income. (Which should be median working class income or something, not average income, as billionaires fuck up every statistic.)

This is why there has been such an erotic desire from corpo scum-suckers for Grand Theft Auto VI to be the first of many games to charge $100 for the base package. …While further monetizing itself via its to-be-detailed Grand Theft Auto VI Online ~~mode~~ primary game. Because game publishers want to make more money from individual sales. They are not content with just selling season passes and expansions for games, not just content with enabling a growing addiction epidemic/pandemic with their live service bullshit. Game publishers want ALL the money, and are beholden to the capitalist dogma of maximizing profit by any means necessary.

This is all preamble to saying that Nintendo plans on charging up to $90 for physical Nintendo Switch 2 games, and up to $80 on digital Nintendo Switch 2 games. (It is not fully clear what games, if any, will actually adopt the $90 price tag, but I blame Nintendo for the general confusion on this front.) Thus marking a 50% increase to the price of certain physical first-party Nintendo game.

Edit 4/10/2025: Hey, so I was wrong here. Everybody was. The cap of Switch 2 prices is actually $80. But Nintendo was SO BAD at communication, it was easy to believe this.

What. The. Hell?!

This is an insane price increase and something that, like the price of the system itself, was omitted from the Direct. This represents a massive increase in the annual costs for a Nintendork, especially one who wants to maintain a physical collection that they can sell in 20 years when people start getting nostalgic. Yes, I understand that part of this is attributable to the cartridges seemingly having a higher capacity and Nintendo is rightfully pricing their digital games at a lower price. (Their direct COGS are immaterial compared to the costs of pressing a cartridge, shipping a box, and apportioning a portion of MSRP to go to the retailer.) However, this is just a brutal blow to customers, and for digital games, there is no excuse greater than greed. If they were $70, I would understand the increase. But the extra $10 being slapped on here is just pure profit for Nintendo.

I thought it was bad that so many of their games had DLC expansions, upping the TRUE costs, but now we’re looking at a future with $80 to $90 games along with $30 to $40 expansion packs. The industry has narrowly skirted around the era of $100 AAA games for the past five years, but the plane has landed. It is burning and 170 people are dead because of budget cuts, but it fucking landed. AAA games are $100 now, and those that are not, those without DLC packages or season passes or special digital deluxe additions, are the exception to the rule. Thanks Nintendo, thanks Trump, and thank you the billionaire class who benefit from this. …Actually, no, I need to vent about this.

Switch 2: The Tariffs
(Fight the Power, With Your Fists!)

Hours after the Nintendo Switch 2 was revealed, the Trump administration announced a series of tariffs that apply to pretty much every other country on Earth. A move that moronically sought to end the era of open international trade by making all foreign goods drastically more expensive, and for no good reason. (Trade deficits are not a financial deficit, and if you don’t like how your country is importing too much stuff, the answer is to import less it and start producing it locally. This is macroeconomics 101.) The tariffs proposed here are utterly disgusting, exist to only enact harm onto others, and are brutally applied toward what are some of the United States’ biggest trading partners. Places like China, Vietnam, and Taiwan are vital nations for United States imports, yet all three of them are being targeted with tariffs exceeding 40%. A move that promises to dramatically increasing the costs of living for tens of millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, with no meaningful savings and stagnant wages.

This is a disastrous plan that has left the games industry terrified and scrambling. Nintendo delayed the pre-orders for Switch 2. Executives and analysts are thrust into unprecedented times that have not been experienced in at least a lifetime. The broader American economy is undergoing what, to me, looks like the start of a panicked recession, if not depression. It all begs the question of why this plan was enacted, when the only imaginable result is economic disaster and pain. I would like to say that the answer is a mixture between senility and horrifically incompetent White Supremacist Nationalists being put in charge of a former global superpower. However, I believe the answer is far more sinister.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, countless independent businesses died, and people became more dependent on digital services run by tech companies to perform labor. The ensuing economic instability has led to a widespread political shift, with many people seeking change, no matter the form, and turning toward nationalist authoritarian leaders after liberal democracies have failed to provide for the people. Faith in institutions is low, private industry is more powerful than ever, and I believe that the rich crave instability. For most people, instability means risking the loss of everything they know and love. But for the rich, it’s just another opportunity to get richer.

The tariffs will be collected by the Federal government as tax revenue, where it will be used according to the current administration. Meaning it will not go to Social Security, it will not go to healthcare, it will not go to improving the collapsing national infrastructure, it will not go to fund research, nor will it go to working class people, period. Instead, it will go to tech companies who enable the American Dream of turning the United States into a genuine police state where people’s actions are obsessively tracked and logged. It will go to companies promising the latest tech fads, granting them the ability to build data centers that are putting a throttling the already waning American power grid. It will go to military contractors who have a long history of wasting and stealing money from governments in order to create weapons of murder. Weapons that will be used to threaten citizens into compliance and be used to threaten annexation of all American neighbors.

But you know who runs the tech companies, the data collection agencies, the manufacturing end of the military, and the prisons where Americans are sold into constitutionally legal slave labor? The rich. Or, at the very least, those who aspire to become the rich by any means necessary.

These tariffs are also a brilliant excuse for companies, not unlike Nintendo, to just jack up the prices. It’s something that companies have been eager to do since the economic turmoil and the wealth ‘redistribution’ brought in by The COVID-19 Pandemic, yet now they have a brilliant excuse. The tariffs are fucking moronic, exceeding 50% for China, and a minimum of 10% for nearly all countries. Except that does not mean there will be a straight 10% to 50% increase on the price for everything. Oh fuck no! Corporations know that most people are too overwhelmed to process the exact math, their sense of value obscured through years of inconsistency and shifting product arrangements. So companies could easily use this as an excuse to jack up prices by 20% to 80% and say it’s the tariffs’ fault.

Tens of millions of Americans— maybe even a hundred million Americans— cannot stomach that. Hell, I don’t think I can, and I’m doing great per the standards of a typical single 30-year-old. However, these people still need to eat, still need places to live, and still have a burning need for entertainment. So, they will need to give up what they can, take bad deals to survive, sell and sacrifice their valuables, and the only people buying would be the rich. And that… that is what they want. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 60% of the country, and they want to make that 90%. They want the top 1% to own half of it, and for the lower 9% to share 40% amongst themselves. Thus rendering the middle class nonexistence, and making the average person poor, dependent, and consumed by a mixture of debilitating trauma and misery. A debt slave caste desperate to escape into censored digital spaces and curated fantasies, meant to placate people while leaving them unable to so much as imagine a better reality.

Trauma is the point. Cruelty is the point. Terror is the point. Pain is the point.

I do not feel it is hyperbolic to call what is currently being enacted by the ruling class to be ‘financial terrorism.’ These tariffs are a form of financial terrorism enacted by the American government itself, by a president too malicious to realize his incompetence, and the target is the people. This is an assault on you, on anybody reading this, by people who don’t want you dead, but want you in the shackles of debt and fear. However, for all these people’s capital, for all their delusions of divinity, they are merely people. And I think that we all know how fragile and easy it is to stop a person with the right tools. Some have tried to stop this using such crude methods previously, but I think that these lone wolves are forgetting something. No matter how outmatched someone is, there is no way one man can stop a hundred people who want him dead.

We, the people, have the numbers, the power to stop anything these oligarchical bastards can throw at us. We just need to stop playing nice, stop being nice, and look back to how past revolutions went. Because I can assure you, most involved a lot of people, good and bad alike, being killed in the pursuit of change. And with over 300 million people in America, I think that at least a few lives can be forfeited for the greater good. For our future, the future of our children, and the future of our species. Fight the power, and don’t be afraid to bring a brick.

…Actually, fuck the pretense.

Don’t buy a Switch 2! Buy a gun!

Switch 2: The Verdict
(Nah, Imma Gonna Pass This One)

I do not like Nintendo as a broader company. I love them as a developer, I love many of the series they have fostered over the decades. And I consider them the indisputable Masters of Video Games. That being said, Nintendo as a platform, as a publisher, as a corporation, has been on my shit list for all the crap they’ve gotten up to over the past few years. The way they went after Yuzu and Ryujinx. Their constant war on emulation. Their half-assed attempts at preserving their own legacy with Nintendo Switch Online. Their blatant disregard for modern history that was seen in their shut down of the 3DS and Wii U storefronts. The way they went after fan sites that exist to preserve gaming history. I went on a rant about all of this before, swearing off supporting Nintendo, and I have!

…Well, except for how I spent $10 on that Animal Crossing mobile game. I also spent $20 to get a ‘fuller experience’ in Pokémon TCG Pocket. And I have said that I will probably get Pokémon Legends Z-A around launch to appease an addiction. …But I have at least kept my Switch in my closet, so that’s something, right?

Joking aside, I am not a fan of Nintendo as a publisher, and while I understand why they are going in so hard with the pricing this time around, I do not want to support it. So I won’t. Based on what has been announced, I am not going to buy a Switch 2. I would not even have the free time needed to play through these games on account of these Rundowns and my terrible work-life balance. (I just worked a 230 hour month.) I think many of the games look excellent, and am glad that there is this new exciting era in the Video Game Canon. But I also think the pricing here is so bad, so prohibitive, that it will put people off, cause games to under-perform, and prevent people of all sorts from getting a Switch 2. Yes, even with a new Mario Kart. I want it to do well and for more high quality Nintendo games to be made… but those prices just hurt.

And because of Trump, and his boundless idiocy, the prices could go up even more!

Random Tax Tip For American Gamers
(I’m An Enrolled Agent, Trust Me Bro!)

I went through a couple revisions of the Tariff and Money Zone sections of this Rundown, so this following bit of tax advice was orphaned, but I think it should be shared with the world.

Here’s random bit of tax advice that I am comfortable people taking verbatim, namely you AMERICAN GAMERS™! If you like games, and buy them a bunch, you should become a streamer so you can write off many of your game and hardware purchases on your tax returns. If you are a streamer, if you are playing games for an audience, with any income or even the reasonable expectation of income, you have the ability to write it off. Because streamers are Creatives. They are Artistés. They are able to deduct “qualified creative costs.” Which, as defined by IRS Notice 88-62, all costs that would be “deductible in the trade or business of producing creative properties.” Meaning if it is a cost in creating the work, and you can prove it, you can deduct it. And these costs can be expensed up to $2,500, as permitted by IRS Notice 2015-82. Meaning you don’t need to depreciate it over 5 years or whatever, you can just take the write-off now.

You can also deduct your phone and internet, as they are a necessary part of running any business. You can take a ‘home office’ deduction if you have a dedicated streaming set-up at your home. Well, so long as it is just for streaming. You will also want to stream a game for either its duration or two hours, whichever is shorter, as it shows a commitment to use something you purchased. And you need to at least try to make some money off of this. So that would require running a social media, announcing when you stream, and trying to maintain an audience. Aim to become a Twitch Affiliate or get monetization enabled for your channel. So long as you are trying to start up something that can be deemed a business as a streamer, you can write off a LOT of stuff.

If you are confused by this or want more guidance, hit me up in the comments below or email me at natalie at natalie.tf!

Oh, Right, April Fools Happened
(And I Didn’t Get to Celebrate It!)

**I did not actually scale any of the images, except for Maria, and after seeing Giantess Cassie, I *could not* make her small again. [REDACTED] would be so thrilled to see her like that!**

As a tax accountant whose big deadlines are April 15th and October 15th, I just don’t get to celebrate in any faux holidays that happen in the three weeks preceding these deadlines. Which really sucks for me, as I love the idea of putting out something fun or off-kilter during April Fools. Like that Fan Fiction Funsies story back in 2020. …Or Weiss Vice: Glory Unto Genocide. But that’s mostly because I just like the opportunity to write stories with fun and interesting concepts. A privilege that has been denied to me by my boss and his insatiable demand for more clients. Sure, I’m getting more stock in the end, but I don’t want any stupid stock that may be worth nothing in a year. I want time, damn it!

I have novels whose schedule has been irrevocably fucked. I have $700 worth of server crap on my floor that I don’t fucking care about, because I can’t use it for the things I wanted to use it for. My life schedule has been sidelined, just in general. And by working so much, there is this dirty sense of guilt I have to carry about using my time inefficiently, as it is at such a premium, making it that much harder for me to enjoy anything. So now I am just not in the fucking mood for anything more than work, because I want to KILL my work. It’s the only thing I have any chance of killing.

God, I wish that I had the competence and temperament to run my own business, but I just don’t. At least not one where I need to interact with 150+ clients.

…This was supposed to be a prelude into the April Fools bit, but I went and made it all about my shitty work situation— again!

Every April Fools segment I do is always the same. I am glad when it leads people to create zany or cool one-off side projects, or reveal what they have spent months if not years making. But I do not like it when it is a mere tease that the creators have no intention of ever delivering. Taking an existing game and replacing the character models with chibi versions of themselves for a joke trailer? Lame! Introducing a permanent chibi mode where new chibis will be introduced each April Fools? Dope, but nobody is cool enough to do that!

Teasing a dating sim spin-off for the second year in a row and going so far as listing a Steam page for it? I admire the gumption, but put up or shut up, ya dorkus maximus. Actually making a dating sim spin-off of your game? Sick as hell! Making it only available for a month? …No! Stop being stupid, stupid! Making a trailer using in-game player-accessible assets to sell your game by comparing it to another? Inspired! But choosing to present the idea of a high school sports spin-off of Final Fantasy VII should be a crime unless you are willing to do something with this idea. At least make a one tankobon manga or something. It would cost basically nothing to make and translate.

As always, Gematsu has the best list of April Tricks for historians to consult, but the Student Transfer dev team also prepared their own treats… and it took the form of a 21 recipe cookbook. One featuring a few dishes features in the base game, like Maurice Honda’s mac and cheese and Cassie’s beloved blackout cake. But what really makes this cookbook stand out to me is the artwork. Student Transfer is no stranger to producing original assets, and at a glance, I quickly assumed they got an artist to draw these adorable full-color illustrations of the characters. It’s one thing to see them represented in fan art, or commissioned sequences, but it is another to see them in ‘official’ media. Seeing them cutely preparing and enjoying food is exactly the sort of thing that helps endear a community to these characters.

But then I sent to search for who did the artwork, and found this conversation between jcjace and whether the artwork here was AI generated. He did not offer a direct answer, saying that they “used [AI] as we would a snapchat filter to give images a certain vibe.” Before making it sound like the recipes were the main draw of this, and where all the effort was spent. …Which to me indicates that they view the illustrations as the supplemental pieces, when I would consider it to be the main draw. Goldarn it ST dev team. It is one thing to make something that is blatantly AI with that Rhythm Transfer game last year, but don’t hide AI artwork in a damn cookbook, especially when it looks pretty legitimate due to the sketchy, colored pencil filter applied to the artwork, which does wonders to hide the AI imperfections. Generate AI images once for a joke, I roll my eyes at you. Generate AI images for something you actually expect people to use, and obscure that fact, then I don’t want to be in the same room as you, ya poopy-stank-bitches.

However, Student Transfer is a key part of Natalie.TF’s identity, so you know I’ll be back for V9 to celebrate the 10th anniversary on November 8, 2015. …I just made that part up, but if they’ve got more sense than doorknobs, that’s what they’ll do.

Akumako: “Yo Nat! When are you gonna get back to reviewing Student Transfer scenarios?”

…Fuck you, that’s when! I’ve worked over 600 hours so far this year and I don’t have time for your bullshit! I already talk about enough TSF with TSF Showcase. And I would rather make my own TSF stories, even if I know that barely anybody reads ’em.

Progress Report 2025-04-06

The word cookbook is forever associated with the preposterously ill I Am Jemboy Cooking Mama mashup album, The Cookbook. I love that album, and not just ‘cos it has some fat fuckin’ titties on the cover, and I think fat fuckin’ titties are… alright, I guess. Honestly, I miss Jemboy. He was super prolific for a while, producing TOO MUCH music and then disappeared. I hate when skilled folks do that! …Actually, fuck, this man is the reason why I learned to love Parappa. Because I liked PINK CHICKEN enough to seek out the full album, then he went and mixed Parappa with Biggie, and it fucked. Two of my favorite things, together at last!

How do you make something as peak as this and then disappear? HOW?

2025-03-30: 3,500 words for TSF Showcase 2025-04. Finishing it and realizing that I’d need to do two TSF Showcases this month, per my promise to deliver a set word count.

2025-03-31: Fuckin’ 13 hour day! I really want my boss to retire and just take over the business myself, as I’m developing trust issues at this point. Didn’t do jack nor shit.

2025-04-01: Wrote 1,000 word April Fools bit. Then I had to get ready for an early night for Nina Tendo’s Directive.

2025-04-02: Wrote 7,400 word for the Switch 2 extravaganza. Got extra angry about some stuff because I could not close my mouth after sleeping poorly the following night. I miss when they made good pillows that didn’t crater after using them for a few months.

2025-04-03: What did I write today? Like, 4,900 words, which is ignoring the stuff I rewrote. And I also made some header images for the segments. Then edited the first 5.5k words. Because what else was I gonna do before bed?

2025-04-04: Edited the rest of this finnicky little bitch and read some damn TSF manga. Which one? No spoilers, ya stinky poop!

2025-04-05: I had chores in the morning and work through the evening. Then I decided to check out Tribe Nine to see if it improved after the open beta I played. In short, it did. The stamina mechanic was more or less gutted, the game is generally easier, and it introduces its gacha system a lot earlier. Why did I decide to check it out now? Because I did not want to commit to something else, and the demo for Last Defense Academy got me curious.

Tags: Bravely Default, Daemon X Machina, Donkey Kong, Elden Ring, Emulation, From Software, Kirby, Like A Dragon (Yakuza), Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch 2, Politics, Student Transfer, Taxes, The Legend of Zelda

This Post Has 9 Comments

rain 04/07/2025 Reply

Nintendo Switch 2 and Politics back to back in tags is something that couldn’t be foreseen back in 2017. But I guess this is the world we live in now. I’m praying for the Conservatives here to not make a resurgence in the next 3 weeks.

FYI for any Canadian readers, with me poking around online a bit, the streamer workaround does somewhat exist here. Though it seems to have a higher barrier to apply (as you have to might prove you’re profitable), talk to your accountant if you can afford one.
1. Natalie Neumann 04/07/2025 Reply
  
  The only Canadian taxation I have any experience with is reporting Canadian company assets on a former client and reporting Canadian pension funds as other income for the mother of a current client. Hell, I’ve never even SEEN a Canadian tax return. :P
  As a reminder to the American readers, despite being so busy, I am willing to help people with their taxes for a very cheap rate. Because I believe in tax avoidance, especially when you don’t like the current administration.
Ouran Nakagawa 04/11/2025 Reply

You ever read Punpun, Natalie? NGL, i kinda want a manga but in the exact same kind of tone as Punpun…
1. Natalie Neumann 04/12/2025 Reply
  
  Nope! I’ve never actually heard of it before now. Reading the first chapter… it certainly seems like a unique manga series, very much rooted in the author’s eccentric persona, so I’d imagine it is hard to find something similar.
  1. Ouran Nakagawa 04/12/2025 Reply
    
    You GOTTA read the whole thing, omigosh 😭 pretty please Natalie-sama! ❤️ if you’ll read it, at least more, I’ll uh… I’ll do something! It’s a manga that means so much to me.
    ;_;
    Aiko…
    1. Natalie Neumann 04/13/2025
      
      It’s quite a lengthy read, being 13 volumes, so I’m not sure if I will be able to get around to it, especially with my schedule such a mess at the moment…
Ouran Nakagawa 04/12/2025 Reply

Also Natalie, you GOTTA write a post on Remake Touko. 😭 shit sucks so bad lmao. I was going thru my manga backlog (and as I do with all pieces of media I have on my backlog, I on purposely ignore any hint of spoiler so it’s ‘fresh’) and when I finally got onto Remake Touko (which iirc, translators only got up to… Volume 1 out of 3, there’s two more?!) it was so bad, 😭 I did check comments on other posts of your blog and yeah, seems like ya agree with me too. :P idk why but in this economy I feel like it would be pretty fun to disect a pretty ‘bad’ example of a TSF work lol. Especially one that’s kiiind of ‘The Room’ tier bad.
1. Natalie Neumann 04/13/2025 Reply
  
  One of my friends openly HATES Touko Remake, so I don’t think I want to touch it , as it would just upset them, and I would want to try and highlight some of the positives of that work. I am not opposed to doing an analysis of a work that does not work, but there is a clear intent with Remake Touko. Do I like it? No, not really. But I also do not want to platform it, and would rather let it stew in obscurity.
  1. Charishal 04/13/2025 Reply
    
    I think Remake Tohko (using the spelling in the japanese manga) is pretty much just schlocky shock horror, where the main aim is to show disturbing situations following unintended consequences from deals with the devil. Like with other schlocky horror series, character motivations are usually pretty silly and mainly there to put characters in gruesome situations later on.
    The second volume fully limits the setting to christian-themed private school. The repressed nature of the students there keeps the deals with the theme of “sexual desire” and “desire to belong”, that you see in Vol 1. There are some interesting ideas, like a girl who wishes to be a dream walking succubus to get closer to her male classmates, who end up helping her face her own nightmares because of it. Only for her to become the tyrant of their dream worlds afterwards.
    Vol 3 stays at that private school but goes completely off the rails. Think Berserk-like demon invasion.
    There is only one other TSF chapter in there : Vol2. Chap 8.5. Where one guy who becomes a girl becauses he’s very horny and wants to do the things he sees in adult videos. Past that point, it’s a generic hentai plot with zero self reflection, even after the other girls at school fiercely bully the TSFed for his behavior.
    I will just say : the chapter in volume 1 you two are referring to is pretty much the worst this series gets in terms of sexual violence and depravity. While there are gorier chapters, chapter 4 is imho the most appaling one.

Rundown Preamble Ramble:Swiitch 2 – 4 Mii & U

Switch 2: The Main Deets(Summary of the System Level Stuff)

Switch 2: The Race World(Mario Kart World Announced)

Switch 2: A Familiar Fable(Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster Announced)

Switch 2: A New Zelda, Technically!(Zelda Musou – Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment Announced)

Switch 2: A FromSoftware Multiplayer Switch 2 Exclusive(The Saga of Souls Chapter IX: The Duskbloods Announced)

Switch 2: Sakurai’s Next Big Game!(Kirby Air Riders Announced)

Switch 2: A Banana Bonanza(Donkey Kong Bananza Announced)

Switch 2: The Riffraff(Games I Have Only A Paragraph of Stuff To Say About)

Switch 2: The GameCube(Dolphin At Home!)

Switch 2: The Money Zone(And the High Prices Brought to You by Trump Tax)

Switch 2: The Tariffs(Fight the Power, With Your Fists!)

Switch 2: The Verdict(Nah, Imma Gonna Pass This One)

Random Tax Tip For American Gamers(I’m An Enrolled Agent, Trust Me Bro!)

Oh, Right, April Fools Happened(And I Didn’t Get to Celebrate It!)