Ports

Final Fantasy XVI

Since we already know the Remake series is coming to the Switch 2 according to the producer as seen on the Creator’s Voice video - I’d like to see Final Fantasy XVI come to Switch 2. While we’re at it (I don’t want to make just a list full of Final Fantasy) let’s say Final Fantasy XV as well since all we got last gen was the Pocket Edition.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

I absolutely adore the first game and given that Capcom is already bringing Street Fighter 6 (which was a surprise!) to the Switch 2, I’d like to see this game come to the Switch 2 as well. I’d definitely pick this up to be able to play portably.

Baldur’s Gate 3

One of the best RPGs made in the past decade. It’d be interesting to see if this could get ported. I’d imagine it could but who knows. It would definitely be a day 1 purchase for me though, I know that for sure.

Marvel Midnight Suns

This was actually supposed to hit the original Switch before being cancelled. Maybe with the boost in power this game can be done correctly on Switch 2. I actually own this game twice, but I enjoy it so much I wouldn’t mind getting it a third time to play on the go (something you’ll hear often).

Tiny Tina’s Wonderland

I really enjoy this spinoff of the Borderlands series. It’s one of the only games missing from the series at this point as we are also getting Borderlands 4 later this year.

Visions of Mana

When this was released it seemed like it’d be the perfect game for Switch as Trials of Mana was released there and did well. I’d definitely pick this up if it hits Switch 2 and I think a lot of people may have thought the same.

Fallout 3/Fallout 4/New Vegas

I’m going to put these together, but I wouldn’t mind either of these games on the Switch 2. I actually liked Fallout 4 a lot and New Vegas is of course a masterpiece.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

This game is actually what prompted my list in the first place. This is one of those gems that I feel like don’t get talked about as much as it should. Combining Final Fantasy with Dark Souls was a super fun time and I’d definitely want this on a portable system so I can play it anytime.

Final Fantasy XIV

Okay okay, so I have more Final Fantasy on here than I hoped but come on. Having an MMO of this caliber on the system would be pretty awesome in my opinion. However, I’m not hopeful as this requires quite a bit of power. If the Switch 2 is close to Xbox Series S specs then it should be able to handle it but I guess we will see!

Starfield

This might be a controversial take, but I enjoyed Starfield. It did get old kinda quick but I think that might’ve been due to the fact that a lot of good games came out during this time. I’d like to see this come on the Switch 2 however.

Improvements

Kingdom Hearts

I’m kicking things off with the Kingdom Hearts series. We got this on the Cloud due to the Switch not being able to handle (some) of the games but having native versions would definitely be a day 1 purchase and a huge boon to the library in my opinion.

Resident Evil Remake Series

This is all of the recent Resident Evil Remakes (1, 2, 3, 4 - also 7, 8) and like Kingdom Hearts, we got most (if not all) as Cloud based titles. So again, having native versions would be great.

Astral Chain

A pretty great action game that I feel like is held back by the Switch. Framerate/Resolution is pretty rough at times, and while I’m able to play it, it would be nice to have those bumped up a bit. Especially if a second one could be on the way if rumors are true.

Daemon X Machina

Similar situation to Astral Chain. I feel like this was held back a bit by being on the Switch as the fast paced combat was tough to keep up with on the Switch at times.

Borderlands 2/3

I feel like Borderlands 2 suffers from the same situation it did on Vita. It’s a little bit more playable on the Switch than the Vita but not by a lot. Borderlands 3 is even MORE difficult to play as it was clearly not made for this system and they did what they could to reduce it to play on the Switch.

Doom/Doom Eternal

Similar to Daemon X Machina - the games are pretty fast paced and so it makes the framerate/resolution situation look even worse. Most of Doom is playable however, but Doom Eternal definitely struggles.

Mortal Kombat 11/Mortal Kombat I

We’ve all seen the memes about MKI especially how they had to sacrifice a LOT of fidelity to get these games to work on the Switch. Hopefully with the increased power of the Switch 2 we can get real ports/improvements of these games.

Nier: Automata

While I wouldn’t say this is a terrible port by any means, I think having a performance patch to help with some of the rougher edges would be nice. It’s definitely not 100% necessary but it’d be nice to have.

No Man’s Sky

This game is a miracle that it even runs on a Switch if I’m being honest. However, having a performance patch to make it closer to the other consoles would be awesome imo. I wouldn’t mind playing this on the go if that were the case.

This is just a few examples I could think of off the top of my head. Feel free to leave your suggestions below if there’s any other games you can think of that you’d either want to see on the Switch 2 or could really use a performance patch!

Now, I have seen other companies do AI DMing and I wasn’t super impressed which is why I never tried just using regular ol ChatGPT instead. However, I was thrilled when I asked if it could run a D&D campaign and it said absolutely, instead of - sorry! It actually asked what ruleset I wanted and whether I wanted to roll a character or let ChatGPT decide. I actually decided to see the extent of that and told it just a Bard character and a name and let it do the rest. It actually chose things that were most appropriate for a Bard even taking the average roll array and working from that.

Once you have your character created it asks if you want an NPC party or go solo and what type of adventure you want. After that - it sets the stage for your adventure and does a fantastic job creating a story for you. It also gives prompts of things that you could quickly do such as:
1. Pull rope
2. Ask Questions
3. Eat a sandwich

But you don’t have to adhere to its choices. You can actually tell it something completely different and it will change based on what you ask instead. Also, you can do that IN COMBINATION with a choice that it gives you. There were plenty of times when I said something like “Look around the room for anyone suspicious and then pull the rope” and it worked with what I sent it and did those actions in the order I asked. I actually found myself testing the limits of this multiple times and being pleasantly surprised each time. It also handles combat as well by simulating rolls for you. It could be said that ChatGPT could be fudging rolls or whatever but for the most part I felt it was pretty fair. Another thing I like is I can just ….leave the app at any time and pick up where I left off on any of my devices. I want to make it clear that this does NOT replace sitting with a group of your friends and playing D&D - nothing beats that, but when your options are limited this a great alternative.

Introduction

My history with Dragon Quest is a varied one. I remember playing Dragon Warrior at my cousins house and thinking how primitive it looked compared to Final Fantasy, even back then I was more of a Final Fantasy fan. However, I never really gave up on the Dragon Warrior series. I’d check in from time to time to see what the other big JRPG was doing at various times - we never got Dragon Quest V or VI but we did receive VII on Playstation as Dragon Warrior VII. I liked that game enough but it was WAY too long to keep my attention at the time. It moved pretty slow and so I put it away. Next, on the Playstation 2 we received Dragon Quest VIII (with its title now matching the Japanese title). I also really liked this game but also moved away from it (you’ll see this is a trend with me and gaming in general). Next we got Dragon Quest IX and that one blew me away. I got to the end but never beat it due to difficulty spikes from time to time. Finally, on Switch we got Dragon Quest XI S and that game sealed Dragon Quest as an amazing series (so much so, my wife got heavily into it as well). I wound up beating Dragon Quest XI S as I could not put that game down. As a result I purchased I + II + III mobile remakes for Switch and while they were tough to get into, I still played through a good bit of them.

Enter Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake as it used the technique previously seen in games like Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, and clear favorite of ours, Live a Live. As I hope to express, the team at Square Enix knocked it out of the park with this rendition of HD-2D, and even attempted to modernize the game while still keeping the nostalgia high for returning players. Overall, I was pretty impressed with this remake, and I highly recommend the game. However, I’m going to go through the game in full so…

Story

Dragon Quest III begins with the birth of the main character. You choose your gender and name and meet with the King who tasks you with stopping the evil Baramos who is trying to destroy the world and along the way figure out what happened to your father, the might warrior Ortega. From there you go from town to town, solving local issues and finding out more and more about how to stop Baramos from realizing his plan. You also gather three keys in order to open doors throughout the world to solve quests and open previously unexplored areas. After the three keys are obtained, you’re able to get a seafaring ship that helps you travel to more places around the world, but once you visit a place once you can use the series staple spell Zoom to get around from place to place. You then find out about the six mystical orbs that allow you to revive the legendary bird Ramia. Once you get the legendary bird, you are able to get to Baramos Lair and move to the final fight.

OR is it?! Once you defeat Baramos, you find out that he wasn’t even the main villain involved and you are introduced to Zoma. You are then plunged underground and find a whole new place to explore. While not as large as your home world, if you’re a Dragon Quest fan you’ll realize this is Alefgard from Dragon Quest I + II (and other games). You then have to gather some more legendary artifacts and revive Rubiss, a sage who gives you another artifact. Once you have everything, you’ll create a Rainbow Bridge that gives you access to Zoma’s domain. From here you’ll fight your way through its depths, but before you reach the final battle, you’ll find your father Ortega! He was dropped down here after a battle with one of the bosses above ground and lost his memory. You catch up with him as he suffered a killing blow and no matter what you try to do, he can’t see or hear you - so he doesn’t know that you’re his son(or daughter) that he left behind all those years ago. Sad, but parents dying or going missing becomes a trope in Dragon Quest ….so …there’s gotta be something there right? Even in Chrono Trigger you never find out about Crono’s dad - but he has a mom. I feel like there’s some kind of father issues with someone on the development team. At any rate, after traveling a bit more you get to the bottom and go through a boss gauntlet of four bosses - the hydra your father lost to, and three variations of Baramos. Once defeated you fight Zoma and save both kingdoms - however, you are now stuck in Alefgard, but the King gives you the title of Erdrick - and as a result …after credits roll - boom to be continued in Dragon Quest I + II HD-2D.

After this, there is a post-game. I have not attempted it as there are a lot of annoying aspects of the post-game but once I complete it, I’ll update my review with my thoughts. Let’s move on to..

Gameplay

While this remake tries to keep as close to the original as possible, there are a lot of updates that are actually pretty interesting versus the original game. For starters there’s the new class Monster Wrangler that lets you learn new skills based on how many monsters you save. Which means they also add a new Monster Arena mode where you fight with all the monsters you have saved in an Arena like setting. There’s also tons of new features such as healing after a level up, saving in churches like modern Dragon Quest games, there’s also difficulty settings to help tweak the game to a more manageable level for newcomers. There’s also a harder mode for those wanting a challenge.

Speaking of the challenge of the game. I played on the normal setting and for the most part I was able to just let my characters utilize auto battle settings and the AI was pretty smart for the most part. There were a few boss battles where I had to intervene and take manual control as the strategies needed were a bit too complex for the AI to handle.

Rewinding a bit, when you start the game, as previously mentioned you create your main character, however after that you don’t get ANY characters that join your party as part of the story. So in other RPGs where characters may join you as the story deemed it necessary - that’s not true in Dragon Quest III. Instead you go to the pub and enlist three characters to help you with your quest. You can either choose some that have been premade, or you can create your own. You can customize the class, the character’s appearance, and you can either choose how to utilize a set amount of stat seeds, or let the game decide where to put the seeds into. After that, you are good to go. You can create quite a few characters, but can only take three at a time.

Later on in the game, once you get any of your characters (minus the Hero) to level 20, you can change their class at Alltrades Abbey. (Protip: Be sure you’ve leveled them to the point where you have learned all the skills you want on said character.) Once you change the character’s class, the character is thrust back to Level 1, however you keep your skills learned from the previous class and only take about a 50% hit to stats versus when it started at Level 1 on it’s initial class. This was actually pretty fun trying to figure out what I wanted to make each character to get me through the game. While you COULD get every character to max level in each Class and learn every single skill - I don’t advise that for a first play through as that takes a LONG time to accomplish. The good thing is - there’s actually a degree of survivability with these level 1 characters as they can generally keep their equipment (assuming they can equip it) and the stat decrease isn’t too bad. On top of that doing a single battle around Alltrade Abbey would often get me 5 or so levels right from the start.

Another aspect of the game is the ability to alter the personality of your characters. This helps change their growth and there are definitely some personalities that help grow certain classes ideally over others. Thankfully there’s tons of books that can instantly change your personality or you can find some equipment that can change your personality as well. If you want the most out of this I highly recommend a guide, however I didn’t really pay attention to this too much and I was able to beat the game without too much of an issue. I will say this will probably be way more crucial for the hardest difficulty than the normal difficulty.

There are a few new things I was seriously impressed with outside of combat/visuals. One of those is the remembrance feature where anytime after you finish dialog with ANY NPC (or boss…) you can hit + to commit that to memory and then refer back to it at any time. It’s also organized by location and person so it’s not just a huge mess of memories. The only caveat is that you can only store 30 at a time, but you can remove any at any time once its usefulness has run out.

Another added thing that helps making the game feel a bit more alive is the additional of “Secret Spots”. These are places on the world map that you can enter that aren’t on your minimap that could have treasure or monsters to save. A lot of times, you can find some pretty good treasure in these Secret Spots so it’s good to search them out. There’s also glittering things on the world map itself that will reward you with some items when collected. Sometimes you get some good items including seeds, equipment, and healing items so it is good to grab these too.

There are so many other differences from the original that it’s honestly tough to list every single change but just a few of the more interesting are:

• New Monsters

• New Spells and Items

• New Scenes featuring Ortega

• Battle Speed Options (serious life saver)

• View Story Objectives at any time

Presentation

Now the main reason most people were interested in this remake was the use of HD-2D visuals like in Octopath Traveler or the Live a Live remake. I was honestly really blown away by this game and how they used this and I never felt like this took away from the game. I think where this game excels is with scope. Things feel big, environments feel pretty realistic with hills and valleys and the forests feel like danger is around any corner.

A lot of the dungeons felt ominous and foreboding at times whereas towns feel lived in. The NPCs and characters don’t feel out of place with these environments either and I feel like the devs did a great job of balancing the graphics of the characters and environments as a result.

Another thing I really liked were the enemy and boss sprite artwork as it retains a lot of the charm of past games with the infusion of the new HD-2D art. All in all, I think this is one of the best looking HD-2D games and I seriously can’t wait to see how Dragon Quest I-II get reimagined in this way.

Closing Thoughts

For my closing thoughts, I want to say that overall I think this is a tremendously great HD-2D remake and if you’ve ever shied away from one of the first Dragon Quests due to the fact that it just felt really antiquated, I think one of the strengths of this remake is how they brought it to the modern day, not just with it’s graphics but also with some of the quality of life improvements and additions that help make this game way more palatable. As I mentioned before - I’m really curious how they are going to do the DQ I-II remakes as they’ve created a pretty good template for how these remakes should be done. I really hope that these remakes are successful so we can also get remakes for DQ IV-VI and beyond.

With that being said, I give this game a solid 4 out of 5 and think everyone should play it at least once.

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9/9/99 - This date was a very important date for Gaming - not only did Final Fantasy VIII come out on this date, earning a Critical Hit - but the Sega Dreamcast also came out at this time in North America. While I was swept up in the fanfare of a new Final Fantasy coming out (as I had just beaten Final Fantasy VII not too long before this release), I remember getting a demo disc of Final Fantasy VIII and not being super impressed. From then on, I'd have a ...well hate relationship with Final Fantasy VIII. My stepbrother would play Final Fantasy VIII and would swear that it's one of the great Final Fantasy's of the time, but I just couldn't see it. I tried off and on to play Final Fantasy VIII but could never really be drawn into it at all. Enter 2024.

For a long time, I did not like Final Fantasy VIII. I thought it was weird with its obtuse design and the way that it had you upgrade your equipment instead of just buying it out right was beyond my comprehension at the time. The Junction system felt like an enormous oversight and miss in a series that rarely had misses like these. Triple Triad, while fun, also seemed like it was imperative to even do anything in the game. I just couldn't wrap my head around the game and it's systems until I decided to play the other games with the recent Pixel Remasters and as a result it helped me really understand the Final Fantasy series as a whole. I actually set forth to beat each Final Fantasy until I had them all under my belt. I got through the entire Pixel Remaster series. I then played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (which I hold in very high regard) and it really got me looking at how Final Fantasy has tried to consistently turn RPG mechanics on it's head time and time again. While some Final Fantasy games play it a bit safer than others - it's the weird experiments that stuck out to me the most. Final Fantasy II for example with its unique character growth system that many didn't like at the time (and even in current day to some extent) would eventually birth the entire SaGa game series. A sister series to Final Fantasy that I really enjoy as much as Final Fantasy itself in some cases - was never shy to experiment with RPGs either. After playing through these six initial Final Fantasy's it became clear that Final Fantasy VIII wasn't as far removed from its predecessors as I thought. It definitely felt in line with the type of experimentation that they would do over the years to try and push the RPG wheel forward - in comparison, Final Fantasy IX that came after felt more of a safer entry than VIII, and while I adored that game way more than VIII at the time - it's one I rarely go back to due to the length of that adventure. With my eyes opened to the fact that Final Fantasy VIII isn't really such a crazy experiment but more in line with the history of Final Fantasy VIII (and also thanks to Andrew Bluett's recent retrospective).

I decided to take another crack at the game to see if I can't gather any new insights.

To start, I played the Final Fantasy VIII Remaster that was released not too long ago - using the 3X speed is a godsend as FFVIII can move SLOW at times. Especially when drawing magic from enemies, but more on that a little later. The brief intro is that you play as Squall Leonhart - a member of SeeD which was developed as a group of mercenaries - to what end...well you gotta find that out. The game starts off strong with a crazy opening that feels cinematic. You could tell Square was trying their best to bridge the gap between gaming and movies at this time - and while I think they more or less succeeded - the technology just held them back at the time, as if you look at recent entries in Final Fantasy, it's almost effortless how they are able to bridge that gap these days. The gameplay is typical turn based Final Fantasy but with some key differences. Instead of having your normal Attack -> Magic -> Item commands, you can also learn other helpful commands from what's known as Guardian Forces or "GF". These Guardian Forces serve a similar purpose to summons in past games but you also learn new abilities from them as well. For example, you can learn the Treatment command which immediately heals status effects from your character. There's also the ability to create magic from items you find around as you play. Another command is the DRAW command. This allows you to draw magic from any enemy you fight (and it's how you unlock some GFs during boss battles) and Magic is incredibly important beyond just casting this time around. You can do something called Junction which allows you to essentially "equip" your magic to various stats. This powers those stats based on the type of magic and the number of magic stock you have. Luckily, Square decided in their infinite wisdom to have a specific icon to indicate what magics are currently junctioned to you (it doesn't tell you the specific stat but just knowing it's Junctioned is usually enough). Some GFs actually allow you to expand the stats available to Junction once learned so you can really build a character the way you want. There's also ways to junction to your attack and defense (so you can junction Fire to deal more fire damage, or junction Sleep to be more resistant to Sleep.)

Now when I originally played this game all those years ago, I really didn't understand how all these different gameplay mechanics came together to create something unique and...good. As I've played through this game this time however, I found that a lot of the gameplay mechanics that were tough to understand, suddenly made a lot more sense when you see it through the lens of how the game is supposed to operate. On top of that, this game is probably one of the easiest Final Fantasy games to break - in fact with enough preparation you can find yourself with the best weapons in the game as early as Disc 1. I chose not to go this route and play the game somewhat traditionally minus the boosts you can get from the Remaster - which even with the boosts a lot of the game is still challenging at times. Going back to the speed boost mentioned earlier - a lot of times without this boost the game moves at a snails pace. Whenever I turn the speed boost off, I'm amazed at how much slower the game plays. This could be due to abusing the speed boost and the normal speed feels way slower in comparison but even attacking and moving are slow. Also, as mentioned previously trying to get 99 stock of a magic through drawing would normally take forever as well but this substantially cuts that down to a more manageable level.

Overall, while this definitely isn't my favorite Final Fantasy of all time - it has definitely climbed the ranks a bit for me. Taking a tenth look at this game really did wonders, as I've had so much more fun this time around than in the past. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact that my appreciation for game mechanics has improved over time or what the case maybe, but I'll say if you haven't played it in awhile, try the Remaster out and see if the boosts help you appreciate the game more like it helped me out.

There were tons of games that came out in 2024, so many so that I often forget which ones I've played - so instead I want to focus on the games that I beat this year. As a father of four, it's tough sometimes to fit gaming into my schedule so the fact that I was able to beat ten games this year was nothing short of a miracle. I want to discuss not only what games I completed, but I want to give my thoughts on the game and a score. I know some of you may think that my "completed" list will be weird - I count Animal Crossing as I got to credits - but I have to stop somewhere so I can get to the next game. My backlog is VAST. I may one day try and do some kind of challenge where I just start hacking away at my backlog and report just like this. I'm also going to put them in order of games from worst to best - but worst isnt that the game is terrible, just that it fell lower on the list for me. Anyway here we go - starting at number..

10. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade

Console: Playstation 5
Completed: February 2024
Rating: 4/5

I only played the Yuffie scenario, as I beat the full game in 2023 maybe? At any rate, while I did like being able to return to the world of Final Fantasy VII Remake and seeing what happened around the main story - a lot of the time I just kinda felt like it was unnecessary to see most of the stuff going on. Don't get me wrong, my opinion of this changed after playing through Rebirth, but at the time I thought the best part of the game was the ending (and I still kinda stick to that) for story reasons and not sarcastic ones. I really enjoyed playing as Yuffie however, and being able to play as her a bit earlier than the original story was fun. Overall, I think this intermission definitely adds to the narrative in a positive way - even if it feels a bit padded in some places to justify it's existence.

9. Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise

Console: Nintendo Switch
Completed: August 2024
Rating: 4/5

Like most people, I caught the Animal Crossing bug in 2020 when New Horizons came out and I've been wanting more Animal Crossing. Happy Home Paradise came out a little while after New Horizons but I was never really able to focus and give it the attention it demanded until this year. I decided to just go all out and try to unlock as much as I could. I enjoyed my time with the game overall. While it mostly dealt with decorating rooms, it had some fun challenges like unlocking Hospitals and Cafes to decorate which in turn would unlock new things to use in other houses. My wife and I would often compare designs to get ideas from each other and while it isn't as in depth as the main game - I found it to be fun to come back to time and time again, until near the end that is when you get a bit tired of constantly trying to unlock stuff so you phone in a LOT of the designs to meet the goals to unlock the next thing. I did appreciate the ability to convert Poki to Bells daily to help with my main island so it wasn't like my home decorating skills were completely a waste - and a LOT of the unlockables are really cool for your main island. All in all, I definitely recommend this if you want more Animal Crossing to play - and as a reminder...you get this with the NSO Expansion Pack if you dont want to shell out the 30 or so dollars for it.

8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Console: Nintendo Switch
Completed: July 2024
Rating: 4.5/5

While definitely not the worst game, I had played this at launch and decided to play through it again with a brand new island so that my wife and a couple friends could all play along. I think that's where this game shines is with the ability to play with other people and share designs and supplies. My wife and friends and I would often just hang out and explore each others islands and play pranks on each other (pitfall seeds equal hilarity) but also trade things to help fill out the Art/Fish/Bug and Fossil parts of the museum. All in all, revisiting this game this year was just as fun as the first time we played back in 2020, and if you haven't played it in some time I heavily advise starting a new island and going from there.

7. Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster

Console: Nintendo Switch
Completed: March 2024
Rating: 4.5/5

I actually played a lot of Remakes/Remasters this year and I really wanted to beat the entire Pixel Remaster series (I did at the end of 2023/beginning of 2024) as there were quite a few Final Fantasy games I never beat (I made it to the end of many of them but never beat the last boss) and FFV is no exception. There's so much to love in this entry with the star being the Job system. I think this is where they really started showing they understood how the Job system worked and what they wanted to do to separate it from the rest of typical RPG classes (the only game I think that does it better is Final Fantasy Tactics with X-2 being close). While I finally beat this game - I think it's definitely got sore spots on it - I think the story drags on a bit too long and it feels very much like they started running out of steam near the end of the game and just tried to figure out an ending. With that being said though - this is a great entry in Final Fantasy and I highly recommend.

6. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Console: MacOS
Completed: March 2024
Rating: 4.5/5

I'm going to start this out with the fact that I have a love/hate relationship with Final Fantasy XIV. I love it very much and think that it is definitely worthy of being a numbered Final Fantasy game, however I hate the time commitment and the fact that it costs so much over time. As a result, I only just beat A Realm Reborn this year. I've played off and on since it came out (ARR that is, never played 1.0) but just now focused myself to beat the story. I actually beat this in tandem with my wife who also beat ARR along with me. I really want to go back and play more - but it gets hard to commit time to such a massive venture.

5. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Remaster)

Console: Nintendo Switch
Completed: July 2024
Rating: 4.5/5

Confession time, I never really played this Paper Mario game (or the original - I've just played Origami King and a bit of Color Splash) because I was a huge fan of Super Mario RPG (another game I beat in 2023) and hated the stylistic difference for a long time. However, I decided that I should play this game since a lot of people love this game a lot, and I'm really glad I gave this a shot. I wound up beating it and loving every minute of it. The humor, the battles, and story - I was quite surprised with how involved this got. I like a lot of the call backs as well. The partner system is great in this and I think it definitely deserves to be in many top RPG lists for the Switch. This game definitely deserves every accolade it receives.

4. Resident Evil 4 (Remake)

Console: Playstation 5
Completed: November 2024
Rating: 4.5/5

This was the last game I beat this year, and I was a little nervous going into it as I wasn't the biggest fan of Resident Evil 7/8. I don't feel like they are bad games or anything, it's just a bit jarring playing in first person after growing up with this game in third person. However, I beat this game when it came out on the Gamecube all those years ago and I was interested in seeing if the remake could do it justice or not. I actually kind of liked this remake a lot better - I feel like a lot of elements felt a bit more polished not just graphically but also from a gameplay pov. I'm also willing to admit that this could be due to the fact that I haven't played RE4 in almost 20 years so - there's that too.

3. Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster

Console: Nintendo Switch
Completed: March 2024
Rating: 5/5

Full disclosure: Final Fantasy IV is my favorite game of all time. It encapsulates what I love about RPGs and Final Fantasy as a whole, and the Pixel Remaster did nothing to tarnish that viewpoint to me. In fact, I'd argue that it is one of the best ways to play outside of the Complete Collection on PSP. I loved the new soundtrack (see my article on Soundtracks to see why..) and I loved the updated graphics. I do lament at the fact that we lost the GBA dungeons and the fact that we don't have the after years in this style, but overall I'm so happy I got to revisit this game. It made me fall in love with it all over again. I'm very curious to see how they'll handle the classic Final Fantasy games as we move to console generation to console generation but being able to play these on the go with the Switch is always great in my book. (Now to buy them all over again to trophy hunt on the PS5...)

2. Cyberpunk 2077

Console: Playstation 5
Completed: February 2024
Rating: 5/5

Oh Cyberpunk 2077. When you first came out you were riddled with bugs. I tried to play on the PS4 but it just could NOT handle what you were trying to show us. After that debacle, I put that away for quite some time after launch until I got a PS5, and then I decided to try again and holy crap. This felt like how Cyberpunk 2077 was meant to be played. The graphics, sound, and everything else felt truly next gen in my opinion. I got mercilessly addicted to this game at the end of 2023 and at the beginning of 2024 I decided to stop wasting time with side missions (even though so many were written so well) and move on to the main story and finally beating it in February. I haven't played the DLC yet, but it's on my to-do list in 2025.

1. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Console: Playstation 5
Completed: March 2024
Rating: 5/5

This game deserved the top spot twenty times over in my opinion. After completing Final Fantasy VII Remake completely just a month before - I eagerly waited for Rebirth's release. Once I got Rebirth it was all I played once it launched. I think the thing for me about the entire Final Fantasy VII Remake project is how they deviate from the original material. I think for me that's the most exciting thing. I really feel like that's what sets this apart from the original in a big way. The whole time, I'd think I know what story beat would come next but then would be pleasantly surprised with the difference. There's so much to love in this game, and while I didn't beat all the side stuff (there's so much more than in Remake imo) what I was able to get through was a combination of the main story and the side stuff. While there were parts of the game I think dragged on a little too long (which...I sense a pattern here) overall I enjoyed this game so much and I can't wait for part 3. I hope it releases before Playstation 6 however - I'd love to be able to play the entire series on one console generation. Or maybe we'll see it released for the Switch 2...? One can hope.

Anyway, I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering since its inception. I got lucky and had a childhood friend who had an older brother and we got to play it during alpha/beta etc. Before anyone asks, I don’t recall ever seeing a Black Lotus in real life. What I do remember is that Shivan Dragon and Hypnotic Specters were a big deal. I don’t remember dual lands even being a point of focus at the time as we admired the creature art way more.

The thing I think Magic has going for it is the fact that it constantly evolves. I’m sure this was the point of the game so that it had longevity but I don’t think anyone could’ve expected that it would be played 31 years later. For me, I would play off and on over the years. I played during Alpha all the way to Ice Age, and then I would move away to another state and lose touch with friends I’d play with. I would always want to play though - I never got involved at a LGS or anything as I was always intimidated by other players I didn’t know. I remember moving back in 8th grade and getting to play with classmates (who were often pretty dismissive and mean to me about it but -shrug-) I also remember doing the Guru thing and getting some Guru lands (which I wish I had the foresight to keep as those are quite expensive these days.

I would then go into 9th grade and find new people to play Magic with that were a little more welcoming. I’d play until I would move again to Florida where I didn’t have any opportunities and by that point I “grew out” of the idea of playing Magic. However, when I got older (early 20s) I’d see Coldsnap on the shelves and decide to buy a fat pack and try to relive my youth. I’d find people at various jobs to play with until they inevitably move. I wound up buying a lot (a huge collection of cards) off eBay with a friend I worked at Blockbuster with and we would spend like 3 nights splitting it in half and then playing. I still have a LOT of those cards to this day. At this point, I still play with my wife and kids and whoever decides to tag along but being in 2024 brings a new avenue to play Magic - Arena. The online version of Magic that can be played on Mobile or computer. I’ve actually started streaming myself playing and I’ve been playing that since it’s beta. They actually added a variation of my favorite format Commander on the app as Brawl. It’s slightly different but serves a similar purpose and works well enough for me.

I have so much I can discuss about Magic the Gathering - and I intend to in the near future. I just wanted to talk about my history with the game so that people can understand how much I love this game. While I didn’t have a ton of ways to play (and still don’t) - I make it work. I have 10s of thousands of cards at this point and maybe one day I’ll post my entire collection inventory and decks for all to see - as I have brewed quite a few decks. I think the most interesting thing about modern Magic is the fact that they are now trying to pull in famous IPs like Fallout, Walking Dead and more. I’m actually quite excited for Final Fantasy next year and I’m going to try and collect the entire set. If you ever want to play on Arena with me, just drop a comment and we can make that happen. I’m not super great. I actually created a python script to track my Arena games and the first night I did it I lost three games in a row lol. It doesn’t matter a whole lot to me though - it’s just for the love of the game.

During the 2021 year, Nintendo was still pumping out unexpected games and console revisions. The very very very long rumored Metroid Dread was released along with a sorta long rumored revision of the Switch called the Nintendo Switch OLED was released, and while it wasn’t a Pro model that was rumored year over year up to that point, it did bring a nicer screen and a different chip to allow for better battery life. We also got a remake of Pokemon Diamond/Pearl that was met with mixed responses. NSO got an Expansion Pack which included Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games. Overall, this was a pretty packed year for game releases and surprises and after this point, the only big things of note would be mostly games, however it feels like every year they surprise us with something new we weren’t expecting..

Timeline

January

Jan 12th

Five Nights at Freddy’s Core Collection

Jan 14th

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game - Complete Edition

Jan 20th

Hitman 3 (Cloud Version)

Jan 26th

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy

Cyber Shadow

Jan 28th

Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny

Sword of the Necromancer

February

Feb 17th

Nintendo Direct (Splatoon 3/Mario Golf: Super Rush)

Feb 23rd

Persona 5 Strikers

Feb 26th

Bravely Default II

March

Mar 9th

Apex Legends

Mar 16th

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

Mar 26th

Monster Hunter Rise

Mar 27th

Children of Zodiarcs

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

Mar 31st

Operencia: The Stolen Sun

April

Apr 6th

Star Wars Republic Commando

Apr 30th

New Pokemon Snap

May

May 21st

Miitopia

May 24th

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

June

Jun 11th

Game Builder Garage

June 25th

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

July

July 16th

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

July 27th

NEO: The World Ends With You

August

Aug 27th

No More Heroes III

September

Sept 10th

WarioWare: Get it Together!

Sept 14th

Cruis’n Blast

Sept 23rd

Diablo II: Resurrected

Sept 24th

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot + A New Power Awakens

October

Oct 8th

Metroid Dread

Nintendo Switch OLED

Oct 25th

NSO Expansion Pack released with N64 and Sega Genesis titles!

Oct 29th

Mario Party Superstars

November

Nov 12th

Shin Megami Tensei V

Nov 19th

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

December

Dec 3rd

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain

When Echoes of Wisdom was announced, I remember being on the fence about it. Not because it had Zelda as a main character or anything like that, but because I was curious about the overall game loop and how it could sustain itself over the course of an adventure. My initial impression was that Zelda would have to completely rely on a Pokémon like mechanic where she would need to “capture” monsters and other things in the overworld in order to use them to her advantage, and while this is partially true - the full truth is so much more interesting than I was led to believe. While this game isn’t a perfect Zelda experience, it is interesting enough and fun enough to warrant anyone looking for a game that isn’t as expansive as the newer Zelda games but also want to experience some of those games core gameplay mechanics in a older Zelda games wardrobe.

Beyond this point, there will be spoilers for the game at times so if you’d like to experience the story for yourself, or any of the things that this game provides I suggest skipping to the end to see the TL;DR to get the gist of the game and what it offers.

The Legend of…Link?

In the beginning of the game, you play as an overpowered Link - this already caught my attention as we are playing as Link after he has had an entire adventure, one that harkens back to Link’s Awakening or Link to the Past - but there are doubts as to when exactly in the time line this game is due to various aspects that I’ll touch on later. As you go through this short intro dungeon you eventually face off against Ganon right off the rip in his pig form. Once defeated (and if you’ve played past Zelda games you’ll have a distinct advantage at already knowing what tricks he’s going to pull), he opens a rift that swallows Link in, but not before he shoots one final arrow to free Zelda from her crystal prison. After this, you take control of Zelda and grab his cloak he wore and escape before the rift swallows Zelda as well - then the title appears with Zelda doing the “world lookout” that has become popular with the newer Zelda games as of late. (From here on our I’m going to refer to the games as LoZ so that it doesn’t confuse the main character with references to past games)

After this brief intro you are taken to the King who has Zelda thrown in a dungeon and there you meet Tri, a creature who allows you to “echo” objects in the overworld, whether that is a defeated monster, boxes, a table, or even a bed.

Protip: You can use the beds to heal yourself!

Echo…echo….echo….

As you progress through the game, you gain access to a ridiculous amount of Echoes and they fit comfortably into three main categories: Monsters, Traversal, and Utility. The Monster Echoes are just that, echoes of monsters that help you fight and solve puzzles. Traversal Echoes are things that can help you travel the overworld such as trampolines, boxes, and other things of that nature. Finally there’s Utility that help solve puzzles or maybe have other uses outside of the other two, an example of this later is a device that shoots wind in all directions and can push monsters, or boxes or sand to help you reach new areas or avoid fights. I found the Echo system pretty interesting overall - there are so many unique ways to use the echoes in the game and I was even surprised at finding what works (and by contrast what doesn’t) which reminded me heavily of playing Tears of the Kingdom and the way you can find new ways to combine things to solve situations. The Echo system feels like the best way to recreate that idea for a 2D top down entry. With all these interesting interactions you would think you could just freely drop echoes all over the place, but that’s not really the case. They have made a limitation where every echo costs a certain amount of points - from one to four that correlates with Tri and their tail of triangles. You start with three and eventually gain more - and while this sounds like it may suck to have such a limitation, I feel like the team did a good job at keeping you progressing and not really feeling too limited. I don’t think I ever felt like I couldn’t overcome a challenge because I didn’t have enough power to generate the echoes I needed for a situation. People who spend time trying to break the game may be disappointed by this limitation as it doesn’t let you just create 100 tables just to reach parts of the map you shouldn’t. I also found the upgrade loop for Tri to be fair, as you keep logically progressing and it’s clear a lot of care was taken in making sure the game was balanced between what echoes you need and what’s available. That’s not to say that you can’t sequence break and do things in order that wasn’t intended but even with that being said - due to the way cost works for echoes you are never really too powerful for most situations.

Ghost to the Past

Another thing you unlock fairly early in the game is a “sword fighter” mode where you become the embodiment of Link and can use a Sword and Shield against your foes. However, this too has limitations. You start a Level 1 and it gives you around 10 seconds or so as “Link”. To keep the meter charged, you’ll defeat dark echo forms within Rifts to get the crystals necessary to charge this mode. You can get upgrades to increase the time you can spend in this mode, but again a lot of care was taken to not let you just steamroll through the dungeons and other challenges in the game. Which brings me to my first real concern with the game and that’s combat.

I realize that combat isn’t the primary focus in a LoZ game that stars Zelda, but you can’t deny that it’s a pretty large focus of the series as a whole on top of it’s puzzles. However, combat in this game is very very slow. The monsters take some time to wind up their attacks and as a result they may be defeated by monsters before even have a chance to swing once. In Sword fighter mode, you do have the power and speed to defeat enemies like you’d expect from a LoZ game however because you stay in this form for such a short period it’s tough to use it for anything but emergency situations (unless you’re in a rift then you can grab crystals to recharge at a fairly decent pace). There’s also smoothies in the game that mimic cooking in newer Zelda games. You CAN make a smoothie that recharges your Sword fighter’s energy and there doesn’t appear to be a limit to how many smoothies you can have on hand - however I feel like this too slows down combat because you’d have to go into the menu, drink a smoothie, fight, wait a few then drink another versus just being able to fight like normal. This is a very very minor gripe as like I mentioned earlier - while you fight a lot of enemies, the focus is way more on puzzle solving using echoes versus just constantly fighting and there are definitely ways to get around certain encounters by using the wand.

Alakazam!

I haven’t really talked about this yet, but to summon echoes you have to use the TriRod that you are given at the beginning of the game. At first, all you can do is summon echoes and dismiss them but eventually you get an ability to grab things with the wand such as enemies and environmental obstacles. It’s a lot like the Master Hand in newer LoZ games that let you manipulate the environment. One surprising thing is you can actually grab enemies from afar with this technique and either drop them into a pit, water, or lava and bypass a fight or hold them in place as your echo wails on them. Either way works and it works surprisingly well. This helps speed up battles from time to time but it definitely gets harder when you have more than 3 or 4 enemies in a room to deal with.

Making the Pieces Fit

Overall, I think there’s a ton of different ways to solve puzzles and combat in this game and it definitely stays interesting. Originally, I thought the game was going to be pretty short as around halfway through the game ramps up and has you fight what appears to be a final boss but the game pulls the rug out from under you and gives you even more things to solve. Once Hyrule opens up more, you start to get way more options for things to do. Another thing I didn’t mention earlier were accessories. Most shops have a unique accessory to help you navigate things for that area (like a Zora flipper in the Zora domain to swim faster) and while these things are helpful, they never felt like a must have to beat any of the challenges. It just made them mildly easier. I definitely recommend trying out echoes that seem outside of what the game expects you to use to solve puzzles as you start to learn the quirks of each echo and its use. One example is the sign echo you learn really early can be used as a single use shield for emergencies. This is something I wouldn’t have thought of, but the developers sure did. Also, one other gripe I have is some of the boss fights are REALLY obvious in what they expect you to do to beat the boss once you figure out your bearings. However, don’t be surprised if you enter a boss room and think to yourself….what? How can I even beat this? That mindset also happens when entering some of the more challenging puzzle rooms until you start looking at your ever expanding toolbox of echoes and realize that this one can start a fire or that one can strike from far away - then you start realizing that a lot of the echoes are just stand ins for more traditional LoZ items.

Can I Recommend a Break from Tradition?

With all this being said, I think Echoes of Wisdom is a great addition to the franchise. It has some minor issues - but I think the way it tries to fuse new and old Zelda together is definitely something worth trying once or twice. I feel like the story is decent, even if it is a bit derivative at times but truth be told I enjoyed this new Hyrule that is seemingly a mix of Link to the Past and more modern Hyrule. I highly recommend that if you enjoy any Legend of Zelda games to give this one a shot as it definitely brings some interesting things to the table.

In March of 2020, the world was struck by the COVID pandemic and as a result - most of the population had to remain indoors. As businesses were starting to suffer from the lack of people coming to purchase products in-store, Nintendo managed to turn this situation into a huge plus for them. They announced Animal Crossing in 2018 for a 2019 release but that date came and went. However, in February of 2020 we got more details on New Horizon. They also announced that this title would be released a month later in March. This timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous for Nintendo as this allowed all the people who were stuck inside with nothing to do seeking the enjoyment of such a cozy game which caused sales to skyrocket. This helped 2020 become the year of Animal Crossing as a whole with people wanting to build up their island as much as possible and have friends visit for a chance at getting ahead in the stalk market. While Nintendo would continue to release many games in 2020, no game was pivotal to their success as Animal Crossing that year. Also around this time, reports of a Nintendo Switch Pro would be heating up - this would cause many people to wonder if we’d see a new iteration of the Switch to help close in the gap that other consoles had on the Switch as the graphical power of the Switch was really starting to show it’s age even as far back as 2020. However, Nintendo was able to keep the steam moving and the Switch was selling faster than ever before at this point..

Timeline

January

Jan 9th

Pokemon Direct

Jan 16th

Smash DLC Direct - Byleth

To the Moon

Jan 17th

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore

Jan 21st

The Walking Dead Season Two / A New Frontier

February

Feb 12th

Pokemon Home

Feb 14th

Darksiders Genesis

Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl GOLD

Feb 20th

Nintendo Direct - Animal Crossing

Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition

Feb 25th

Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection (I believe this gave us the first emulation on Switch DS games)

Samurai Shodown Reboot

Two Point Hospital

Feb 28th

Rune Factory 4 Special

March

Mar 6th

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX

Mar 13th

Langrisser I & II

Mar 17th

Indie World

Exit the Dungeon

Mar 20th

Animal Crossing New Horizons

Doom 64

La-Mulana / La-Mulana 2

Mar 26th

Nintendo Direct Mini

One Step from Eden

Shinsekai Into the Depths

Mar 27th

Children of Zodiarcs

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

Mar 31st

Operencia: The Stolen Sun

April

Apr 14th

Ver 10.0.0

• Transfer Software between SD/Internal Memory

• Remap Controller Buttons

• Play Activity Settings

Apr 20th

Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope

Apr 23rd

SmileBASIC 4

Apr 24th

Trials of Mana Remake

Apr 28th

Indivisible

Apr 30th

Streets of Rage 4

May

May 7th

Void Bastard

May 12th

Huntdown

May 14th

Ion Fury

May 21st

Journey to the Savage Planet

May 22nd

The Wonderful 101: Remastered

May 26th

Minecraft Dungeons

May 29th

Bioshock: The Collection

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

XCOM 2 Collection

June

June 4th

Shantae and the Seven Sirens

June 5th

The Outer Worlds

51 Worldwide Games

Jun 17th

Pokemon Presents

Jun 22nd

Smash DLC Direct - Min (from Arms)

Jun 24th

Pokemon Presents

Pokemon Cafe Mix

June 25th

Brigadine: The Legend of Runersia

July

July 7th

Catherine: Full Body

July 8th

CrossCode

July 9th

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

July 17th

Paper Mario: The Origami King

July 20th

Nintendo Direct Mini - Partner Showcase

July 21st

Panzer Paladin

July 28th

Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection

August

Aug 18th

Indie World

A Short Hike

Spiritfarer

Aug 26th

Nintendo Direct Mini - Partner Showcase

West of Dead

Aug 27th

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered

Moon

September

Sept 3rd

Nintendo Direct - Mario 35th Anniversary

Sept 9th

Minoria

Sept 11th

RPG Maker MV

Sept 17th

Nintendo Direct Mini

Nintendo Direct - Monster Hunter

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The Long Dark

Sept 18th

Super Mario 3D All-Stars

Sept 24th

Going Under

Kirby Fighters 2

October

Oct 1st

Super Mario Bros 35

Oct 3rd

Smash DLC Direct - Steve + Alex (Minecraft)

Oct 8th

Game Dev Tycoon

Oct 15th

Ring of Pain

Oct 16th

CrownTrick

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit

Oct 21st

ScourgeBringer

Oct 28th

Nintendo Direct Mini

No More Heroes 1 + 2

Part Time UFO

Oct 30th

Pikmin 3 Deluxe

November

Nov 13th

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

Nov 20th

Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity

Sakuna Of Rice and Ruin

December

Dec 1st

Ver 11.0.0

• NSO Icon added to Home

• Auto Download Saves

• Transfer Screenshots to Smartphone

• Prioritize downloads

Empire of Sin

Dec 2nd

Shiren the Wanderer The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

Dec 3rd

Immortals Fenyx Rising

Taiko no Tatsujin Rhythmic Adventure 1 + 2

Dec 4th

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

Dec 8th

Doom Eternal

Monster Sanctuary

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

Dec 15th

Indie World

Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend

Dec 16th

Dicey Dungeons

Dec 17th

Smash DLC Direct - Sephiroth

Dec 18th

Super Nintendo World Direct

Dec 29th

Wingspan

Slow Ride..

2019 was a slower year for the Nintendo Switch - while it had a few big titles and more games were hitting the system than ever before, it was getting harder and harder to find standout titles that were just on the system itself and not just a port or remaster. Don’t get me wrong, there were a LOT of incredible ports this year with standouts like The Witcher 3 and Hellblade taking everyone by surprise, but I feel like this was definitely a year when the shovelware really started flowing hard in the systems lifecycle. Nintendo did have a few enormous games that hit this year like Pokémon Sword and Shield and Super Mario Maker 2 - but otherwise it was a pretty quiet year as the Nintendo Switch settled into itself and even with this lull, there was a game right around the corner that would CROSS all expectations. One that would bring us closer to our ANIMAL friends like never before - but that would have to wait until next year..

Timeline

January 2018

January 10th

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

January 11th

New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe

Tales of Vesperia

January 15th

Onimusha: Warlords

January 16th

NSO NES Update
Blaster Master
Ghosts'n Goblins SP
Joy Mech Fight
Ninja Gaiden SP
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

January 18th

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

January 28th

v7.0.0 Update Released

• New Icons

• General Stability

January 31st

Downwell

Dragon Marked for Death

February 2018

February 1st

Wargroove

February 13th

Final Fantasy IX

NSO NES Update
Blaster Master SP
Kirby's Adventure
Metroid SP (Mother Brain Battler)
Super Mario Bros. 2

February 26th

Trials Rising

February 27th

Deltarune Ch. 1

February 28th

Ape Out

March 2018

March 13th

Baba is You

NSO NES Update
Kid Icarus
Kirby's Adventure SP
StarTropics
Zelda II: The Adventures of Link SP

March 15th

The Caligula Effect: Overdose

March 20th

Blaster Master Zero 2

Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon EVERY BUDDY!

Nuclear Throne

March 26th

Final Fantasy VII

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid

March 29th

Yoshi’s Crafted World

April 2018

April 10th

NSO NES Update
Kid Icarus SP
Punch-Out!!
Star Soldier
Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels

April 11th

Hellblade - Senua’s Sacrifice

Vaporum

April 15th

8.0.0 Update

• Sort software in the ALL GAMES view

• View All News

• Splatoon 2 / Yoshi’s Crafted World Icons

• Transfer Data Between Switch Systems

• Zoom in on the Menu and during games

• Prevent Sleep on AC Adapter

• Stability

April 16th

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD

My Time at Portia

April 18th

Cuphead

Katana Zero

Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection

April 23rd

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

Mortal Kombat 11

April 25th

Picross S3

Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

April 26th

Boxboy + BoxGirl!

April 30th

Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age

May 2018

May 2nd

Duck Game

Swords of Ditto - Mormo’s Curse

May 7th

Shakedown Hawaii

May 15th

NSO NES Update
Clu Clu Land
Donkey Kong Jr.
Star Soldier SP
Vs. Excitebike

May 16th

Castlevania Anniversary Collection

May 21st

Assassin’s Creed III Remastered

Resident Evil 0

Resident Evil

Resident Evil 4

Team Sonic Racing

May 23rd

Wonder Boy Returns Remix

May 28th

Crystal Crisis

May 30th

Gato Roboto

June 2019

June 4th

Timespinner

June 6th

Slay the Spire

June 11th

Collection of Mana

Contra Anniversary Collection

The Last Remnant Remastered

June 12th

NSO NES Update
City Connection
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
TwinBee SP
Volleyball

June 13th

Cadence of Hyrule

June 20th

My Friend Pedro

June 21st

Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled

June 25th

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Devil May Cry

June 27th

Graveyard Keeper

Terraria

Sega Ages: Wonder Boy: Monster Land

June 28th

Super Mario Maker 2

July 2019

July 4th

What Remains of Edith Finch

July 11th

Tiny Metal

July 12th

Dragon Quest Builders 2

God Eater 3

Streets of Rogue

July 17th

NSO NES Update
Donkey Kong 3
Mighty Bomb Jack SP
Wrecking Crew

July 19th

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

July 26th

Doom (1993)

DOOM 3

Doom II (Classic)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

July 30th

Forager

August 2019

August 1st

Chroma Squad

August 8th

PictoQuest

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition

August 14th

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark

August 16th

Grandia HD Collection

August 19th

Hotline Miami Collection

SuperHot

August 21st

NSO NES Update
Downtown Nekketsu March: Super-Awesome Field Day!
Gradius SP (Second Loop)
Kung Fu Heroes
Vice Project Doom

August 22nd

Oniaki

August 30th

Astral Chain

Bulletstorm: Duke of Switch Edition

Risk of Rain 2

The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors

September 2018

September 3rd

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Torchlight II

September 5th

Deadly Premonition Origins

Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition

River City Girls

Super Kirby Clash

NSO SNES RELEASE
Brawl Brothers
Breath of Fire
Demon's Crest
F-Zero
Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics
Kirby's Dream Course
Kirby's Dream Land 3
The Legend of Zelda: A Link of the Past
Pilotwings
Smash Tennis
Star Fox
Stunt Race FX
Super E.D.F. Earth Defense Force
Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario World
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Super Metroid
Super Puyo Puyo 2
Super Soccer
Super Tennis

September 9th

v9.0.0 Update

• Search in News

• Use QR code to Sign In to Nintendo Account

• Alarm Notifications

• Configure Touch Screen Sensitivity

• Option to Turn on/off System Button (Nintendo Switch Lite Only)

September 10th

Blasphemous

September 13th

Daemon x Machina

September 17th

Castle Crashers

September 19th

Sayonara Wild Hearts

September 20th

AI: The Somium Files

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Remake)

Untitled Goose Game

Nintendo Switch Lite Releases!

September 24th

Dead by Daylight

September 27th

Dragon Quest I

Dragon Quest II

Dragon Quest III

Dragon Quest XI S

Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition

October 2019

October 8th

Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair

October 10th

Corpse Party: Blood Drive

Spirit Hunter: NG

October 11th

Alliance Alive HD Remaster

October 15th

Baldur’s Gate I - II Enhanced Edition

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete

October 16th

Little Town Hero

October 18th

Return of the Obra Dinn

October 29th

Disgaea 4th Complete +

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 6

Vampyr

October 31st

Luigi’s Mansion 3

November 2019

November 1st

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout

November 8th

Disney Tsum Tsum Festival

Layton’s Mystery Journey Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy

Super Lucky’s Tale

November 11th

Romancing SaGa 3

November 14th

Sparklite

November 15th

Pokémon Sword and Shield

November 21st

The Touryst

December 2019

December 3rd

Neverwinter Night: Enhanced Edition

SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions

Tools Up

December 5th

Alien Isolation

Star Ocean First Departure R

Shovel Knight Showdown

December 10th

Shovel Knight Showdown

December 12th

NSO NES Update
Crystalis
Journey to Silius

NSO SNES Update
Breath of Fire II
Kirby Super Star
Star Fox 2
Super Punch-Out!!

December 19th

Ashen

December 23rd

Demon’s Tilt

Sophomore Year, but not a slump

Nintendo moved into their second year a little slow, however starting at the end of January, they started picking up many many releases that would go on to become classics. This is also the year that the Switch saw a ton of Final Fantasy releases (some on Nintendo systems for the first time!) as well as more expanded support from Square Enix as a whole. They also announced that due to the success of past titles they would start bringing more remasters to modern consoles (most start on Switch though). This was also the year that they announced and released the “Virtual Console” successor known as Nintendo Switch Online - starting with NES they released 20 games that you could play at any time as long as you stayed subscribed. There were mixed feelings about this approach, mostly negative at the time - however I recall not being upset about this at all. My personal opinion on the matter hasn’t changed and actually has improved over time as they made the service better and better.

Nintendo Switch Online vs Virtual Console

For most, the appeal of Virtual Console was the fact that you could purchase each retro title individually and as a result would own the game on the platform. A LOT of third party developers had deals with Nintendo in the past this way. A lot of older titles like Breath of Fire and Final Fantasy II/III were released this way on Wii/Wii U where you could buy them for 5, 10, even up to 20 dollars for Wii titles. At the time, this was fine - however I think a lot of companies once they released it on Wii/Wii U they kinda washed their hands of retro games and moved on. However, I noticed something interesting with the Switch - with this barrier to entry now gone, publishers were now free to release their games on the Switch without any real Nintendo branding like Virtual Console.

I’ve been intentionally adding as many Retro titles/bundles on my timeline as I can as I wanted to illustrate that this system is infinitely better as it is now. For example, we saw four! separate Mega Man bundles released on the Switch (and eventually other platforms) in the form of the Legacy collection. For 40-50 dollars you get all the Mega Man or Mega Man X titles in one package vs paying 5-10 dollars for each individual title over time. Plus, this shows Capcom directly that gamers want these retro collections. I think the first and second year of the Switch was crucial to prove this point. Even Square Enix made a huge announcement that they were going to commit to releasing their old titles on modern platforms due to the popularity of Romancing SaGa remasters and the Collection of Mana collections. Which, speaking of they started a trend that also continues to this day which made me pretty happy as someone who grew up playing English translated games back in the day - Square Enix paid to have older SNES titles re-released on Switch in English…stuff we never got in the states and it pretty much started with Romancing SaGa 2 (which I posted my first look at the upcoming remake so definitely check that out as well!) and we are still getting re-released titles to this day. Just off the top of my head I recall we got Trials of Mana (originally Seiken Densetsu 3), pretty much every Romancing SaGa title, Front Mission 2, and Live a Live.

Going back to the NSO front itself - Nintendo has released quite a decent selection of games over time and it’s still being supported this late into the systems life cycle. I know with Wii/Wii U the selection started waning over time due to lack of demand for those titles as the systems died off. With the rumor of the next gen Switch being backwards compatible - that means all of these great titles will more than likely continue to be available on the next system and Nintendo may even add more available systems to NSO since the next console will have more firepower behind it. As I continue this retrospective, I really want to drive home the effect that Nintendo had on the retro game revival and while I know a lot of these titles hit other systems, time and time again I’ve seen reports that they sell better on the Switch by a large margin (with Playstation def coming in second).

Other Thoughts…

While doing research for this, I found that the available games almost tripled in the second year that the Switch was available - I think while a lot of developers signed on for Nintendo’s new system when it first came out, I know there was a lot of hesitation due to the failure of Wii U. I feel like by the second year a lot of those fears started to dissipate and a lot of developers were all in on the system. We started to see more and more “miracle” ports as time went on (with way more happening later on in it’s life cycle ….but we will get there) which really went to show that just because they chose a less powerful processor out of the gate - that didn’t mean they still couldn’t compete. With that being said - here’s the timeline!

Timeline

January 2018

January 11th

Nintendo Direct Mini
The World Ends with You - Final Remix -
Kirby Star Allies
Hyrule Warriors Definitive
Mario Tennis Aces
Payday 2
DKC: Tropical Freeze
Dark Souls Remastered

January 18th

Darkest Dungeon is released

January 23rd

Lost Sphere is released

January 25th

Celeste is released

February 2018

February 1st

Night in the Woods is released

February 8th

Crypt of the Necrodancer is released

February 9th

Dragon Quest Builders is released

February 16th

Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 are released

March 2018

March 8th

Nintendo Direct
3DS
WarioWare Gold
Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey
Detective Pikachu + amiibo
Luigi's Mansion

Switch
Okami HD
Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido
Octopath Traveler
Dark Souls Amiibo
Undertale
First Super Smash Bros Ultimate Trailer (Same year release)

March 9th

Flinthook is released

March 12th

v5.0.0 is released

• Register FB/Twitter Followers

• 24 User Icons

• Faster download process from PC + Smart Device

• Notifications for Pre-orders

March 16th

Kirby Star Allies is released

March 20th

Shantae and the Pirates Curse is released

Nindies Showcase
Mark of the Ninja: Remastered
LUMINES: REMASTERED
The Messenger

April 2018

April 24th

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

April 26th

Korg Gadget

April 27th

Nintendo Labo: Toy-Con 01 (Variety)

Nintendo Labo: Toy-Con 02 (Robot)

Just a quick aside - Nintendo Labo was a fascinating experiment in using the Nintendo Switch for more than just traditional based controls. They wanted to add a bit of “STEM” type activity to the Switch in only the way Nintendo could and while a lot of people don’t talk about Labo today - I think it was a pretty unique concept at a time when other console manufacturers were doing same old same old. This won’t be the last time we hear from Labo either..

May 2018

May 4th

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is released

May 18th

Hyrule Warriors Definitive Collection is released

May 22nd

Mega Man Legacy Collection is released

May 24th

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is released

May 29th

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is released

Yoku’s Island Express is released

May 30th

Pokemon Quest is released

June 2018

June 8th

Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido is released

June 11th

Fallout Shelter is released

June 12th

Fornite is released

Hollow Knight is released

Nintendo Direct: E3 2018
DAEMON X MACHINA
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna - The Golden Country
Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Eevee
Poke Ball Plus
Super Mario Party
Fire Emblem Three Houses
Fortnite
Overcooked! 2
Hollow Knight
Update about Smash Bros

June 22nd

Mario Tennis Aces is released

June 28th

Inside is released

Limbo is released

June 29th

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is released

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is released

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is released

July 2018

July 13th

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is released

Octopath Traveler is released

July 24th

Mega Man X Legacy Collection is released

August 2018

August 2nd

Salt and Sanctuary is released

Picross S2 is released

August 7th

Dead Cells is released

Overcooked! 2 is released

August 8th

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Direct

This direct gave more details about the game including new characters and stages as well as the introduction to Echo fighters.

August 9th

Okami HD is released

August 28th

The Walking Dead Telltale Games Series is released

Into the Breach is released

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is released

August 29th

Mobile Direct: Dragalia Lost

Note: I added this Direct as I believe adding all of the different Mobile game directs are important pieces of the Nintendo Switch puzzle. It was at this time frame that they really branched out to platforms that weren’t their own and it’s interesting to look back at this point in Nintendo’s history as a sort of snapshot of the time. Also - this game is no longer up. They shuttered it in November of 2022.

August 30th

The Messenger is released

September 2018

September 6th

Hyper Lighter Drifter is released

September 13th

Nintendo Direct
Luigi's Mansion 3
Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn
Mega Man 11
Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle
New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe
Katamari Damacy REROLL
Nintendo Switch Online + NES Controllers
Diablo III: Eternal Collection
Little Town Hero (GameFreak non-Pokemon Project)
Yoshi's Crafted World
Civ VI
Starlink: Battle for Atlas
FF Crystal Chronicles Remastered
FFXV Pocket
World of FF Maxima
Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon EVERY BUDDY!
FF XII Zodiac Age
FFVII, IX, X/X-2
Smash Ultimate Bundle (Nintendo Switch w/Dock, JoyCons, and Game)
Animal Crossing first look

September 14th

Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition is released

Nintendo Labo: Toy-Con 03 (Vehicle) is released

Note: See told you we weren’t done with Labo. This one was pretty good too as you got to do a variety of vehicle related mini games. There’s still one more Labo just over the horizon though…

September 18th

Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle is released

Undertale is released

v6.0.0 is released

• Nintendo Switch Online improvement

• Cloud backup for Save Data

• Play digital content on non-primary consoles

September 19th

Nintendo Switch Online - NES makes it’s debut with 20 titles:
Balloon Fight
Baseball
Donkey Kong
Double Dragon
Dr. Mario
Excitebike
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Gradius
Ice Climber
Ice Hockey
The Legend of Zelda
Mario Bros.
Pro Wrestling
River City Ransom
Soccer
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Tecmo Bowl
Tennis
Yoshi

September 25th

South Park: The Stick of Truth is released

September 28th

Dragon Ball FighterZ is released

October 2018

October 2nd

Mega Man 11 is released

October 5th

Super Mario Party is released

October 10th

NSO Update:
The Legend of Zelda SP
NES Open Tournament Golf
Solomon’s Key
Super Dodge Ball

October 12th

The World Ends with You -Final Remix- is released

October 16th

Starlink: Battle for Atlas is released

October 19th

Dark Souls Remastered is released

November 2018

November 1st

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Direct

Last direct before release - goes over more characters and talks about the DLC in development

November 2nd

Diablo III: Eternal Collection is released

Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum n’ Fun! is released

November 5th

Moonlighter is released

November 6th

Rogue Legacy is released

World of Final Fantasy: Maxima is released

November 14th

NSO Update:
Gradius SP
Metroid
Mighty Bomb Jack
Twinbee

November 16th

Civilization VI is released

SNK 40th Anniversary Collection is released

Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee is released

November 20th

Warframe is released

December 2018

December 6th

Sega Genesis Collection is released

December 7th

Katamari Damacy REROLL is released (ouch)

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is released

We’ve finally reached the part where Smash is released - Smash once again blew up the game industry due to the fact that “Everyone is Here” where every single character ever introduced into Smash is added to the roster and if that wasn’t enough there were TONS of DLC characters released (with their own Amiibos!) with some pretty insane surprises which I’ll add to these timelines as well due to their significance. These characters were often looked forward to just as much as any other game release with rumors and leaks abound as they got closer and closer to release. Each of these DLC fighters often if not always got a special video from series creator Masahiro Sakurai as he dived into the unique aspects of the DLC character along with their stage - these were always entertaining to watch as he is clearly a hardcore gamer and would often give interesting trivia and tidbits about the character in question. However, as enormous as Smash was on release and how important it continued to be - there were plenty more games of equal if not more importance to come depending on your view point. Stay tuned for 2019 as we continue to dig into the history of the Switch and it’s releases!

December 12th

NSO Update:
Adventures of Lolo
Dr. Mario SP
Metroid SP
Ninja Gaiden
Wario’s Woods

December 13th

Sega Ages: Phantasy Star is released

December 17th

Firewatch is released

December 27th

Indie World - last direct of the year, but no footage could be found

Final Tallies for 2018

Total number of Western releases: 1085

Total number of OS updates: 8

Total number of Nintendo Directs: 10

Total number of NSO Updates:

• NES: 33

The first thing is that the game does a good job of explaining the apps purpose and how to play the TCG. You get 2 free packs a day to open, however you can earn or buy hourglasses to get more packs right away. Coming from Live this was a big change. It took forever to earn anything in Live unless you played tons and tons of games. However, in Pocket I probably opened 20 or so packs on the first day without busting a sweat.

One cool thing is the app is really going out of its way to show off your collection. Theres only one expansion at the moment, Genetic Apex, but depending on which pack style you open - will depend on what cards you get. For example in the Pikachu pack, you can open a Pikachu EX. There's a little window on the booster selection screen that tells you what cards you have a chance to get to help make your decision a bit more informed. After selecting and opening a pack they get added to your card Dex which is basically a way to see what cards you own from the set overall. You can get duplicates to help fill out your decks. Speaking of...

There are battles in this game but they are incredibly simplified. I feel like they are going for the Marvel Snap demographic with how much they simplified it. There's no energy cards and you play until three Pokemon are knocked out. But Justin, you may be asking, how does energy work? You get one random energy every turn depending on what your Pokemon need and as a result it helps speed up rounds dramatically. Even with all this simplification - I still found it to be a lot of fun to play. The other thing is you only make 20 card decks instead of 60. This was kind of a bummer but at the same time it makes you really be intentional with your decks. Overall, the battles themselves are still fun and still feel like the Pokemon TCG. I feel like this makes it easy to play a lot of games quickly.

There are a ton of missions that help unlock all sorts of things. One aspect I enjoyed was that when you pull certain cards you earn a rental deck with that card so that you can try a deck with it for a limited amount of times. If you like the deck, after collecting all of the cards in the deck you unlock the deck list so you can make it anytime you want. Another thing with the missions is you can unlock cosmetics or shop tokens to buy cosmetics like play mats, sleeves, and coins. I feel like some of the unlockables are expensive but since you're earning them I guess it evens out.

A couple other unlockables are new binder covers and slabs. You can actually make binders of cards to show off to friends or the public. This goes for favorited cards in "slabs" as well. You can put up to 15 cards in a binder to show off but only 1 in a slab and you can pin these to your profile. It appears there's going to be trading but this feature wasn't live yet when I was playing. Finally there's a thing called wonder pick where you pick a card from another players pack to keep and you can send thanks to give the player tickets. I wasn't able to unlock this feature or tell how I could offer my own packs - I may have missed the tutorial for it or it may come at a certain level.

Speaking of, you have levels on your account to help unlock things. I believe binders were at level 6 and battles at level 3 or 4. It helps ease you into each aspect of the game over time and I'm fine with this. You can exp from a lot of different sources like opening packs and the like. If you open enough packs you can get pack points which can be turned in for a specific card with each card costing a certain number of points based on rarity. The higher the rarity the more it costs. You can also use shinedust from opening packs and winning matches to unlock a gold shimmer on your cards. This isn't a foiling as you can open foil cards in packs but its own type of cosmetic with each card requiring a certain number of dust and extra cards to make. The most interesting type of card is the immersion card as it basically lets you "see inside" the card with new artwork detailing a scene involving that pokemon. There's 4 I believe at launch, Pikachu, Charizard, Mewtwo, and after completing certain missions, Mew.

Overall I think this has a place and due to it being simplified and a huge emphasis on the cards, I think I'd probably wind up playing this way more than Live over time. It comes out October 30th, so definitely give it a shot when it comes out to see if it's right for you. Let me know if you're interested in playing against me and I'll drop my code!

Can you believe the Nintendo Switch has been out for 7 years already? It feels like yesterday that I saw the reveal trailer and while I initially had mixed feelings after coming off the Wii U, I was hopeful since they showed Skyrim and a host of other third party games and for a brief moment I thought that Nintendo might get back to their Super Nintendo supremacy days - and the next 7 years proved that this was way more than a fleeting thought. The purpose of these articles is to look back at the Switch year by year and see what games did well, what the OS looked like over time, as well as seeing the evolution of Nintendo Directs and other things at the time. I want to create a kind of timeline that is easily followed so that we can see the evolution of this incredible console over time. The Switch grew to be one of my favorite consoles of all time, despite it's lower power in a time we were seeing advancements from Microsoft and Sony to really push graphical horsepower, however the Switch still came out with a lot of interesting game projects and third party offerings despite it's limitations.

To start with, the Nintendo Switch reveal came in October 2016 and I remember at the time not knowing how to take what I was being shown. It looked truly revolutionary with the ability to not only play it at home with the dock but also take it on the go with handheld mode. The Joy-cons looked like an interesting way to play game with the motion controls built into the Joy-cons and they really drove home the idea of the new HD-Rumble which will be mentioned a lot throughout this retrospective.

Starting at the beginning of the year there were two Nintendo Directs leading up to the release of the Nintendo Switch:

January 18th, 2017

Nintendo Direct - Fire Emblem (discusses Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia(Nintendo 3DS, Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo Switch) , and Fire Emblem Heroes (Mobile))

February 28th, 2017

Nindies Showcase - Reveal of some Indie titles coming to Nintendo Switch (Highlights include: SteamWorld Dig 2, Yooka-Laylee, Overcooked!, Shakedown: Hawaii, WarGroove, and Stardew Valley)

March 3rd, 2017

On this date, the Nintendo Switch was released. Some of the games that were released on this day were:

• 1-2 Switch

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Also available on Wii U)

While those were the marquee titles that were released to help show off the capabilities of the Switch, there were a few games that came out at this time to show other aspects:

• Snipperclips

• Super Bomberman R

• I am Setsuna (Square Enix’s first release)

• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove

There was also a day one update that included:

Ver 2.0.0 Update

• eShop access

• Online Play

• Friends Lists

• News

• Ability to claim My Nintendo Points

April 12th, 2017

Nintendo Direct - Highlights include: Ever Oasis (3DS), Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (3DS), ARMS (Switch), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch), Minecraft (Switch), Sonic Mania/Sonic Forces (Switch), Splatoon 2 (Switch)

April 28th, 2017

The biggest event for this month is the long awaited release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

May 12, 2017

Minecraft is released on the Nintendo Switch platform.

May 17th, 2017

Nintendo Direct - ARMS

June 6th, 2017

Pokemon Direct - Pokken Tournament DX on Nintendo Switch, Ultra Sun and Moon & Gold/Silver on 3DS

June 13th - June 15th, 2017

E3 was held

June 13th, 2017

Nintendo Spotlight E3 2017 - Highlights include: ARMS, Rocket League, Pokken Tournment DX, Splatoon 2, FIFA 18, Kirby Star Allies, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

June 16th, 2017

Arms is released to the Nintendo Switch.

June 19th, 2017

Ver 3.0.0 Update

• Find Controllers Function

• Change System Volume via Quick Menu

• Controller Updates

July 6th, 2017

Nintendo Direct - Splatoon 2

July 21st, 2017

Splatoon 2 is released

August 15th, 2017

Sonic Mania is released

August 29th, 2017

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is released

August 30th, 2017

Nindies Showcase - Highlights include: Super Meat Boy Forever, Shovel Knight: King of Cards, Golf Story, and Travis Strikes Again

September 13th, 2017

Nintendo Direct - Highlights include: Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions (3DS), Layton's Mystery Journey (3DS), Mario Party: The Top 100 (3DS), Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS), ATLUS RPGs (The Alliance Alive, Etrian Odyssey V, Strange Journey Redux, Radiant Historia) (3DS), Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Special Edition Version & Pro Controller (Switch), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Switch), DOOM & Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Switch), Dragon Quest Builders (Switch), Kirby Star Allies (Switch), and Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

September 22nd, 2017

Pokken Tournament DX is released

September 28th, 2017

The highly anticipated indie title, Golf Story is released

Picross S is released

October 5th, 2017

Stardew Valley is released

October 18th, 2017

Ver 4.0.0 Update

• Video Capture

• Preordering opens on eShop

• Wii U GameCube Adapter Support

• USB Headset Support

October 20th, 2017

Fire Emblem Warriors is released

October 24th, 2017

Mobile Direct - Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (Editor note: This is being discontinued on November 28th, 2024 - so this existed during the entire Switch life cycle)

October 27th, 2017

Super Mario Odyssey is released

November 7th, 2017

Sonic Forces is released and fails to reach the success of previously released Sonic Mania just two months earlier

Nintendo Direct - Xenoblade Chronicles 2

November 10th, 2017

Doom (2017) is released and begins ZeniMax’s partnership with Nintendo that continues to this day

November 17th, 2017

Bethesda releases the anticipated title Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

December 1st, 2017

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is released

December 15th, 2017

Romancing SaGa 2 is released - marking the first time that Square Enix has brought a previously Japanese only retro game to Western markets fully translated.

Final Tallies for 2017:

Total number of Western releases: 323

Total number of OS updates: 11

Total number of Nintendo Directs: 12

A lot happened the first year the Nintendo Switch was out that we take for granted. We can see in full display that third parties started giving the Switch and as time went on that would be more and more true as third parties start porting their games from other systems over en masse. We also see that the Nintendo 3DS wasn’t actually removed from the game at this point and so Nintendo kind of had two handheld systems working in tandem to provide two different styles of games to consumers at once before they eventually went all in on the Nintendo Switch as their main home and handheld console.

In 2018, we see a lot of huge releases as some of the biggest indie games get released, it’s also a huge year for retro titles on the Nintendo Switch and towards the end of the year we get quite possibly the biggest game to release on the platform - so stay tuned for part 2 as we examine the timeline for the Switch in 2018!