Switch 2 Seems Like What I Thought It Would Be (Cool)
The lead-up to Switch 2’s launch really reawakened the Nintendo fanboy in me. I love all kinds of video games, and last year I didn’t play my Switch much at all, but with a new console coming out, it was like the kid who obsessed over every trace of a Wii 2 rumor back in 2011 never left.
So anyway, I have the Switch 2 now. No one really needs my impressions, but I am going to give them anyway just for the fun of it—which is more or less the reason for every post I write on here anyway.
Early in 2023, I said (like a number of people were saying) “Nintendo should make a Switch 2 rather than something totally new.” This year, they announced they were doing just that, and I said “Hey that’s what I wanted.” In April we learned a bunch of details about Switch 2, and the specs seemed pretty decent. Now that I have the console, I can say: it lives up to my expectations. Which is good news!
Preorders
Honestly I didn’t bother trying to get a preorder immediately—except, the night after preorders began and quickly sold out, a certain retailer opened up their preorders once again, and seeing this, I thought, “What if…?” The site was busy and kept giving error messages, but eventually I got through. On launch day, people reported that this retailer, which was having drivers deliver from their local stores, was giving people Coke and Pringles as a bonus—but why didn’t I get any?! Still, I got the console before 7 AM on June 5th, so that was the important thing, and I already had Coke Zero on hand anyway.
I didn’t actually preorder the bundle that had Mario Kart, mainly because when I was trying to get through on the site, I was able to get through first with the non-bundle edition and just thought, “Yeah might as well, who knows if I’ll ever have luck with the bundle?”
I thought about just waiting a while to get Mario Kart, but honestly, as launch approached, I really wanted it. It is a very expensive game, but I found out I had a gift card, so at least there was that.
I ended up going to a late-night launch event, not to get my Switch 2, but to pick up the game. Yeah, that felt kinda goofy, but how often do we get the chance to go to such events these days? They rarely happen anymore. I also decided I didn’t really want to wait until the next day, because the store wouldn’t open until 10 AM (unless I went to Target or something, but I didn’t have a gift card there!), and then I would probably have a Switch 2 early in the morning, but no Mario Kart. So to make the most of the day, I wanted to have the game ready right away.
However, I did not realize just how many people would be lining up at the store to get Switch 2. I scoped the scene out early and the line for non-preorders was already wrapped around the building at 7 PM, which was understandable. The preorder line was almost empty at that point. When I came back a bit before 10, both lines wrapped around the store, the ends nearly meeting each other. Alright, so this wasn’t going to be so quick after all. But, at least I got to witness the excitement of strangers getting their Switch 2s with my own eyes. I gotta say, the store had way more stock for non-preorders than I thought they would. It seems like Nintendo was able to get a lot of supply (actually, after I started writing this, Nintendo announced they sold “over 3.5 million units” in the first four days, so yeah, they really prepared a lot of stock). Anyway, even though it took a while, I walked out of the store with a copy of Mario Kart in my hands, which would keep me from having to wait on a download the next day.
Setup
Like I said earlier, the console arrived before 7 AM. As I had noticed the night before, it’s a smaller box than I expected.
Consoles aren’t exactly “plug it in, put in a game, turn it on, and start playing” these days, but setup wasn’t too bad. I had my Switch OLED there to get my stuff transferred.
Best part about the setup process: there’s background music.
My complaint about it: I want more options when transferring. The process is somewhat similar to when you get a new iPhone, except I recall iPhone giving me more options. I didn’t really need every Switch game I had downloaded to start downloading on Switch 2. I’m not sure why I had to transfer every user, too. The Switch to Switch OLED transfer didn’t make me do that, as far as I remember. And I really don’t get why it was necessary to transfer all my screenshots from the microSD card. If I really was gonna miss those, I could just transfer them to my computer. Ah well, they’re on Switch 2 now.
I did have an error at one point, which made me nervous, but it was probably just because my Switch OLED wasn’t close enough to the Switch 2, so I moved it closer. Overall, not a bad setup.
The UI
Once setup finishes, you’ll be greeted to a familiar sight. The menus of Switch 2 are just like Switch 1, but in 4K, so they no longer are so muddy. They also feature rounded rectangles instead of silly old jagged regular rectangles. Exciting, I know.
But Nintendo did get a bit more playful with the sound effects this time, I have to say. For example, when waking up the system, if you press one of the Z buttons three times, the noise it makes is funny! Also, all the menu options at the bottom of the home screen make a different sound. I know some people want background music the whole time but this stuff is both minimalist and playful!
Oh, there is another playful element I love: when you wake the docked console from sleep, you hear a little melody. Love that.
Learning about “Upgrade Packs”
Now that my Switch 2 was ready to use, I cancelled the downloads of stuff I didn’t intend to play and prepared for the next generation of gaming—by which I mean playing Breath of the Wild.
Getting to the Switch 2 Edition of Switch 1 games could be easier, I think. At first what you’ll have is just the regular Switch edition. Now, Switch 1 games will often run better on Switch 2 without any software patches being applied (which is pretty cool!), but I wonder—if someone who doesn’t even know about the upgrade edition wants to play Breath of the Wild, is there some obvious sign telling them about it? I didn’t see one. Regardless, after poking around, I ended up in the eShop. There you will find the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition for full price, as well as the upgrade pack for $10—but since it’s included with the online membership (with “expansion pack”), there was a button to just download it.
Once you get the upgrade pack, it replaces the Switch 1 version. There isn’t really an obvious distinction between Switch and Switch 2 games on the home screen, unlike PlayStation 5 which labels games with the black “PS4” or the white “PS5” as you select them. However, the icon for the game in this case does have the big “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” so that should make it clear enough—I’m just wondering if every Switch 2 game that’s also on Switch 1 plans to have that? I do like that the old Switch game just disappears though. It annoys me that my PS5 always brings up the PS4 version of Gran Turismo 7 because that’s the disc I have, even though I have the PS5 upgrade and am obviously going to play that version.
Anyway, the Switch 2 upgrade for Breath of the Wild started downloading. However, it was going to take a minute.
Mario Kart World
At this point I decided to grab the cartridge for Mario Kart World. I put it in and realized, “Aww heck yeah, no installation!” The cartridges are pretty fast, you see. It was a bit of a buzzkill moment when I was prompted to update the game when I clicked on it, however. But once I told the update to download before Breath of the Wild, it literally only took a few seconds.
And then I experienced Mario Kart World for the first time. And it was pretty magical. Nintendo had a lot of fun with this game, I gotta say.
When I saw the trailer for the game initially, I thought, “Well, in terms of graphics it doesn’t look that much better than Mario Kart 8.” That’s not to say I was disappointed by that, because the concept behind the game seemed awesome regardless of how it looked, and Mario Kart 8 is a lovely-looking game anyway. But you know, I had played some Mario Kart 8 on my TV a few days prior to Switch 2’s launch, and I think that prepared me to realize that Mario Kart World is actually a whole lot more impressive visually. Obviously there’s the sharpness—I don’t know if Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is 720p or 1080p, but World is definitely a higher resolution and it looks great on my TV. But beyond that, the lighting in World can be absolutely stunning. Nintendo got HDR up in here. Before the Switch 2 Direct we were questioning if they knew what that was. They put a photo mode in this game and I find myself wanting to use it during all sorts of random moments just because the colors are so beautiful. Plus, the animations are so fun and playful.
I had thought of “open world” as being Mario Kart World’s hook, but actually it’s more accurate to say that it’s one interconnected world, and being “open” is not exactly the main selling point. What I mean by that is, races are still the part of the game that are the most emphasized, but the races are different from previous games because they involve going from one course to another within the interconnected world. Free Roam is very much a part of the game, but the fact Nintendo put it in the bottom right corner of the main screen suggests they don’t consider it the main attraction.
Free Roam is appealing in the same way that realizing you could drive around Peach’s Castle in Mario Kart 64 is. It’s just cool to look at stuff in a video game world. But also, Free Roam has all these P-Switches, which give you extra challenges to complete. And there seems to be a lot of them.
Mostly I’ve been focusing on the races, though. I was surprised that Grand Prix is not the traditional “race around the course three laps” but incorporates the interconnected world. For all but the first race in each cup, you will spend a large portion of the race going to the next course, and finish with a lap at the actual course. These middle portions involve going straight a lot more than you normally do in Mario Kart, but a lot can happen during these portions. I love how supersized enemies will charge at you as you journey along the road. The straight sections are also the time to use the new movement options: you can charge up a jump, drive on walls, and grind on rails. I didn’t even know you could charge up a jump the first day I had the game, but it’s pretty important. Although the normal driving doesn’t feel too different from Mario Kart 8, these new mechanics do change up the game quite a bit.
The fact that there are 24 racers also means your rank can change incredibly quickly in either direction. It’s chaos. I feel like the CPU racers are a bit tougher than they were in 8, though that may be a matter of me needing to learn the game better.
There’s a brand new mode called Knockout Tour, where you try to win a number one victory royale by staying near the front of the pack as racers are eliminated in a series of checkpoints. It can be tough to win this mode, as it doesn’t really matter if you’re in first place most of the race if you mess up in the very end. You can get away with more mistakes in Grand Prix if your goal is just to finish first overall, I’d say (but if your goal is to get three stars then you’d better be good😤).
If you do want the traditional Mario Kart experience of racing a few laps around a track, mostly you gotta go to versus mode for that. You can select either a track, or one of the many routes between tracks. Even in this mode, I notice that a track like Peach Beach, which I know well from the Gamecube (and Wii), has been remixed into a course where the route changes a bit from lap to lap. Guess I’ll just play the original game if I really want the classic experience.
I kinda wish there was another set of Grand Prix that followed the traditional format, but it’s not that big of a deal. It makes more sense for the game to focus on its new ideas. But perhaps the game will get DLC, and who knows what that will bring?
One part of the game I am really excited about is the soundtrack. The music has a Smash Bros. Ultimate level of comprehensiveness, except it’s exclusively covering the Mario series—except it’s better than Smash because all of these are new arrangements—and not only that but all of them are actual live recordings and not MIDI, and they are performed by jazz fusion musicians who, in many tracks, just get to solo like madmen on top of these classic Mario tunes!!! And they got so many games represented here. I noticed there are several Mario Galaxy 2 tunes, which made me say, “So Nintendo hasn’t forgotten after all.”
So yeah I’m really into this game. I definitely played a decent amount of Mario Kart 8, both on Wii U and Switch, but I feel like since I was no longer technically a kid, local multiplayer wasn’t quite as fun as it used to be (and there were perhaps less opportunites for it) and I never fully embraced the singleplayer modes. I mean I got mirror mode unlocked and everything, don’t get me wrong, but I never finished it all the way. Maybe it’s just the launch hype, but I feel a determination to play the heck out of Mario Kart World, even just in singleplayer and online multiplayer.
Oh hey the Breath of the Wild Switch 2 Edition Finished Downloading by the way
Breath of the Wild on Switch 2 is so smooth that it makes me say “How is this the same game????” I mean I played so many hours of Breath of the Wild that it’s like… 30 FPS is how the game looks (at best). It’s one of those facts of life. So when I’m on Switch 2 and the animation for an enemy attacking me is buttery smooth 60 FPS it’s like “What is going on????”
(Switch 2 video capture is still 30 FPS so I would have to capture footage another way in order to show you).
So yeah I’m doing a replay of the game now. Just, you know, keeping it casual, not trying to get too obsessed.
The game also now connects with the Switch mobile app, I guess. I haven’t found any of those new notes from Zelda yet or whatever.
I haven’t jumped into Tears of the Kingdom just yet, but it seems like the upgrade has been amazing for that game too.
Gamecube is here
I’m pretty excited Gamecube games are here (if you have the $50/year membership). I’ve only tested Wind Waker so far because I know that game well and I’d rather wait to get the Gamecube controller they’re selling before I jump into something I haven’t played before.
Not much to say about it. It’s Wind Waker. It’s running at a higher resolution than it originally did, I guess. I’m glad it’s here.
I was disappointed to not see the Gamecube startup animation when I opened the app. Later I learned that it’s there, you just have to move the left control stick in any direction to see it. Cool! And that other essential Z-button easter egg is there too! (Hold R on a Switch controller to see it). I appreciate them for this.
Accessories?
I didn’t buy the new Pro controller or nothing. What’s great about Switch 2, though, is that the old Pro controller as well as the old Joy-Con can all be used. That’s one thing they’re doing that’s nicer than Sony, who insists you need a DualSense for all PS5 games, even if the game functionally doesn’t need its unique features at all and DualShock 4 would work fine. The only limitation I see with the old controllers is that you can’t wake up the console by pressing the home button, for whatever reason. It works with the new controllers, but otherwise you just gotta go press the power button on the system itself. It’s not that big of a deal.
The new Pro controller does have a headphone jack though so I do want it for that.
Hopefully I can get the Gamecube controller sooner or later.
Handheld mode?
This thing is beeg in comparison to the old Switch, though not as big as the Steam Deck. I find it less comfortable to hold than the original Switch as a result, but it’s not too bad.
The screen is LCD, so the colors aren’t as vivid as the Switch OLED (and the bezel is thicker too), but this doesn’t haunt me too much, because it still looks really good.
The magnet mechanism holding in the Joy-Con is clearly superior to the rails on the original Switch. When these new Joy-Con are on, you forget that they’re not actually permanently attached, while Joy-Con on the original Switch tended to seem slightly wobbly. And the way magnets click into place is so satisfying isn’t it? Any MacBook that has a MagSafe charger is proof of this.
The Age of Incremental Upgrades
Overall, I’m quite excited to have a Switch 2.
I know there was chatter a while back about “Why isn’t Nintendo creating something more unique?” but unless they had come up with a genuinely great idea, I don’t want them to just be different for the sake of being different. The Switch concept was good, and now we have a vastly improved version of it.
It is another example, of course, of a product that’s more iterative than innovative—which seems to be the vast majority of tech products today. I don’t see this as a result of people just not having good ideas anymore. Rather I think customers have products that meet their needs and then some, and no one’s come up with any radical new designs that would actually be improvements on the current ones.
The 2000s was the wild west of MP3 players and cell phones. But the touchscreen smartphone started to dominate at the end of the decade, and by the end of the 2010s, mostly the world had decided “a rectangular glass slab with a six-inch screen is pretty much all we need from these things.”
Meanwhile, advancements in computer chips don’t impress as much as they used to. This has been easy to see in video games, particularly with this most recent console generation.
We’re in an era of hardware where the potential for graphical fidelity is actually really high, but to truly reach that potential, it takes an incredibly high number of man-hours. The hardware itself isn’t the limiting factor. Rockstar Games recently released a new trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 with footage captured on PS5, and it looks gorgeous beyond anything we’ve seen in games before. The level of detail is astounding. But that game has been in development for so many years with an enormous staff. The budget has gotta be astronomical. Rockstar has the freedom to do it, though, because it’s almost a guarantee that when the game finally comes out, it’ll break all sorts of sales records and make the money back in no time.
I am glad that someone gets the chance to push graphics to that level, but developers who actually want to release more than two games in a decade have to find other ways to do things.
Yet I feel like some fans haven’t been able to see what’s happened here. The number of PS4 games releasing nowadays is pretty small, but for a while, people online were in dismay anytime a game was announced for both PS5 and PS4. “It’s not going to make full use of the current gen hardware!” they’d say. But maybe reaching the full potential of the hardware was never actually realistic to begin with.
I saw a post once that was wondering why no game has surpassed Red Dead Redemption 2 in visuals. I actually agree that no game has surpassed it—which is a little crazy, because that game came out in 2018. But it wasn’t raw computational power that gave us those visuals, it was Rockstar committing to realism like no one else has and employing thousands of people to make it happen (within the limitations of the hardware, of course).
But you know, Rockstar published a whole lot more games in the PS3 generation than they have since. So it’s quite a tradeoff.
Even if you aren’t Rockstar, nowadays it seems like most AAA games take around five years to make. Man, the original Uncharted released in 2007, and then the sequel was two years after that, and the third one was two years after that. It’d be kind of nice to go back to that sort of release schedule, wouldn’t it?
And what you have to ask about putting so much time and effort into graphics is if it’s even worth it. On the one hand, cutting-edge graphics are very cool. I like looking at them. On the other hand, fun games are fun even if the graphics aren’t impressive. Every time this topic comes up, I start telling everyone to look at Ryu ga Gotoku Studio and learn from how they do things, but do they listen…? [incoherent mumbling]
Well I tell you what, maybe Nintendo was correct back when they took a left turn and made the Wii. They knew that competing for the best graphics in the next decade or two was going to be an expensive commitment with diminishing returns. And in the short term, yeah, the Wii’s graphics often looked lame. Sure, the jump from PS2 to PS3 might not have been as crazy as the previous one, but that hardware still could do a lot of stuff Wii couldn’t. But now we’ve been in the PS5 generation for over 4 years, and guess what? The returns, um, have definitely diminished. You can take PS4 games and make them sharper, add some new lighting, and yeah, to an avid gamer, the improvements are noticeable. If you really want to impress people beyond that, well, refer to all that stuff I said two minutes ago about Rockstar. But aside from that, now it’s like Nintendo’s hardware has almost caught up to PlayStation. I mean, it hasn’t literally—I’m sure PS5 is more powerful than Switch 2 by quite a bit—but it finally feels like it’s close enough. Because the gap between PS4 and PS5 just doesn’t feel that big. And if Switch 2 is somewhere in between those two consoles, then that’s pretty good.
And to be clear, I love my PS5. But I’ve always thought of it as a much-improved version of a PS4 rather than some futuristic mind-blowing console that enables gaming experiences never before seen. And improving on PS4 is a great thing, because PS4 was pretty dang fantastic. That console had Persona 5 before everyone else (well, PS3 had it too). It had Yakuza 6. It had a lot of really fancy-looking games like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Death Stranding and God of War.
Now, Switch 1? I appreciate all that it did for us. It had one of the best game libraries Nintendo’s ever had. But the limitations of the tech were sort of getting distracting after eight years.
So Switch 2? Yes it’s an incremental upgrade in many ways. But going from a 2015-era tablet to a much newer one is actually kind of crazy. Yeah, we’ve seen graphics better than this on other hardware. But a new Mario Kart looking as good as it does is pretty special. Breath of the Wild looking buttery smooth is super neat. And Nintendo is going to make some other cool games that will look and run better than what we’ve seen from them recently.
It is ironic that I complained about games taking a long time to make when Nintendo spent an incredibly long time on Tears of the Kingdom. But that wasn’t for graphics. That was because they came up with some crazy ideas. And I think them getting to do that is probably good for the industry. I actually hope they try a “back to basics” approach for the next 3D Zelda though, because frankly, I just don’t want to wait that long. But other than that, I don’t think Nintendo is going to get super obsessed with realism (crazy prediction, I know), so I’m not really worried about all their games taking five years to make. Some will though.
I am optimistic about third-party games. If so many PS5 games could scale down to PS4, third parties will definitely be able to bring them to Switch 2 as well. It’s just a question of demand, I think. But if sales stay strong, third parties are definitely going to want to get in on this console.
So, is Switch 2 a familiar experience? Yes. Like most tech products now, you buy it because it’s an improvement on what you had before, but it’s not something totally fresh and novel. In 2017, it was pretty neat to be able to say “I’m playing Mario Kart 8 on this handheld device and I didn’t even have to plug in a console!” But soon that just became normal. But despite the familiarity, I still think the console is exciting. It’s fun to use, but more importantly, it will hopefully become the home of some great new games in the next decade.