Nintendo's New Generation

An Incoming Switch To New Hardware

This is the non-fiction ‘Warthog Blog’ section of the Warthog Report, where I write about different subjects as they interest me. And as a Nintendo fan, a certain piece of recent news has definitely caught my interest.

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After what felt like years of furious spinning from the rumor mills, Nintendo has announced its next console, the Switch 2. The reveal itself was surprisingly barebones, essentially just showing off how the console looks and a bit of gameplay footage and showing a date for further information. But I think about Nintendo a lot, so even this has my mind spinning.

The reason I like Nintendo hardware is because it’s unique, it pushes the boundaries, it does things other systems can’t until people start copying it. So a straight upgrade to the Switch doesn’t excite me. But what does excite me is a new generation of Nintendo games, since new hardware means Nintendo will bring out its heavy hitters once more.

According to the leaks, which appear to be confirmed now, the Switch 2 does have at least one notable new feature. The new joy-cons will reportedly be able to work like a mouse when placed down. On one hand it’s not terribly exciting as an innovative new feature, just mimicking what PCs have had for ages. On the other hand, Nintendo’s main development teams being able to design for mouse controls does excite me, I like what they do when let loose on new controller set ups.

Since this is based off unofficial information it’s hard to get too deep into it. I’ve been annoyed by incessant talk of the Switch 2 so I haven’t followed the leaks, but after seeing people talk about the mouse mode following the reveal, I did take a moment to review the evidence, which shows that the new joy-cons contain the same technology used for mice and are packed like mice. Considering this is Nintendo, I’m not entirely ruling out possible oddball uses of that technology beyond a simple cursor. It all depends on that next wave of info.

So it’s time to step into an area that feels a little easier to speculate on, the games. Starting with the game shown off in the reveal video, a brand new Mario Kart, the first proper new entry in the series since Mario Kart 8 released in 2014. With a gap that long the series has come to an odd place, since this new title will be following up a free to play phone game and an expanded port.

My hope is that after the massive amount of courses Mario Kart 8 ended up with, this game will do something different to stand out. There are already some changes people have observed in the brief glimpses of footage we’ve gotten, which would appear to be in line with that.

First, the number of racers has doubled from twelve to twenty four. This means races will become far more chaotic. There was a glimpse of an odd hovering orange item in a side path on the new course as well, looking like something a racer could pick up. This is most likely tied to some new mechanic. The prior Mario Karts have generally made their new selling point focused on kart selection or course design, like custom karts or antigravity, so something tied to a new form of power up would be novel.

Moving to the realm of things that I think would be neat, I hope the concept of reverse tracks from the phone game is brought in. Playing a course in reverse feels different in a way that simply mirroring it doesn’t. It can also help the selection of courses feel a bit bigger if each has two versions.

Mario spin-off rosters are also a subject I have oddly strong opinions on purely because of how poorly they’ve been done. There was an entire row on the character select screen on the original version of Mario Kart 8 dedicated to baby versions of the cast, and they weren’t even the only repeats. I’m hoping we can move past the period of aggressively bland Mario spin-off rosters and return to something that actually draws on the long history of fun and weird characters in Mario games.

Unfortunately people already spotted all of the baby characters in the Mario Kart footage. So based on trends I’m preparing myself mentally to endure the debut of Lime Luigi and Baby Pauline. I don’t care that much about who specifically gets added, I just want actual distinct characters instead of an alternate version of someone who is already playable.

Also while Link is my go to character in Mario Kart 8, I don’t like having crossover characters in. There’s already a video game series for Nintendo characters competing with each other, let Mario Kart be about Mario.

On that note, there are also the other series that Nintendo keeps on a release schedule of once per system. I love Smash Bros, it’s my favorite video game series, I think about it constantly, and I live in fear of the inevitable next Smash Bros. I am a veteran of the flame wars around character speculation for the series, I can’t endure this again. So when it happens I’m retreating from all Smash related fandom spaces.

Animal Crossing is far less intense for me, even if the fandom did get notoriously crazy around the release of New Horizons. Which also means I don’t have that many hopes or expectations for the next one beyond that it will happen at some point. I hope the equipment durability goes away, that was annoying and didn’t add much.

Then there’s the Mario Sports, which so far have stuck to each sport only getting one showing per system. They’re a safe bet for filling out the selection of games for the console. Now that I think about it, it has been a little bit since the last Mario sports game. Maybe one is being readied for the Switch 2, though I wouldn’t put money on it being in the first batch of releases.

A new Pokémon is also inevitable but I don’t want to acknowledge the current state of Pokémon, to me it ended on the 3DS with Ultra Sun/Moon. Splatoon also doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon, so I expect that to continue into the next console generation.

Legend of Zelda is another one where I don’t even need to say that it’s getting a new game for the Switch 2 at some point. I think like Smash and Mario Kart it’s in somewhat of an interesting place after Breath of the Wild reinvented 3D Zelda and then Echoes of Wisdom took that philosophy to the 2D games.

Tears of the Kingdom was a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, so naturally it had the same massive scope and expanded on it, partially because it could reuse the same world. What about the next 3D Zelda game to have its own version of Hyrule? The non-linear design is likely here to stay, for better and worse, but I wonder if the next Zelda will have quite that large of a world after people reported feeling worn out by Tears of the Kingdom.

As for what’s less guaranteed and purely a matter of speculation, I’ve seen some be hopeful that after F-Zero 99 we may see a brand new full fledged F-Zero. I don’t quite see it that way. To me, the Switch 2 reveal marks the point F-Zero and the other Nintendo racers missed their best chance to come back.

On the Switch the lack of a truly new Mario Kart felt like an opening for Nintendo’s dormant non Mario Kart racers to potentially return. But now is a terrible time for the likes of F-Zero, Wave Race, or 1080 to make their return, because Mario Kart is back. And now that we have a precedent of Mario Kart games with DLC, I don’t think we’re seeing anything of any other racers until all the DLC for the new Mario Kart is wrapped up. Why release a Nintendo racing game when the Nintendo racing game is still in the limelight?

The mouse mode also has every fan of a DS or 3DS game that used the stylus in a way similar to a mouse hopeful that this means their championed game will return. I’m also hopeful for quite a few of those titles, and it would make sense to use established titles to show off new controls, like the New Play Control rereleases for the Wii. But I don’t think it’s the slam dunk guarantee people (including me) want it to be.

In terms of titles that debuted on the Switch, I think ARMS stands a decent chance of becoming a minor member of Nintendo’s once per system contingent. Despite what oddly dedicated haters try to say, ARMS did well for the small pond of brand new fighting games.

Ring Fit Adventure was a massive hit for the Switch, but I’m not sure if Nintendo will go for a sequel when it requires its own accessory (meaning a sequel would need versions with and without it) and had being an exercise game released during the pandemic to back it up, which can’t be ethically replicated. LABO felt like a fun one off, and I hope the new system showcase is something better than 1-2 Switch.

With that I feel I’ve come to the end of what I can say with some confidence about the incoming Switch 2 era of Nintendo with the minimal information we have. I’m not terribly sold on the Switch 2 itself as a piece of hardware, but I have some faith the system itself may win me over once there’s more than morsels of info about it.