Nintendo Switch 2 (5th June 2025)

[Dcubed]

42 minutes ago, Julius said:

The Switch 2 Experience was awesome, just on my way back now – a bit too tired to string together any meaningful cohesive thoughts, but I was busy taking notes of my time and opinions at the event, so to do them justice I'll share those thoughts tomorrow. 

For now, though, @Dcubed @Glen-i @Ugh first aid (and anyone else attending tomorrow?), just thought I'd share some things that'll hopefully make your day just a little bit easier...

Nice-to-know

• I couldn't find this anywhere before the event, so had to keep my eyes peeled for a big ol' weirdly fonted '2' and that unmistakable Nintendo red – but check-in is in Hall N5, which is on the left side of the main corridor when entering through the Excel pyramid entrance. It's kind of hard to miss, honestly, but it's nice to know where you're heading!
• You'll get given a wrist band and wait in one of three lanes in a pretty hilariously barren hall while they show the Switch 2 Direct again. 
• When you walk in there's somewhere to check-in bags on the right, and a super brief bag check by security. 
• So, my Experience was set to start at 14:00, but the FAQs make it clear to not arrive more than 15 minutes before your start time – yet, arriving promptly at 13:45, I found that there was an entire lane already taken up, which promptly entered at 14:00 on the dot! So I reckon you could probably start queuing around 20-30 minutes ahead of time. 
• Don't worry if you end up not going in at your assigned start time on the dot – if you're in one of the later lanes, you'll have a different band to the others, and they let you in as part of a wave every 20 minutes. You'll get the full 4 hours either way – so I was in there from 14:20 to 18:20. 
• Controllers and Switch 2s, as you can imagine, are tied down through the entire hall...except for two, which are either side of a display case for all of the hardware arriving at launch. I think a whole bunch of people missed out on this. You can just ask the guys or gals to hold them to get a feel for the weight, and, obviously, *snap* those Joy-Con 2s off! Feels super solid, those things. They'll be watching you very intensely, like a hawk, while you *snap*, mind 
• Don't miss the little goodies to your right on your way out! 

 

The Games/Floor Plan

I've watched a couple of videos which showed some of the games which have been at these things, but I was still surprised by a couple of the games which were available to play today. It was a nice surprise for me, so I'll throw it in a spoiler tag so you can decide whether you want to know going in or not, but here's a full list of the games available and the floor plan for the event – which might make it a bit easier to plan your day or route around the floor, especially with a few of you going and likely wanting to check out different games! 

  Reveal hidden contents

(sorry you might need to zoom in!)

Might have been because I was in one of the later sessions, but I found the big ticket items - i.e. the Nintendo Switch 2 first-party newness - had a bit of a queue when I first walked in, which I didn't mind, but I could stroll right into the play areas and replay some of the big ticket games towards the end with no queue time. Pretty arguably the biggest ones there, too. YMMV, of course, but something to keep in mind! 

Hope that can help you plan your day just a little bit and that you guys have a great time 

Thanks for the heads up.  Very helpful!

[Julius]

Alright then, it's time to dig into my time at the Switch 2 Experience in London yesterday. Rather than structure it too keenly, I'm going to just walk through how the day went, the order I played the games in, and my thoughts on all of it as I went along, like a bit of a diary entry. 

So, while waiting in the queue to get in, they were playing the Switch 2 Direct up on a relatively small screen (considering the size of the hall) and it was all going smoothly...until Elden Ring got shown. Look, I know that game looked pretty scuffed in the trailer as it was, but parts of the screen gave out and so black bars covered it, which I found all kinds of hilarious – this persisted for almost the entire third-party segment before returning to normal later on. A coincidence or a bad omen, I wonder? 

Anyways, upon entering we were shuffled into what was essentially a warm-up room, with a lot of staff in Switch 2 shirts cheering as we came in. It was super awkward but did help to set the vibe for the day, so there was that! In this opening part of the Experience I got my hands on the first game of the day...

...Mario Kart World. I was attending solo and so was paired up with a stranger for a generic local co-op race in docked mode on a TV, turns out this guy in fact didn't have a Switch or much experience with Mario Kart, which I just thought was so interesting (and I kind of want to know what he played the rest of the day because of this).

Anyways, I myself don't have crazy amounts of experience with Mario Kart either - haven't played in a few years - so was mostly leaning on my many hours in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing on Wii and having checked the controls for MK8D before arriving at the event. I obviously picked Cow, and got to play with the Joy-Con 2s inserted in the grip like @BowserBasher asked about, and I can confirm it felt like a much more comfortable option vs the OG Switch Joy-Cons in the same setup, just because of the Joy-Cons being so much bigger this time around (if the original Joy-Cons didn't feel a bit toy-ish before, they certainly do now), but I would add the caveat that I'd still gladly take a Pro Controller over this setup, especially for longer play sessions; don't think I would run the same risk of cramping anymore with the Dog-Ears setup, though. 

The game played great, super smooth (as you'd expect from Mario Kart), holding R down allowed you to charge a higher jump which meant you could jump up onto rails and grind, unfortunately didn't find myself in a position with any walls to wall jump from! I ultimately came 2nd (beat the guy I got paired up with), and in the most Mario Kart of experiences, I was out in 1st, probably 2 seconds from crossing the line...and got Blue Shell'd. Go figure! 

We were then given the opportunity to play a race in single-player vs CPUs, and this time I again went with Cow, and again I came 2nd. And again, I kid you not, because of a Blue Shell, and this time I was virtually 10m from the line! I mean, I guess it is the Switch 2 

This being the first chance I got to see the screen in action, and not having picked up an OLED model of the OG Switch, I was really happy with how the colours popped, and the screen itself being an LCD didn't get in the way of the fact that this was clearly such a massive jump from the screen on the OG Switch. My best comparison for this, from experience, would be going from that OG DS screen to the DSi – everything was just so much more crisp and it also felt, again, less toy-ish and more premium.

Oh, and just to answer it here before diving into more games, I found throughout my time with the event that there was no means to access the main system UI and Mii Maker – so apologies, @RedShell, guess we'll just need to wait until launch to see what the deal is there!

After those two races - roughly 5-10 minutes - with Mario Kart World, we were slowly pushed towards the next room and could see the floor proper for the first time, which was very exciting. There was a floor map and a list of the games shown like I mentioned on the last page, and I was surprised by some of the inclusions! It wasn't as crazily busy as I had been expecting, but there were still a good few queues to go around. After snapping a pic of the map to help plot my day as I went along, I decided I might as well start the day off with what had the longest queue and was the game I had the most questions about: Donkey Kong Bananza. 

I think this was the single-player longest demo I tried out, which staff confirmed was 20 minutes long, so I spent a decent enough amount of time with it to feel like I should have started to get to grips with it. It was also the first game I got to play with the new Pro Controller, which felt great – a little more heft to it than the current one for the OG Switch, which I liked a lot. I've seen some people say they kept accidentally pressing the new rear buttons? I totally forgot they were there. 

And, unfortunately, I have to admit that I came away even more torn and unsold on this game than the trailer and some of the impressions videos I'd watched had made me. 

You start off in a mine, punching your way through the area with some light platforming, but what I really want to emphasise from this stint with the demo was that it really felt like the platforming was taking a backseat here, and destruction taking centre stage. I don't mind some dumb fun, but it truly felt like just that, which for me, assuming of course that this is Nintendo EPD, is kind of wild? It felt very aimless and unfocused.

I toyed around with the controls a good bit here to get a feel for it, and tried to go out of my way to go off the beaten path, going places and reaching rooms in ways my handler for this game hadn't seen anyone try – for instance, there's a fenced off room with some coins in, and there's a conveyer belt running through from that side to the side you're on with destructible material on it; the game wants you to punch into the dirt below you, then just punch your way through the material against the direction of the conveyer belt until you're in the other room. I, on the other hand, decided to climb up some walls (there are some slippery surfaces you can't grip throughout the demo, but this was fine to climb), and put myself probably 30m or so directly above the fenced off room – and then punched down through the floor to get to it like my life depended on it. 

And then it kind of clicked for me at this point what this game was, and I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet: it's some weird Mario Odyssey x Breath of the Wild hybrid but with destruction as the core mechanic (hilariously this first level in the demo is coloured exactly the same as the Sky Isles in Tears of the Kingdom, with the gold leaves, white stone, etc.). I've only played an hour or so of Odyssey back when I got my Switch (before deciding to play through the 3D Mario's from the start with 64), but for me that game places a keen emphasis on player skill and optional expression in the form of getting to Moons in your own unique way, whereas the modern open world Zelda titles place a keen emphasis on freedom and finding your own solution to things – and this is some weird middle ground which I just couldn't click with. 

I think what also struck me was how very un-DK this was, and how very Mario Odyssey it was – things like the "gold" you pick up being your source of lives in the same way coins were in Odyssey, the black screens in transitions looking and feeling almost identical, optional challenge rooms which felt distinctly Mario (find the bananas, kill X number of X enemy), etc. What makes it worse is that there were only one or two elements in the challenge rooms I tried where I felt it couldn't have been in a 3D Mario game, and that was purely down to needing to use the destructive capabilities of DK to force my way through to somewhere in order to get an optional Banana...meaning that this could have just been a power-up in a 3D Mario, surely? In one particular challenge room I was grabbing onto a chained fence overhead, and man, I kept losing sense of where I was and falling off the edge – and the solution to this was to super awkwardly position the camera upwards, which then means I didn't have a good sense of what was going on directly in front of DK. It was so strange. 

Oh, and speaking of Bananas, after completing the tutorial in the mine you grab a Banana and transition to the first level after a cutscene...where there's a Banana planted just 2 inches in front of you. I think for anyone who wasn't a fan of the crazy number of Moons in Odyssey, you might not be a fan of the number of Bananas in Bananza. 

I also want to speak to the game feel, which is something Mario games always nail, and something just felt a little off at times here. With DK standing still and taking control for the first time at the start of the demo, I tried to turn him around (i.e. pivot him to face the camera), and in doing so there was a weird sense of weightlessness to this specifically I've never before felt in a 3D Mario game. Similarly strange were some frame rate hiccups throughout my time with the demo; for example, digging down too much (with very little sense of direction when doing so, mind you) and then breaking out into a larger room occasionally saw a little dip, but the worst offender was the map – while it looked nice itself, a miniaturised 3D version of the level itself, I couldn't not notice how framey it was. There was also an instance where I was digging down to get a Banana, and the "celebration screen" popped up, and a flat texture was layered over the top of the hole I had made? Super odd. 

After that, I queued up for Drag x Drive to try the Mouse-Cons out for the first time – which are super accurate and sensitive, very similar to a mouse you'd use on your computer. The set-up to this demo was that we'd play through a brief tutorial to get the gist of the controls before facing off in a 3v3 against and alongside some other attendees.

As you can see, things were set up for us to use the Mouse-Cons on a desk mat, which was honestly super awkward given the cables attached to the 'Cons themselves, as they'd occasionally rub up against the corner of the table. While playing through the tutorial it mentioned using them against your legs, and so I tried it – and found that I much preferred using them that way instead! Maybe it's just because of the motion and positioning then being more similar to how you'd be moving an actual wheelchair you were sitting in, but I was very impressed. I was also super impressed with the improved haptics in the Joy-Cons here, too, as they weren't something I'd noticed too much playing Mario Kart or Donkey Kong before this – there this really satisfying graduated "chink" feeling as you would get (and can sometimes hear) from real wheelchairs. 

We lost the 3v3, but I came away pretty impressed with Drag x Drive – and so what is gutting to me now is that this game shouldn't at all be the way that it is. It feels so absent of character that it doesn't feel remotely Nintendo, the 3v3 being full court just feels like too large a space for these games with how awkward it can be to get around the court (I think a half court with 3v3s, 2v2s and 1v1s would work much better, and also push passing more than the current set-up does, and did, as I was the only one on my team taking advantage of passing!), and honestly, realising that the little Joy-Con flick to shoot felt almost identical to the same action when playing basketball in Wii Sports Resort? It felt like it should've been narrowed in scope and bundled in with some other sports. Similarly, and returning to the point on a lack of character, if they wanted to salvage this as it is – different heights/sizes for characters? Upgradeable wheelchairs, perhaps with specials you can perform? Chair and character customisation? Different surfaces (e.g. ice, rocky terrain, etc.) to emphasise the challenges people in wheelchairs face a little bit in getting around, and which can show off the haptics some more? 

There's so much which they could have clearly done, absolutely in line with Nintendo's other games, to make more out of Drag x Drive. This game is unfortunately being sent out to be forgotten by the end of the summer after it releases. 

Next to this - I suppose in the designated Mouse-Con demo area? - was Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. For context, going into this I have played all of 1 hour of the original Metroid Prime via Remastered on Switch last year. I feel like this gives me a pretty good base from which to be fairly objective here. 

Game of the Experience for me. The game looks incredible, handles super smooth, the gun (well, beam) play felt fantastic. It was a vertical slice showing off the very beginning of the game - just what we saw in that original re-reveal trailer and then a boss fight - and so we didn't get to try any of the psychic powers, it felt like they didn't show off anything new rather than just let us experience what has already been shown, but yeah, I thought it was great. 

And what really helped with this was the Mouse-Con/Joy-Con hybrid controls – @Kav you'll be happy to hear it works a treat. You can seamlessly switch between Mouse-Con and Joy-Con modes just by turning the controller onto its side to engage Mouse-Con and back again to play with it as a standard Joy-Con. Mouse-Con control of the pointer felt fine and precise, unlocking doors was much faster with Mouse-Con vs the Joy-Con, and it made the combat encounters incredibly breezy to quickly focus my fire on an enemy who made a quick entrance – maybe a little too breezy, but it is just the opening of the game, and so that's to be expected. The only potential downside to the Mouse-Con is the face buttons on that Joy-Con still being used for some actions, for example Y, which would be on the left, is now at the bottom, and so there were one or two moments where I was accidentally pressing X to go into Visor Mode rather than going into a Morph Ball.

Couple of super, duper nitpicky things to mention, just because I would do this for any other game: having played only an hour of Prime Remastered, I know how impressive the sound effects and design are in that game, and so it's a shame that this demo in particular didn't have an option to use a headset, though I don't know how practical that would have been from a hygiene perspective and I suppose it did place even greater emphasis on Mouse-Con. In terms of the game itself, there were one or two moments where you'd burst into an area and a cutscene would start, and the game presents it like it should be a seamless transition from gameplay to cutscene, but it isn't – for example, Samus has her Arm Cannon drawn in first-person and it looks like I'm ready to smoke some aliens, but then there's a beat between entering the area and then the cutscene starting, so I start off in the cutscene a step behind where I feel Samus was and she's just casually strolling in with her Arm Cannon down. Look, I said it would be nitpicky, and honestly, that I cared to notice something as small as this speaks to just how brilliantly the rest of it felt and played. 

Completely sold on this, and it has put Prime Remastered back at the front of my mind – but after spending time with the Mouse-Con in Prime 4, I might have to wait until the next Direct to see if they have a Prime Remastered Switch 2 Edition with that control scheme available in the works. 

For me, really, that was all the big-hitters, well, hit, and while there were some other games I was looking forward to trying out, I needed a bit of a breather. 

So I made my way over to the curtained off room in the back corner with the 18-rated games, and decided to wander the streets of Kamurocho a little bit in Yakuza 0 - Director's Cut. Japanese audio, obviously, I ain't no scrub (with Yakuza, anime dubs are great). The handler for me here asked if I'd played the games before and, well, I have hundreds of hours of them, so he gave me the sales speech and then mostly left me to it. Knowing this would be way too short a time to spend with Yakuza, I wanted to make my way over to some mini-games. Didn't stop me from needing to bring myself to a crawl on the way over because of a very familiar back, mind you...

(if you've played 0 you'll know)

Heading over to the karaoke bar, and obviously having not played 0 in a good minute (if a good minute is half a decade)...good lord does this look super rough. When the demo loaded up there was the name of a studio, who I assume are handling the port, that I'd never seen on Yakuza games before – and I have to imagine that they're to blame. It was that bad that I had to make a point to not take photos of what I'm talking about to save the handler having to awkwardly ask why I was photographing a bunch of nothing. 

What was so bad about it? The draw distance is like 25-30 metres before it becomes a blurry bloomed out haze, and the NPCs roaming the streets have very basic, flat, polygonal textures for faces before their nose and face curvature pops in when they're a few metres from you. The worst offender of all, though, is that the lyrics/music sheet in the karaoke are low resolution – as in, the text itself is spotty and blurred. How the hell I haven't heard or seen a peep of this mentioned anywhere online is beyond me, and I'm annoyed that I didn't grab the name of the studio porting this, because unless something radically changes before launch, they've done an incredibly shoddy job which they should be ashamed of. 

On the upside, it's still Yakuza, and karaoke (Judgement with my bro Nishiki and then Baka Mitai – some kids next to me questioned why I wasn't doing Baka Mitai, to which I say you clearly don't know Yakuza lol, I was playing Judgement for the emotional context!) and darts were still good fun – my handler said I got the highest scores he'd seen all weekend after seeing me get 90 on Baka Mitai, but I got 95 on Judgement before that when he wasn't looking! Honestly, even that felt down to just not knowing the face buttons to a Nintendo controller like I do those on PlayStation, but I felt like I adequately represented my love for the franchise at least, and it was a nice way to recharge. I think I also opened up the eyes of the girl working the Cyberpunk demo station because I heard a "WAIT THERE'S KARAOKE?!" exclaimed from across the room while I was playing 

But, honestly, this photo feels like a fitting image to capture how I felt about this port right now:

Assuming this comes to other platforms, we best hope it's not a Dragon Quest XI S situation where they're going to port the Switch version of the game. The original Yakuza 0 was a PS3 game, by the way. 

Last photo from the event - I guess I got a bit tired at this point lol - I headed over and checked out the Switch 2 Editions of Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild (yes, in that order). Both were played for 5 minutes in handheld for that experience before getting to play it on a TV. 

Super impressed by both, and these gorgeous looking games just look that much more crisp and play that much more smoothly that they genuinely feel like entirely different games than their Switch versions. I'll be honest, I miss the weight and sluggishness the 30fps and below added to those games, but I have to admit that I'll likely be playing these Switch 2 Editions at some point.

Both handheld demos were of the very start of the game, but the docked demos had 5 saves from various points in the hames. In TOTK I loaded up a late-game save, checked to see if I had the food necessary to seek out my goal (I did), went to Lookout Landing, and launched myself up into the air and beelined it for the Korok at the top of Hyrule Castle. Good stuff. On BOTW I did basically nothing because I got sidetracked by the person next to me attempting to take out the final boss (there was an endgame save with like 30 Ancient Arrows?), apparently loads of people had tried their hand at it that weekend, and only a few managed it! Didn't hear anything about anyone attempting the same for the ending of TOTK, mind you, but given that the handheld and TV demos were 5 minutes a piece, I don't think you'd have the time (unless you skipped cutscenes, like an animal). 

After that I tried out Wind Waker and F-Zero GX on the GCN NSO, with a GCN controller. In Wind Waker I just wandered around Outset Island a little bit to see how nice the game looks – and it sure did look lovely! But I quickly backed out to not spoil anything for myself, and because I didn't feel like I'd be able to do anything meaningful there. F-Zero GX was good fun, I won a couple of races on a lower difficulty, not too shabby for my first time with F-Zero. Super Mario Strikers/Football was also present here like it was in the Treehouse, despite not being a launch game (maybe it's dropping in time for the Club World Cup this summer?), and Soulcalibur II I left for now just so I can experience it all for myself. 

Then I tried out Welcome Tour, outdid my handler and got some gold medals on some of the challenges, though I think I was too shattered by this point to pay enough attention for the frame rate challenge. Think this might actually be what I play first on Switch 2, it doesn't seem like it'll be all that long but feels worthwhile enough for me who finds curios like this super interesting. 

Needing to bring my energy levels back up, I then wandered over to the 24-player Knockout Tour demo for Mario Kart World. I chose Cow again, of course (10 of 24 of us did!), and this was the first time I very briefly got to spend time in Free Roam while people were voting. Just a minute or two, but I managed to show my handler here something she'd not seen before by riding up the back of a dino! It was very brief, though, and honestly it was a bit awkward in that Free Roam started at the starting of a race – can't tell you which it was, but basically we were up in the sky, and so it took me 20 seconds to get back down to the surface by driving off these chunks of track in the sky before ultimately landing in some water. 

As for the race itself, I made it to the Top 8 before crashing out – I'm expecting to hear that Glen did better! I had been in 1st place for most of that round of knockouts but then, Mario Kart being Mario Kart, the cards (and question blocks) were stacked against me and I bowed out. Really fun and intense, especially in a local setting where people were being cheered on (which could be heard throughout the day across the floor!), don't think it would quite have that same intensity online and could be a bit awkward dropping out (as you kind of just have to wait or walk away), but I'm totally sold on it as a mode.

Jury is out on the Free Roam, but again, limited time. I was trying to drive into the back of a truck to take control of it but then the race started! Either way, for someone who hadn't played Mario Kart for a few years, think I did myself and Cow proud. 

With it now being 17:55 and things starting to wind down, with no queues in sight, I had a choice: either replay my favourite game of the day, or what I perceived as the biggest disappointment, to see if I could clarify my thoughts any further. 

And so, for my last game of the day, I spent another 20 minutes with Donkey Kong Bananza. My thoughts after this second demo are largely unchanged - there's a lack of focus and excitement around some kind of core - but what did bring it together for me a little bit was trying to chain moves together like I did in Mario, and finding that I could surf on spinning rocks I picked out of the ground with R by tapping L, and you could do this with different materials, which might have degraded at different rates? Not totally sure. 

I think, inherently, there's an asterisk to my thoughts on this game in that it was only a 20-minute demo of a version of the game that's like a month or two old, but given that we're only 3 months and change from this launching, and especially with the vertical slice that they chose from the beginning of the game, it just didn't do a good enough job of conveying the throughline of this game in the same way that many of its EPD contemporaries do. I didn't feel like there was a hook to latch onto, and honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this for a potential EPD game knowing their pedigree: but I think this game might need a bit more time in the oven, and potentially a good demo - different to those one - to win people over. 

On my way out I went hands-on with a Switch 2 which wasn't tied down, getting to snap those new Joy-Cons in and out (the magnets feel super sturdy, and the button to release feels very rigid too) and the console itself felt great. I also got a couple of goodies in a Switch 2 tote bags from by the exit, and scanned a QR code for some Platinum Points, which was a nice way to round off the day.

Overall, while I'm not sure I'd necessarily say the needle has moved one way or the other on my Switch 2 hype, I had a great time! Also of note for me was that were some guys walking the floor with All Access badges – don't necessarily want to assume they were Nintendo JP guys or developers specifically, but one of them looked loosely familiar, and I loitered for like 5 minutes and only heard them speak exclusively in Japanese. 

Highlight of the event for me - even more so than the games itself - was just how nice all the staff were, they all seemed very excited to be there and well informed beyond what you'd get from a bit of PR training ahead of an event like this. They also did a great job of keeping you informed on queue times – joining a long queue they'd always warn roughly how long it would take, it just felt very well organised. All the stations and controllers were wiped down or spritzed between demos. And every time I got the chance I asked staff what they were most looking forward to in terms of games on Switch 2 at launch, and I got so many different answers, from a Switch 2 Edition Zelda, to Yakuza, to Mario Kart World.

What was nice too was that so many of them were open to talking about non-Nintendo games and platforms, such as with my Yakuza 0 rep where I mentioned that the Nintendo buttons are so foreign to me in karaoke because I play the Yakuza games on PlayStation, and he mentioned having a similar issue because he played the Hatsune Miku rhythm games on PlayStation too. Ironically, I didn't speak to that guy much about Yakuza – in fact, it was the girl handling my Tears of the Kingdom demo who talked to me about Yakuza 0 - Director's Cut being her most anticipated game at launch because she'd played them on PC and was always down for a replay (specifically because of Nishiki ). And then the guy who did my BotW and Welcome Tour demos, we were talking about me doing the final boss of BotW and I said I was more persistent than I was good at games, which made him laugh, and we briefly touched on Souls games before the BotW title popped up at the start of the game and I brought up the opening of Tsushima and he mentioned playing exclusively in black and white (Kurosawa mode) just because he could, and we talked about our shared excitement for Yōtei and my planned replay of Tsushima on Lethal difficulty ahead of that game arriving. 

There were just such undeniably jolly vibes all around, kudos to the staff for creating such a great atmosphere, and to Nintendo for hosting such an event! Just really makes me wish they - and other platform holders - hosted more opportunities for fans (and staff, who are fans!) to hang out like this and share their passion for games! 

But I suppose N-E will do just fine until then 

Edited Sunday at 01:46 PM by Julius

[RedShell]

1 hour ago, Julius said:

Oh, and just to answer it here before diving into more games, I found throughout my time with the event that there was no means to access the main system UI and Mii Maker – so apologies, @RedShell, guess we'll just need to wait until launch to see what the deal is there!

No worries. I had a feeling Nintendo would have that stuff locked down.

Shame about the Yakuza 0 port, huh? Not that it really concerns me, seeing as I already played it (and the rest of the series across PS and PC), but sounds like it'd be an unfortunate way for anyone who's new to Yakuza to experience it.

Anyway, thanks for a fantastic write-up of the Switch 2 event!

 

 

[Glen-i]

@Julius has done an excellent job explaining the more intricate details there. So I'm gonna try and just add my impressions and thoughts.

Mario Kart World is what we were forced to play at the start. 2 player local play, followed by a single player race.

We weren't allowed to try 4 player split screen, which says to me that it will still be 30 FPS, like in 8.

This game is so very slidey! Drifting feels very different to 8. Unfortunately, there was no way to turn off Smart Steering, which, if any of you N-E League regulars would recall, tends to make us more experienced players hilariously rubbish.

Funny for a theme night, not so great when you're trying to get a feeling for how it handles. Add to that the fact that it took me two races to find a bike that drifts on an inward line, meant that I looked very clumsy at first.

The items are universally nerfed. I guessed as much from watching Treehouse footage. Probably for the best, seeing as there's double the amount of players.

The Bullet Bill and Lightning got hit the hardest. The Lightning doesn't hit people behind you (Good change), but it also wears off magnitudes faster (Bad change). Apart from making people lose items, it's almost pathetically ineffective.

The Bullet Bill, while still great for rocketing ahead, no longer makes others flip over if you touch them. It just bumps them out of the way. It's so rubbish now. The Mega Mushroom is more effective, lets you retain control, and is more common.

Weirdly enough, some items remain pretty much the same as their 8 versions. Mushrooms are the same, but with how little items slow you down now, the Mushrooms become borderline OP! And some of the intermission tracks we played have some immense fields of grass that you can use a Mushroom to completely cut through.

Stars are just as lame as they are in 8, but with 24 players, they (And Boo) are now absolute godsends. Items are all over the place in this game, so being able to ignore them and plow through is very desirable.

Spiny Shells, on the other hand, still stop you dead. Which makes them even more devastating, as every other offensive item has been neutered. That's quite surprising.

I didn't win a single race (Except the CPU one), one was down to DCubed's disgraceful behaviour, but the other two, I just couldn't get used to the bike I had. It's inward drifting, but it's not quite as tight as my 8DX setup feels.

Didn't wanna risk changing it up and getting lumped with an outward one though. So I'll have to see if there's a better fit for me once the game is out. Hammer Bro was probably a poor fit as well, too light for it, needed more speed.

After that, Donkey Kong Bananza. It hasn't changed my trepidation. In a 20 minute demo, I got about 18 Golden Bananas.

Flashbacks to the abundance of Moons in Mario Odyssey there... Not promising.

I also did a similar thing to @Julius in that a place was blocked by something that the game clearly wanted me to use that exploding material to get into, only for me to just clamber on top of the structure, and pummel my way downwards into it instead. Not very satisfying. If you like that kind of thing that the Zelda games have loved doing recently, more power to you, but I prefer a more structured format for problem solving.

Next, Mario Party Jamboree had two different sections. One for the Mouse Con minigames, one for the camera based Bowser TV.

Bowser TV is fine. The camera works better then I expected, but it was still a bit finicky. Neat distraction, but not one I'd care to go back to often.

The Mouse Con minigames though? Oh man, that thing is smooooooth! It's works beautifully. There were only 6 minigames available there, but they all were great fun. One of them even needed you to rotate the Mouse-Con around, kinda like turning a dial, very cool.

Shout-out to the minigame where you are in a toy car, which you catapult forward by dragging the Joycon backwards to try and propel yourself into a goal on the other side. Problem is, the other team is trying to do the same thing, but in the opposite direction. And the bridge that connects the two sides is quite narrow. Hilarity ensues as you end up smashing into each other and flinging yourselves all over the place!

While the others played Drag X Drive, I went to try Bravely Default. Not an easy game to demo, to be fair. Not helping was the fact that the party setup the savefile had was atrocious! It's in the second third of the game and you have no White Mages!? ARRRRRRGH!

Game is silky smooth though. 60 FPS Bravely is lovely! There's a dash button now, so you can move at double speed! Very nice! The kiosk I got put on didn't have any of the Mouse-con minigames available, which was a shame.

We had a quick go on Street Fighter 6. Terry wasn't in this demo, so big bummer there. Honestly, I don't care about the game, but there were Pro controllers here, and this was a great game to test out if the D-Pad is as crap as it is on the Switch 1's Pro Controller.

Noticeably better! Didn't have a single accidental diagonal input. Obviously can't tell if the sticks will end up drifting as fast as the Switch 1, but still!

GameCube outside of being forced to play the EU on this Demo works as lovely as you'd think. GameCube games really do benefit from the HD bump.

@BowserBasher, @S.C.G and us are going to get some mad mileage out of this thing!

Funnily enough, the demo kiosk had a save file on F-Zero GX that had the AX Cup unlocked! This was the first time I got to play one of those tracks! So that was neat!

Please Nintendo, give us an SP version of that game that has everything unlocked from the start. I, and I imagine many others, are incapable of doing it ourselves!

I skipped Kirby and Metroid, as I'm already sold, don't need to try them. And I didn't care about the rest of the games.

Anyway, one more thing to say is that you can attach the Joy-cons to the Switch 2 backwards, which is amusing.

4 hours ago, Julius said:

Highlight of the event for me - even more so than the games itself - was just how nice all the staff were, they all seemed very excited to be there and well informed beyond what you'd get from a bit of PR training ahead of an event like this.

Yes, they were very good at what they were doing.

Shout out to the guy who had to interrupt our Mario Party minigame session to ask me if my shirt (The one I posted a photo of on 2024's Christmas thread) is meant to look like a Kecleon's stomach.

What a nerd!

[BowserBasher]

Great to hear the impressions, @Julius and @Glen-i. From the sounds of things, Mario Kart is gonna be fun the more people are playing, so hopefully our Thursday nights will attract a few more players. 

And NSO GC sounds like it's gonna be a blast, and even better once we get some more games added. (Please 4 Swords Adventures) I can't wait to get playing.

[Cube]

I think the Tingle Tuner will give us an indication on how likely Four Swords Adventures will be, as we'll see if they're implementing GBA connectivity and how it works

 

 

 

[Dcubed]

Ok.  I’ve had a mediocre sleep and I’m bum rushing my way into work; perfect time to throw out some coherent thoughts on the Switch 2 London event!

First off, the system itself.  It’s lighter in the hand than I expected! Despite being about 25% heavier than a Switch OLED (which was already heavier than the OG Switch model due to the glass panel), the weight has been distributed in a manner that makes the device feel light in the hands.  The hardware architect dudes clearly spent a lot of time on this aspect and I reckon they’ve done a cracking job here!

The new Joycons are also a lot more comfortable to hold, with a proper controller sized analog stick this time.  Gone are the little nubbly control sticks of the current Switch and instead you get a stick that I believe matches the new Pro Controller.  It feels much better than the current Joycon stick, and it has a very smooth, almost gliding motion to it.  If I had to liken it it any particular control stick? I’d say it feels most like the one for the Xbox One/Series controllers.  Likewise, the buttons and (especially) the triggers are quite a bit bigger and have a nice matte finish to them that makes them feel nice to use, the zL/zR triggers and the sL/sR buttons see the biggest upgrade in that respect though; as they have just that little bit more travel to give them a nice satisfying click.  The console, the Joycons, the charging grip and the new Pro Controller are all given a lovely matte finish that feels both comfortable in the hands and very premium.  These controllers won’t feel like they’re slipping out of your hands for sure.

The screen is also striking with how large and bright it is.  The bump in screen size is immediately noticeable, even coming off the OLED (which had a bigger screen), and the svelt bezel allows the screen to feel impactful.  I only got the chance to play Mario Kart World in handheld mode myself, but the colour and motion reproduction looks very good; it doesn’t obviously feel like a downgrade from the Switch OLED.  Though that being said, I would’ve liked the chance to see some other games running that had darker scenes to better examine the black levels (they did have TOTK and BOTW available to play in handheld mode, but I didn’t get to try them myself).

Speaking of the new Pro Controller, the new handle shape is very nice.  The Ask The Developer article for the Switch 2 hardware notes that the handles were modelled after the GCN controller and that checks out with the final product.  The handles do indeed feel quite similar to the GCN controller, and feel very nice in the hands, though the matte finish is obviously quite unlike the GCN controller of yesteryear.  BTW, the new Joycon grips also feature a GCN inspired set of handles!

As for the NSO GCN controller? Yup, it’s a GCN controller alright! And yes I can confirm that the analog shoulder buttons/digital click all work just like the original (dunno who started the stupid rumour that they wouldn’t be included, but rest assured, that person can safely be thrown into the bin).

That’s about all I can say regarding the hardware itself.  All of the Home Menu and OS features were locked off (as you would expect), so it’s time to talk about the games!

Actually, I lied, because there’s two more hardware features to talk about, but I didn’t lie because they both involve Super Mario Party Jamboree + Jamboree TV Lex Luthor’s Revenge.

First up is the official Switch 2 USB-c Camera.  We played the silly Bowser TV mode, the one that uses the camera for eye toy esc minigames, and we had a good time with the mode (naturally my team won, because I was the craziest lunatic there ); but I’m not here to brag about that, I want to talk about the camera itself, because it impressed the hell out of me!  So we were playing Bowser TV in 4 player mode, with four of us stood in front of the camera against a bright red Nintendo coloured wall… Turns out that one of my friends just happened to come along wearing a one piece bright red Nintendo coloured dress; one of those little bits of sitcom that you couldn’t write if you tried.  Except as it turns out, the joke’s on us because the camera had no trouble keeping up! Even with the matching colours! If any of you have ever worked with green/blue screening and chroma keying in video production, you’ll realise how incredibly impressive that is!

We also had a chance to try out the mouse mode minigames, which were mad fun and all worked very well.  The Joycon 2 works like a high quality optical mouse and the ergonomics worked pretty well, much better than I expected; and a lot better than my attempts to try using a Joycon 1 as a makeshift mouse… at least with a Right Joycon, since I’m right handed, I did find it easier to use a Right Joycon than a Left one… something to keep in mind for future multiplayer games.  I particularly liked the minigames that combined mouse mode with the gyro tilt sensing, they were very cool and worked really well.  The Joycon does a great job of detecting when you pick up the mouse as well.  Mouse mode is a true killer feature, and I do reckon it’ll make for quite a few new gameplay experiences, as the combination of optical mouse and gyro/accelerometer motion controls opens up quite a few new doors.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got time for right now.  After work? Maybe I’ll be able to talk about some actual Switch 2 games? Wouldn’t that be nice!

[nekunando]

7 hours ago, Dcubed said:

The new Joycons are also a lot more comfortable to hold, with a proper controller sized analog stick this time.  Gone are the little nubbly control sticks of the current Switch and instead you get a stick that I believe matches the new Pro Controller.  It feels much better than the current Joycon stick, and it has a very smooth, almost gliding motion to it.  If I had to liken it it any particular control stick? I’d say it feels most like the one for the Xbox One/Series controllers.  Likewise, the buttons and (especially) the triggers are quite a bit bigger and have a nice matte finish to them that makes them feel nice to use, the zL/zR triggers and the sL/sR buttons see the biggest upgrade in that respect though; as they have just that little bit more travel to give them a nice satisfying click.  The console, the Joycons, the charging grip and the new Pro Controller are all given a lovely matte finish that feels both comfortable in the hands and very premium.  These controllers won’t feel like they’re slipping out of your hands for sure.

Speaking of the new Pro Controller, the new handle shape is very nice.  The Ask The Developer article for the Switch 2 hardware notes that the handles were modelled after the GCN controller and that checks out with the final product.  The handles do indeed feel quite similar to the GCN controller, and feel very nice in the hands, though the matte finish is obviously quite unlike the GCN controller of yesteryear.  BTW, the new Joycon grips also feature a GCN inspired set of handles!

Delighted to heard about the improvements to the controllers 🙂

I've been exclusively a joy-con user throughout the entire Switch generation and never bought a Pro Controller. I like having controllers that can do everything the console has to offer without only being able to use one controller for certain games.

Having said that, I had been considering the Switch 2 Pro Controller if only just to feel something considerably different going into the new console but I did expect the joy-con 2 to be a significant upgrade.

The sticks are definitely the weakest part of the current joy-con (not just the drift but the lack of travel too) so it's so encouraging to hear your positivity about the improvements.

Will it be good enough to deter me from the pro controller? I wasn't entirely sold on the Switch 1 Pro Controller (one of the reasons I never got one) but the new one somehow looks much more enticing!

[Dcubed]

1 hour ago, nekunando said:

Delighted to heard about the improvements to the controllers 🙂

I've been exclusively a joy-con user throughout the entire Switch generation and never bought a Pro Controller. I like having controllers that can do everything the console has to offer without only being able to use one controller for certain games.

Having said that, I had been considering the Switch 2 Pro Controller if only just to feel something considerably different going into the new console but I did expect the joy-con 2 to be a significant upgrade.

The sticks are definitely the weakest part of the current joy-con (not just the drift but the lack of travel too) so it's so encouraging to hear your positivity about the improvements.

Will it be good enough to deter me from the pro controller? I wasn't entirely sold on the Switch 1 Pro Controller (one of the reasons I never got one) but the new one somehow looks much more enticing!

TBH, the new Pro Controller feels like a superfluous purchase to me.  I reckon the new Joycons & Charging Grip (which comes with the extra mappable back buttons) is good enough really.

[nekunando]

2 hours ago, Dcubed said:

TBH, the new Pro Controller feels like a superfluous purchase to me.  I reckon the new Joycons & Charging Grip (which comes with the extra mappable back buttons) is good enough really.

The original Joy-Con was "good enough" for me too, even with the shortcomings so I'm fairly confident you'll be right here that these will be enough for me again.

The expensive of buying another set and then another grip on top of that doesn't fill me with joy, mind you!

Am I right in thinking there isn't an official grips to buy other than the charging grip, much like the original Switch?

I ended up just buying a couple of unwanted standard official black grips that come with the Switch from eBay so that I had 4 sets the same..

Edited yesterday at 06:45 PM by nekunando

[The Bard]

Yeah paying eighty buckaroos for a game is just a straight turd sandwich. Not even mildly interested in paying a premium for 8nm silicon that drains system battery in two hours. I'll just get a Steam Deck, and still be able to play Prime 4 on OG Switch. 

[Cube]

I wonder if anyone will release some back buttons for the standard Switch 2 JoyCons so you can have them without needing to join them together. Using them separately is far too nice to sacrifice. 

[Ashley]

37 minutes ago, The Bard said:

Yeah paying eighty buckaroos for a game is just a straight turd sandwich. Not even mildly interested in paying a premium for 8nm silicon that drains system battery in two hours. I'll just get a Steam Deck, and still be able to play Prime 4 on OG Switch. 

How much did you pay for that arcade controller that Nicholas and I beat up?

[Dcubed]

2 hours ago, nekunando said:

The original Joy-Con was "good enough" for me too, even with the shortcomings so I'm fairly confident you'll be right here that these will be enough for me again.

The expensive of buying another set and then another grip on top of that doesn't fill me with joy, mind you!

Am I right in thinking there isn't an official grips to buy other than the charging grip, much like the original Switch?

I ended up just buying a couple of unwanted standard official black grips that come with the Switch from eBay so that I had 4 sets the same..

It's exactly the same as with Switch 1.  The console comes with a non-charging grip, while charging grips are sold seperately.

Note that only the charging grip comes with the extra mappable Gr and Gl buttons, not the one that comes in the box!

Edited 23 hours ago by Dcubed

[The Bard]

9 hours ago, Ashley said:

How much did you pay for that arcade controller that Nicholas and I beat up?

Your spaghetti arms couldn't beat their way out of a paper bag, kid. But for real, those were only like £50 a piece, cheap as hell, which is why I let you two get your mitts on them. They still work but they're in the attic somewhere. Got about a dozen more since then with different grommet tensions, linear microswitches, buttons etc, and they're all totally worth it since I put them into practical use at weekly tournaments in town for a bunch of different games. 

[The Bard]

An old photo, for reference:

[nekunando]

10 hours ago, Dcubed said:

It's exactly the same as with Switch 1.  The console comes with a non-charging grip, while charging grips are sold seperately.

Note that only the charging grip comes with the extra mappable Gr and Gl buttons, not the one that comes in the box!

I figured as much.. and that really irritates me 😢

It would actually bother me to have different variations of the grip in my drawer, especially when I never felt the need to have a grip that charges as I just rotate the joy-con on the console every so often to keep them all charged. Plus, it's £29.99 for the charging grip!

[Dcubed]

46 minutes ago, The Bard said:

An old photo, for reference:

And I thought the two I had was excessive!

[The Bard]

2 hours ago, Dcubed said:

And I thought the two I had was excessive!

Hey man, that's not even half of them

[Happenstance]

Been debating whether to grab myself an arcade stick again over the weekend as I enjoyed it so much at the Liverpool arcade. I just don't know if I'd get enough use out of it.