Nintendo Switch: Thread 06

[QualityChimp]

My son wants a Switch for his 7th birthday.
What games do you recommend for him?
Tropical Freeze could be good as we can play it together. Anyone played it?

[Dogg Thang]

Haven't played it. If you haven't yet got in on other systems, Lego City Undercover is a perfect one for the 7-10 age range.

[Asura]

And it seems the idea of a Virtual Console is pretty much dead. There is no good news in this thing. No amount of NES games would be attractive to me.

Admittedly not trying to seem smug here (as it's going to sound like that), but rather I'm happy I never really bought into the VC when it was out. I didn't want to buy anything until Nintendo had a proper universal account system that seemed like it might get carried forward to future machines. I bought a couple of titles but just a handful.

It sucks for those people who did buy them though.

[Dogg Thang]

Well I always went into the VC knowing this is how Nintendo operates. I fully expected to have to buy them again on Switch (although of course I would still grumble and look at Sony and say I shouldn't have to) but I'm definitely disappointed that it hasn't been relaunched in a bigger and better form. It was pretty great back on the Wii and I've bought a bunch of classics on the 3DS.

[Junko]

The virtual console name is gone . “ Nintendo classics “ starting with Nes and GBA titles

[fishbowlhead]

Admittedly not trying to seem smug here (as it's going to sound like that), but rather I'm happy I never really bought into the VC when it was out. I didn't want to buy anything until Nintendo had a proper universal account system that seemed like it might get carried forward to future machines. I bought a couple of titles but just a handful.

It sucks for those people who did buy them though.

I only ever bought the exclusive eshop games that were only release on wii & wiiu, and that was only a few. Im dam glad i did now.

[wakka]

An incredibly meh offering for £18 per year, even by Nintendo's stingy standards. NES games, bloody hell. You'd think they could sling something a bit more interesting our way than NES games.

My son wants a Switch for his 7th birthday.
What games do you recommend for him?
Tropical Freeze could be good as we can play it together. Anyone played it?

Tropical Freeze is a good game, and it's a nice cooperative title but it might be a bit tough for a 7 year old to play on his own. It's more difficult than Mario.

For me, Mario Odyssey would be a much better choice. Instead of a series of deadly gauntlets with fail states galore (which is what DKTF, good as it is, amounts to), each Mario Odyssey level is like a lovely bouncy playground with loads to explore. They're all beautifully crafted, too.

And it still has coop throughout - even though it's not quite as full featured as the coop on DK. One player controls Mario, the other controls Cappy and helps by collecting items, capturing enemies and bouncing Mario higher than he could usually jump. I played it quite a lot and it was fun.

I'd say he'll have much more fun with Mario. One of the things I thought was so clever about the game was that as a bearded adult nerd, there was some challenging platforming and fiendishly hidden moons - but I could also see how a kid could have fun loads of fun just running round the levels trying things out, without dying all the time like in a 2D platformer.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Well I always went into the VC knowing this is how Nintendo operates. I fully expected to have to buy them again on Switch (although of course I would still grumble and look at Sony and say I shouldn't have to) but I'm definitely disappointed that it hasn't been relaunched in a bigger and better form. It was pretty great back on the Wii and I've bought a bunch of classics on the 3DS.

I don't know that I'd personally say that Wii VC was "great", tbh.

Sure, the Wii played host to the VC concept at its peak but a lot of it smacked of missed opportunity to be a real gamechanger (pardon the pun).

50Hz VC games across the board for PAL Wii owners, the overall failure of spin-off concepts WiiWare and Virtual Console Arcade, Nintendo pretty much abandoning Wii VC (the most recent games added to it were done so back in 2013)...I feel like Switch VC not happening had been written on the proverbial wall for quite a while, especially if you look at the way Wii U VC and 3DS VC have pretty much slowed down to a crawl in terms of new content being added to them.

All that said, I too went into Wii VC with the same mindset as you and purchased a fair bit over the years. My VC purchases on 3DS have been much less though, and zero on Wii U (not interested in playing GBA and DS games on Wii U, wanted them on 3DS like Nintendo originally promised years ago).

[Dogg Thang]

I said it was "pretty great"! The "pretty" takes the edge off a little... I guess. But really it brought together games from a bunch of systems, including the Megadrive, and to my knowledge we haven't seen this happen anywhere else. Including unfortunately on Nintendo's later systems. Yes there were a whole bunch of very notable absences and a lot that could be improved but what was there was good and it was a concept that it would have been lovely to see developed rather than diminished until dead.

I have to wonder what the barriers were for them. I know a bunch of games would have been hellish to sort rights for (if Sega can lose source code, who knows what their legal is like) but once that's out of the way, it feels like it would be a cheap endeavour... I say that knowing precious little about what it takes to run though.

[Jaz]

So this subscription service will have to be a must if one wants to safeguard their game saves because Nintendo totally neglected to include an option to back up save files offline, a feature standard to pretty much every console for generations now?

Here's hoping that the recent Switch hacking can somehow offer the ability to back up save data offline.

Already implemented by the hack.

[Neon Ignition]

Mario Odyssey is such an easy recommend there over Tropical Freeze. Freeze is good but it's day light robbery on Switch, you'll get much more co-op houred goodness from Mario and for less coinage too

[Dogg Thang]

I have to wonder if Mario Odyssey will quickly get too tough for a 7 year old? Maybe not - depends on the kid, I guess. I just know mine got way more from Lego City Undercover or Splatoon and (possibly weirdly?) Stardew Valley than they did Mario Odyssey in spite of Odyssey obviously being the better game.

[dataDave]

My seven year-old niece was fine with Zelda, even. She's only ever played Kirby before after her older sisters are done.

[wakka]

I should add I know nothing about kids.

[Neon Ignition]

The only good news about the Subscription is that there's no reason to pay for it. It's a kick in the nuts for anyone still going online in Mario Kart or Splatoon 2 but bar that an eaey dodge for almost anything else they'll likely release going forward too