Jake: Jeff says not worth it because there's not going to be Star Fox. Oh, how do you know Jeff? It's a two minute trailer of Hardware. All they showed was a snippet of Mary.
Chard: Here's a box. There ain't gonna be shit on here I want. Hasn't even been.
Jake: Fuck your Switch.
Chard: Good. Nintendo Bot. Squaresoft back.
Jake: It's great. I have an article to talk about when we get started, but there's something Eurogamer said in an article and I'm dying laughing. It's just crazy. Yeah, there could be Star Fox. Don't worry, there'll be stuff. Whenever you're ready. Chart.
Chard: All right.
Jake: You want one? I can do one.
Chard: Go for it if you got one. Go for it.
Jake: All right. Well, Nintendo announced the switch 2. Are you fucking happy now? Are you? Are you? Today on wow, she dropped a death ball.
Wulff: Don't leak over the intro.
Jake: Too late to censor it and get a sensor button.
Chard: Guys, welcome. As one might think that Jake was hosting this episode, but he's not. He just had a better one liner and I couldn't think of anything fast enough. Welcome one and all to another Friday night as we are press B to cancel. We are here to talk about none other than retro games because that's literally all we've discussed the last couple of months. Today we're going to talk about a retro game known as the new Nintendo Switch 2 XL.
Jake: So retro.
Chard: Super retro. But of course I'm not here to talk about the Super Switch 2 XL unit by myself. No. I've got two of my closest dearest friends with me to discuss the same things as we normally do. Jake, how excited are you? Are you excited for this at all?
Jake: I'd be a lot more excited if they called the Super Switch. That's a hell of a name. They could have painted that son of a bitch gray and it'd been great. It worked for Sony.
Chard: Did you know the. The, the nostalgic fucking. I would buy one. I mean fucking Sony did that and all I want is a goddamn PS1 controller for my PS5. Ridiculous.
Jake: Sold out instantly.
Chard: It did. Stupid. Dumb. And it was like 70, 80 bucks. Ridiculous. Also who is not ridiculous but is here with us? Wolf, how are you today, sir?
Wulff: How am I not ridiculous? I'm pretty sure I suffer from a wow. From a condition called ridiculosis, but thank you.
Chard: Ridiculitis. Well guys, it happened. It finally happened. We've all been watching 10 year old sketches hit all the social medias. We've been hemming and hawing and wondering, is this really what it's going to look like? Is this really what we're going to get? And guess what, boys? We got it. We got it. So for those of you who are living under some kind of rock or a box or just only turn on your PC during the weekend, Nintendo has come out and announced that its new console, the Switch 2, or as Sinistar likes to call it, the Super Switch XL2U. I had to slide that in there for him. He's really sad he wasn't here tonight. It's out. Well, it's not coming out, but it's coming out. What, in April? Is that when they announced the release?
Wulff: No, that's when they're doing the big announcement.
Chard: Oh, I can't speculate. That's when we're getting the announcement.
Jake: That you can't throw a wild accusation. That's coming out in April. That's crazy talk.
Chard: Listen.
Jake: Yeah, well, it's right. There'll be a direct in April.
Chard: Okay, I'm here to drop all the.
Jake: They gave us a. They gave us a two minute trailer showing the hardware for two minutes and a teaser of Mario Kart and that's all they got. And then a date for April for direct. That's all we know. Yeah, we know that it's coming out in 2025. That's. That's about it.
Chard: Okay, Well, I did see. I watched the video myself halfway through working and halfway through trying to see what the big, all the big hubbub was about. I got to see the cool little animations of it outlining all the little colors. And you know, it's gray and it's still got the red. I think Jake's going to pop up the video here so you can watch along with us as we go ahead and discuss what is essentially just a newer, bigger Switch. Now the question is because all of us have Steam decks, so that'll be kind of our, I guess, our comparison to the new Switch compared to like a streaming device such as the Steam deck. And really, is it worth it? Like, are we excited about seeing a Switch 2 after watching the two minute video, the small snow snippets of information we got, which is basically nothing. It's got a breakable kickstand that folds all the way down, which is super great. You guys have complained about the controllers on more than one occasion and now they're talking about. We think it might be used as a mouse as well. We don't know. I don't know if we know that for sure. But we've had some speculations on how we think things are going to work. So keep in mind when listening to this episode. We've all seen the same thing you guys have seen. We've seen two minutes of this thing. This is a lot of speculation on what we think is going to happen. Are we excited about it? What games do we think we're going to get with it? And all in all, is it really going to be worth it? Are we really super hyped for another Nintendo console to come out? Just like we all have switches. Right. We all have our switches available with us to talk about. Have we used. Do we use the switch we currently have? Is it worth the update to a new console? What do you guys think? I will go ahead and individually just kind of say, Jake, what is your. What is your how do you feel? Blanket statement. You don't have to go into detail right now. But like on the Switch. Yeah. What, what do you, what do you. What do you think after this video?
Jake: You know, I'm glad they officially announced it because it's. It's like the world's worst kept secret. Right? I mean months went by where people like Switch 2 is coming, gonna be called the Switch 2. It's gonna have all this and that. It got to the point where manufacturers, accessory manufacturers were starting to leak their designs of their controller cases and housing and all that kind of stuff. And it got to the point where everybody was leaking information about the Switch except for Nintendo. So I feel like this announcement was probably very rushed. Let me just close this video real quick. They were probably felt like they were rushed maybe to a degree to get something out. And I feel like what they showed us in this 2 minute and 22 second trailer is probably B roll that they are put together for their direct. And I bet you everything we saw in this two minute trailer we're going to see again in April. But we're going to have the President Nintendo talking over it and snapping his fingers going, you know. Yeah.
Wulff: The opening of the direct is just going to be this video with a voiceover.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: And a few of the.
Chard: Right.
Jake: And more and more endgames and that. And that's. And you know what, that's fine. I thought we would get more than two minutes. I'd also like to. For them to have confirmed a couple things. So like real quick, there was rumors of a mouse functionality of some sort. The trailer kind of alludes to that with the snaking joy cons. We can talk about that a little bit Later. I don't know if that looks very comfortable as a mouse, but whatever. At least that's new. It does look like they took out the IR camera from the Joy Cons. They're slightly longer. That means the screen is bigger. I think I heard 8 inches for the new Switch 2 screen magnetically connecting to the console instead of being this plastic rail system that was so janky before. There's some new stuff here, but I mean like Sinistar told us offline and we said we would bring it up. He kind of struggled on whether this was. Does this really feel like a Switch 2? Does this feel like a new console or new handheld? Or is this more of a Switch XL in vein of, you know, 3Ds and 3D XL? And it's an interesting take. I don't know. I feel there's probably some new stuff here, but from that brief, what, three seconds of Mario Kart gameplay, I'm sure games are going to run better on the Switch 2, but I don't think it's going to be a graphical leap forward that some people might be expecting. And I'm okay with that. I'm interested in the Switch 2, but I don't think I'm hyped for it, if that makes sense.
Wulff: Yeah, I'm there with you. We were talking in the Marco Polo's about what the innovations are looking like they'll be or lack of innovations. Yeah, this is not looking like it's going to be the jump from Wii U to Switch, which all things considered, the jump from Wii U to Switch, I don't feel like was as big as everybody makes it out to be. It's just that it's. A lot of people didn't play with the Wii U.
Jake: That's what it is.
Wulff: Understandable. But going from oh yeah, I loved mine, I played the crap out of it. But I mean I really liked that I could play the game off of the TV and on a little screen in my hand. I've been saying since, and I know it wasn't exactly realistic back then, but I've been saying since the Game Boy advance was, since the SP came out, I think that Nintendo really needs to make a console that can connect to the TV and just be a handheld. Like that's how long I was saying that should be a thing. And then they finally did it with the Switch. How many generations later it was GameCube. So we, we, you switch. So three generations later they finally did it. But I mean I, I was not a huge fan of the 3ds, personally. Okay, the. I liked the DS, but the jump to 3ds didn't feel like much of a jump. And I mean, I never bought one. Eventually my brother got me the ugly looking 2ds because 3D doesn't work for my eyes because I got a lazy eye, so can't do it. So there was no point in spending all that money on something I couldn't make use of. And it sounds like most people thought it sucked anyway as far as the 3D effect goes.
Jake: So it wasn't no love lost there. It was a novelty. I don't think I. I think I eventually just turned it off. But there are certain games where it felt like it was interesting. It wasn't bad. The whole idea of glasses free 3D is neat, but I mean the whole idea of 3D effect on a screen is kind of. It's kind of a fad at this point. That's been over.
Chard: Right?
Wulff: Yeah.
Chard: I remember 3D TVs being a big old thing and you know, you had to buy glasses for it and everything. I was like, this ain't gonna last. And sure as sure shit it did not last very long.
Wulff: Yeah, no, that's absolutely ridiculous because I think you had to sit like in a certain span of it to see the 3D, even with the glasses on.
Chard: I'm looking at a curved monitor right now and I'm like, this makes sense. But now I gotta look. Literally gotta be at a point to look at a 3D TV. I don't need to watch Pirates of the Caribbean in 3D. I'm good, thanks. So appreciate it.
Wulff: Yeah, like Even things with 3D glasses never worked for me.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: I remember going to like, that's fair. What? At Disneyland or Disney World they had something where you had to put on the glasses.
Chard: Captain eo, baby.
Wulff: There was that. And I think there was also the honey I shrunk the audience show.
Jake: Yes, that one too.
Wulff: And honey, I shrunk the audience. It didn't work for me. Obviously. I had to put the glasses on so I didn't see the doubling image, but that's all it did was make the image look like it should. Anyway, 3D didn't work for me.
Chard: It clarified it.
Wulff: Yeah, it was like, what? This is what it looks like when I don't have my glasses on. Anyway.
Chard: Yeah. Michael Jackson flying around in space to really get your 3D, your 3D glasses on. Anyways, before we go too far off on a tangent, Jake, what do you have?
Jake: Yeah, I Want to talk about real quick? You said the Wii U and people don't realize that it wasn't much of a jump to the Switch. I think I'm going to echo that because one of the games that people love on the Switch was Breath of the Wild. I wonder how many people forget that they came out on the Wii U first. That was a cross generation game. I played that on the Wii U and it looked fine. I mean it had some frame dips and spots, but that was great on the Wii U. And I'm with you playing that on the Wii U. Tablet on the couch, my wife watched tv. It's awesome. I like the Wii U. When it came to the Switch, I bought it again for the Switch because I liked the game so much. But outside of some frame rate improvements, same game, there wasn't that much in terms of graphical change. And I'm going to say it again like I don't expect a graphical, you know, makeover for the Switch 2. Nintendo is kind of like dialed in or zeroed in on a certain graphical style for their first party games. And they look great. I think Mario Kart and Mario Odyssey, they, they look great and I don't think there's much more they can do with that cartoony style they've nailed down to make it look better. All they can do I think at this point is add more things in the screen. Right. Or maybe make it so the frame rate is better. I would love this thing. I would love. And I wish I didn't have to speculate on this, but I really hope it's 1080p60 locked at this point, at this many years into this generation. How many years we've had 1080p 60 gaming on PC? It feels like at least 10 years. So I'm hoping maybe this device would be that.
Chard: You can argue that Sony and Microsoft have their consoles that are also, you know, 1080, 360 or 1080, 60p locked. Right. I mean I played.
Jake: They're not stuff.
Chard: Right. I don't know if they're locked.
Jake: They.
Wulff: There's a quality.
Chard: There's a quality and then there's like. Instead of like having the specifics. Yeah. Performance or quality. Right. And when I put it on performance and I play. We'll just say for Ben west because that's one that I finished just recently. The game is smooth and beautiful. There's no frame drop, nothing. It is. It's actually looks pretty good but if you put up performance then it drops it. But it looks beautiful. But in like if you take it off, if you take the quality off, it looks, still looks fantastic. So I don't know, the PlayStation, you know, as a console is pretty, pretty beefy on its own, you know, being primarily PC gamer myself, but on my big screen downstairs, it's a 1080. It looks fucking great. So I guess, I don't know, it feels like, like Microsoft and Sony might have that down and the Nintendo just uses their art style to kind of hide the fact that they're not doing the same kind of thing. Am I wrong in thinking that you think guys are.
Jake: I don't think the consoles, Xbox and PlayStation are that powerful yet, although I think they're getting there. I think even on performance mode, depending the game, some games may still struggle. But I could be wrong. Sorry, Wolf, go ahead.
Wulff: Yeah, Something to consider with the Switch is. Well, with the Switch 2 specifically is it's gonna be what, roughly seven, eight years newer technology than the Switch. And I do feel like the capabilities of small footprint chips have grown so much in that time. Like, look at the Steam Deck, look at the Legion, look at the go. Like these all are little tiny powerhouses, right. And the Switch 2 is probably not going to be much different than those in terms of capabilities. That would be my guess anyway. I don't know when they started, you know, when they ended their R and D and said, okay, send them into production. But I got to imagine it was after the Steam Deck did so.
Chard: Right.
Jake: How old is the Steam Deck now? Three years? Four years?
Wulff: Three years, I want to say.
Chard: Three years, yeah. How long have I had mine?
Jake: Because like the original Switch, when the original Switch came out, it was at the, I guess the pinnacle of tablets, kind of just overtaking things. Remember we had a period where people had these mini little netbook laptops and then they moved to tablets and then tablets kind of ramped up in graphical power.
Chard: Yeah.
Jake: So now we have, you know, now we have tablets. And when the Switch. Switch 1 came out, it was a. It's an Nvidia Tegra Tip. Tegra chip. And it was, I mean it was pretty advanced for a tablet. Right. It's. I mean, it's a glorified Android tablet. That's what the Switch one is. But you're right, well, since then we've had the Steam Deck, which is more than just a tablet. The Steam Deck is basically a PC in your pocket or a big pocket.
Wulff: Oh yeah, I've, I've disassembled mine to change the hard drive and change the, you know, change parts out like, since that's doable, I did it.
Chard: Like, and it's designed that way.
Wulff: Right.
Chard: Like, they actually say, please mess with this.
Wulff: I want to say, I know we're kind of like on the side of, you know, like you said, interested, not excited.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: I'm sure there are a lot of people who are very excited because, like, me personally, I wouldn't consider myself a power user, but I'm definitely a lot more in tune with digging into the settings and all that than your average gamer.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: If we use. Let's. Let's use my brother as an example for the average gamer. My friend. My friend is a P. Like, he plays on PC, but he doesn't get into the nitty gritty about the details of stuff. He generally doesn't build his own PC. He had a friend build it for him last time he did it surround.
Chard: People that have built their computers on this podcast and look for, like, how can I overclock this properly? And this dls I don't get him still worked it. Or other stuff.
Wulff: Yeah, I don't jump into the overclocking because I've fried things in the past doing that. So I just don't mess with that anymore. But yeah, like, I think there's a lot of people who are going to see this as like, oh, I don't have to screw around in Linux or Windows while I'm gaming. This is going to be the preferred option for people who want gaming on the go. That's easy, right?
Jake: Yeah.
Chard: The plug and play, I can see that.
Wulff: Yeah. With the Steam Deck, you know, sometimes I hit a game where I'm like, oh, I gotta tinker with stuff before I could play it. Right.
Chard: Yep.
Wulff: Even Final Fantasy 12 just because it's old enough. It was like. And Square Enix never bothers to update crap. So they were just like, well, Steam Deck's out. Good luck with that.
Chard: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Jake. Jake has shown me a bunch of different programs to download on the Steam deck. Like the moonlight sunlight that I finally got working. And it makes Wukong gorgeous on my tv in my bedroom to play while I'm going to bed. And Wukong is not playable. If you download it straight to the Steam deck, it is too powerful. Alan Wake 2 I couldn't play it on there, but you could play it on this thing and it's just streaming from your PC, but you can adjust where it's the Steam Deck. Streaming from Steam is one thing. This basically taps in your computer and then you can adjust the different things that Jake is. Jake has gushed about moonlight sunlight on more occasions than one. But I'm just getting into it. So it's like new and. Yeah, new.
Wulff: I haven't even tinkered with that yet. I just. If it runs on the Steam Deck, I'll play it. It's kind of where I'm at.
Chard: I used to be that way.
Jake: For me, it's like if. If it's a game I want to play, I want to play on the couch upstairs and my, My PC is here in my office and I don't want to. I don't want to lug this upstairs.
Chard: Right.
Jake: So I've been using Steam Deck for everything. And I would argue for me that the best parts of the Steam Deck are the stuff that's. You gotta tinker. And it's not out of the box. Out of the box, the Steam Deck is a great device. It runs games that you're probably playing anyway. But when you realize you can install Emudeck and play all the classic retro titles with the fancy interface and screenshots to, you know, you can tinker to stream from any other computer to your Steam Deck to, you can install Battle Net, you know, Blizzard's launcher, Gog, all these other launchers on your device and play them. Yes, it's. It's fidgety, there's tinkering involved. It's. It's not something is accessible to everybody. Like Wolf was saying. But those are the best parts of the Steam Deck to me.
Chard: Right.
Jake: But I think you're right, Wolf, from the average person, they're not going to want to deal with that stuff. But out of the box, Steam Deck is fine. But out of the box, the Switch 2 only does one thing. It's to play Switch 2 games and that's definitely to a benefit.
Chard: And Switch 1, it's backwards.
Wulff: Yeah.
Jake: And Switch 1, not everything they've said. Not everything.
Chard: Fair.
Wulff: Well, I mean that. That big old honkin Joy Con isn't going to fit into the. It can't be a toy Con, so.
Chard: Right, well.
Jake: So I mean, can we mention that real quick in terms of what we don't think. What's not backwards compatible with The Switch? The Switch 2.
Wulff: Yeah, go for it.
Jake: So because my, my thing is so out of the box, people are saying, okay, it's not going to work with Ring Fit Adventures, which is that exercise game where you had the hoop and you squeeze the hoop, because that has a thing where you slide in the Joy Con. Fair enough. It probably won't work with Nintendo Labo, which, for those who don't know, that was that brief period Nintendo was selling you cardboard, which was cool. I'm going to say it was awesome. I love Labo, but it's Nintendo selling you cardboard. Yep. Wolf's got some.
Chard: God damn it.
Jake: So the size of some of those builds are probably not going to fit the Joy Con. And if this thing doesn't have the IR camera, some of the builds will not work, period. Because some of the builds use the IR camera.
Wulff: Yeah. There's also things that make use of the IR camera, like the 12 switch.
Jake: Right, there's that too. But my worry is I'm wondering if this thing will have a touchscreen, because why would you announce or why would there be rumors of a mouse support? I'm not going to say announced, but why would there be rumors of mouse support when the thing had a touchscreen? Because when Switch 1 came out, no one ever really used the touchscreen. For the most part. It's very rare. I mean, Mario Maker had it and a couple, a couple Eshop games had it, but nobody really took advantage of the touchscreen. So why would you have a mouse support if you have a touchscreen? Unless they took the touchscreen off. In that case, any rare touchscreen game on Switch 1 would not work on Switch 2. That's my, that's my thing.
Chard: Let me argue, Let me argue real quick. Because the Steam Deck has mouse capabilities on it with the touchpad or with like a mouse adjustment. It has a touchscreen. So. And I used, I used the mouse on either when I'm floating around, I need to get in desktop mode, or I have my, my little mouse that I have here that's on the floor, and my Bluetooth keyboard, so I can plug it in and do stuff there. But it also has the touchscreen that I use my stylus on. So why would they get rid of one to use the other? Like, why would you think that they would get rid of the touch.
Wulff: Yeah, why not both?
Jake: Why? Because this is a company that had Bluetooth built into Switch 1, but didn't turn on Bluetooth audio for like four or five years. Right? So that's like they don't, they don't always have, they don't always give you as many control options. I mean, the Steam Deck also has very robust controller support. You can, you can change the controls however you want on Steam. That's one of the reasons why I love it. You can change buttons, swap them, change add on screen menus, like the controller setup on the Steam Deck is second to none. It's amazing. Whereas on Switch, you can barely edit controls in game as it is. Right. You can go to the system menu and tinker with things, but it's system wide and it's not nearly as good.
Wulff: Yeah.
Chard: You know, I want to bring up, like, since we're kind of on the topic of. Of bells and whistles that are. That we think are missing or that should be a part of it. Sinistar brought this up about innovation and how we're always looking at. Well, if I'm going away from a topic that you want to discuss, please let me know first before I go into something else, because I. I don't want you to have to be like, oh, I was going to explain something that was.
Wulff: I was just. Okay then, real quick, I want to mention technically, the Wii U had a form of mouse support and the touchscreen. Because using the Wii Remote.
Chard: Jake doesn't believe it.
Wulff: It was a lot like a mouse when you're pointing at the part on the screen to click. So it had both.
Chard: Okay, okay.
Jake: So the Switch had that as well with the Joy Cons, I mean.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: But it didn't have a touchscreen thing.
Jake: Which has a touchscreen switch.
Wulff: I'm sorry, I thought you were talking the Wii U.
Jake: So that's what. That's. Yeah, I see the point. And again, that's another thing like, okay, fine, they're getting rid of the IR camera from the Joy Cons. Is that because they were adding mouse support to kind of make up for that? But I mean, using the mouse, the Joy Con on its side, sliding around my lap is no, is no replacement for pointing at the screen with the, with the Joy Con, I think, anyway, it feels weird unless they're like expecting you to use the Switch at a desk or something. Why the mouse support? It just.
Chard: Why would you use Switch at a desk, though? Isn't the whole point of it is be mobile. Isn't the whole.
Jake: Why the mouse support? What would you use the mouse support for?
Chard: I don't know.
Wulff: Here's what I think the mouse support is for Mario Maker 3 because when they add a feature, they don't plan it for every game. They're like, we need this feature for this game.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: So Mario Maker 3, one of the major gripes with that is it was not as intuitive to use on the TV as it was in handheld mode.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: So mouse support, you're sitting on your deck, on your. On your couch playing Mario Maker 3 and you want to fine tune instead of Sliding the analog stick around real quick. You slap it on your leg, move where you want it, click.
Chard: I have to.
Jake: Is that more in. Is that more intuitive than pointing a joycon at the screen? Yeah, there's no way.
Chard: I mean, it's cheaper.
Jake: It's definitely cheaper. Yes.
Chard: And I'd have to argue that. Do you really think the people of Nintendo. And I'm probably totally wrong. So blast me on discord if you guys think I need a good ass kick and verbal ass kicking about this. But I can't imagine that these engineers at Nintendo are like, we should put a mouse in this. And like, well, you're going to be mobile. How are you going to work the mouse? The guy just takes the thing and goes, put it on your leg. It works great. I have a hard time believing.
Wulff: I can see that being a thing, because also consider this. It's designed in Japan. They have a lot of tiny home spaces in Japan. Fair.
Chard: That's fair.
Wulff: You don't have big workspaces using your leg as like a makeshift mouse pad when you need it. Not constantly, but when you need it.
Chard: That mouse back to your leg.
Wulff: That's not a terrible idea. It's. It. I think I. I know it's funny, but I also think it's innovative.
Chard: No, I get it.
Jake: I get it. You made a good point as well too, where. Where you said they don't always bring out features that are used for every game. And that's very true. There's one feature that I remember for. I think it was. Yeah, it was one of the Mario Party games that came out on Switch. One of the features was you could take two switches. So you and your buddy, if you and your friend both have Mario Party, you could actually put them on the table side by side and play special games that way across two switches. It's a feature that almost nobody's going to be able to do, like battle. It's incredibly rare, but it's supported. Right?
Chard: Right.
Wulff: There was another game that made use of that, the 40, the clubhouse games. Clubhouse games had the stock, like the slot car race thing. And you could connect multiple switches in different patterns and get a whole track that followed the shape of how you connected the switches. Because everybody wants to play across four little screens this big with gaps between them, like they're four friends. Like they're playing what, Motor GP at the arcade. That was three players back in the 80s.
Chard: Right?
Jake: That's funny.
Chard: Crazy. Well, since you guys are talking about.
Jake: What did Sinister mention? Chard. It was that the thing that One feature that he thought was great and he hasn't seen anywhere else was the ad hoc network support, I think it was called. He was on a plane with his wife and brother, I think, and they just turned on the ad hoc network and on the plane they were able to play their. Link their Switch together to play I think Mario Party or something or Diablo something. They played something on a local network on a plane. And that's something that the Steam deck doesn't do. That's something a lot of devices don't do. It's more cumbersome than not. And the fact that Nintendo did it so easy peasy is pretty, pretty noteworthy. So I know he, he liked that feature of the original Switch.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: I don't know if it was as easy as the Switch. But you know what did that way back when?
Jake: What?
Wulff: Psp.
Jake: Yeah, it had that.
Wulff: Yeah, PSP had ad hoc multiplayer.
Jake: Really?
Wulff: Yeah.
Jake: That at all?
Chard: Okay, Nintendo over here just scooping out of Sony's trash bin what you gotta do.
Wulff: I think I want to say the DS had the capability but not a lot of games made use of it.
Chard: Right. Well that's.
Jake: So that's the thing too. Oh, go ahead, Shard.
Chard: I was just going to go into a segue, but please keep going.
Jake: I was going to say that Nintendo kind of flirts. Sorry, I had a chicken sandwich earlier, I'm still picking at my teeth. No, the Nintendo's always like flirted with the idea, the concept of networking in online features. Right. Because DS is the one that had that street pass system, right. Where you could, if you had a DS in your pocket and you can encounter strangers and trade. But in recent years they've been very, very cautious with the online stuff. So I'm wondering how they do it with Switch 2. Whether they open up a bit more or they're still gonna be oddly strict like something like Animal Crossing for those who played Animal Crossing on the Switch. To go visit somebody else's island, you have to, you have to go to the 1 spot on the beach, enter the building, load screen, talk to the guy, get a spiel about online connectivity, Connect load screen loading, loading and then you can go to an island. It's like a 10 minute process to go online with some of these games. I wonder if they're gonna be like that in Switch 2 or they be a little bit more open. Is my, is my, is my curiosity.
Chard: Yeah, I was, we were going to segue into a, you know, center Star had mentioned Nintendo is always known kind of for its innovation like it's not known for, like you said, the graphical inputs or the 60 frames and all this other stuff. Nintendo's big thing is innovation. So, you know, you got the GameCube, I mean, you had the Nintendo 64 that had a bunch of ports and things that they were going to use for it. That never really happened. GameCube, the same thing. There was a bunch of things that we never really got into because it's like they build these things for them to have these magical things happen to them and then they abandon them and they move on to the next big thing. And they, they make, you know, Wii controllers that are really cool. And you get Twilight princess on the GameCube, but then you get, also, like you said, you got Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, but also played it on the Switch. You got Twilight princess on the GameCube, but then you get to swing your sword and shoot your bow and arrow with your like. Like you're actually doing it on the Wii, right? So the, the innovation that comes out of this, you've got exactly what you had asked for years ago, right? A gaming system that was handheld that you can take with you anywhere and plug it into your TV and play it on your home couch, like wherever you wanted, right? Without any loss of picture. Everything looks amazing on any size TV you have. It's Nintendo. So it's not Stellar Blade, it's not Horizon Zero Dawn, It's Mario. You're totally fine with it. It's Mario Kart. It doesn't have to look freaking amazing. It looks good, but it's not. Whatever. So when you look at the Switch 2 and we see that 2 minute and 22 second clip of all the features that they're adding to it. Where's the innovation at? Is what Sinistar was asking. Where is the innovation? Where is, where is the thing that makes us go, oh, what is Nintendo doing now?
Jake: What?
Chard: Because, I mean, you're going to play. What do you play the Switch for? You play it for proprietary, proprietary Nintendo games. Do you play it for Metroid Dread? You play it for Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom. You play it for Mario Odyssey. I can't play those games on my Steam deck, not legally, at least without Nintendo coming after me. I mean, you, these, these games are specifically. I can't play Animal Crossing on my Steam deck leg, you know, so what is this going to make me put down my Steam deck for? What innovation am I going to put my Steam deck down to specifically go buy it other than just to Play the next unnamed mainline 3D Mario platformer. I had to throw that out.
Jake: I'm fantasy critic. Great pick.
Wulff: Honestly, I think that's all it is, right? Nintendo is banking on the players who are not power users. They're banking on the casual gamer. They're banking on the people who are huge Mario stands. You know, they're. I'm sure they're banking on the next Zelda because Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, like those were just gangbusters for them. So.
Chard: Right. That's.
Wulff: Nintendo has always been very first party centric. And that's not to say that Microsoft and Sony and Sega never were, but Nintendo has by far been the most egregious about it and they're not going to change anytime soon for sure.
Chard: Right?
Jake: So let me, let me start by saying Eurogamer has an article out that people should take a look at. If switch 2 is the end of innovative Nintendo, there's much to be sad about. So the reason that headline bothers me is all we've seen so far, it's 2 minutes is 2 minutes and 22 seconds of the goddamn hardware, right? There's so much. We don't know what they've done with it. So like, I'm not trying to be too negative with the Switch because we don't know what they're going to do. It may be the innovations are what we saw, right? Mouse support in your lap, on your leg. That thigh mouse is a whole other category of gaming. It may be that the Magnetic Joy Cons is going to solve the problem that people like me had or that I had. Right? With the Drift. And also I can barely use it handheld these days because the things are so loose. They disconnect all the time. Maybe that's what it is. Refining the hardware so it's, it's next to perfect for folks, right? Because like, you know, Nintendo used to be about quality hardware. That was kid proof practically, right? You used to be able to hurl an N64 controller against the wall and the wall would break before the controller does. Maybe the Switch 2 is going to take lessons learned from the Switch Lite to make it more durable. Maybe that's the innovation. We don't know. Or it could just be software, right? I mean, they do take what works and move forward. They've already said, you know, on the Wii and the Wii U, the big thing was a virtual console where you could buy retro games for money. Each individual title, they moved away from that to this Switch Online system where you subscribe to their monthly service and you get the games in a package. People can shit on it all they want, but it's still dozens of games that are available to you instead of buying separately. And they said they're keeping that and they're not likely to restart from zero again. They're going to.
Chard: Is that like Game Pass Like. Like PlayStation Plus?
Jake: Yeah. You never used it?
Chard: No, I've not used one. I've only used the. I played Game Pass and then PlayStation plus where you get to play free games every so often before they take it. It's like a Netflix for your video games, right? Yeah. Take it off.
Wulff: That was actually the joke when they initially announced. It is. It was often referred to as nesflix because it was essentially that with just any S games at launch that makes sense. And they've added way more now. And you know, I think the Genesis and N64 and maybe game Boy and people doing that.
Chard: When you have Game Pass and PlayStation, those are paths. It's the same thing.
Wulff: Right. But those are locked behind the expensive Nintendo Online package. Whereas any Super Nintendo and Game Boy are with. Are included with the basic package.
Chard: Gotcha.
Wulff: So yeah, but I mean that's still. You get dozens of games. Like here's a great example of that actually being a good thing. My cousin just got his kid who is about to turn six a switch for Christmas and it came with a 12 month Nintendo online subscription. So I helped him set it up and downloaded all the updates for him and everything and got him going in it. And that kid was going nuts on the Super Nintendo games. Like a six year old going absolutely nuts on Super Nintendo games. That was super cool. He was like Kirby Golf and he was just having a blast playing different things. He popped in super. He popped up Super Metroid. He didn't get it much, but he was loving just being able to go from game to game to game.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: My kid never did anything like that with those. But this little five year old was like, yeah, this is awesome. You know, so there's, there's an interest there, especially for younger audiences who are just wanting more. It's more.
Chard: Right.
Jake: It's. It's also easy for like us to forget too. Like for guys like us who, you know, have Steam decks, have messed around with retro arc who are to have a podcast about retro gaming. There's a dozen different ways I can tell you how to play retro games better.
Chard: Right.
Jake: But it doesn't matter when Switch has a small library of classic Nintendo games that anybody can pick up. And play as long as they're a member of their service. Right? And it's easy peasy to get in. Get in there. Whereas tell somebody, okay, download your ROMs from this website. Get, you know, configure. I mean, we do it, but the average person does not do it.
Chard: No, you're right. My wife would not sit in front of my Steam deck and go to all these different sites to get all the programs to play Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis, like, or something like that. Like, we are. We are spoiled. But it's also, it's what we like to do. We like to go find those things and play these things and get these things set up. And to be honest with you, I'm. I'm not. I'm. I'm tech savvy to a point. But there are layers that I have asked you. Jake, you wolf Sinistar, what the hell am I doing to get this to work? Right? And because I have a basic roadmap of what to do, I can usually get there pretty quick. But my wife ain't gonna do all that stuff. She's gonna be like, can I just plug it in and play it? You're like your casual gamer, so it makes sense to just be like, I'm gonna go to the store, hey, Super Metroid's here. I love that game. And then you play it and you're done. You're good to go. So instead of having to go to five different ROM sites just to pick the damn game up.
Jake: Yeah. I have to really try and restrain myself from being. Not like, gatekeeping, but I gotta be very careful when somebody says, I just want a retro handheld to play old Nintendo games on. What's the best handheld? And my first thing is, oh, if you want handheld, get an analog pocket. Spend the $300, get an analog pocket. It's the best FPGA, yada, yada, yada. I have to stop that, right? Because there's $40 handhelds that you can get like the Retroid Pocket, which is super cheap and runs things more than adequate for 99% of the people out there, just not for me. Right, right. But I can't tell you how many times I've used my. I have a lifetime subscription to EMU movies. And the only reason I have that I've had it for a decade, I think, at this point. And it's so I can take a library of ROMs on a. On a handheld device and it syncs up and it downloads all the screenshots and movies for me. Nobody in their right mind does that. Does that more than once in their lifetime. I've done it like six times. Right. For various devices over the years. I like doing it. It's monotonous, it's boring, It's a pain in the ass. But somehow I like doing that. Do I ever play the device after it's set up? No, but I like doing it.
Chard: It's your Zen guard, man. It's going out there with your rake and playing with your Zen garden. It's just. That's what you do. It's how you find peace. It's perfectly normal.
Jake: So it's definitely innovation for the Nintendo Switch. They're taking what's working from Switch 1, and we don't know yet what they're fully doing. I have one more point you had mentioned. It's mostly Nintendo games on the Switch. Very true for the first one and very true for Wii U. Wii U was basically dead on arrival. Right. Like a wolf will say with me. Like, it's just nobody released games for that system. And even the Wii, I think, had a lot of great games, but it was all unique to the Wii. It didn't have those ports from other systems.
Chard: Right.
Jake: I think we're gonna have a change on the Switch too. Go ahead.
Wulff: There was one game on the Switch I was. Or not the Switch, the Wii, that I was really excited about, the Little King Story. I absolutely loved it, but I can't stand having to point and click with the Wii Remote. It's so awful.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: Using it as a mouse is trash.
Chard: We played all the bowling games and the. And the games that you use the remote control for, like the surgery games, you know, the trauma center stuff. It's, you know.
Wulff: Do you know how. How long it took to put Little King Story on something other than the Wii? It finally happened in 2016. Game came out in like, what, 2008.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: It took eight years to put it on PC. All you had to do was make the Wii Remote be the mouse. Like, that's all you had to do.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: And so there's a barrier there where a lot of companies were just designing stuff for the Wii and then it wasn't easily transferable. So the Wii kind of had its own software pool. And then when somebody tried to put something on the Wii from something else, like what. There was all of maybe three zombies at a time when you were playing Dead Rising on the Wii, right?
Chard: Yeah, right.
Jake: Like the hardware, they stopped competing with Sony and Xbox, you know, generations ago. Right. And even with the Switch, which has A more arguably a more classic option in controller. Right. The Pro controllers, the Wii U had this as well. But the Switch really kind of dialed down a classic controller. You have that now. But the hardware is still lacking compared to the Xbox and PlayStation. So we still didn't see many ports of those games to the Switch. The Switch 2 however, is going to be better in terms of graphical power. It's not going to compete with the PS5, but it's easily going to do PS4 in that generation of games, right?
Wulff: Yeah. Wasn't it supposed to be like base PS4 caliber?
Jake: Right. And PS4 even today still looks really good. I mean, hell, half the PS5 games are ports of PS4 games anyway.
Chard: So come on Nintendo, there's no cyberpunk.
Jake: But then also in terms of software support, we have companies like Sega. SEGA is kind of like almost on the verge of a renaissance, I'm going to say in terms of they're bringing back all their old properties, right? They've got Shinobi Crazy Taxi golden axe. They're bringing a lot of their classics back in new versions of games that are kind of like not AAA graphics. We're going to say aa. And I think they'll run fine on the Switch. I think they're going to be there. The other option is Microsoft. Microsoft is fast approaching the point where they become a software company and less of a hardware company. I think they're always going to have some kind of hardware device like an Xbox. But they started bringing their games to PlayStation and they're looking more like we're a software first company. We want you playing Xbox game no matter where you go. It doesn't matter if it's on our hardware, on PC or PlayStation or wherever. And if they get, if given the opportunity, I guarantee you they would love to put game pass on the Nintendo Switch 2. They would bring games to Switch 2. I mean, is it going to be Indiana Jones? Probably not.
Chard: Right.
Jake: But Halo Infinite? Probably Right. All the doom 3 or doom dark Ages, I think I heard that one's coming. So I think the bump in graphics will be enough for a generation back of games. And I think Microsoft and Sega are going to be all over the Switch two.
Chard: Right. I mean you could play like Hogwarts Legacy on the Switch 1. It is available on there and it doesn't look as good, but it still plays pretty good. My sister was playing that on there, but on, on her specific Switch. But I mean, even if you look at the old Xbox like the last Xbox X that just came out not just came out, but came out what, four years ago now.
Jake: Xbox One.
Chard: Yeah, not the one.
Wulff: The Xbox series.
Chard: Series X. Thank you.
Jake: Series X and S. Yeah, it looks.
Chard: It looks like, like it looks.
Jake: Yes.
Chard: It doesn't look like a gaming console anymore, but basically it's a shorter version of what I got under my desk here. So it always like, to your point, it feels like they were always. There's like, this is our last kind of thing. We're gonna go software and start pushing it all over the place and Sony's just gonna be throwing PS numeric status probably till the end of time. So, you know, because Sony is gonna probably fight with Nintendo and be like, we're still better than you since the PlayStation 1 era and keep going from there.
Jake: But yeah, I don't even think it's a competition anymore. I think, I think it's ps like Sony won the console war. Right. Like if you want the premium console experience, you're going to get a PlayStation. If you want the best gaming experience, you're going to be on PC. And if you want just, you know, convenience of games, maybe Xbox on Game Pass and cloud streaming. And then if you want to play, you know, Nintendo's got Nintendo games. Nobody has Nintendo games. Nintendo has a certain magic with their first party games and they're only on their system. So it's kind of like not necessarily console war, it's just a console cold war. I guess everybody's doing their own thing now. It's. But everybody's equally useful, right? I don't know.
Chard: The console renaissance.
Wulff: I will say that the switch to. When I described it yesterday to you guys at Marco Polo, I said it looks like a sleeker Steam deck and I didn't mean that in a good way because it looks nowhere near as comfortable as a Steam deck.
Chard: Right, right. You guys are talking a lot about ergonomics.
Wulff: I do have to say it does look thicker and more. Better rounded to be more comfortable in your hands. So in that regard I do think it's going to be a comfort improvement for most people.
Chard: Yeah, this is. It's a weird. I mean, I don't have my Steam deck anywhere because it's in my. It's in my office. But I feel like when I play this, like it. It. I'm expecting to have the grips that the Steam deck has right on this.
Wulff: Yeah. Like there's my hands hurt looking at you.
Chard: Right. It doesn't.
Wulff: And then you've got this thing right. That's got like the controller grips on it.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: And it's actually when the Steam deck.
Chard: Was released and I was reading reviews about it, people were complaining about, like, how heavy it was over playing it for too long. And I've not had that problem with it at all. Playing it?
Wulff: No.
Chard: I could play the thing for hours and it doesn't feel.
Wulff: Yeah.
Chard: As big as it is, you feel like it's going to be bulky and heavy and hard to. Hard to handle. That thing is like. It's like holding the cloud almost like. I know that's probably too super exaggeration, but it still feels really good in your hands.
Wulff: Yeah, it is.
Jake: One of the reasons I almost. I didn't buy it at launch was because the controls looked like they were uncomfortable. When you guys told me it was comfortable, I thought you guys were nuts. Yes.
Chard: How wrong are you?
Wulff: Super comfortable. It's ridiculous. Like, and I can see how people might think, okay, it's a big, giant, hulking tablet that you're holding. Like, you kind of have to hold with both hands because if you're holding with just one hand, it gets a little wonky. It does get a little wonky, honestly. Try doing that with the Switch. It is worse with the Switch to hold it with one hand.
Chard: Yeah.
Wulff: It is almost as heavy and you have no frigging grip on it. You're, like, holding on. You're holding onto it by the shoulder and you've got your finger on the screen in hopes that you won't drop it. And then you can feel that tension there of where you're putting tension on where the control, where the Joy Con meets the tablet. And you feel that like, it's. You're like, oh, I'm going to break it doing this.
Chard: Right. It does not feel robust at all. So hoping like on there keeps that so it doesn't feel like you're gonna snap that thing in half.
Wulff: Yeah. It blows my mind that Nintendo did not more comfortably design the Joy cons with the Switch 2 than they did. I'm sure they're more comfortable than the Switch ones, but give it a little meat to hold on to, you know?
Chard: Right.
Jake: Yeah. My thing with the Joy Cons is I understand why they did it that way. I understand that the on paper, their concept was one controller, but you can split into two so you and a friend on the couch can play Mario Party and all that stuff. But they are not comfortable that way. And none of my kids like playing with the Joy Cons on their own. Like, every single one of them is like, can I just go use the. Your 8bitdo controller. Can I go use your Xbox controller or whatever I have? They would rather use any other full size controller than using a tiny little Joy Con. And my kids have small hands and they don't like it. And we lost the D Pad because of the Joy Cons on the Switch one. I really wish by now we'd had official Joy Con with a D pad. The Switch Lite has a D pad. Why can't I get that as a thing? So I hate the Joy Cons. I hate that it's $90 for a pair of Joy Cons. I hate how many times I sent it in to get repaired for Drift. Hopefully they fix that with hall effect. We don't know for sure yet, but I'm with you. They are uncomfortable. They are tiny still. Even if they're longer, they're still tiny and thin. They hurt my hands. My kids don't like them. Who likes the Joy Cons? Like I do wonder by removing the IR camera and some of the other stuff if they did it to make it cheaper so that you're not paying. And when I say $90, $9 Canadian if they've reduced the cost of the Joy consistency, because I know that was one of my big complaints is I refuse to pay any more for controllers for the switch because of how expensive those damn things are.
Chard: Right. I think this is a really cool feature. Let me get this out of the way. I think this is a cool feature.
Wulff: The removability. Absolutely.
Chard: Exactly. And I used to have a co worker that I'd work with, he used to bring, when he first got his switch, he'd come out and at lunchtime he'd bust a switch out and he'd pop it off the table and he put the switch, you know, the screen down on the table and he popped us off. And he just sit there and screw around with his little Joy Con in his hand like that. And I was like, that's freaking neat. But it's too small. Like this is just, this is too much. Like, or not enough. You say too much, but I also mean not freaking enough. Like there's, it's not beefy enough to, to really do anything with it. And I can imagine being a man without children, I can, I can simply imagine this thing going missing when a kid gets its hand on it easily. So I, I, I, I hope that the, the, the newest ones have a little bit more weight to them and if, if they are electromagnetic, it holds it in place better and it, it makes it feel like I get angry when I game, man, I'm gonna snap this thing in half. I mean, if I. When I play Metroid Dredge on this thing, I have to put it on the TV with a handheld because I will break this console. I feel like I would snap it in half because that game was hard.
Wulff: And very frustrating, that game. At the end of a gaming session for games like that, my hands are feeling like that episode of Friends where Chandler was really into Ms. Pac Man.
Chard: Yeah.
Wulff: At the end, he's just stuck with the claw. Like, that's how I feel just playing these in handheld for that long. Like, for three hours if I actually get time to get in a good gaming session or even like an hour with a more intense game. Oh, man. Like, my hands are done. It's like, I need a break because of the stress, but also because my hand hurts.
Chard: Let's. I want to point out, because Jake's replaying the video here, that there's also a headphone jack in this, which my phone doesn't have a headphone jack on it anymore. I'm just saying, like, most handheld things nowadays don't have handheld jacks. Except, okay, the Steam head has it too. But I just, I appreciate that it's an appreciation thing that they're not. Oh, yeah, everything's going to be usb. Like, I, I, when I saw the headphone jack, I was like, oh, okay, cool. Because everything I use is Bluetooth because not everything I have has a freaking headphone jack in it anymore. What I.
Jake: But again, it goes back to my point chart of it took five, six years for them to enable Bluetooth audio headphones. Do you think they removed that feature? And it's gonna be another five years before we get Bluetooth wireless support again for, for headphones and we're stuck with the jack. Like, I like the jack too, but I like the option is my thing.
Chard: I hate chords, so I'll, I'll take anything that has chords on it. But my Bluetooths don't last eight hours anymore. So you want to have something that you know you're going to be running with for a bit. So. And if I'm gaming hard and I'm into a game, I don't want my sound to be cutting out because I'm so, like, into it. It's going to ruin the whole motif of what we're doing.
Wulff: So, yeah, before we go on, I want to Bluetooth with the Steam deck because it doesn't like, it's not great with it syncing to my earphones at least. So I Kind of have to use the wired ones.
Jake: Well, I have it up on the screen. I paused it at the. So you mentioned chard real quick that there's. It's magnets now instead of like a physical plastic rail. And I'm interested to see how that works when it comes out. But what's bothering me here. And I have it up for people watching YouTube. I have it pulled up here. It's magnets, but there's also like a exposed circuit nub on the switch itself now. And that to me seems like something's gonna break within five weeks. Like I don't see that lasting the moment. My kid gets upset and flexes the magnetic Joy Cons. If it's not strong enough, it's gonna break that nub.
Chard: Right.
Jake: So I really wonder about the durability of these new Joy Cons because that was my complaint about the switch. One is the Joy Con rails basically broke. Right. They're. They're loose and they disconnect. I don't want the same problem or a different type of problem with the new Joy Con. So I'm curious to see how that works.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: Yeah. I feel like that nub is a little too long.
Chard: Yeah.
Wulff: I feel like it would have been okay if it were a bit shorter and didn't protrude all the way as far out as the hole seems to.
Chard: Yep. It's interesting to see how all that's going to. How that comes together. I do like now for, for like the color for the aesthetic look, I like the old gray with the highlights instead of, you know, one side's blue, one side's red. I really.
Wulff: Yeah, I'm into that.
Chard: I like that.
Wulff: Very analog stick bases.
Chard: Yeah, the monochromatic look for that looks pretty solid with, with the highlighters on the, on the other end. And then you take off and you can see more of the coloring. I think that's neat. Now again, that's, that's purely for aesthetic approach. PZ for myself.
Jake: But it's Lisa at the top of the show. I mean, lost opportunity to show off a Super Nintendo Switch with the gray color scheme and the purple buttons.
Chard: Agreed.
Jake: If they do that, I would buy one of those hands down.
Chard: And who's to say that that doesn't happen? I mean, we just saw the PlayStation do the same thing for their 30 year anniversary. Right. When they released a PlayStation 5, but it had the same coloring as a PS1. And now all my PlayStation things, basically I can either have a PlayStation 1, wallpaper 2 or 3, and it's the same sound effects, the same coloring. So there's a lot of nostalgia you're getting out of that. Who's to say that they don't launch this thing and then a couple years, months or years later, whatever anniversary comes up for Nintendo where they're like, it's the Super Nintendo's 40th anniversary. Here's a switch with the same coloring and all that stuff. That would be.
Jake: Right.
Chard: Everybody would go and get one.
Jake: And they've, they've done a ton of cosmetic designs on the switch. I mean, I feel like every six months they really, they used to release a new switch with a new Doc pattern or something. There's an animal crossing switch, a Zelda switch. And I know they're big into that kind of thing and it'd be interesting to see if they do one in Super Ndo style. Especially because that Sony one did so well for the, for Sony.
Chard: We got to keep our eye out for whatever centennial anniversary the Super Nintendo will have and how they're going to do that.
Wulff: Wouldn't 2025 be the 40th anniversary of the NES? Maybe?
Chard: At least the Famicom was 85, I think so.
Jake: It was 85 here. But was Famicom 84?
Chard: That's a good question.
Wulff: Let's see.
Jake: It's definitely around that time though. You're right.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: Oh, The Famicom was 83.
Chard: Okay, 83.
Jake: Wow.
Chard: So we missed a 40th on that one. But I mean, I could see it turning into. I could, I could see them going in some kind of nostalgic direction for some kind of, again, centennial anniversary for, like you said, Super Nintendo or 64, whatever was the one that's talked about the most at the time. You know, which one ever they can lean into. So. Well, I don't know, guys. I'm, I'm, I'm interested. I'm to go, to go around Robin and to gauge our interest level or our excitement or interest level in this. And I think we're all kind of in agreement. And I won't speak for you guys, but for myself, I want to say that I'm interested in what they're going to bring to the innovation table outside of what we've seen in that 2 minute, 22 second video. I don't know if I'm as excited about it as I would be for a new console. But I think being primarily PC gaming, it's hard for me to get excited about consoles these days, especially when I have the Steam deck. Like, I'd be more excited to see what the Steam Deck's gonna bring out for accessories for my Steam Deck than maybe a Switch two. So I am very interested to see where it goes, but not as excited as I could be about something like this, if that makes sense. And that's not a negative. I don't want it to sound like I'm disappointed or I'm set. My headspace is just into the PC portion of things, so I'm not going to be able to do anything on my Nintendo that, you know, I just. I'm more excited about video cards than I am about handheld consoles. So. But I'm very interested to see what Nintendo does with this thing and what they're going to do and to hear people's responses when we get a full fleshed out thing in April, to know exactly or close to exactly what we may or may not be getting. So my interest is piqued. I'll go with that. Jake, what about you?
Jake: Yeah, you know, I look back at what I used the original Switch one for seven, eight years ago and I was looking back my purchase history and there's a lot of independent games, a lot of indie titles, Shovel Knight Hollow Knight Shantae games, all on Switch. And then, I mean, I haven't played that many indie games since Xbox 360 era, but now the Steam deck hands down has replaced it as my indie device. When there's a new indie game, the first thing I look at is not my PC, not my Switch. I look at the Steam deck to the point where I had bought Inscryption in December of 2023 and a few weeks later when I got the Steam deck, I'm like, I should have gotten it for the Steam deck instead. I should have waited because I love Inscryption, but I'll never play on the Switch again. I look at the last couple years of games I bought for the Switch and I mean it's few and far between. As a joke. I looked at 2024. I did buy Echoes of Wisdom. I had a ticket coupon so I used it for that. Did not like that game. I bought Nintendo World Championship. Very neat. I fell off that game after like three weeks, sadly. And then Vampire Survivors DLC for my kid. So I bought like two things in 2024, 2023, a little bit better. Of course Tears of the Kingdom was out, but I look at the last few games I bought on my Nintendo Switch over the last three years and nothing really stands out except for Tears of the Kingdom in terms of what I played and we're talking Kirby and all that stuff too. I just don't know what would excite me more about a Switch 2 software wise. I would love to see an Odyssey 2. I don't think I need it launched. I would like to see a Mario Kart. I know they teased one. I'm curious to see what the gimmick is, but I spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart 8 and I thought that was a perfect game to me. Even if they were announced another Smash Brothers, I don't think I'm that hyped for it because I spent so much time with Smash ultimate on. On Switch and then Smash on Wii U. And that game is a perfect game to me. I don't know what they could do on the Switch 2 to bring me back in terms of gaming.
Chard: Right. You can actually, since we need to get our. Our bingo cards filled up for the week. You can actually see my two Switch games right here, which is Breath of the Wild and Metroid Dread. My wife has the third and only other Switch game in this house, which is Animal Crossing. So, yeah, you know they're Nintendo proprietary games, right? So it's games that I can't play anywhere else. I can only play on the Nintendo Switch. We went and got. I think I got her this switch for her birthday a couple years back because she saw something on Animal Crossing and everybody was talking about it, so she had to have it. So we went out and picked one up and she played that religiously. And it was funny because I was like, I'm gonna bring this into my office and talk about it tonight. So I'm gonna have it in here. And she hasn't touched it in a while because she's got a PC and she's been playing stuff on there. And she goes, well, I was gonna play that today. Like, really the night I talk about the Switch and need to show it off is the night you want to play something on it. How convenient is that? But she let me have it just for tonight, and then I'll give it back to her when we're done. But I mean, I even have that blue thing that you see right there. That's. That's the Switch Lite that I have too. So that's. That's what I was playing on my cruise. So if I want specifically Nintendo S games and I just bust out the Switch. So I don't. I don't know what they'd bring to me that would make me go, hey, I mean, Metroid Prime 4, I'd be all about that. I know, Jake, you're not as enthusiastic about it as we are, but that would be the only thing I could think of. But am I gonna. Is it gonna just be on Switch two or will it be back? Will it be. Be able to play on both of them? Because if it is, I'm just gonna play it on the. On the Switch one. So.
Jake: Right.
Chard: That's how they would get me is they're like, oh, it's only available on Switch 2. And I'd be like, fuck, we need that. And then Animal Crossing, Lunar New Year or whatever version of Animal Crossing is gonna come out for Switch 2 this year, if it does come out this year, or whatever. But we're gonna have some. You're gonna have something. And Animal Crossing was such a huge sell for the Switch one. I feel like they would be completely remiss if they didn't do something for Animal Crossing for the Switch to maybe.
Jake: But the Nintendo is Nintendo, right? Like you guys are talking about new Zelda games for Switch 2. Not going to get one. I almost guarantee you we will not see a sequel to Tears of the Kingdom for like another three, four years, if not longer.
Wulff: I would be a launch title. It'll probably be like a midlife of.
Jake: The console title considering it's been how long since we got a new Mario, a 3D Mario, right? Mario Odyssey was what, six, seven years ago and we haven't gotten a new Mario.
Chard: Zelda was the bridge game. It felt like whenever we had the innovation, there was a Zelda on one console and then it also went into the new console, right? So like the GameCube Twilight Princess into the Wii that had all the new stuff. Then you said Breath of the Wild was on Wii U. Plus it went into the Switch, you know, and then we got Tears of the Kingdom, which, you know, was its own thing. And then we had the remake, you know, Link's Awakening remake and. And then the new Zelda where you play a Zelda game. So it's. It's almost weird to not have like a Zelda bridge because that's, that's what it always felt like to me was it was a Zelda bridge.
Jake: The rumor is that they're doing a Breath of the Wild for the port for the Switch 2. Basically it's breath of the Wild or it'd be an update to Breath of the Wild so they'll look better on the Switch too. Because more than Tears of the Kingdom, the original Breath of the Wild had some frame rate issues. So there's talk that they would do an update to show they make that look better on the Switch 2 as one of their launch offerings. We'll have to see in April what they do with it. So that may be what you're going to get. And I think that's all you're going to get for the Switch 2's lifespan. We're definitely getting Mario Kart because they teased it. We're definitely. I would say we're getting a 3D Mario game because we already had Wonder, we've already had Mario Maker, we had a teaser with Bowser's Fury. So I think we're due for a Mario 3D Mario game soon. Oh, yeah, not closer to release, but I don't think they're the type that looks at, oh well. Tears of Kingdom sold really well. We're going to do one in two, three years. It's not happening. I think they're very slow with their releases. I don't even know if they look at what fans want half the time. I think they just kind of do Nintendo things. Nintendo does what Nintendo does and they don't really. Well, they don't really look up from their desks.
Chard: I think Nintendo going to Nintendo.
Wulff: Yeah. You have to consider, though, the release schedule for Nintendo Switch, like once it hit like three months in, it was really consistent with major releases and first party releases regularly for like the next two, three years. And so, yeah, I do think we're gonna get. If I think we're gonna get a Zelda game in the middle of the lifespan of the console. They pumped out two on this one.
Chard: Three.
Wulff: When was the last time? Oh, three. When was the last time we saw more than one Zelda game on a console?
Chard: That would be Nintendo, right?
Jake: Well, GameCube, right, isn't GameCube? We had Wind Waker. We had Four Swords and we had.
Chard: Four Swords and then Twilight Princess.
Wulff: Right, right. It's been that long.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: The Wii, we saw Skyward. No, no, we got Twilight Princess and then it got Skyward Sword. So that1 got 2 wii u crossbow training. Yeah, you didn't get one until Breath of the Wild that you know as. It's like Dying Breath.
Chard: Right. Of the Wild. Dying Breath of the Wild.
Wulff: Dying Breath of the Wild. Yeah.
Jake: Yeah. Well, we'll see what they have to offer. But I mean, I think it's gonna be. I think that what I heard was it Bloomberg, I think, had a report saying that they delayed the launch of the Switch 2 by 6 months, both to build up stock because they didn't Want to have a shortage at launch. Right. They saw what Sony and Xbox went through, but also to ensure they have launch titles available. So I think we're going to look like a strong launch lineup for the system. Covid.
Chard: Their entire world shutting down for a year didn't fucking help with that either.
Jake: So that doesn't help either. You're right. Yes. Yeah.
Wulff: But I mean when a console releases with almost no lunch titles, it doesn't bode well for the console. It looks bad. And so yeah, they got to have like a couple of first party, a couple of third party that are big, some indies and they're set like that's all they need at launch because otherwise you're murkying the waters and people are like, well what is there to buy? There's too many things, I don't know what to get. And then nobody had. Nobody's happy because they didn't sell as much as they wanted. But yeah, I think we're gonna see Mario as a console seller this time around. As you know, the start. Maybe Mario Kart as well. If that's not out by the end of the year, I'll be surprised. But yeah, I don't think we'll see Zelda for maybe two, three years while they figure out what they're going to do after Tears of the Kingdom. Because that was a big game and I know that one came quick because it was mostly reusing the breath of the wild world. Right, right.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: I can see us. You know, Metroid Prime 4 will probably be pretty quick. We'll probably get another Yoshi game, which the most recent Yoshi's island game, whatever it was for the Switch was kind of trash. My kid got bored playing it.
Chard: I feel like Nintendo is going to bank a lot on Metroid Prime 4, I think. I don't want to putting a lot of chickens in their hat in that basket, but I feel like that's where the eggs are going. It's because I think Metroid positive response for the, you know, the delivery of. We're doing this now. We're going to make Switch two. That's the next stage. Oh, by the way, this is going to come with it. You don't need anything else right now like until we can kind of get that figured out. So that's, that's.
Wulff: I also think Metroid did well enough that they're gonna. That we're gonna get another side scrolling Metroid on this platform in a couple dredgers is great.
Jake: So we'll get another side scrolling before we get another 3D one, I think for sure. Right. It'll be four and then that's it. But we'll definitely get a sequel to Dread.
Wulff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chard: Before.
Wulff: I'm definitely interested in the Switch. Like, Chard pointed at his whole two games. My.
Chard: Yeah, he's got.
Wulff: These squares are the same size as Chards. I got a whole stack of them right here. And then like, there's a couple of special editions on the bottom. Undertale and Axiom, Verge. And then a couple of big special edition boxes right there. And then I also got a big Zelda special edition box up here behind this wooden NES cartridge. And then I've also got these two. So I've got plenty. Like, I. I was really excited about the Switch one. I'm not really excited about the Switch two, but I will likely end up getting one to play the first party title. Like. And it sucks that Nintendo knows they have gamers by the balls like that.
Chard: Right?
Jake: That's their business, right?
Chard: Right. That's their model.
Wulff: Where else can you play Metroid? Where else can you play Mario Kart? Where else can you play Zelda? You could play games like those, right? They're usually not quite as good or not the same. Like, I don't know if I ever told you guys this, but I think Horizon Zero dawn was the best Zelda game ever, not Zelda, you know?
Chard: Yeah, I support that decision at 100%.
Wulff: The fact that they came out the exact same day is wild to me.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: But I mean, that's. It's a very Zelda ish game. But it's not Zelda.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: You know, it doesn't have that built in fan base and love. I mean, my fucking wedding ring has the Zelda prints on it. I don't know if you guys can see there.
Chard: Yeah, I see it.
Jake: There it is. Yeah. I think if the rumor is that it's not oled, if it's an LCD screen. And again, it was a cost thing. Right. To keep costs down. We've seen before Nintendo, like other console manufacturers will do like a refresh where they improve things slightly. Right. We had the slight revision of the Switch, had better battery, then we had the OLED version. I think if I can hang on and not be tempted with the fomo, we'll see how that. Well, that goes. I think I would rather wait for the OLED version of the Switch 2. If it's not OLED at launch.
Chard: I would blow. It would blow my freaking mind if they have an OLED version of the Switch 1 already in production, and they don't take the damn technology to the Switch two to make it OLED right out the gate. I understand the costing, I totally get that. But it feels like more of a kick to the balls if they're like, hey, we're going to release this shitty screen to you. Even though the Switch one has an OLED already attached to it, we're still just going to give you this lcd. And then five years later or three or two years later, we'll give you the fucking oled. That seems awful. That seems terrible. But I. Nintendo going to Nintendo, if they're going to squeeze. If they're going to squeeze the cash cow, then they're going to do what they can. So we were doing it to keep the prices down. Yeah, sure you were. Sure you were.
Jake: What do you guys think is. What would you be willing to pay for the Switch to? What's your. What's your limit?
Chard: Sounds like it's going to be around 300, right? Like 299.
Wulff: 309 something. No, I'm thinking closer to 399.
Chard: Okay, well, then I'd argue that I would pay 299 for that. I won't get that. That's what I would pay.
Wulff: Yeah, they've got to keep it. They can't go over 400. They just can't. Otherwise, you know, that's going to scare away a lot of families who are like, yeah, because I want to get my kid a console.
Chard: I could get him a PlayStation for that, you know.
Jake: No, you could get them a PlayStation 5 is what?
Chard: How much are they?
Jake: 5 is like 500, isn't it?
Chard: I thought they were like, I think.
Wulff: Digital PS5 is 380.
Jake: Is it?
Wulff: I think.
Jake: I thought it was more than that. Take a look.
Wulff: I think Canadian, but it could be that too.
Jake: But I think $399 would be the great price. I think that'd be the sweet spot. But I bet you they do 425 or something. And I'll tell you why. Because they Already have the Switch 1 out there and you can buy Switch 1. They'll knock $50 off the price and they'll say, hey, for your kids, you can still get a Switch 1 or a Switch Lite for, you know, 300 bucks. But if you're a gamer, gamer with Nintendo, you'll pay the 425 and you'll get some kind of demo disc or maybe they'll even bundle in Mario Kart, because I'm telling you, Mario Kart, whatever this is Mario Kart 9. Mario Kart 10 will probably be a launch title, and I think that's smart because of how many units Mario Kart 8 sold for them and how many systems they bundle with Mario Kart 8 over the last five years. So I think they might do that. But 425 is what I think you'll end up being. Although I would love to see 399.
Wulff: Okay, so the PS5 is 450 or 500.
Chard: I'm looking at a 349 here at Target on my end.
Wulff: Oh, I went and checked Best Buy.
Chard: But if you go to the PlayStation consoles like the Slim and the PS Pro are like 699, like that. The Slim is like 4 something. But the Pro is 699, which makes sense for that. But the digital edition of my version, physical edition, 349A target.
Wulff: So wow, that's cheaper than Best Buy. Okay.
Chard: Because you got it now. You got the Pros. So you're gonna offload the older.
Wulff: No, their pro is 700. Their base is 500 at Best Buy.
Chard: So don't go to Best Buy, go to Target.
Wulff: I guess it just depends where you shop. But you also have to consider, like, for 400, if. If you're going 400, there's gonna people who are gonna be like, I'll just get a meta quest. I'll just get.
Jake: That's true.
Wulff: A bottom tier. I'll get a low tier, a 1570 card. The bottom tier steam deck is under $400. And what you have to consider too is Nintendo does not go hard with internal storage. The switch had what, 32 gigs?
Jake: I think so. Or less. Yeah, they relied heavily on SD cards for storage.
Wulff: Yeah. And I got the SD card. I've got a 512 hidden under here. Or a 256 or something. We got a 512 for my cousin's kid. Or 256. I don't remember. We got him a big one because it's like they wanted to go digital for as many games as they could if they're the same price. And I was like, all right, well then you're going to want storage space for this child. And so I can see Nintendo just being like, yeah, just stick an SD card in there. It's good enough.
Chard: But also Nintendo is also keeping physical copies of games. Right. That's. They're not going purely digital. Yeah, that I heard too.
Jake: Right.
Chard: So that's. That's another big thing for collectors. And people like us that are like, we want our games to have physical editions of them. So as Wolf shows off all of his Switch, his Switch limited edition shit, including Sea of Stars, which I'm very jealous of.
Wulff: But that was a gift from my friend for my birthday and I was super appreciative.
Chard: He nailed that one out of the park.
Wulff: Yeah, he did.
Jake: So.
Chard: All right, guys, well, do you think we've covered our basises here and have we set our pieces, our Reese's Pieces?
Jake: I mean, we spoke for an hour and 16 minutes, about a two minute trailer.
Chard: That means we're a good podcast, right?
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: I wanted to reinforce your idea of there being like Mario Kart as a launch title. I know we're wanting to wrap up here, but especially since they're not going to have like, they just did a Mario party game in the last few months and there's no way in hell there's a Smash Brothers on the horizon anytime soon. So they need something multiplayer to sell the console as well. And I think Mario Kart is what it's going to be.
Jake: And like 3D Mario I'm sure is coming, but I bet you that's a holiday title because you need something to sell it during Christmas. So I think Mario kart launch Mario 3D Mario Platformer at Christmas and that's, that's a console plus, you say. And it works with every. Almost everything else on Switch one and. Right. And we did a free update for Breath of the Wild, so it runs great. I mean, and then you have Metroid 4 for the Metroid nerds. Right. Like it's, they have. It's going to be a strong year for their launch. I think they made the right call by delaying it six months. But it's fomo.
Wulff: I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the Twilight Princess remaster hit it either because.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: Last time we saw that for a while was on the Wii U.
Chard: That'd be a good one.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: So I can see that coming around again. And yeah, yeah, it's, it's gonna be an interesting year. I think we're gonna see some remasters, honestly. We might, we might see the Metroid prime trilogy bundle hit remaster on the Switch 2 as well.
Jake: Yeah. Because that's the ongoing rumor, right. That it was one was going to be the big remaster, but then they were going to do light remasters for two and three, but then they just kind of quietly disappeared. They haven't said anything. Nothing's been announced. So I can see that coming out and when you don't talk about Zelda.
Wulff: Being out till next year, Prime Trilogy being an early title would not be a dumb move on their part.
Jake: That would be an awesome move for them. Yeah. But also you mentioned Zelda and there should be a Zelda on Switch 2. I think that's the play. You just mentioned it. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker. I could see those coming to Switch.
Chard: Two and they already do a remaster of Wind Waker though, for Switch on.
Jake: The Wii U switch.
Chard: Okay, okay. I thought they, I thought they didn't do a remaster of Wind Waker at some point. I just didn't remember which console it fell on.
Jake: Yeah, okay. So, yeah, it'll be, it's interesting to see, I can't wait to see in April what they announced in April. Hopefully better hardware details. Hopefully see more games. I, I, yeah, I am optimistic to see something neat about Mario Kart. Whatever. Hell it is not nine, ten for that three seconds we saw, it just looked like Mario Kart with more people on the track. Star, it has to be more than that.
Wulff: Yeah, it's easy to look at this and see, oh, this is just feeling like a hardware refresh like Sinistar said. But I think it's going to feel more like, and I mean, it wasn't that much different from feeling like a hardware refresh. It's going to feel more like going from DS to 3DS in terms of capabilities.
Chard: Right?
Jake: Yeah.
Chard: All right. Perfect. Okay.
Wulff: Well, I have said my pieces.
Chard: Pieces or Reese's Pieces? Perfect. Well, guys, this is a good conversation for a 2 minute and 22 second long video. I'm glad we decided to kind of pivot and we had other plans to talk about something else today, but with this coming out, this felt like this is something we definitely need to jump on and, and discuss with you guys. In which case, let's transfer it to the listeners and the viewers and the people that are hanging out with us. Please come by Discord, tell us your feelings about the Switch 2. What do you think about it? Are you excited? Are you just interested? Like the three of us are like, how do you, what do you want? What do you want to come out, Star Fox? More Metroids? More Zeldas? What would you like to see on the Switch 2? And what are you hoping to get? Yeah, come and hang out with us over at the Discord. Press B2. Cancel Discord. You can stop by our website and come see us there@presbytocancel.com or pressbee.org Jake is closing his eyes because he knows I'm gonna fuck it up. We are also part of a huge group of other amazing podcasters over at the Superpod Saga. Superpodnetwork.com you can find them there. Go hang out with a bunch of people. It's on my screen so I could read it right. And you can hang out with people like.
Jake: Nailed it.
Chard: Dave, who was with us last week from Remember64, and Aaron for the SuperPods podcast and. And some really cool people that are over there. So come check us out over there. Follow them. Follow us. It's been great being a part of that team. You can find me over@twitch www.twitch tv chardmonk playing my Sisyphean game of Doom. Sounds like I'm gonna finish it this weekend. And Jake just uninstalled his, so that's pretty cool. I think I'm part progress here. You can find me on YouTube, Twitter, Blue sky, all the social network places that exist right now until one of them burns to the ground here in a couple days. Jake, where can they find you? Sir?
Jake: You can find me. Shit. Posting over in Blue Sky. Sick, Jake. Over in Blue Sky. No K and sick. You can also find me on YouTube. Follow me on YouTube, please. Again, s I C J A K E. I have something planned starting in February on my personal channel, so make sure you check that out.
Chard: There's no K and sick, but there's Canadian in Jake. Werewolf.
Jake: Oh, one more thing, one more thing. Hold on, hold on. Give me one sec. I have one more thing.
Chard: Did we get another sponsor from another Amish company?
Jake: Oh, never mind. It's not out yet. It's okay. I'll. I'll advertise it next week. There's something I did voice work in that's coming up, but it's not out yet. It looks like it's being done another week, so.
Wulff: Interesting.
Chard: Well, I'm excited to hear about it next week.
Jake: Wolf.
Chard: What about you, sir? How are you doing? What are you doing? Where can they find you?
Wulff: I am really aching to start doing YouTube stuff again because my stupid little Parasite Eve short that I did when I did it like a year ago or something is. And I know this isn't like, oh, but for us, it's kind of big numbers. Mine is at 2,200 views.
Jake: Let's go.
Wulff: That's badass. How did that happen? So I'm thinking I might just jump into doing those kind of things a little more. Yeah, I have some other stupid little things I wanted to do. So I'll probably just do shorts, and then at the end, just be like. And go check out Press B. So perfect. Once I get those going, I'll say I've done them. But that's kind of where I'm at right now is like, I see that, and I'm like, okay, I need to do more.
Chard: Yeah, totally. Awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I've been doing the Jake thing where he told me to put some thumbnails to my videos, and they're getting a lot more views than I normally get. So it's been kind of exciting to watch stuff that I do on Twitch get thrown onto the YouTube and get a little more love over there. So we'd love to see. I'd love to see it. I'll watch all the Wolf stuff. Wolf is a greatly entertaining individual outside of the podcast as well as inside of the podcast. So anything he does is going to be. It's going to be golden. Gonna be super gold. It's gonna be.
Wulff: I think I want to just better.
Chard: Than anything Nintendo can release. I'll tell you that right now. But. All right, well, you can also check out our friend Sinistar over at DJ Spin A Star. He does his fat beat drops out there. He really wanted to join us tonight, but he is. He's getting the new house squared away in the old house squared up. So we love you, bud. But go check out our friend DJ Spin A Star, dropping fat beats on Mondays and Saturdays for Smatter Day. And then the rest of us, you can always catch us here at press B2 Cancel at YouTube, and we will see you guys next week with some more exciting episodes. So until then, have a good night.