The best part of a Nintendo console launch isn’t the console itself. It isn’t even the marquee game that launches alongside it, as much as I love Super Mario 64 and Breath of the Wild. No, the best part of a Nintendo console launch is the game Nintendo releases at the same time (usually as a pack-in) to teach you the hardware’s ins and outs.
Wii Sports And Nintendo Land Were Great Introductions
The Wii had the best of the bunch with Wii Sports. Though it launched along the more eagerly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Sports completely stole the spotlight. At night, I would play Twilight Princess in my room, gradually making progress through its (extremely lengthy) campaign. But during the day, my dad and I would spend hours trying for strikes, knock outs, and home runs. It’s been in heavy rotation at nursing homes since 2006, and it’s easy to see why. You know how to swing a racket? You already know how to play Wii Tennis.
The Wii U‘s was good, too, but much less approachable for a non-gamer. Nintendo Land, like Wii Sports, was a pack-in game that offered a selection of different activities that were designed to show off the system’s broad range of capabilities. There was an F-Zero racing game that had you tilt the tablet to steer the car, a lightgun-style game where you swiped the touchscreen to chuck shuriken at enemy ninjas, and several asymmetrical games that pitted one player holding the tablet against three with Wiimotes and nunchucks. Closer to the less popular Wii Play than the phenomenon of Wii Sports
Nintendo Land highlighted the weird, liminal quality of the Wii U as a whole, as some games required Wiimotes and nunchucks — controllers from the previous console generation — in order to play them.
1-2-Switching The Business Model
But 1-2-Switch was the strangest of the bunch. For one thing, it was the worst of the three games by a wide margin. Then, to add insult to injury, it didn’t come with the console. If you wanted to play 1-2-Switch, you had to pay an extra $60 for it. And the middling reviews ensured that very few people d — What’s that? It’s actually the 38th best-selling Switch game, beating out Among Us, New Pokemon Snap, and both Mario + Rabbids games? Chalk it up to a lack of options at launch, I guess.
Like Wii Sports and Nintendo Land, 1-2-Switch was built to show off the specific strengths of the new console’s hardware. One game had you use the Joy-Con’s HD Rumble to judge how many little simulated balls were rolling around inside the controller. One had you use the motion controls to milk a virtual cow. And one used the motion sensor on the top of the Joy-Con to judge how many imaginary sandwiches you could munch in a set amount of time.
Unlike its predecessors, 1-2-Switch tutorialized its minigames with live-action videos that showed actors playing the games.
It was a bizarre game, with one-note minigames that were far more gimmicky than anything in the previous launch games. And yet, it got a sequel, Everybody 1-2-Switch! in 2023, that got similarly middling reviews. Though it sold really well for one month in Australia last July, it made little impact and, if you’re anything like me, you probably forgot that it existed. These games were not made to launch more than one calendar year after the console. It’s just unnatural.
So, where does that leave the Switch 2? Will it launch with 1-2-3-Switch? Will Nintendo go back to the familiar formula of Wii Sports or Nintendo Land? Or will it invent an entirely new franchise to tutorialize the seemingly modest changes arriving with the Switch 2? Time will tell.
Whatever Nintendo decides, I hope it makes the 1-2-Switch equivalent a pack-in game. These games are designed to introduce you to the console and if you have to pay full price for that introduction, it sets up the wrong expectations for what the game will accomplish. I want a launch mini-game collection to get me, my friends, and my family into the new console groove as quickly and seamlessly as possible. No more, but definitely no less.
