A strong Nintendo Direct showing recontextualizes the Switch's entire 2024.

Before the morning of June 18, 2024, the unspoken vibe I was picking up was that 2024 would be Nintendo stretching their product line up with niche intellectual properties and ports and remakes of older games.

In that frame of mind, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the long awaited Switch price... Read more...

Caution: Although this is a Pokemon article, it is rated PG-13.

Well, that was surprising and in a way, not surprising. I believe I might have referred to a new mainline Pokemon game on Switch being announced in the Pokemon Presents as “the free space on the bingo card”, and it came to pass pretty much as expected. We do have a new Pokemon game coming to Switch, but it’s still leaving a lot of questions. Specifically, I have five.

For one thing, it means a once-in-a-decade event.

After Nintendo's last financial results release, the latest updates to Pokemon game sales indicated that the mega-franchise has shipped somewhere over 100 million copies on Switch, with “main” games - defined as anything that can move Pokemon into the Home subscription service - being more than... Read more...

There's multiple reasons why the Nintendo 3DS StreetPass feature should return in the Nintendo Switch successor.

Until Nintendo reveals the Switch 2 there's plenty of space to speculate about what they'll do for their next act. It'll be a more powerful system on some level - that alone is a prolific topic of speculation - but for a company with such a unique history of hardware innovations/changes, how exactly... Read more...

Sure we only know about some ports, remakes, and a Peach game, but this is year 8 of a console and a new one is coming. Right?

This time last year, we only knew about five video games confirmed to be coming out from Nintendo on the Switch in 2023. Those comprised four games in the first five months and an unidentified Pikmin release. We had all sorts of chatter back then about nothing of importance hitting the Switch after... Read more...

Observations from a year that single-handedly proves Sturgeon’s Law to be true.

Early in 2023, author and hot-air balloon resident Cory Doctorow published a piece on how TikTok had shifted value from users to business partners to itself and now was in the process of dying, calling the process “enshittification”. For most of the year, I’ve thought of this as a good explanation... Read more...

Justin takes a critical look at one of the year’s most acclaimed titles.

Back in 2006, New Super Mario Bros. released on the Nintendo DS after a 15 year hiatus from the traditional Super Mario Bros. series. The first game in the New series was met with mostly positive reviews, but even back then I was a little let down by the entry. Over time it seems as though more people... Read more...

Correct!

I just played the first level of Quest for Camelot, the latest addition to the Nintendo Switch Online's Game Boy Color library, and I'm in pain. This addition was so substantial that Nintendo deemed it worthy of being the only English language NSO game in that batch (other titles: Kirby’s Star Stacker, Joy Mech Fight, Downtown Nekketsu March Super-Awesome Field Day!).

Or how not to launch a spinoff.

2015 was a year of transition for Nintendo for a variety of reasons. The Wii U was definitively a sales bomb, regardless of how well received Splatoon and Super Mario Maker were when they launched to critical and fan acclaim that year. The 3DS was doing okay, but as the system entered its fifth year... Read more...

Squandered potential makes for a Paldean mess.

Willem went nuts and made an entire video essay for this editioral, so be sure to give it a watch over on our YouTube-channel!

I’d say that when it comes to faith in the Pokémon series I’ve been on the more positive side over the last decade. I’ve written and made a whole video essay... Read more...

Advance Wars in 2023 rings hollow in the face of actual war.

I experienced a weird sort of whiplash with the announcement and release of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp (AW). Not only was the game’s release postponed twice, with all signs pointing towards a largely finished title, but the major cause of its primary delay was an event that at first had little... Read more...

Time will tell if this year's EA Sports soccer game be more than just another Legacy Edition on Nintendo Switch.

Back in 2017, FIFA was featured as a core part of Nintendo's initial Switch marketing campaign. You could play some footie on the road. It's portable soccer! But after a decent outing in 2017, EA Sports' notable soccer franchise stalled. After a few minor tweaks in 2018's FIFA 19, every ensuing year featured a "Legacy Edition" - essentially just the same game as the 2018 release but with new rosters. This was an annual disappointment.

When they say life comes at you fast, they aren't taking the eShop's terrible latency into account.

I am incensed. I am bewildered. I am awake, well beyond my bedtime, unable to calm a mind poisoned by confusion.

I was in the eShop, minding my own business, trauma-dumping dubious products into the Nintendo World Report Discord (join today!). I consider this a form of ablution; I behold the inexplicable, and I then cleanse it from my mind by delivering it to you - our unsuspecting readers.

In recent memory, Nintendo never reveals their full year as of January 1.

I felt a major sense of deja vu recently. "Nintendo has nothing for this year!" "Switch is going to be barren after May." "We only know of five games Nintendo's bringing to Switch!" "When's new hardware?"

Those kinds of sentiments fill the Nintendo discourse every time the calendar changes years.... Read more...

Or “Nintendo, can I please get my weekends back?”

One of the fun features of the website is that it preserves the Talkback threads in the article proper, basically serving a function of a comment section but with actual moderation. Recently, friend of the site Syrenne took time out from her vacation to dig up this psychopathic comment from a 2010 blog post (yes, we had blogs at one point) by Neal called “This Week In Awful Downloads” and drop it in the Discord:

A lengthy list of games played and games not played.

For close to a decade, I’ve kept a running list ranking my favorite games of the year. I add new games as I play them, idly tinker with it once every month or two, and sometimes make big swings when a game turns sour over time or I find myself returning to it more than I expected. It’s a fun exercise... Read more...

Square's busier than Nintendo on their own platform from now until February. Who knew?

It seems like every week, another Square Enix game is announced for release soon. A third Voice of Cards game came out the day of the September 13 Nintendo Direct and wasn’t mentioned in the Direct, likely because at least 5 other Square Enix games already had a chunk of time in the 40-minute presentation.... Read more...

How does the day-one roster for Mario Strikers: Battle League compare to the two previous Strikers games?

I have not played Mario Strikers: Battle League yet, but after seeing the roster of playable characters - or rather, the reaction to the roster - I was curious to see how exactly the roster stacks up to the two previous Mario Strikers games and if the absences of Daisy, Diddy Kong, and more are worth... Read more...

My original plan was to do this entirely in wrestling jokes, but the writing time was coming up to a Ric Flair 1980’s title defense.

We’re into the traditional dry period between the announcement of a new Pokemon game and the reveal of actual new information about it, but it’s left me with a lot of time to stew over things since our rapid analysis came out. As someone whose Pokemon playstyle is largely focused on Pokedex completion,... Read more...

Four score and many PAX Easts ago…

This is my tenth PAX East. 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022.

My first was, as you see in that lede, a decade ago (recap here). I was 17, still in high school, and had been on staff at Nintendo World Report for a few months. 10 years later, I’m a legacy staffer who spends most of his time working in a career that this very site prepared me for. I’m buying a house and getting married. My back hurts (haha).