I’m too busy playing Nintendo Switch 2 to write a review
It's been a long weekend
In 2017, I reviewed the Nintendo Switch for The Verge. Which was a bit of a surprise, frankly—at that point in my career I had largely stepped away from bylines, for one. And for another, I had just flown out to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference. So instead of going to the usual talks and meetups that define GDC, I spent my entire week jumping between my hotel and the Vox Media’s SF office, holed up playing lots of Breath of the Wild, listening to the satisfying *click* of the Joy-Cons and, yes, licking a cartridge or two. (Meanwhile, back in New York, James Bareham was snapping gorgeous photos of another Switch to accompany my words. Thank you as always, James!)
This week, about eight years and two months since then, I managed to pick up a Switch 2 at launch and spend the whole weekend playing. This isn’t going to be a full review, nor is it really a full essay; it’s something a little different and new for MBH4H. Below are three vignettes about our first weekend with Switch 2—about the hardware itself, about Mario Kart World, and about its library of classic titles. Please enjoy and let us know what you think!
The Switch 2’s hardware is boring. Good.
Growing up as a video game-obsessed teenager in the early days of broadband internet meant I was the target audience for wild, fan-made Nintendo console concepts, renders, and hoaxes. While many of the worst offenders have been lost to time—I spent far too long digging up broken links for this graf alone—you can still find a few new and old concepts here or there. Whereas PlayStation and Xbox hardware design has always been fairly subdued by comparison—iterations of a non-descript console box and a familiar take on a twin-stick controller—an unrevealed Nintendo console could be anything. And to be fair, reality favored bold choices.
Here are just a few real design decisions that Nintendo has made over the years:
A table-bound headset that creates 3D images but only as shades of red;
A three-handled “trident” controller designed for a species that, notably, has only two hands;
A clamshell of two screens, one of which requires a separate stylus to use—and, later on, one screen that boasted glasses-free 3D effects;
A one-handed remote that can be swung around like a Tennis racket, with a wriststrap included to try and avoid tossing the remote through a TV; and
A goddamn handle on a home console.
When Nintendo revealed the original Switch, it really was innovative amongst its peers. After generations of everyone bifurcating home and portable consoles, Nintendo decided to combine them into one console. The Switch could be treated like an oversized GameBoy, or it could be docked to a TV for seamless switching between the two experiences. Controls attached to either side of the console could be disconnected and used as one full controller or two miniature gamepads for instant multiplayer, or even as customizable cardboard musical instruments. None of these things were entirely new, but the combination of ideas and the ease with which Everything Just Worked was a modern marvel.
That brings us to 2025, where the wildest thing about the new Switch 2’s hardware design is how utterly boring it is. After decades of reinventing the wheel with each generation, Nintendo decided to retain the Switch form factor and simply improve upon every aspect. And frankly, I could not be happier.
Side-by-side, the Switch 2 is noticeably bigger than its predecessor while managing to retain the 14mm thickness that all Switch models share. But what’s most startling is how Nintendo has matured in its hardware sensibilities. Where the original Switch’s Joy-Cons used bright and somewhat flimsy plastics, the Switch 2 adds just hints of a more pastel red/blue hue under the joysticks, which now have a sturdier feel that matches the casing overall. What little other color the Switch 2 has, it’s hidden by the Joy-Con’s locking mechanism, which is now secured via magnets rather than a flimsier slide. (RIP that dulcet click.) The kickstand, once a small perforation that easily broke off, is now a strong metal hinge that could very well outlast the rest of the console. Even the 7.9-inch display, while not OLED, is sharp and bright enough to render the original Switch display wildly muted. Even compared to other modern handheld PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally, the Nintendo Switch 2 stands out as an impressive feat of hardware engineering in a way the company has never strived for before. It is the most grown-up device the company has built.
And here’s the thing: After several minutes playing the Switch 2 in handheld, I don’t even think about the hardware anymore. There’s no fumbling around to find the power or Volume buttons, because they’re within reach without having to take my hands off the controller. Having USB-C ports on both the top and bottom of the device means I can plug it in without a cord getting in the way, and the dock Still Just Works. Yes, it’s a little tougher to travel with than my original Switch, but after lugging around the Steam Deck for over a year, having a device that’s less than one-third the thickness feels refreshing.
In 2025, there are a plethora of other handheld devices on the market that have brought parity between console and portable gaming. After years of trying to not directly compete with anyone in the console market, Nintendo has decided to create the ultimate handheld gaming hardware. And for now, at least, it’s the best one out there.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Mario Kart World
The Switch 2’s sole first-party launch title is Mario Kart World, and for good reason. The Mario Kart series has always been Nintendo’s greatest comfort food since it first launched in 1992 on Super Nintendo. And while it’s always been popular, its most recent entry set a new high watermark. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Switch title of all time by some margin, with over 68 million units sold, including six million more just this past year. Nintendo originally launched it on the Wii U back in 2014, but like many games of that more beleaguered console era, it found a much bigger audience in the Switch era thanks to a much bigger audience as well as aggressive post-launch support. By the time Nintendo released the kart racer’s last bit of downloadable content in late 2023, it had 96 tracks in all—and keeping with Mario Kart tradition, around half of those tracks were adapted from past Mario Kart entries. It is more than fair to say that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the definitive edition of Mario Kart, one that is still playable on the Switch 2. So, where do you go from there?
Mario Kart World is absolute fucking chaos. It takes the Mario Kart formula and adds a dash of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, with a physics system that rewards experimentation—even in this first weekend, people are finding extremely wild ways to power slide, wall jump, and rail grind just off the beaten path to shave even a few seconds off their best times. I’ll never be able to recreate these moves, but I’m excited to watch all the YouTube compilations in the years to come. The game cherry-picks elements from past titles to reinforce this more arcade-y vibe, with feathers now an essential tool to jumping to new shortcuts and speed-enhancing coins that add tension to the more combative elements.
The game’s most obvious change is its open world design. Every track exists on a cohesive island of dramatically-varied biomes, and that interconnectedness permeates through every aspect of the game. Races often start with characters driving to the next track, weaving through traffic, grinding on electricity lines, and looking for little shortcuts just off the main roadways to attain or maintain a lead. In the traditional Grand Prix mode, these preambles are sure to be polarizing—I love them now but I can see them wearing thin over time—but it’s Knockout Tour that really sells this new paradigm: a nonstop event that has you drive across the entire island in a six-track battle royale, with each checkpoint serving as a new cutoff where the number of racers dwindles from 24 to 20 to 16, and so on, all the way down to a final four. While Mario Kart 8 Deluxe might be a more complete package, the visceral excitement of Mario Kart World’s Knockout Tour is enough that I cannot see myself going back anytime soon.
Officially, there are more than 30 tracks in Mario Kart World, and like past entries, around half of them are remixes of classic Mario Kart tracks. No track has gone unchanged, with an abundance of new shortcuts and rails to grind on as well as new entry/exit points to better coalesce with the open world. But several have gone through much starker updates than others. The Nintendo 64-era Wario Stadium, for example, feels like an overhaul that captures the essence of the original track but addresses many of its weaker sections, while Mario Circuit is more of an homage to a quartet of Super Nintendo tracks. Even outside of the core tracks, you can find nods to the series’ history, like the boardwalk planks leading to and from Boo Cinema that echo the SNES Ghost Valley tracks.
Mario Kart World is a best-of compilation that samples from past titles everywhere it can to create a visual spectacle and build a foundation for what I imagine is ample post-launch content to come. I just… I have no idea where the inevitable DLC tracks will go here.
A Link to the Past
For all of the excitement for the new improved hardware, the greater screen fidelity, and the bonkers new open world Mario Kart game, perhaps the best new feature of the Switch 2 is how it brings the best of Nintendo’s entire 40-year catalog all under one device.
Let’s start with recent history. Accompanying Mario Kart World at launch is a pair of “Switch 2 Edition” upgrades for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. We’ve written extensively about how modern Zelda titles have a timeless art direction that “upscales” through ambient perspective and smart design choices, but here we also have many technical improvements to better sell that. The faster load times and improved framerate are immediately noticeable; I’ll let Digital Foundry handle the finer details, but to my less-trained eye, the game’s impressionistic canvas is even more refined, the edges less apparent. It may not be a dramatic overhaul, but the full package of changes has certainly improved. I’ll admit, I never finished Tears of the Kingdom—I spent dozens of hours wandering around but never bothered to actually face off with the final boss—and perhaps now I’ll give it a proper go. (There is also a new Zelda Notes companion app for mobile, which sounds intriguing but I’ve yet to put in the time to test it. Still, I’m excited that it enables you to download other players’ brilliant Tears of the Kingdom concoction, so I imagine the Hyrule Engineering subreddit is about to have a groundswell of new interest.)
The Switch 2 upgrades for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom cost $10 apiece on their own or are free as part of Nintendo’s upper-tier Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription, which costs $50 for the year. I can’t recommend buying these upgrades à la carte, but I can say it’s worth trying Switch Online if for no other reason than Nintendo Classics (née Virtual Console), a suite of emulated games that trace Nintendo’s lineage from NES and Game Boy up to Nintendo 64 and, new for Switch 2, GameCube. In many ways, the Classics collection is a very Nintendo twist on the Netflix model of having something for everyone, and if you’ve spent any time playing Nintendo’s consoles in the past several decades, you’ll find something that hits that nostalgia impulse.
It’s been years since I’ve played around with any of Nintendo’s emulated titles, and I was frankly surprised by how much each library has expanded. There are hundreds of games available, and for the most part, the controls map intuitively to the Switch and Switch 2’s control scheme. Like all modern emulators, you’re able to save and load specific moments of gameplay at the platform level, so even older games with horrible save systems can be played more easily. Nintendo’s most popular first- and third-party games are available here, and even some smaller gems. To wit, I’m sure a lot of people will be happy about classic Mario and Zelda games, but during the original Switch’s run, I probably spent most of my time on the incredible SNES RPG Earthbound (aka “that game where Ness from Smash Bros. comes from”) and the Nintendo 64 construction destruction arcade game Blast Corps.
What’s new for Switch 2 is a Classics portal for GameCube, notable for being the first and only Nintendo console with a handle. (I have always loved it; I will always love it.) There are just three games at launch, all of which unlock very specific pangs of nostalgia for me. Sci-fi racer F-Zero GX feels as fast and smooth as ever, complementing Mario Kart World’s looser style; conversely, the 3D fighting game Soul Calibur II has a more deliberate pace but a great flow to the combat. (It also helps that Link is a playable character, replete with bombs in addition to his sword-and-shield kit.)
But the big highlight to me is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. This mainline Zelda entry launched in the early 2000s and, based on the various internet forums and websites I visited at the time, was a fairly controversial game. The focus on a younger Link and cel-shaded look (often maligned as “Celda”) stood in stark contrast to the more “mature” aspects Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask that preceded it. Ditto the world map, which emphasized sea travel and archipelagos over larger continents. I absolutely adored it, and up until Breath of the Wild, I thought of it as my all-time favorite Legend of Zelda title. It may very well be again soon enough; the more I play Wind Waker on the Switch 2, the more I find myself enjoying an altogether different era of Zelda.
There were over 600 titles released for the GameCube, giving Nintendo plenty to roll out over the years to come—it's still adding more Classics to each platform at a regular clip, including the NES. And with the addition of GameCube, we're moving much closer to Nintendo's modern era: Wii, Wii U, and DS/3DS. At what point does the Switch 2 truly become Nintendo's everything machine? Pretty soon I'd wager.
Don’t Just Take Our Word for It
Some other great pieces about the Nintendo Switch 2 launch:
Nintendo Has Something to Sell You (Zachary Small and Meghan Morris / The New York Times)
A night at New York’s biggest Switch 2 launch (David Imel / The Verge)
The Switch 2 May Signal the End of Physical Games (Matt Kamen / Wired)
📺 How Mario Kart tracks are created (Thomas Game Docs / YouTube)