Eight years. Eight years ago. March 3rd, 2017. 2025.
Eight years ago it was around my Bar Mitzvah, and we moved earlier that year from my home of ten years. My new home still had the familiar faces of my immediate and extended family, and many familiar faces from my old home made the trip up for me and my family, but it felt weird to see them all go. I didn’t really know what to feel after the slow transition that moving homes brought everyone close to me nearby and then gone again. But there was one thing I did know. I. Wanted. A. Switch.
I left my old home knowing that my friends there have been playing games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 2 and other games. All while I couldn’t play with them! Truly, a tragedy. But the Sunday after my Bar Mitzvah, after a surprise visit from some family friends, it happened.
There it was. A combined financial effort from my parents and family friends.
Behold.
A Switch.
Now, sevenish years later, multiple joy-con drift fixes, a pro controller, a bunch of not great third party GameCube controllers, an OLED upgrade and over a hundred games downloaded (I promise I’ve beaten about 60-70 of them), it’s time to reflect on what games I’ve played in handheld mode, tabletop with friends and on the big screen after eight long years.
- Neo The World Ends With You: July 27, 2021
Fourteen years after the DS cult classic, a year after I bought the physical, this action RPG has made an impact on me personally that will last my lifetime. You play as mainly Rindo, Fret and Nagi in a Shibuya not unlike our own, as you navigate a week long game in a world mirroring our own. Everyone has a sort of psychic powers activated through natural ability for special actions outside of combat and pins for use inside of combat that act like different styled attacks you can chain with your party members. It’s story is about Rindo and his own inability to make decisions as a leader, so his ability to replay this game’s rigged scenarios again helps him gain confidence and leads him and his team one step closer to returning to their lives. However, they will not return as the same people. With fully realized characters that feel as human as they are fashionable, it is a rollercoaster of twists and turns that new and old fans will latch onto forever. Try it out, and expand your horizons. See how far you’ll go.
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening: Sept. 20, 2019
Released and bought for my 15th birthday, this remake of the original remaster on Game Boy Color from Game Boy (they added a dungeon, that counts), lets Link’s Awakening shine bright and pure as one of the best Top Down Zelda games since 1993. Link wakes up on the beach of Koholint Island—shipwrecked— after a crazy storm, and is taken into Marin’s house in Puni Village to rest up. When he wakes, he asks about Zelda and where he is, in which Marin responds that she isn’t familiar with Zelda and that he’s on Koholint Island. He returns to the beach he washed up on with only his shield, and when he finds his sword, a talking owl approaches him to find the Eight Instruments of the Sirens to wake up the Wind Fish Egg at the island mountains peak, so he can escape this island and go home. The toy-like shine of the graphics reflects the almost unreal whimsy that makes up Koholint Island and all its inhabitants. This humor and backwards logic is almost dreamlike. Other Nintendo characters show up in odd places, like Goombas as enemies and Chain Chomps as pets. That logic is almost as persistent in the later dungeons and the paths to reach them, but once you figure out the solutions it becomes a smooth journey from one point to another, with many humorous stops along the way. But the humor is slowly met with this uncanny self-awareness about the status of Link’s journey and its consequences for the island. If you want to see for yourself why it is called Link’s Awakening, play this game.
- Legend of Mana Remastered: July 24, 2021
Originally released on the PlayStation on July 15, 1999, I saw this game at the February 2021 Nintendo Direct. I knew basically nothing about the Mana franchise, but when I saw the beautiful painting-like backgrounds, and heard the incredible trailer score, that I had to play it. Gameplay be damned, this game felt magical. So the day of release came, I downloaded it off the eShop and I was whisked away on a journey through a stitched together lost world. Yoko Shimamura’s composition swoons over the variety of populated towns and majestic nature areas you add to the map, with monsters and bosses to fight weapon class beat em up style. The people in towns lead you to the many side quests and misadventures you can go on, as well as the scattered main quests that lead you to revive the missing Mana Tree. The game is cryptic and almost hidden in most of its systems if you go in blind, but there is a dedicated website to help guide players to see everything that the game has available, which I made use of by the near end for the sake of seeing if I missed anything. But going in blind is truly a delightful adventure I will cherish, and hope others can be whisked away on their own adventure as well.
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate: Dec. 7, 2018
There is not much to say specifically about this game on its own (it’s Smash Bros, super ultra crossover video game smackdown) but the time I spent with this game, from the first day I left the annual Chanukah party with my cousins early to play this game (you would’ve done the same), to the friends I’ve made online through the online Smash Crew Server, I was never that good in (shoutouts to Zek, PR in Arizona), and all the while playing online on my own, stopping myself from getting addicted because I wasn’t that good online (but I’m probably better than you). Being around from the beginning of the competitive scene to now kinda not paying attention too much but still checking in whenever Tea is playing (LETS GO TEA!!) has made me feel a lot older than I think I should be feeling when it comes to a children’s platform fighting party game. But isn’t that something special? To know so much about something from the beginning, to never fall out completely, to always be connected somehow to its community, feels nice. Warm. Like I can pick up a controller and just shoot the shit with friends, and just have fun.
- Super Mario Odyssey: Oct. 27, 2017
Now this was the game I was most excited about in 2017. The new Zelda game came out immediately with the Switch in March, and I only got it in October. So this was the first NEW game I got to play. For the next few months after the game came in the mail, every day after school would be spent in the acrobatic playground that is Mario Odyssey. This wasn’t my first 3D Mario game; that being 3D Land, but it was my first open-collectable style game, more akin to the go-wherever-you want-however-you-can-and-get-however-many-stars-you-can-find gameplay of Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine than the pre-set-up obstacle course path style of Mario Galaxy and 3D Land/World. At that point, I’ve never played a game like that before, so it felt like I was being let loose in the most imaginative experience video games could create. Mario was more acrobatic than ever, but he was also tighter than ever. Every input, every ground pound jump, every long jump became second nature. Then there was the companion Mario has with him, that being Cappy, a ghost in his hat that can be thrown as a little bouncy platform, as well as let Mario possess any enemy that Cappy can rest on top of, which also changes your moveset to the enemy you possessed. Everything about this game from the enemies, to the story, to the kingdoms, to your own ability to just make that tricky jump, just exudes a confidence that says you didn’t know you needed this until it’s over.
Please make Mario Odyssey 2 please. I need it back.
- Blaster Master 0 1/2/3: March 3, 2017/March 20, 2019/July 28, 2021
Yeah that’s right. I’m cheating. Sue me (dont).
Inti Creates was one of the first smaller dev teams I began to say I am a fan of. From Campcom’s Mega Man Zero games to their own originals like Azure Striker Gunvolt, this team has style and flair with every game they make, not to mention just how fun they consistently are. But it all started with Blaster Master 0, mostly because there was a free demo on the Switch eShop that played for a while before I bought the game…on my 3DS. The first game was more or less a remake of the original NES, but with the narrative combining aspects of both the original Japanese game; Meta Fight, and the localized American version; Blaster Master. You play as Jason Frundrick, a genius in robotics in the near future after an ice age has forced humans to live in a man-made subterranean world. Now on the surface, Jason finds a frog and keeps it as a pet. There are no records of this creature’s existence, so he names him Fred. One day, suddenly, a portal opens up and Fred hops through it! Jason follows him through the portal and ends up in a cave holding a battle tank with the name Sophia III printed on its side. He enters the tank and leaves the cave, only to find that he’s in the old overgrown subterranean world. And it’s infested with hostile mutant creatures! From this point forward the game is like Metroid plus Zelda. You jump and blast with main and sub weapons through each area, and you leave your tank to enter dungeons that play like Zelda, except you have small projectile bombs and a blaster that can be upgraded up to nine times as long as you found enough pink gear thingies. Make sure not to get hit, though, or you’ll downgrade one level until you get to one left, then you start losing health. As the game continues, you find a girl with amnesia lost in one of the areas named Eve. She joins you to help find Fred and try to regain her memories. This narrative is simple yet engaging, and as each game progresses its story the gameplay becomes refined and basically perfect, with a refined selection of blasters and new abilities introduced, it has been my favorite trilogy not only in its story, but also in the gameplay style.
- Tetris 99: Feb. 13, 2019
A Tetris Battle Royale is literally the best idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Since 2019, I’ve been playing Tetris versus 98 other players, and this game has barely left my main screen, for its addicting gameplay and bopping soundtrack(s) have made me many a school morning upset that I was just thiiiiiiiiiiis close, and many evenings feeling soooo close that I might just make a Tetris Maximus and win it all.
Still haven’t won a game. 10/10.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land: March 25, 2022
As an avid Kirby fan since 2016’s Kirby Planet Robobot on the 3DS, it was a shock to the system to find HAL Laboratory making their first truly 3D Kirby game. Too bad when it arrived at my house two days late I had to wait another day and a WHOLE 24 HOURS for the staircase to the den where my Switch was to play this game. And now, after three years, I can say that Kirby and the Forgotten Land is an incredibly joyful roller coaster ride through a post-apocalyptic overgrown world. Abandoned cities, empty malls, deserts, ports and much more, let’s this game’s identity be as bleak as possible, and yet Kirby is here, running amuck, causing widespread cuteness and joy around this abandoned planet. The gameplay is such a genius conversion of the 2D Kirby platformers that it feels like they’ve been making these 3D Kirby games for a while and not just now. I played this game alone, smiling all the way through, letting the game take me on an adventure, and again with a friend all the way through. Both times we rescued all the captured Waddle Dees from the Beast Pack, and discovered their plan to [REDACTED]. I cannot wait to see what else HAL Labs comes up with for the next step in this great 3D world.
There you have it. A brief-ish blurb about some of my Switch highlights. If you wanna see a tier list of all 100+ games, scan the qr code (it’s unordered really). Here’s to another eight years of playing portably, wherever, whenever.
