Switch 2 - One Year Later with JT from The House of Mario, Rare Item Studio

[00:00:07] Welcome to Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and gaming culture in Japan's capital. Your host Mono here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo. Returning guest Josh, aka JT, from The House of Mario podcast is here as we look at Switch 2 one year later. We talk about the games, the news, the weird, the wonderful, and everything else about Switch 2's first 12 months.

[00:00:32] And in the future, I take you inside Akihabara's Rare Item Studio, a cool retro game shop. Let's get into the games and look at Switch 2 one year later with JT from The House of Mario. Today in the game section, we are looking at the Switch 2's first year. Joining me to chat all about it is a special guest. So guest, please introduce yourself.

[00:00:57] Hello, my name's Josh or JT if you like. I'm the co-host of The House of Mario, which is a weekly Nintendo podcast that I have with my good mate Drew and formerly producer of the Nintendo Maniacs podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for joining me. You were on the podcast just a few months ago to talk about Pokemon Legends CA. But this time we are going even beyond that to chat about the Switch 2's entire first year. We're going to get into the launch, the games, news we probably all forgot about. I want to cover as much ground as possible.

[00:01:25] So my goal is to get a 100% hit rate on all the important and also non-important aspects of the Switch 2's first year. And the format is that we're pretty much just going to go in order from last June to this June. But of course, we will forget things and hop around. So listeners, if you don't hear a game, we'll circle back to it. So don't worry about that. So let's just get right into it. June 5th, 2025, Switch 2 launches. I want to hear about launch day on your end. Were you able to get one at launch?

[00:01:53] Did you take a day off of work or what was your launch day plans? Oh, this was, I felt like years in the making. Ever since late 23, early 24, I was waiting for this announcement to happen that would get the Switch 2 and this eventual Switch 2 launch day. So I took the Friday off work. It was a midnight launch. I think the Thursday it came. So I kind of, I got to get it that night, but go to work later that day. But it was my first proper midnight launch for a console.

[00:02:19] I was in my city where I live and was able to line up with all these like-minded people. And it was such a fun experience. And there was a real buzz around the place because I'd kept playing my Switch throughout the years. But a few people I'd talked to that day were like, yeah, I hadn't touched it for a couple of years, but they're excited to get this Switch 2 that day. There was a lot of energy. There was a lot of positivity. It was like the upgrade that we'd been waiting for a long time. And then to get the new Mario Kart game was the big thing, wasn't it? Yeah. I look back at that and it seems so long ago now, but some really fond memories of, yeah, actual, you know, midnight.

[00:02:49] And getting into the game straight away. Yeah. I talked about in detail in my Switch 2 launch in Japan episode last year, of course. But yeah, I have very similar feelings where I did win the online lottery. And so I didn't have to go anywhere. I just waited patiently in my house and I got it delivered at my house at 9 a.m. on launch day. So it was pretty much the best case scenario, even though getting one was quite the ordeal. And I did take off work as well. Though ironically, I didn't play it that much that day because I had to spend a lot of time installing games.

[00:03:19] And also I went out to other game stores just to see the atmosphere and see what they were doing. Now, I've got a list of the Switch 2 launch games. And to be honest, I completely forgot about so many of these. These are the day one launch games from Nintendo. In Nintendo, we got Mario Kart World, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 editions. And Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. And third party games, we got Cyberpunk 2077. Rune Factory, Guardians of Azuma. Street Fighter VI.

[00:03:48] Hogwarts Legacy. Hitman World of Assassination. Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster. Yakuza 0. Suikoden 1 and 2 HD Remaster. Civilization 7. Split Fiction. Puyo Tetris 2S. Delta Rune chapters. All of them up to now. Survival Kids. Konitsugami. Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening. Fast Fusion. Fortnite. Arcade Archives 2 Ridge Racer. Fantasy Life Eye. The Girl Who Steals Time.

[00:04:16] And then we got free upgrades for these Switch 1 titles for Clubhouse Games, Arms, Game Builder Garage, Captain Toad, Big Brain Academy, New Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe, Pokemon Scarlet Violet, Super Mario 3D World, Mario Odyssey, Echoes of Wisdom, Link's Awakening. And we also got GameCube added to NSO, which included Wind Waker, Soul Calibur II, and F-0 GX.

[00:04:42] So, JT, out of these games, were there any that made you think, wait, that came out on launch day? I always forget about the Sonic 1, yeah, the Delta Rune, because that was a big deal, really, and that extra chapter that came out. And I completely forgot about that. And then you mentioned that, yeah, so the upgrades. So there were a lot of upgrades, weren't there, in terms of Switch editions to get their Switch 2 one. I even forgot about the Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom upgrade, because I played it.

[00:05:06] I didn't start a new file or anything, but for someone who wanted to go back to Breath of the Wild, it was pretty big, the upgrade visually. Whilst the Zelda Notes mobile app integration wasn't quite what I wanted the upgrade to be, it was still pretty sizable, all those things together. We had choice, didn't we, come launch day? Yeah. And then I think of the 3DS launch or the Wii U launch in comparison to that, and combining everything third-party-wise, not just Nintendo. That's a pretty sizable launch for people to play something day one.

[00:05:36] Yeah, it is very funny to think a year back, because at launch, there were some people who the sky was falling, where's the big single-player first-party game? It's like, it's okay now, don't worry. There was quite a lot at launch, and the ones that made me think, oh, I totally forgot this came out. Some third-party games like Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening, there is a Nobunaga's Ambition game you can play on your Switch 2 right now. Suikiden 1 and 2, I knew that came out, and I did an episode about it. I totally forgot there was a separate Switch 2 edition.

[00:06:03] And of course, I think the favorite trivia answer is Survival Kids, which is a brand new game from Konami, which is a fairly big Japanese company. But I don't know how many people are picking up Survival Kids in 2026. But what did you pick up on launch day? What were your big games? So obviously, Mario Kart World, I got Welcome Tour, because I played anything Nintendo seemed to make, and I wanted to experience that one for sure. That with the GameCube NSO, but then third-party stuff, Yakuza 0, the series I really wanted to get into.

[00:06:31] I was able to play that, and it was just nice that this was on a Nintendo system, not really much, or any, I believe, presence before that on Nintendo. And that was fun. And then having been to Japan just beforehand as well, I enjoyed that more kind of being in the whole vibe and setting that it was trying to portray. So I was stabbling in a lot of different things. It wasn't just Mario Kart World. It was majority Mario Kart World to me. But I had those moments where I've annoyingly lost maybe a knockout tour, and I want to play something else for a bit.

[00:06:59] And I was able to, you know, pick up something else, and there was plenty of stuff there. I played Cyberpunk elsewhere, and I had recently done that. So I wasn't really waiting to jump into that again or buy it again on a new system. But I imagine a lot of people would have picked that up day one and had a portable way to play that game, even for the first time. The choice was pretty good. Yeah, for me, I got Mario Kart World Welcome Tour, of course, maybe the greatest game ever made. And then they gave me the Zeldas thanks to NSO.

[00:07:27] And yes, I did pick up Cyberpunk, Street Fighter VI, and Kunitsugami. And I did download the Switch 2 version of Fortnite. And yeah, it's interesting that you said, oh, you tried out Yakuza 0 for the first time thanks to Switch 2. For me, I tried out Cyberpunk for the first time thanks to Switch 2. So again, with these ports, a lot of people are like, oh, I played that elsewhere. But shockingly, not everybody has played every game. So for me, Cyberpunk coming to Switch 2, that was a great opportunity to finally try it out.

[00:07:54] Even though I do have a PS5, but I just never kind of got around to it. And I wanted like, you know, a tech demo showcase for the Switch 2. I think that's a good one. And yeah, Yakuza 0, that's like a day one, 30, 40 hour single player game that you can try out if you haven't tried out before on brand new hardware. So a year after, what did you think about the decision to launch with Mario Kart World? It was always going to happen, wasn't it? If Nintendo were thinking smartly and it seemed like they were.

[00:08:22] And they gave us Deluxe for Switch, the Mario Kart 8 version and were able to coast through that. And I think we've read that this wasn't going to be a Switch 2 game straight away. But you know, like Deluxe sold so well. So why would you bring out another game? The success of the series meant we get more delayed entries and something like GTA suffers from that as well, because it's so successful and so much anticipation. Like I was really excited for it. And I really liked the game and there's lots to do.

[00:08:48] And Knockout 2 is like a really great mode that sort of really stands out in terms of new features for the series. And yeah, it's just one of those games like I think sadly though, expectations are really high and it just didn't quite hit the mark. And I think a lot of people feel that it's a good game, but they wanted it to be an amazing, excellent game that really brought everything together. Like I wanted to collect all those P switches. I wanted to drive over all those question mark tiles and things like that. But on day one, I couldn't really track those things.

[00:09:17] I couldn't really know what I was doing, whether I was getting close or getting clues and things like that. Yeah, like a great experience, but like, oh, I wanted it to be just that little bit more fleshed out and connected. And we've seen it since and they're treating it like a live service game in a way, aren't they? Because they're incrementally upgrading it. And the version we have today is certainly much better than the one we got on launch day. But yeah, like it's a great success. Obviously, it's still selling really well. The attach rate, if you buy a Switch 2, you buy Mario Kart World.

[00:09:46] It's like 90% or something, which makes total sense. And obviously a great game to bring to friends places to play online or even single player on couch co-op, that kind of thing. Yeah, a great game that's just, I hope, going to get more updates. And I think the real test of how good this game is still to come later on after all these years of updates. Yeah. If you think about it, the highest selling Switch 1 game is Mario Kart. So it makes perfect sense to launch with Mario Kart World. And Mario Kart World has outsold the Wii U.

[00:10:15] So I think we can consider it a success. I kind of wonder how many copies does it need to sell to become officially profitable for Mario Kart? Is it something like 3 million? Is it that low? So I'm sure they're making a ton of money on Mario Kart, even though it might not sell as much as Mario Kart 8, but what game can? And I definitely thought the launch was good at making a statement. Here's a big first party game. Here's the deal with Switch 2 editions. Here are some technically impressive third party games. Like I said before, Cyberpunk was just a really great showpiece of the Switch 2's power.

[00:10:45] Even though it was a five year old game at that point, it set the table for many other third party games that would raise the bar in later months. And yeah, if you've never played Cyberpunk like me, they just gave us a 50 to 100 hour RPG day one. I also thought it is crazy they just gave us Soul Calibur 2. I can just play that at any time. So let's move away from launch and head into July. Some complained there was no big single player game from Nintendo at launch. But here it is, Donkey Kong Bonanza from the Odyssey team.

[00:11:14] And we also saw Super Mario Party Jamboree plus Jamboree TV, which is the first here's an upgrade with DLC. Give us $20 please type of game. So what did you think about Nintendo's offerings a month after launch? Yeah, I like the idea that we don't get DK Bonanza day one. Like we've got Mario Kart World. I like the window thing approach. Let's space it out. I feel that makes it a bit more special. You can give Mario Kart it's time to shine a little. And six weeks after we got DK Bonanza, which I think I was probably more excited for.

[00:11:44] I'm like a really big single player platform loving kind of gamer. And especially Donkey Kong because he never got the love that Nintendo always, I don't know, lately before that release gave him that Gravitas. And he had a lot of spin offs in the early 2000s. And we've had some 2D platformers, really good ones, Tropical Freeze and Country returns since then. But never that really big take me back to DK 64 kind of vibes. And this was the big one for me.

[00:12:10] And I think it was a bit more welcoming of the DK idea for that reason. I think a lot of people, I could tell online, it wasn't Mario. It wasn't the Super Mario 3D platformer that they wanted. And you look at the years since Odyssey and it is like last year, it was eight years by the time that game had come out since Odyssey. Right. And so a sizable amount of time, but I just think, I don't know how really that Mario game, I don't know how they could have fit Mario into that game without it feeling really different and off.

[00:12:39] It's a total Donkey Kong, like fitting slam dunk of a game that like Nintendo just does it again. Like they just can revolutionize 3D platforming and bring a destructive element to a game that is incredibly fun, rewards you for exploring and smashing everything. Because there's so many things to discover.

[00:12:57] And then I see the other side where it comes to multiplayer games, where I think Nintendo sometimes drops the baton and that was the Jamboree TV DLC, which felt like an absolute tack on of the Switch version of Jamboree. And you couldn't play the original version of that game with the upgraded visuals. You had to go through the extra Jamboree TV section to get the upgraded visuals and frame rates, all that kind of stuff.

[00:13:22] And it just felt like this is Nintendo doing bare minimum here to get the Mario Party game onto the new system. And yeah, it's definitely like we get that a lot with Nintendo. We get the absolute like slam dunk, holy grail of a launch of a game. And then two weeks later, you get to this very basic upgrade, which will do, which doesn't matter to them as much, I feel.

[00:13:43] So a bit of a mixed bag, but Bonanza is such an amazing game that I wish more people gave a go because I look at those sales figures and it's not that high compared to what an Odyssey Mario game would have sold, I'm sure. But it's a super amazing, addictive, fun game that I think, yeah, if you haven't played it yet, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. Yeah, Dunk Kong Bonanza, I thought it was absolutely incredible. It was my game of the year last year. And I think my appreciation for it has even grown since, because I think back to that game and realize just how technologically impressive it was.

[00:14:13] And no other platformer is going to do this. It's not going to have fully destructible environments like that. And yeah, Jamboree TV, I didn't get, but this was when Switch 2 edition started to get a little vague as the new stuff was very sequestered. It was not metaphorically tacked on. It felt literally tacked on. And even now, when you hear Switch 2 edition, you're not really sure what you're going to get. So how do you feel about Nintendo's messaging with the phrase Switch 2 edition?

[00:14:41] Is it a bit amorphous or what do you think about it? If you hate lots of words, you're going to hate it. It doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? And I think, you know, they're trying to simply spell it out to people that is a Switch 2 edition by forcing everyone to do it. Like Hollow Knight and Silksong, they had to get those whenever they got put on Switch 2, they had to get those titles. And I think it's kind of messy and you get different variations of what the Switch 2 edition means.

[00:15:09] Because you get stuff like Zelda, Breath of the Wild and all that kind of stuff and how it's really slightly more integrated. And we get this with Jamboree TV and then like you get Kirby and what that brought with Forgotten Land. And it's, yeah, it's one of those things they're trying to be simple and laying it out. But at the same time, they're just giving you a whole bunch of words. And by the time you're halfway through the title, you've maybe lost attention and you're not really knowing what's happening. I feel they're going to stop it soon, potentially.

[00:15:35] I think maybe with some latest releases, they can be a bit more sort of strategic. If they're going to do Nintendo Switch Sports, Nintendo Switch 2 edition, I don't understand if that's going to make sense in terms of like, let me call it slightly something different. So, you know, it's like what the Wii U port we got with the Switch Gen 1, isn't it? Yeah. The whole library of Wii U games that they ported over and that was able to fill in the gaps throughout the many years that the Switch was the main console.

[00:16:03] And I feel like this is going to be, sadly, in a way, the new thing that, you know, when they add a bit more content to a game, they can call it the Switch 2 edition and that can be like your January release every year kind of thing. And it fills in a gap. We're going to have to wait and see, I suppose. Yeah, it is very analogous to the Wii U ports instead because Furukawa even said, oh, we need to think about ways to distribute content that is not just a typical game. That's not just a $70 game.

[00:16:30] And this is in line with his thinking of offering kind of a cheaper experience, but still at the same pace as Nintendo does. Yeah, some of them are definitely home runs. Some of them are, they feel skippable. So some I'm more excited than others. So let's go on to August. From the beginning, we had Dragon Drive and another Switch 2 DLC combo. The, this is maybe my favorite Switch 2 edition name.

[00:16:56] Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 edition plus Star-Crossed World. And also for me, this was a Switch 1 game, but UFO 50 also came out on Switch this month. And that was a great thing to play portably on Switch 2 with that huge screen. So how was your August? Did you drag and or drive? I did. I was interested to see how mouse controls would work. I knew I wouldn't be playing this for longer than a week. I could just tell this is going to tire me out. This is going to annoy me.

[00:17:24] But this is one of those Nintendo proof of concept of here's the new game you can do with mouse controls kind of thing. I think it controlled fairly well and I did my time with it, but like the online was lacking. They didn't heavily promote this game. And I just feel sometimes they stepped away with really saying the accessibility things this could bring or the fact that this is a, you know, wheelchair basketball. They never called it that in a lot of marketing materials. I really feel like Nintendo missed an opportunity to promote that side at least and be a bit more inclusive.

[00:17:53] And they swept it under the rug for probably a few reasons, but I haven't touched that game since. I don't really want to play that game again. If I'm being honest, it's not one of those things I yearn for when I want to pick up a controller and play a game. There is something very much to just picking up that Switch 2 Pro controller and playing a game and knowing that it's all there. It's very precise. And I do enjoy that aspect. Yeah. As a proof of concept, not really there for me, I suppose. Yeah, I play the online demo of Dragon Drive and I will admit that it does work.

[00:18:22] I was impressed by how authentic it felt when controlling the wheelchair. And one of my most anticipated ideas for the Switch 2 was the mouse mode, especially the dual mouse control scheme, which has really never been done before. But Dragon Drive, I felt like it wasn't the best idea for that, even though it quote unquote technically worked. I also felt like this game has a very high skill floor. So if you want to be bad at the game, you have to put in a lot of effort just to be bad at it. And you would need to pour in quite a lot of time to be decent at it.

[00:18:50] I wonder if somebody is really good at Dragon Drive, are they just jacked now? Are they really strong? Because you have to put in a lot of effort to just move those toy cards. It's tiring. Arms are really sore by the end of it. And I was just like, oh, I'm not good at this because I haven't played it for long and it was just that combo of now I'm done. I'm not playing this anymore. What do you think about the Switch 2 mouse mode in general? How have you been using it? No, I was really hopeful for maybe Metro Prime 4. That would be the one for me. And then I gave a go for five minutes and it was fine.

[00:19:17] But for me, I just couldn't beat the button controls of a controller. And I think I like the idea of it being used for me personally in more of a mini game situation in a Mario Party or I tapped on side bits with multiplayer fun. I think that's for me where it's really going to do well because while it works really well, I think if you're going to want mouse controls, PC gaming's there for you and probably does it in a bit of a better way.

[00:19:44] And then secondly, I think I'm waiting for Nintendo to do a peripheral kind of thing to make it a bit wider when you hold it because I'd still find it really narrow and hard to grip and click the buttons well. So I'm used to that wider mouth that I'm sure a lot of people are as well. So I think for me, it's just not quite natural enough for me to really want to default to playing that way.

[00:20:06] Yeah. Originally, I did think this might be the biggest differentiator for Switch 2 and that they would push really hard, but it really is just an alternative control scheme, not like the main thing that they are really pushing. But many games are utilizing it and some have said, oh, Civilization 7 or Procopia mouse mode is the way to go. So it seems to be a good alternative for some titles. And the Kirby DLC, I thought it was pretty solid. It's just more of that great game.

[00:20:33] And the original game is now 60 FPS and it does feel very good to go back to these past levels with that big boost in visuals and frame rate. If you've never played it before, the Switch 2 edition definitely has a lot going for it. So let's move on to September. No first party release at all. So a rare skipped month.

[00:20:51] But we did get a lot of big third party titles, including Star Wars Outlaws, Hollow Knight Silksong finally came out, Hades 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, The Evil East Chronicles and Trails in the Sky, the first remake were some big titles. So did you pick up any of these games or some other games? I suppose we got the DLC for Donkey Kong Emerald Rush in September. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. And then Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 was the Switch release. I know it wasn't Switch 2, but I suppose they filled up that release.

[00:21:18] So that were the things I was playing predominantly. And Emerald Rush is a great mode. I loved that the DLC didn't feel like it wasn't like six months down the track when I forgot the game. I was still playing Bonanza at the time and DLC was ready for it. So that was cool. At least I got to jump into that straight away. And then like Galaxy 1 and 2, we didn't get the second game when 3D All-Stars came out in 2020. So this is nice as part of the celebration for the 40th that we got Galaxy 2, even though I still felt they should have.

[00:21:45] I was still a bit dirty that they didn't include that in the original 3D All-Stars release. Like it was always going to be padded out for the next five year incremental celebration. So that were my things. I didn't really play much else, to be honest. But yeah, that was a nostalgia trip for me going back in time and playing some of my favorite Mario platformers. And then just absolutely trying to high score everything in Emerald Rush and just again an absolute roll with that mode, trying to distract everything and working out where things are on the map.

[00:22:12] And you're just playing it in a different way to the normal game sometimes. And it was just, yeah, really fun to go back to and the events they've done as well subsequently. It's a game that I can, it feels like Tetris 99 to me in a way I can keep coming back and doing things and chipping away at it and still having fun. Yeah, I forgot about the Emerald Rush DLC, which I did pick up. For me, I wasn't super hot on it. It was really awesome to go to DK Island. I thought that rendition was really awesome, especially that there's a Bongo Island, which is just like, this is a perfect addition to DK Isle.

[00:22:42] So the DLC I kind of, or the roguelike mode, I played it. I just didn't really get addicted to it, but I do know a lot of people, especially some Nintendo fans I talked to who got really into it. So I definitely think if you got into it, you really liked it. And this was a huge month for me because it caused me to have a backlog that I didn't really clear until January. Star Wars Outlaws, to me, this is maybe the most impressive Switch 2 game in terms of visuals. It has ray traced lighting, amazing textures. It runs very well.

[00:23:12] There's almost no frame drops. And there are a lot of smart, subtle cuts to make it run better. For example, in the handheld mode, there's just less grass rendered in handheld mode compared to docked mode. But you would not notice that at all unless you just saw a side-by-side comparison. So I think for the Switch 2, devs are getting really smart in terms of what are some smart sacrifices we can make to get this game running on the hardware.

[00:23:36] And yeah, Silksong and Hades 2, probably in terms of hype, these are way bigger than many first-party Nintendo titles. And these are games that people wanted to play on Switch 2 despite being available elsewhere. So to me, I think, oh, what is the big September release on Switch 2? It's probably Silksong if we're talking about hype and also sales. That game, who knows how many millions it sold thus far. I still can't believe they released so close to each other.

[00:24:02] So two of the biggest and most anticipated indie games, and they just happened to release two weeks between each other. So I just thought it was absolutely baffling, but also very cool at the same time. Yeah, it was so crazy. I was rushing to beat Silksong before Hades 2 because I thought, oh, once Hades 2 comes out, I'm not going to touch Silksong. But ironically, even though I loved Hades 1 and I didn't like Hollow Knight at all, but I liked Silksong more than Hades 2. I don't know how this happened, but it somehow happened.

[00:24:27] Even though I still think Hades 2 is a great game, but Silksong, it just got its hooks into me that Hollow Knight did not. So I was rushing for kind of no reason. And I think Silksong is maybe the only game where I felt like, oh, I might get injured if I keep playing this game. Because it's just, I don't know what happened. Maybe I'm just getting older, but my forearm, it just started to get tired from just the button mashing. Yeah, it's, I don't know. It's just one of those games where, especially like when you lock down and you've got a boss and you're not going to defeat it straight away,

[00:24:55] but you're doing it five, six, seven times in a row and you're working out. Okay. Yeah. I know how to defeat this first phase. Okay. Now phase two, this changes and I need to work this out now. And you kind of slowly get better every time. But yeah, I do find I got to hype myself up for these boss battles. And then afterwards, once you do finally do it, my hands are like, yeah, I don't know if this is an older person thing as you get older, but just, I've got to rest for a bit. I'll pause, I'll walk away for a bit. So that's if I haven't rage quit by then already, because I've died 20 times trying to work out how to defeat it. Yeah.

[00:25:24] But I had a great time with silksong. Definitely one of my favorites from last year. I did beat it somehow, some way. And my arm eventually did heal. And again, it is funny. You mentioned before this Nintendo switch to addition in the name, my home screen is like silksong Nintendo switch to addition, like scrolling on the top. The next icon is Hades to Nintendo switch to addition scrolling on the top. And the next icon is Final Fantasy tactics, the evil ace chronicles Nintendo switch to addition. And they all also have on the icon.

[00:25:51] They have Nintendo switch to addition written on the icon, but they're like in different spots. So it's getting like really silly in terms of the naming. But yeah, Final Fantasy tactics, just still a great game, a smart vision, and it runs well on switch too. So I spent a lot of money in September for non Nintendo games. Nice. So let's move on to October. We got Pokemon Legends ZA. And again, I don't want to correct you, but the Galaxy Collection, it came out October 2nd. There you go. My bad. You mentioned it a little, but it's okay. It's totally okay.

[00:26:21] It was a switch one game, but it had switch two enhancements. And we talked a lot about ZA when you were on my podcast last time. But do you have any final thoughts on Pokemon Legends ZA? I just really enjoyed how refreshingly different it was. And then the Legends series now experimenting and doing those things. And then the more they can reiterate in those games, bring it some of those cool things to the mainline series. I know it's a mainline series in its own right, but it's a turn based one. I think that's a really cool thing.

[00:26:47] And yeah, I had a really great time with this and I had a lot more fun ignoring all the windows in the background and just playing the Pokemon battling itself. Yeah. For me, I ended up a little mixed on it. I love the combat, but the gameplay loop, it just really didn't hook me. And I definitely prefer Arceus, but it is one of those things where I'm a little glad they tried something really different as opposed to just Arceus 2. I think I would have had more fun with Arceus 2. But the fact that they didn't do that is kind of exciting.

[00:27:14] Like I'm really happy they did something ambitious and different as opposed to, okay, the Legends series is just going to be this from here on and here out and possibly with diminishing returns. But ZA has sold very well. And yes, the Galaxy collection that you mentioned before. Yeah, I love those games, but I just wasn't in the mood to drop $40 on Galaxy 2. But one day I will.

[00:27:34] I think if that game came out, I don't know, like maybe January or on Switch 1 in January 2025, I would probably definitely bought it because I wasn't really playing a whole lot at that time. So that's just a, okay, I'll buy this one day type of game where there's a drought. I'll pick up Galaxy 2 and run through that again. Yeah, Emerald Rush came out in that September. Like it was every two weeks something was coming out from Nintendo. So it was a lot at that time. And I didn't get time to play everything. Yeah, I totally agree.

[00:28:00] If that was a different time of year, I would have probably finished Galaxy 2 and I only dabbled in it in the end. So I need to get back to it. The Galaxy games have sold extremely well on the Switch and Switch 2. So again, this is secretly one of Nintendo's biggest holiday games from last year. There's a lot of discussion about what is their big holiday title. It was the Galaxy collection. Again, a really annoying thing about these early Switch 2 games is like the sales numbers are really funky.

[00:28:25] Like for example, the digital sales of Pokemon Legends EA on Switch 2, they count as the Switch 1 SKU for whatever reason. And like the upgrades, they don't count. So it's so ambiguous. Like how many copies does this game sell on Switch 2? And the Galaxy games, they report like, oh, if you just bought Galaxy 1 digitally by itself, it sold like 2.5 million. And then if you bought Galaxy 2 digitally by itself, that also sold 2.5 million.

[00:28:52] But they haven't reported like the digital combo and they haven't reported the physical set because you can't like double up the sales. If you sell one copy of the collection, it's not one copy of each game because it's not two copies of one game. It's so confusing. So how many copies this collection has sold? It will be ambiguous forever, but it's sold like millions and millions. They've made money on it. And more since since the movie, I'm sure. Yeah, definitely.

[00:29:22] Oh, I also picked up Dragon Quest 1 and 2 HD 2D. It's a good game. It runs very well. So yeah, my backlog grew quite a lot this month. For whatever reason, I was playing a lot of retro 2D JRPGs on my Switch 2 during this time. So let's run to November. We got Hyrule Warriors, Age of Imprismant and Kirby Air Riders. I would say two kind of unusual games to release during the peak holiday month. Did you check out these games at all? I didn't do Warriors. I did Air Riders and I had missed the GameCube version back in the day.

[00:29:51] I owned a GameCube but never played Kirby Air Ride. Getting the chance to play it for the first time. And because it was one of those games that people were like really talked about, like they really loved it. If they like were a big fan, they talked it up. And then City Trial was always the big thing. And so I need to try this out for myself. I need to understand what the fuss is about. And yeah, like I really like I mixed on the City Trial bit because it was like I could get the appeal sometimes. But sometimes I felt like I was just riding around for no points.

[00:30:19] I didn't know if the boost things that you collected really made much of a difference to me anyway. But it was most of the actual racing that really grabbed my attention. And so like it's not trying to be another Mario Kart game. It's trying to like, okay, let's do this in a different way that makes it still really refreshing and different. And even the outside of the normal air ride, there was the top down mode. I can't remember what the actual name of it was, but like that was incredibly fun too. Like ridiculously good.

[00:30:44] Like some of the like course maps that you're just traversing through and riding, like some of the water physics. I can't remember the names of these courses, but it's visually is very stunning game. And you can tell a lot of like work and love was done by Sakurai and his team to get this game out there. And it feels like a bit of a passion project because I don't know if they ever felt like they were going to make a sequel to the original back on the GameCube. They got that chance because it seemed like Nintendo wanted them to make it. That was a great sort of surprising release.

[00:31:09] And yeah, one that I've enjoyed sort of playing since maybe in the last few months, but for me, like there's been so many good games out on Switch too. It's hard to keep track of all of them. And this one is one of those examples because they mentioned it. They gave us everything in the one go. There's no DLC. There's nothing else coming up. Yeah. So it's kind of not as front of mind, which I think I know it sold really well in Japan. I think it definitely bodes well with that market. I think elsewhere, maybe a bit flatter, but at least it sold a million. We know the sales at least for this one. Yeah, it's definitely a big hit in Japan.

[00:31:39] It's currently at 1.87 million and it will probably lag its way out to like a little over 2 million, which is in typical Kirby range. But I definitely love Air Riders and I did play Air Ride on the GameCube, but I was not really sold on it even as a big Kirby fan. It just felt very basic. But Air Riders felt like a huge step up in literally every single aspect. And I also didn't really expect to get that into it, but I loved it because it does feel like a buffet where you can just try out whatever you want.

[00:32:07] Oh, I just want to do the racing or oh, I just want to do top ride, which I thought what a silly addition. But I got also really into it because there's so much depth to it where every mode, the character and cart combo is like there's different priorities you have. And also, I just love City Ride. It is extremely chaotic and random, but that's also the fun because every single time you play it, it's just totally different. And it can work as almost like a score attack where, oh, OK, this time I got 18 defense stats.

[00:32:37] So I've never gotten that high before. Oh, this time I got the Hydra. This time I got such and such. So it is kind of a make your own fun type of game or mode. And yeah, it is so extremely chaotic. But for me, that's kind of part of the appeal. I kind of think like, is this the best or is this my favorite Kirby game? It might be, even though it is a quote unquote spinoff. It's the one I probably played the most because Kirby games, you play it like 10, 15 hours and you're totally done. But I kept going back to Air Riders.

[00:33:04] And yeah, every now and then I might go back and pick it up just for City Trial. If I just want some chaos in my life, I would just jump back into City Trial. And Hyrule Warriors, I played it at Tokyo Game Show a little bit. So I don't have much to say. I'm not into the Warriors games at all. And I kind of wonder, like, is there an IP that will get me into Warriors? And if it's not Zelda, it's probably not going to be anything ever. So but people do like these games and it did sell pretty well. Like they sold over a million quite quickly.

[00:33:32] And I think I've read before, oh, the highest selling Warriors games, period, are the Hyrule Warriors games. They outsell even Dynasty Warriors, their main series. So these are like big deals for Koi Tecmo. So people seem happy with that game. And it does mimic the Switch 1's first year where they also had the Hyrule Warriors definitive edition. So a trend we've been seeing is that they've almost been like purposefully not trying to mirror Switch 1's first year. They've been zagging when you think they're going to zag.

[00:34:02] Because what's the safest thing to do? Here's Mario, here's Zelda, here's Splatoon. But they didn't do that at all. They went with these totally different IPs for the first year. But it is interesting that they had a Warriors game locked and loaded. So maybe there is something where, oh, Warriors fans, they secretly will pick up a new console if there's a new game there. And also the dev of the Warriors games. This has maybe one of my favorite studio names ever. It's a new studio within Koi Tecmo.

[00:34:31] And it's just called AAA Game Studio, which is the most generic sounding name for a game studio ever. I love that. So let's jump into December. After seven years, Metroid Prime 4 finally came out. Actually, no, eight years, I believe. Because it was announced in 2017 during maybe the first ever Switch 1 Direct. And there were some other notable third party games too, like Assassin's Creed Shadows, Octopath Traveler Zero, Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, and Pokemon ZA got DLC called Mega Dimensions.

[00:35:01] So what were your December pickups? It was literally just Metroid Prime 4. It was one of those surreal moments. I'd been waiting for this game ever since it got announced in that June of 2017 in that Direct. And then I'd played the series beforehand. And so since Corruption, I was hoping always for another one. And it was just one of those like, it was really weird the day I bought the game, brought it to my house and played it for the first time. I got really emotional actually. It was one of those, I don't know, I think we've all had one of those games we've always really been excited for.

[00:35:30] And as a kid, that was Super Mario Galaxy for me. And then I think as an adult, it's been Metroid Prime 4 because it's just one of those, I don't know, it became almost the idea of Metroid Prime 4 was bigger than the game itself in the end, I feel. Yeah. I really enjoyed my time. And then I was hearing all these negative things and people were really hacking into it and this, it doesn't work well. I don't like this, but I was playing it and I was really enjoying my time.

[00:35:54] And as a really sort of solid entry in the Metroid series, towards the end of the game, I could see those things a bit more. The more time I spent with it, the more I could separate myself from those initial feelings and excitement. And I think a bit more critically, look at this game and realize that, yeah, it's promoting itself as being a bit more open world. But, you know, I think these choices I've made along the way haven't been really free, like free will, so to speak, that forced me to go through this path thinking it's off my own free will and it probably hasn't.

[00:36:21] And so it's one of those things where, yeah, just because a game takes eight years to make doesn't, or they had to restart with retro in there as early as January 2019 might have been earlier than that. But it's one of those things like just because it takes a long time doesn't mean it's going to be as good as you're hoping for it to be. And I love my time with it, that the open world of the soul desert is not my favorite part of the game. There's definitely moments where it doesn't treat your time with respect and you've got to jump around and do a few things.

[00:36:48] And I see one of those mech parts that I've got to collect later in the game early on and doesn't let me do that collection of it or remember for later, that kind of thing. But it was one of those moments where I'm not going to spoil things, but even the ending made you feel like I've waited eight years for this and like they're kind of dragging up for the next one now, so to speak. And it might be one of those titles that we've got to judge again with time if they ever do another one. And I hope they do. But yeah, that was my month. I took days off work again to play this.

[00:37:16] I had done it for the Switch 2 launch and then I did it for Metroid. They were the two ones I did within the first year at least anyway. And yeah, I wanted it to be slightly more, I think a bit like Mario Kart World. And I think just because I was a bit more of a fan of the series, I wanted it to be good. And this was its chance to sell well on a Nintendo system. This is the best opportunity it had, I felt. And it didn't quite hit those marks. We haven't seen those sales figures because there are various reasons to switch a game as well. It's got a Switch 2 edition.

[00:37:41] I think there's been confirmations it hit at least a million, but I don't think that's a great sales record considering that Dread sold 3 and that's made it the best one so far. A lot of things worked against it. There was marketing, even the release date of December. I felt that was a bit off. And I think in a way, Nintendo felt relieved that this was out and done and they didn't have to worry about disappointing people anymore by announcing a game way too early and then reciting development. Yeah. I think there would probably be a very good book written about the Metroid Prime 4 development.

[00:38:10] That's almost more interesting than the game. Because Famitsu, they had a really interesting article about the development of the game and they were a lot more candid than I expected where they talked about, oh yeah, this was the issue of Bandai Namco's version. And then this is how we continued on from that. But yeah, it was like an uphill battle. So it is good to see that. I think a lot of people say that it got mixed reviews, which it really didn't. It got good reviews, but it wasn't nine out of 10s, 10 out of 10s.

[00:38:38] It was mostly like eight out of 10s with some seven sprinkled in there, which I think for Prime 4 or Prime fans, it may be a little sacrilegious to have just an eight out of 10 game after literally eight years of waiting. For me, I was never really a Prime guy. So I did skip Prime 4. I like Metroid Prime 1, but I felt like I kind of got my fill with the Prime series. I'm more of a 2D Metroid guy. That's good. And honestly, December was a big clear out your backlog month for me.

[00:39:05] I finally beat Final Fantasy Tactics December 30th. I did pick up Assassin's Creed Shadows though, which I haven't talked about on the podcast yet, but I honestly, I do kind of like this game. It feels like eating a big box of chicken nuggets where you know it's not healthy, but you're like, okay, I'm just going to keep eating these even though I know this is not good for me.

[00:39:27] And it is yet another great tech showcase on Switch 2 because it is a PS5 Assassin's Creed game that came out within the same calendar year on Switch 2. So just that alone is really impressive that, oh, we are getting more and more of these big third party AAA games that are coming out as quickly as possible on Switch 2. And once we get to 2026, this is becoming even a bigger trend. And so, yeah, that's just a great sign.

[00:39:55] Outlaws, Star Wars Outlaws is more technically impressive if we're comparing the two Ubisoft games. But I have been very impressed by it. Again, if you want like a big 50 to 100 hour game where you just stomp around a big open world, Ubisoft gave us two of these very quickly. So if you're just looking for a game to kill time in on Switch 2, Shadows and Outlaws are out there for you. So what did you think about, there was a lot of talk about Switch 2's first holiday season. Oh, they don't have a big game or it's an unusual lineup.

[00:40:24] What do you think about just their holiday season in general? Yeah, I thought it was like there was a lot there from September onwards. I mentioned earlier, it was pretty much every two weeks, two to three weeks, there was a title. And I don't think there was one particular massive game like there has been in previous years. But I think with the sum of it all, with all those really good titles together, I thought it was a really good holiday period. You mentioned there was no Mario, like Zelda or like Splatoon. But in a way there was because we did get the Zelda spinoff.

[00:40:51] We got Galaxy 1 and 2 coming back and then no Splatoon of any kind, but we got the announcement of Raiders at least. But then Metro got its appearance and then a lot of excitement from that September direct with a lot of things coming next year. So I felt we just had our launch games in middle of the year. So we're always going to get the really big games then. And so I think for me, it didn't feel like as much of an issue.

[00:41:14] Like I don't really don't know what people would have wanted at that time, because if we got a new brand line, like we got like a new Pokemon game, but we're ever going to get a new mainline Pokemon game at that time. And if we did, it probably wouldn't have been nicely fleshed out or anything like that. We're only years out from Breath of the Wild, sorry, Tears of the Kingdom at that stage. So we're never going to get a big 3D Zelda game. And then we just gotten a really brand new 3D platform from the Odyssey team. So a new 3D Mario was never going to happen.

[00:41:40] I think considering all of that, I thought it was a really good holiday lineup. And like we're going to talk more about the third party stuff because 2026 is better, I feel, than 25. But with the launch and then Outlaws, like I played a bit of Outlaws as well, and I could definitely vouch for how well that runs. And I've heard great things about Shadows as well. Yeah, like it wasn't like I had nothing to play. I had a lot to play and I couldn't finish everything in the end. So I think that's always a good testament for a lineup at least. There's definitely a subset of Nintendo fan where it's Mario Zelda Smash or Bust.

[00:42:10] And they're not going to play. If you don't have that, then it's pointless. But yeah, there's a lot to play, but it is kind of an eccentric lineup. Oh, there's Kirby Air Riders, which is a spinoff. Even Pokemon Legends EA, which Game Freak considers a mainline game. But for many people, they consider the Legends to be a spinoff. Hyrule Warriors also a spinoff. So it seemed very spinoff heavy. But I think that's if you're being a bit too strict with, I guess, the classification of games. Because there's so many to play.

[00:42:38] And again, Final Fantasy Tactics and Dragon Quest 1 and 2 HD 2D. These are retro ports, but if you've never played them before, this is a lot of game to pick up. And yeah, they're really great as well. So again, I definitely felt like there's a lot to play. Like December and also January is, oh, I need to dedicate time to actually beating the games I bought this year. I didn't beat Outlaws until January. I didn't beat Final Fantasy Tactics until like end of December. So it took a while.

[00:43:06] Even now, I still have quite a bit of a backlog that I still need to clear out. So there's been a great cadence of first party and third party Switch 2 games. So let's flip the calendar and enter 2026. January had, not Assassin's Creed. I put AC in my notes. But Animal Crossing New Horizons Switch 2 edition with the 3.0 update. And the big third party release was Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade. And of course, Suica Game Planet came out, which has not been that big of a splash.

[00:43:35] But I wonder how much that it has sold. Maybe it secretly has sold like three million copies and we just don't know. So what were your January pickups? Yeah, I got back into Animal Crossing after all these years. And so it was very nostalgic going back into my island and seeing all the weeds everywhere. Because I didn't even play the Happy Home Academy DLC that came out a couple of years after. I had more sort of stuff to play in a way than the normal, the original 3.0 update.

[00:44:00] And yeah, like it was a fun three weeks of me doing it. But then I think at the same time, it was like, oh, I've done all the fun things I wanted to do on my island here. The extra DLC's got some cool things in it, but I'm not ready to restart my island from scratch or create a new one or anything like that. So it was one of those, yeah, I dabbled in it, collected this cool Nintendo consoles, that kind of thing within the game. But it was a bit of a short and sweet kind of play session, I think, so to speak.

[00:44:26] And it was also one of those things because I knew what was coming out as well, because we're going to get Pocopia, then we're going to get Tomodachi Life. And I thought this is very simulation, cozy stuff's going to come up later this year. Yeah, very short lived. And this is more so for me, I was still playing Metroid Prime 4 and I was doing my hard run on that game at this stage. And I was playing Skyward Sword during January. This is I'm really like playing something else at this stage and going back to give Skyward Sword a go for the first time.

[00:44:53] I suppose that was my month, really. And keeping an eye on I think what was to come also than playing the stuff actually out. Yeah, I also got back into Animal Crossing at this time. I kind of dabbled a little bit like end of December because I knew the update was coming. So I thought, let me clean up a little first before the update. And I definitely thought the 3.0 update, which is not Switch 2 exclusive, but it had some meat on it.

[00:45:16] There's quite a lot of gameplay there. It wasn't as big as like their big update years ago when they said this is our final update, which was a huge lie years later. It wasn't as big as that, but the hotel was a really great addition and all the new like Splatoon and Zelda items were really fun to collect. And so I definitely got back into Animal Crossing and yeah, it felt very nostalgic and it felt like, oh, it feels good to just be back on the island to see all my amazing building projects that I did once upon a time.

[00:45:42] It felt like a kind of a warm bath to have a reason to get back into Animal Crossing. And yeah, Final Fantasy 7 integrated. I didn't pick it up, but this was a big third party release and like the oh, what is the most technically impressive Switch 2 game? It keeps getting topped like every other month. First it was cyberpunk and then it was like outlaws and then it became Final Fantasy 7.

[00:46:04] And now it's been talked like even since then, I think Square is also being really great with it. It came out maybe like at $40 US, which is a pretty fair price for the game. And yeah, Rebirth is coming pretty soon. And then like the third game might be day one on a Nintendo platform. It's amazing. Which is extremely exciting. I feel like because I love the original Final Fantasy 7, but just like the idea of splitting it up into three games. I don't like that idea.

[00:46:31] So I never really jumped into the new games, even though I played the demo both on PS5 and on Switch 2. And then I think, should I just jump into Rebirth? Because that seems more fun. Should I just jump into the last one? Maybe one day I'll knock them all out. But it's a huge game release. And also this time I got really into the Switch 2 edition of Tears of the Kingdom, which came out at launch. But I finally thought, let me just poke around in Tears of the Kingdom, because every year I get like the urge just to jump into Tears of the Kingdom.

[00:46:58] And the Switch 2 edition, like it's 4K, 60 frames per second. It looks incredible. It plays incredible. The Zelda note section, I think a lot of people forget about this or write it off as this weird thing. And it is weird. But something that I didn't know at launch is that in the Zelda note section, there's like a navigation area where inside the app, it has all the markers for something specific.

[00:47:22] So for example, you can filter by Addison signs. And then on the app, it would just tell you where are the Addison signs you have not done yet. And I thought, oh, wow. In the actual game, I would hate this because it would just be littered with map icons on the map. And then it would totally kill the urge of exploration. You would just be going to different points on the map instead of actually exploring, engaging with how they designed the game.

[00:47:49] But as somebody who's put in 200 hours of Tears of the Kingdom, having the leftovers that you didn't pick up yet on the app and that you can just kind of jump to, it is a little beneficial. I can't lie. It is helpful to go, what are the Addisons that you've never found? And that honestly, you will probably never find because some of them are just so obscenely remote that there's no way you're going on this mountain.

[00:48:14] So it was really helpful as, okay, I put in 200 hours. I found 70% of the Addison signs. Let me just see where the other ones are and just go to them. It's kind of like the Wii U gamepad kind of vibe that they're going for there, isn't it? Because you've got your TV mode and then they want you to look at a secondary screen to enhance the gameplay. There you go. I haven't heard a lot of positive notes on Zelda nodes, but from that point of view, there you go. That makes a bit of sense.

[00:48:36] Yeah. If you're trying to 100% it, like after you've done everything, because I got all the shrines, I did all the missions, I got all the items, I did as much as possible. But then when you get to the real nitty gritty, like, oh, I need to visit every named location or, oh, I need to get every sage's will. Then that's when you're like, I could use some help here. I feel like you shouldn't access it until you played at least 150 hours of Tears of the Kingdom. After that, then you have permission to look up these things. So yeah, I got really back into Tears of the Kingdom once again.

[00:49:05] So let's jump into February. We had Mario Tennis Fever, but the biggest release was undoubtedly Resident Evil Requiem, a brand new Resident Evil game day one on a Nintendo platform. And we also got some big remakes with Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and Yakuza 3. And the Virtual Boy returned, as did Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen. So what were your big February games? Wow, I had a big February. Tennis Fever, like, I was so mixed with this because they announced it and I was so hoping for baseball.

[00:49:35] I was hoping for, let's get a new sports that we haven't had on the Switch yet. And I know Aces came out in 2018 on the Switch. So it had been a little while between drinks, but I still felt like that wasn't that long ago for some reason. And I kind of went into it hoping it was something else. But having played the game, this is quite a good game, really. And really well fleshed out. And the power-ups with the rackets, like, they create, like, this really unique dynamic of, I want to try all of them out. Some of them aren't great, but some of them are really good.

[00:50:03] And then matching them with the character and what they do, like, it really creates, like, a lot of variation in terms of gameplay and, like, tactical. What am I going to use here to help me defeat an opponent kind of thing? And with the tower modes, with the tournament brackets, and then the story, I thought overall, like, for a sports title that I feel Nintendo puts in that bucket of minimum effort. Let's just get it out and it's fine. I thought there was a bit more thought and rigor poured into this one.

[00:50:31] And I think maybe the single-player mode, not just being a tutorial, if they could flesh those out a bit more would be the one thing that makes, you know, a sports game, and especially the tennis series, a bit more standout-ish. But, like, I had a great time with FireRed and LeafGreen. I got FireRed, and then my wife, I let her pick first, and I just get the other one, and so we can trade. And so that's always been a thing I've done, even with my brothers growing up. And so that was fun, just getting back into that game. And I tried to Nuzlocke run and just did it in a different way.

[00:51:01] And that's just a comfort fodder, isn't it, as any sort of Pokemon game, and playing that on Switch was pretty cool. But I think the cool thing for me, on top of all this, was definitely the Virtual Boy. And as a Nintendo fan, this is like the holy grail of things you can own, I feel. Like, they're so rare, and to have one in position would be really cool. And I've always thought about owning one, but this sort of alleviates that need for me to spend those hundreds of dollars getting a real one instead. I can sort of experience it through a very, very good replica of what the original looked like.

[00:51:30] This is something that, for fans of Nintendo, I feel, I find this really hard to recommend to anyone outside of that, because it is so restricted in how you can play this. You've really got to have the right setup. You've got to make sure it's comfortable enough when you're putting it in. Like, whenever I played it, I've had to put things below the stand to lift it up a bit. And so I'm not feeling like I'm munched over as I play it. But to get the chance to play Virtual Boy Wario Land is very cool.

[00:51:56] And it's a great game that I feel has, like, sadly been locked away and denied its glory if it was on another console. But there's so much red, isn't there, Mono? It's just a lot of... Yeah. You better like red if you're going to play this thing, because the filtering color update isn't out as of time of recording. Yeah. I've been hoping to... A weird thing that they teased. Yeah. I want some blue or green or something just to soften up the look for me, at least. But this is just, like, I get to see what they were trying to do, Nintendo, here. And it's Nintendo at its weirdest. And I love that kind of stuff.

[00:52:26] And so getting to play all these games, like, as near a good way as I could have back then is a really fun thing for me to do. I really wish they did the controller as well as part of this NSO update. But they just... At least the pro controller and everything else works with it. But it was very much, like, experiment, play the Tetris, play a few of these different games, experience them for a little. And then it's only the other week when this latest batch of NSO updates has come out that I've really played it again and experienced it. Played a lot of different things.

[00:52:54] I was still on my Scarlet Sword run through at this time. And, yeah, just dabbling between things. But it was a cool month because there was things happening, I felt, in this month. Yeah. Mario Tennis Fever, I totally agree with you on... It should have been baseball. I don't know what is happening at Nintendo where nobody is working on Mario baseball. Like, baseball is more popular than ever. The most famous player in the world is Japanese. I just don't know what Nintendo is doing with Mario baseball.

[00:53:20] I just think it's like a tech deficiency where, you know, people like Camelot, they don't know how to make a baseball game from scratch. They know how to make tennis and golf. I would love if they just got another team to make some baseball game. Like, maybe NST in America. But a team like that making Mario baseball. Like, if they made Mario baseball, they released that instead of Mario Tennis. Easy $2 million sold already. Yeah. Like, easy. I agree. Because Tennis Fever, maybe this is jumping ahead a little bit, it was not in the financial report.

[00:53:50] That means it probably sold under a million. And, like, Aces was a pretty big game when it came out. It had a lot of hype. Even though it kind of reviewed as well as Fever, like, Fever is not poorly reviewed at all. But the marketing and hype for Aces was much higher on Switch 1. We're going back to Nintendo has been doing a lot of different things, but they played the same beat again. They released Mario Tennis the year after the launch. And it just didn't hit this time around in terms of sales.

[00:54:17] And yeah, that $70 price point where that was a huge talking point for a lot of Switch 2's life. And I kind of ignored it because the sad reality is that a lot of games are $70 these days. Most games are $70 these days. And so when people were complaining that Air Riders were $70, I didn't really think so because I got a lot of fun out of Air Riders. I played it for 40 hours. If you're doing the dollar to hour ratio, I think that's a pretty good ratio.

[00:54:44] We're starting to see that not everyone is biting at the $70 price point, especially with the world economy. So people are being a bit more judicial in how they spend their $70. And I think Mario Tennis Fever is maybe the biggest victim of this. I'm just looking up. Aces sold $4.5 million. Fever's maybe might eventually get to $1 million. We don't know, but that's a big drop off, isn't it? Yeah. And I want to say quarter one, Aces sold maybe $1.5 or $1.8 million.

[00:55:12] So same time period, but it passed Fever by quite a lot. So Fever is definitely, I would say, a miss in terms of the planning of the scheduling. And also just people are not excited. If you have Aces, you can just play that on Switch 2. It's on literally the same game grid, the same menu. You don't have to bring out another piece of hardware. And something Nintendo has been really good with in the Switch 2 is giving new experiences that are not just the Switch 1 experiences again. Like Air Riders, there's no Air Riders on Switch 1.

[00:55:43] Mario Kart, there is a Mario Kart on Switch 1. But the focus on the world aspect is something totally different than just here's more Mario Kart 8. Donkey Kong, they've done a really great job in making totally new experiences. And even the more iterative experiences are, I think, a big step up. Like Hyrule Warriors. I think that audience knows, okay, we want those kind of iterative experiences. We don't need to reinvent the wheel for a Warriors game. We just want more of that. But for tennis, I think you kind of needed something different.

[00:56:12] You needed baseball or another sport or some other bigger hook. But I think the biggest game in February was definitely Resident Evil Requiem, which I did play at TGS. And I was kind of blown away by I cannot believe this is running on Switch 2. It's 60 frames per second. It looks beautiful. And we also got 7 and 8 on Switch 2 day 1. Not day 1, but it came out the same day as 9. I definitely read that 7 and 8 are selling really well on Switch 2.

[00:56:39] Because the Resident Evil ports on Switch 1, they had long legs. They sold millions of copies throughout the lifespan. So I think 9 is going to be like a long seller on Switch 2. And again, it's just so awesome. What was the last day 1 Resident Evil game on Nintendo hardware? A numbered Resident Evil game. It's got to be what? Four? Yeah. That'd be cool. We got like the 3DS revelations or whatever, but they don't count. Let's not count those.

[00:57:05] So it's like, whoa, we're back in the days of numbered editions of these games. And oh, if Final Fantasy 7 3 comes out day 1 on Switch 2, oh, a numbered, again, it's kind of, quote unquote, doesn't count. But a numbered Final Fantasy day 1 on Nintendo hardware is a big moment. So the gap between hardware is getting smaller and smaller. And Nintendo is taking advantage of that. That was the biggest benefit, though, with Switch 2, wasn't it?

[00:57:31] And I think, yeah, we've seen that really come to light in these last few months, haven't we? And Switch was definitely aging. But now Switch 2 is just powerful enough, at least, for the time being to get this benefit. And we're not going to like first light the Bond game that's going to come out. I know it's not going to be day 1. It might be delayed slightly. But at least they've marketed it and originally planned for it to be day 1. So we're going to get more of this stuff, aren't we? And I think that's, as a Nintendo fan, I don't really remember that being a thing. Especially even the GameCube didn't really get that. And then it's certainly 64.

[00:58:00] So it just hasn't been a thing for a long time. So it is nice to have that. There is a chance, at least, that Nintendo will get it day 1 as well. Yeah, I think a lot of people underwrite how impressive the Switch 2 is in terms of performance. It is a really innovative piece of hardware that I think a lot of people don't give credit for. Now we've got Steam Dex and a million other things like that. But Switch 2, even compared to those, Switch 2 still has a leg up in many ways. Also, Virtual Boy is just fun to play Virtual Boy games in 2026.

[00:58:29] It's fun to break that thing out and pop it open. And I was retro game hunting a few days ago. And I saw, oh, here's virtual fishing for 30,000 yen. And they just added that to the Japanese NSO Virtual Boy. So I'm like, oh, thank you for 30,000 yen, Nintendo. I can save a lot of money now. So it's just really, again, a huge piece of Nintendo history that they let us experience. FireRedLeafGreen, which has sold 4 million copies. Extremely absurd. So many people complained, why is this $20?

[00:58:59] Because they know you're going to buy it. That's right. That's why it's $20. It kind of feels like almost illegal in a way. Because when you start the game, it just launches straight into the Game Boy menu. Because normally when you play these remasters or reports, you have an HD menu. And then you select all these options. And then you can launch into the game from there. But here, it just loads onto your Switch 2. It feels like I downloaded it wrong and uploaded it onto my hacked Switch 2. It feels so weird. But it's fun to go back to those games again. I haven't gotten that far into it.

[00:59:29] I'm like the second gem. But I'll get the urge to like, okay, I'll go back to it when I get the Pokemon itch and play some more of it. Oh, and yeah, February, what did I play? I think I just played a lot of Tears of the Kingdom. And then I kind of got back into Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. 60 frames per second. It's good to go back and clean up. I finally did the Petorunt, the last Pokemon you get in the DLC. I finally did that years and years later. So it's a good, again, if you don't know what to play, think about, oh, what Switch 1 games got an upgrade? And check those out.

[00:59:59] Because the performance is way better than you expect. Is that a good upgrade though for Scarlet and Violet? I kind of feel like upgrading that one makes it look maybe worse or something behind the scenes? It runs at 60 frames per second. Which was like my issue with the game is the menus are so slow and the frame rate is just up and down. It still looks hideous, but it runs well.

[01:00:19] So if you can deal with that, if you have anything to clean up in Scarlet or Violet, if there's a Pokemon you haven't caught yet, I definitely recommend jumping back into the Switch 2 Nut Edition. Because they wisely decided not to charge for any sort of upgrade to Scarlet and Violet. They knew that they messed up big time. And they're like, here it is for free. We're not even going to call it the Switch 2 Edition. Just pretend this never happened. So let's jump into March.

[01:00:46] Pokemon Pocopia and Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition meet up in Bella Bell Park are the big Nintendo releases. Plus for me, some big releases included Monster Hunter Stories 3 and Blueprints. And we also got the handheld boost for Switch 2. So what were your thoughts on the big offerings from Nintendo in March? Yeah, again, it felt like July for me because Pocopia was so amazing. And I played so much of this and having never played Dragon Quest Builders before, it was a completely new experience for me.

[01:01:13] And just an incredibly endearing game. And I think, you know, this formula, this way to play through the breakdown of the game just fits so well adding Pokemon to it. And like this was, in a way, this could have been a holiday game in a way and could have sold units last year. This was such a, I know people who hadn't had a Switch 2, but once this game came out, they bought one just to play Pocopia. And my wife is still playing this daily. She has been playing it day one.

[01:01:41] She is super, she was super excited for this game. Continues to play it. This is late May right now as we're recording. So for over two months, solid. She has been playing this daily. Her game file is amazing. All the things she's created in it and all the Pokemon befriended and worked through. It's just one of those really cool story moment games as well because it's very heartfelt and somber. And there's a bit of an adult sort of undertone with some of these messages in this game. But it's done in a really sort of subtle way. And I really like it for that.

[01:02:11] And it's just smart how they've used the Pokemon with their different abilities and how that impacts how you play. And the customization of it all is incredibly detailed. I compare it to Animal Crossing and a lot of that's preset and you're just doing your daily things and you tick them off. Whereas in this one, one play session can be you can completely terraform and transform your area into whatever you want it to be. On the other end, you can do story and progress it that way. You can collect items.

[01:02:39] You can grind in any other way that you want to. Or you can just decorate, design things. And it's so incredibly, your playthroughs can be very different every time you get into it. Absolute winner. And, you know, exclusively Switch 2. It runs really well. No issues with performance or anything like that. And I think it just meant that, yeah, exclusive software sells titles, consoles, sorry. And this is one of those things that will just help with that. And it's got some pretty good sales so far from what I've seen.

[01:03:07] And it's come pretty early in Switch 2's life. And so, it's just going to benefit from that early adopter. You know, it's out. And just like the Switch 1 titles that released in that first year, they've got a massive sales boost commits to all the other games because they're just out there at the start. And they just snowball from there. That was amazing. And then Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 edition meet up in the ballpark, whatever it's called. You have to see the full name. This is like July with Jamboree and DK. This is, again, I wanted to like this. I got it.

[01:03:37] So, I was able to play the games. There's a few games and a few things to do. I just don't think there's anything of any real substance here to really compel someone to buy this in their own right. I just had a bit of, I played it in one session, did all the games, did all the things I wanted to do. And I haven't touched it since. And they've tried to tie it in with two weeks or a week before the Galaxy movie comes out. Nintendo are very smart with this stuff. Try to line things up to go that way. I just think for me, it was just, yeah, there's games here.

[01:04:06] There's just nothing that's really bringing me back here. I was disappointed in meeting up in Bellabell Park, but I was quickly forgotten because I was playing a lot of Pecopia and they forgot about it. Yeah. I did not enter Bellabell Park. Again, sometimes Switch 2 editions, they just feel so sleepable. Even though I loved Wonder. But it was very vague. It's, oh, what is this? Is this just multiplayer mini games? I played Mario Wonder all by my lonesome. So unless it was like more, oh, here are four more worlds. Then I'd be like, okay, let's jump into it again.

[01:04:34] But it was like this very unusual, vague type of thing. So yeah, again, a lot of these Switch 2 editions, it's hard to be mad at them because, well, it came out the same month as Pecopia. And they're really smart with the timing of the Switch 2 editions where, okay, they come out the same month as another major release. So you can just forget about it. It's not our big deal if you don't want it to be. We have another thing for you. So they've been really smart with doubling it up with another major release.

[01:05:02] Except for, I think Animal Crossing New Horizons, that was the only release for, but again, that's Animal Crossing. They can kind of get away with that. Yeah. And you're probably playing your Christmas games and maybe even just purposefully to give Final Fantasy VII a bit of room. Because if they drop Pecopia the same day as Final Fantasy VII Remake, that might've been bad news for Final Fantasy VII Remake. But yeah, March for me, Pecopia, when they announced this game, I thought, okay, that's a neat idea. I'm going to skip it though. But then they kept revealing more and more.

[01:05:30] And it just got, oh, there's actually a lot more to the game than I expected. And Dragon Quest Builders Hardcores were like, guys, listen, Dragon Quest Builders is so good. You guys need to pay attention. But then reviews came out and it was literally the highest reviewed game of the year. And I thought, okay, I need to check this out. And I loved Pecopia. It's my favorite game of the year so far. And honestly, I think it is my favorite Switch 2 game. Wow. Going back to Donkey Kong or Air Riders, these are games I was interested in, but I

[01:06:00] kind of had my expectations in check because I'm not a big Donkey Kong fan. And even though I love Kirby, Air Ride was not that great. But those games blew me away. And Nintendo, maybe they need to up their marketing or maybe I just need to be less skeptical. A lot of these games that are maybe not in my wheelhouse, they definitely impressed me on the Switch 2. Pecopia is just an amazing game. And it's one of those games where it's just so brilliantly designed where you can just

[01:06:27] play the campaign or the story, even if you're not a genius in terms of interior design. I'm sure your wife's home and my home are totally different in Pecopia. It must be night and day. I have a lot of potholes and things still there. But the campaign is so strong in that it has such a great emphasis on exploration. There's so many mind-blowing moments. For example, the lava area. You've got the area, this volcano. You're kind of digging in the mines.

[01:06:54] And then you dig and then you find, oh, here's the Pewter City Museum. And that reveal is insane. It's really cool, isn't it? And then when you go to Vermilion City, you've got the area there and then, oh, wait, the ship is all the way over there. And the ship has its own little world. And then, wait, there's an island over here. And then, wait, in the mountain, there's another hidden city. So the way these are designed are just so incredible. It's not procedurally generated like Minecraft or whatever.

[01:07:23] Every single block has a reason to be there. It's just so impressive. And yeah, Koi Techbo said, oh, yeah, this is the highest selling game they've ever made or something like that. It's really amazing how successful this game is. And man, if they make DLC, I think my most anticipated game is possibly Hokopia DLC. More than the next 3D Mario or more than 007 First Light. It's any sort of possible DLC for this game.

[01:07:52] So again, it came out kind of at the perfect time because, yeah, spirits were low after a fever. It's like, man, they just released fever at $70. And this is like not hitting with fans. Oh, wait, here's Hokopia. Here's a legit system seller. And oh, the tides turned in terms of like public perception for Switch 2. Nobody complained about the $70 price tag on Hokopia. I don't do that much. 100%. Yeah. This is like a forever game. You could play it for like years and years. You could play it for a thousand hours. It's one of those types of games.

[01:08:22] Again, Nintendo, when you think about, oh, where's the killer apps? Where's their big epic 50 hour AAA open world game? They don't need that. They need just to find the audience, the cozy audience and hone in on them and they will come and pick up this game. Yeah. My favorite Switch 2 game by far. And I also loved Monster Hunter Stories 3. I'm not a big Monster Hunter fan, but this sub series, it really scratches an itch for me. It came on day one on Switch 2.

[01:08:51] If you're looking for a day one big, the production values are basically AAA JRPG on Switch 2. Here it is. This is a game you can pick up and play. I think a lot of people have kind of written it off because, oh, I'm not into Monster Hunter. So I'm not going to pick up this Monster Hunter JRPG. But if you are into JRPGs, I definitely highly recommend Monster Hunter Stories 3. And yeah, Capcom is definitely the MVP when it comes to third party releases. They've got Street Fighter 6 was awesome, runs perfectly.

[01:09:21] They had Kunisugami, which is another kind of under the radar game. Resident Evil Requiem just came out. They have Monster Hunter Stories 3, a big JRPG day one on Switch 2, and still some more games that we'll get into from Capcom. And yeah, Blueprints also came out. And I'm kind of interested in the indie games that only have Switch 2 versions. Because when we think of indie games, I think we think of, okay, pixel games or whatever, or these kind of low fidelity games.

[01:09:48] But there is a growing crop of indie games that are only on Switch 2 and not on Switch 1. For example, Blueprints. And I also picked up a Sektori that only has a Switch 2 edition of games. Are there any that you've noticed or that you can think of off the top of your head? I can't. And I'm sure there's more that would want that to be the case. But I'm hearing so many horror stories in a way about dev kits not being readily available and only the big publishers getting them. And it's not really filtering down. I'm sure it will happen eventually.

[01:10:16] But I definitely know and get the feeling that Nintendo wants. If you're going to make it, just put it on Switch 1. And you can play it on Switch 2. And I think that idea, because maybe a lot of indie games, the scale and breadth of what it's going to be technologically, it's probably not going to be there as much as other games. And so I think that's Nintendo's approach for now. And yeah, it will slowly happen, I feel. But yeah, I definitely feel there's some indies out there that probably want their hands on it now and get an exclusive Switch 2 game out there, but can't.

[01:10:45] Yeah, that was a big talking point, especially the first half of the year. Again, a lot of these are kind of rumors. What's the basis of this idea that the Switch 2s, like a lot of companies don't have Switch 2 dev kits. There were some indies that said, oh, we don't have them yet for sure. And then I think a lot of people are just, again, they're kind of jumping the gun when it comes to the release schedule because people want like month one, 3D Mario, month two, 3D Zelda, month four, Smash. And if it's not that, the sky is falling.

[01:11:11] But we have been seeing like more AAA games and more indie games coming to Switch 2. But yeah, I think the phenomenon of, oh, indie games that only have Switch 2 edition. We're going to see that more and more as time passes. So yeah, Blueprints was like the first big one where I thought, oh yeah, that's not on Switch 1 at all. Yeah, Handheld Boost. Did you check out Handheld Boost at all? Did you turn it on at all? Not really. No, I'm definitely predominantly docked. And it's always one of those things I forget about because I do sometimes get handheld going.

[01:11:38] But for me, it's just so easy having it docked. And I get free reign at the TV, thankfully, most of the time. So I get to sort of do that. But it's nice to have. And I know a lot of people who predominantly are handheld. So I hope they've turned it on. And whether it's a big difference, I'm not actually sure. I haven't really properly tested it. Yeah, I play a lot of handheld mode. And I turned it on. And yeah, it definitely does make a difference. You basically have, oh, a docked Switch 1 is now handheld. Which is, I think, something everyone expected by default when Switch 2 came out. But now it's finally here.

[01:12:08] It kind of reminds me of when they magically turned on the Bluetooth for your headphones on Switch 1, like years later. I would never get over that. Fortunately, Switch 2, that was already a built-in feature. You can easily connect your AirPods to your Switch 2, day one. So let's move on to April. No real big Switch 2 exclusive release from Nintendo. But we got a lot of big games, including Tomodachi Life Living the Dream, Pokemon Champions. And for third party, I think Pragmata from Capcom, again, is definitely their biggest third party release.

[01:12:36] So did you check out anything in March? Sorry, in April? Yeah, I definitely want to get to Pragmata. Heard some amazing things. Haven't gotten there just yet. But with them and Resident Evil, absolutely amazing. And yeah, I agree with what you said with them. Capcom being the leader in third party games on the Switch 2. For me, I tried to get into Champions. I just couldn't do it. It felt so limiting. And I didn't want to spend money on it. And it didn't look as nice as I wanted it to. And just a few things that I'm like, no, I think I'm good here. So I haven't really played that.

[01:13:05] But what I have played a lot of is definitely Tomodachi Life Living the Dream. I never played the 3DS version. So this was completely brand new for me. I had done Miitopia though. And I get that sort of same similar gameplay and experience vibes from that showing here. I just feel like it's one of those games where the more you put in, the more you get out of it. And so I had some real fun creating some Miis and using some really funny. It's all in-joke humor, isn't it? And I feel like that's the stuff that's going to make you laugh and have a good time.

[01:13:34] I remember getting the demo. We were overseas in New Zealand at the time visiting family. But I was waiting for a flight at the airport. And my wife and I were just creating our Miis to be put into this game. And we used the really cool and extensive Mi Creator tool, which is really great and a lot better than what I remember back in the day, to create our Miis and have the weird phrases. Only jokes that we understand getting sprinkled throughout this experience is a pretty amusing time. I've created a lot of different characters.

[01:14:03] I've got my own Hugh Morris on the island. I have MEO from Famicom Detective Club. He lives on my island. And he's been sectioned off in the very corner. There's warning signs. Don't go near him. We've made our cats actual characters in the game. And MEO really likes hanging out with their children in this game. So it's quite funny how that kind of stuff happens. It's one of those funny situations that you create in just the game. I don't know. It just goes along with it. It's just absolutely balmy.

[01:14:32] Some of the cut scenes are very funny. And it's one of those games that I hit it hard the first few weeks. And then since then, it's been a bit more like foot off the pedal a bit. But I'm just checking in every now and then. I'm still feeding them. I'm still getting them to interact. Or I want to create a me now. I created Taylor Swift because my wife is a big Swifty fan. I thought, let's get Taylor Swift on the island. And she's become friends with... Well, not friends. She's fallen in love with one of my good mates on the island as well. And they're just stupid. And I'm just like sending screenshots across to my maid.

[01:15:01] And it's just fun and silly. And yeah, I love it for that. That's been a great surprise for me. And yeah, it's a bit of a hit, isn't it? It sold really well. And like the 3DS version too. For something that I feel like is quite niche and should be, it's really not. And it's really popular. And people love these games. And I'm surprised then from that, that Nintendo has taken so long to get a Switch version out there, at least for people to play. Yeah, I'm definitely spending a lot of time in Tomodachi life living the dream. I also skipped the 3DS version because at the time,

[01:15:31] I didn't really understand what is this game? What do you do? Even now, it is a what do you do game. But I had so much fun with the creation features. What you put into it is what you get out of it. And if you have a great imagination, you're definitely going to get a lot out of it. And for me, even to somebody who is very limited with my art skills, that built-in Mii Maker is really in-depth. And I made a lot of really awesome Mii's with that. Like I got my family and then Mario and Luigi and I made Chun-Li. And then I'm like, okay, no more game characters.

[01:15:59] Okay, what are some other characters I can make? And then I made Dracula. Nice. And then, I mean, Natsume Solseki, who is a very famous Japanese author. You probably don't know him if you're not in Japan, but he's the most famous author in Japan. He has a distinct look. He has a mustache and everything like that. I made Cleopatra. I've got some pro wrestlers in there as well. Tony Storm, who I believe is from Australia. Yes. So I made her in there. Oh, I have Woody and Buzz from Toy Story, of course. So you got to put them in there. You can't just make Woody. You got to have Woody and Buzz.

[01:16:28] So sometimes you do need to pair them up. I have Shoei Otani, of course, from Baseball. So I tried to mix up like, where are they from? My only anime characters are Asuka from Evangelion and then Sailor Moon. So if you want some tips, try to pick from different fields. So try to go, okay, I'm going to make a few athletes. Then I'm going to make a few historical characters. Then I'm going to make a few characters from novels. Do that and then you will have a great time and have a really diverse island. I did something similar.

[01:16:57] I did like LA Knight from wrestling and then I've got Betty White there and I made her demonic and she floats around and she's got this really high pitch, screechy voice. And it's just absolutely hilarious. And Carlo from the Japanese direct, the Tamodachi Life, I made him. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I just had some really good fun because I found that hilarious because he's just asking throughout the marketing, when's the game coming out? He's just asking what the fans are wanting to know. So I really like that character. But I totally agree.

[01:17:24] It's just these random parts of media colliding together and then them talking about things. Yeah, it's just random stuff and it's just very funny. And yeah, good scenarios that do come from it. Yeah. And you mentioned before, it has sold extremely well. They said it sold 3.8 million in two weeks, not two months, two weeks. But I have been following the Tamodachi Life Reddit and those people were like frothing from the mouth to get a new one. It is weird on paper that Nintendo was like, here's Animal Crossing, here's Bucopia, here's

[01:17:53] Tamodachi Life back to back. But it's paid off massively because they're getting this brand new audience who probably don't pick up new hardware on day one to jump into the Switch 2 ecosystem. And they said 40% of Tamodachi Life players are playing on Switch 2. So again, if it sold 4 million in two weeks, do the math, it's at least over a million are playing it on Switch 2. So there might be a million people who are brand new to the Switch 2 ecosystem. Yes.

[01:18:22] And Pokemon Champions, I tried it out for a bit. I'm not that into it, but I do like the idea that, okay, we are sectioning off that competitive aspect of Pokemon into its own thing. And that kind of gives me hope for the mainline games where we don't need to tie in to the competitive stuff into the horror games as much anymore. That'll be a separate thing. And then we can focus on the main game and make the story mode or make the way you interact with the world in that game a bit disconnected from the competitive side.

[01:18:50] Because once you go into the post game, it does feel like, okay, jump into the competitive Pokemon scene, which I don't really want to do. So I do like that. Okay. It's separated from the main games now. So hopefully that's a good sign in that these are two different worlds now. They're no longer one world. And I do like some of the things they added to Champions. It shows the percentage of the health bar. So that's way more specific. And it also tells you like super effective or it shows you two times as effective or four

[01:19:18] times as effective, which the main games don't do. I'm like, oh, these UI changes, I would not mind if they were in the actual games. So there are some interesting additions to Champions. And yeah, Pragmata, again, I played the demo, extremely impressive on Switch 2. And it seems to be, this is a game that I think is going to sell more and more as time passes on. It seems to be a huge success over 2 million in a month or so. And yeah, even though I think the Switch 2 sales, like the percentage of the pie, it

[01:19:48] is mostly PS5 and PC. But again, even if it's 15% on Switch 2, that might be 15% who didn't buy the game at all. And if you're Capcom, I want those 15% extra sales, please. So I think Capcom, they're definitely the MVP of this first year. I kind of wish like all third party games were just made in the RE engine. That would mean, oh, it will run very well on Switch 2. So May, we've got Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. Have you opened up the book yet?

[01:20:16] No, I haven't had a good feel from good feel for a while, if you get what I mean. And so some of those Princess Peach Showtime being one of those and even the previous Yoshi game, I haven't quite gelled with. And so I've watched from afar, but it seems to be doing a little bit better than I think people thought. And getting some decent reviews, which I think is a good thing. But it's definitely the background for this game is a bit more of a younger demographic and the gameplay isn't going to be hard platforming or anything like that. So that makes sense.

[01:20:46] But I have been playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Switch 2. And this is an amazing port of this game from Machine Games in Bethesda. And I'm a massive fan of the series. And I think the first proper movie tie-in, well, not tie-in, but a series tie-in game, at least a 3D one, is pretty phenomenal. And it's been one of those games I've wanted to play for a little while now when it first came to Xbox. And then last year was on PlayStation. But with this Switch 2 release, I thought, yeah, I'm just going to actually pull the trigger here and actually buy it. Runs incredibly well.

[01:21:15] I'm marvelling at just how this looks on Switch 2. And they've done a great job at porting this to the system. You've got so many great options in terms of how you want it to look and present. And it's capped at 30 frames. But I just think with the gameplay and what you do, that's not an issue at all. But it just makes it look really nice and stable. And I'm playing in a cinematic kind of trimmed ratio. And so, especially the first bit, you're kind of recreating Raiders of the Lost Ark,

[01:21:42] going through that tomb and the boulder and switching the idol for the bag of sand. And yeah, it's hitting all the right notes for people who love this series. And lots to explore and do. You don't want to just beeline and do the main story modes in this. You're in these various areas and there's lots to explore and find and mysteries to solve and puzzles, et cetera. I'm having a great time with this. And yeah, with all the other third-party games we've mentioned, this is definitely one of them that's stacked up now as well.

[01:22:09] Like, I don't remember a time like this for Nintendo getting these games straight away. I think for me, and I hope a lot of people listening as well, this has been like, I played a lot of non-Nintendo stuff these last 10 months on my Switch 2, which is, I think, pretty cool. So, I think the ratio is definitely in the right direction now. And something that Nintendo has probably definitely tried to push for, but hasn't been able to do for a little while now. Yeah, I definitely want to pick up Indiana Jones as well. And yeah, you make a great point because I remember when Witcher 3 came to Switch 1.

[01:22:39] And wow, that's an incredible port, but it kind of looks very ugly. And Indiana Jones does not look ugly at all on Switch 2. Again, if you're comparing like side by side, you can notice some things. But if you're not, it looks like perfect. I definitely think, okay, we don't need better than PS4 graphics. That can be the peep of graphics. We don't need anything better than that. And yeah, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, it got pretty good reviews. And some other Nintendo fans I've been talking to, they are liking it.

[01:23:08] It feels like Goodfield did something actually different this time around with the series. And this is something I kind of want to pick up maybe later on when it's on sale. Because at first I just thought this has no sauce to it when I saw the trailer for it. But I guess the perspective of, oh, it's more of an adventure game and you're interacting with all these different environmental things. It definitely seems a lot more interesting than what I originally presumed. So I hope it does well since Goodfield actually did something different this time around.

[01:23:38] And people seem to be responding to it. And I think this would be a great game to play with a kid or a toddler. Since you can't die and there's no real hazards. It's just like you're running around as Yoshi and interacting with things. So it seems like a good playground type of game. Cheers to Goodfield for actually making a Yoshi game that is slightly interesting. But it doesn't seem like Nintendo has any big first party games until June 5th. We're going to cut off June 5th. Were there any games that you were surprised didn't hit the first year, either from Nintendo or third parties?

[01:24:06] I think DK was a big thing for me in terms of people reacting to it. I see such a big mismatch in terms of the quality of that game and people talking about it and sales of that game. That's, you know, like I think it's about four and a half million. And that's a lot still. But, you know, compared to Mario 3D levels, it's just not at that stage. And I'm definitely surprised by that. And I hope people will turn around slowly and pick that one up a bit more. Yeah. Like, I think for me, a lot of stuff going the other way.

[01:24:34] So, I wanted Metroid to do really well and it didn't do well. I really was hoping, like I was surprised by how low a fever was. And, yeah, I just think it's cognizant of, I feel in a way like someone stepped on a butterfly. We're in the bad reality now of gaming. And it's a world of tariffs and the AI creating shortages of microchips. And like console prices have gone up. Software prices have gone up. But the console prices throughout the life cycle are going up now instead of down.

[01:25:02] All this sort of stuff just created some weird headwinds. And I suppose it doesn't surprise me that maybe people are sticking to stuff they know and less likely to take risks, that kind of thing. I think that's been the big thing. But I'm surprised at how resilient Nintendo has still been in terms of, like, output. A lot of sales still. Yeah. A lot of that monthly game, so it's a game a month cycle. Output's still been there.

[01:25:27] And I even know that Fiocawa's talked about that's how they can sell all the consoles they want to sell. They're forecasting, like, another 16 and a half million this coming year. It just talked about more software and more compelling software as well. So I just feel like this cycle's going to continue, which I think I was thinking would slow down a little. But it seems to maybe indicate they've acquired a few studios and maybe their outputs.

[01:25:51] Maybe they really do have games lined up in their bottom drawer and ready to pull out and ready to release when there's an empty slot coming out. That sort of surprised me that we've been able to see that continuation into the Switch 2. Which, when everyone said, like, they've even acknowledged Nintendo that it's harder now to make these games because there's more technical reasoning. But for what I've seen so far and what we're getting Rhythm Heaven Groove and Raiders in July. And we'll get Star Fox next month. And there might be a Direct.

[01:26:20] And we get a Shudder Drop game. So there is, like, it's pretty good, this output. That hasn't changed from what I've seen, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. The first, technically first fiscal year, not calendar year, but until March 31st, Switch 2 has sold 19th. 19.86 million sold, which is above their expectations. They originally had it 15 million and then they revised it to 19 million. So they haven't passed that. Although I do feel like in a perfect world, it could be even higher. Like, maybe even, like, 22 million.

[01:26:48] But, yeah, Nintendo has been really good with making a lot of software. And there is still a lot of hype for the Switch 2 in terms of sales. Like, the same month chart of, like, how many units have sold, like, the first two years of all Nintendo platforms. Switch 2 is so far ahead of everything. Even Switch 1. Even Wii. It is crazy. I think a lot of people have been like, oh, is Switch 2 a hit? Is it slowing down? There's so many things against it. But it is selling so extremely quickly. Like, way faster than even Switch 1. Way faster than Wii.

[01:27:17] That sell expectations for the first two years of Wii and Switch 2 are, like, totally different. It's, like, such a huge gap. Switch 2 is selling, like, extremely quickly. Exactly. So, I think there's a lot of doom and gloom. But, again, it might just be, like, get off the internet. Because the reality and what people are saying can be very different. But Switch 2, I would definitely say a huge hit so far. There's definitely a lot of things going against it, which is very scary.

[01:27:45] But Nintendo is resilient, like you said. Yeah, it surpassed expectations. The price hike is coming. So, it should be interesting to see how that will affect the second year or momentum. But I also feel like it's not a surprising thing. It's something that people have expected. So, they've bit their lip and gone with it. And in Japan, it's going up actually tomorrow as we're recording this. So, there's been a huge dash to buy Switch 2s.

[01:28:11] I think in the past, like, two weeks, it's sold, like, over 450,000 units in Japan alone. Just because people are rushing to get it before the price hike. And, yeah. But games are coming out. Star Fox, Rhythm Heaven, maybe Fire Emblem. Hopefully, one day, they will tell us when that will come out. Very simple. And there's been rumors of many other games coming out for Switch 2. So, what do you think about Switch 2's first year in general? I think it's pretty great. We've had such a great breadth of different games. And I think you hit the nail on the head.

[01:28:40] It was, like, different experiences as well. And then a couple of, like, ones that have repeated. But they definitely weren't the memorable ones, at least. And, like, I've really enjoyed... I think about, like, Wii to Wii U and how they botched that up so much. And so, there was so much riding on this wasn't there for Nintendo because the stakes were higher. And they've perfectly executed how to do a second subsequent release of a console compared to the very first popular one.

[01:29:07] And we've seen every other cycle with Nintendo, especially when it's, like, mainline. You get that little drop. And then maybe they can get the Wii and it spikes again. And the Wii U's down. And then it spikes with the Switch. But this time around, it seems like, no, it's just going up again. And they've been very conscious of that. It's very deliberate. And all the choices they've made are pretty methodical and deliberate. And has resulted in the position they are in now. And I think we get to benefit now from the fact that they're not just...

[01:29:34] Nintendo's getting a lot of output and software, but it's such a multimedia brand now, Nintendo. We're getting the theme parks. We're getting the movies, the merchandise. That this all-encompassing ship that is Nintendo is just, you know, leading along, doing really well. And is able to weather these really unpredictable... And for a lot of other stakeholders in the industry, it's taken them. They haven't been able to step above it, whereas Nintendo's been able to weather it. And we're getting the benefits of that now.

[01:30:01] Of we're going to get more games, more like this consistency of lineups, which we just don't see with Xbox, which we just don't see with PlayStation and their partners. We're getting that now. That in between of not being super cutting edge with technology, but never having to have the most graphical looking game has paid in Nintendo's favor and kept that. Let's keep these games profitable still.

[01:30:24] I heard, like, last year with Pokemon, like, some of these budgets for these games is so low and what they're selling it for is incredibly off the charts. They're just able to find that great mix. And as long as they can keep giving us those unique experiences, I think they're on a winner here. We're getting a new Rhythm Heaven. We've got a new Air Riders game. You know, like, I looked and hoped for, like, you know, the Mother Series. We're going to get something with that maybe. We're getting Star Fox next month for the first time on a Switch console, which is pretty cool. Yeah, like, I think it's a great time to be a Nintendo fan.

[01:30:52] I'm being definitely more deliberate with my purchases. I've definitely scaled back on Miibos, for example, because they're a lot more expensive. Yeah. I'm definitely more conscious of certain games I pick up. I think that's a pretty general, you know, wouldn't surprise me if that's a bit of a style, a trend out there. Because I know Cyberpunk sales are pretty low or at least lower than what they're expecting. There's still a few things I need to work through.

[01:31:20] And a lot of things could have gone wrong, haven't. And Nintendo's done a great job, I think. I definitely agree with you. I thought Switch 2 had a great first year. A lot of unorthodoxes and very unusual game releases in terms of they didn't play the hits. They went down a different path than a lot of people expected. And so if you expected Mario Zelda Smash year one, I understand the frustration. But I think the games they did put out, extremely high quality, Donkey Kong, Air Riders, Pocopia. Those games, to me, those are games you absolutely need to check out.

[01:31:49] And there's a lot of great third-party support from Ubisoft put out their billion-hour games. You can check out Capcom, hit it out of the park. Street Fighter 6. You could just get really into Street Fighter 6 right now with Switch 2. There's no delay between the new characters or anything like that. Ingrid is on Switch 2. You can check her out. Indie games. Even going back to the Switch 1 games. I think a lot of people wrote off, was like, I just only want to play Switch 2 games.

[01:32:14] But if you check out those enhanced Switch 1 games, like Tears of the Kingdom, Pokemon, Scarlet Violet, it does give you something to play. So there's definitely more than enough to play. And yet Nintendo has had only an uphill battle with all these tariffs and the production cost rising and everything like that. But they've definitely put out a lot of fantastic games. And people have been responding. It is almost like Nintendo is, I don't want to say recession-proof. Or they can weather any storm.

[01:32:42] But it's only been an uphill battle and they've been succeeding. So I'm really interested to see what they have for year two. Because, yeah, again, they will release a new Mario. They will release a new Zelda. Those games are coming. So I'm really excited to see what those games look like when they finally come. But until then, JT, thank you so much for joining me for this extra long episode. Where can people find you? Well, no, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. And it's really cool to take that step back and reflect.

[01:33:09] But, yeah, I'm on the House of Mario, which is a podcast every week. Drew, whose show it is. It's his baby. But, yeah, any sort of anywhere you listen to your podcast, just search The House of Mario and you'll find us. So, yeah, thanks again for having me. Thanks so much. And, yes, listeners, check out The House of Mario. I've been listening to it. And, yeah, it's a really great podcast. I'm always interested in the Australian prices of things that I can find out by listening to The House of Mario.

[01:33:35] So if you want a peek into the Australian gaming scene and Nintendo in general, check out The House of Mario. And the links are in the podcast description. So, listeners, check it out. JT, once again, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. Today's feature is going to be focused on Rare Item Studio, a fairly new retro game shop in Akihabara.

[01:33:58] And, yes, we did forget to talk about Xenoblade X Definitive Edition, Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, and Game Chat in the previous segment. I'm sorry, Xenoheads. X is a good game, and the Switch 2 Edition seems fine in Game Chat. It works as advertised. No real strong feelings about it. Okay, now that we've officially covered 100% of the Switch 2's first year, let's go to Rare Item Studio. This is a used goods shop mostly focusing on retro games, but they do sell music, books, and a bunch of other random knickknacks.

[01:34:28] I want to say I discovered it last year, and it's not been open that long. The company profile said that they started in 2023, but their socials are all from 2024, so this shop is only about a year or two old. And I think I just randomly saw a post about them on social media and thus discovered this new Akiba hotspot. And much has been said about Akihabara. Has Akihabara lost its luster? Is it purely a tourist trap? I mean, people say this today. They were saying this five years ago.

[01:34:58] They were saying this ten years ago. I first visited Japan all the way back in 2007. Was Akihabara pure then? Or was it already past its prime? And I'm sure there are people who say that Akihabara was ruined when it became an otaku hotspot, and not just a place to buy cameras or RF cables. But if you purely care about Akihabara in terms of gaming, for first-time visitors, I think you will be appropriately satiated. But for multi-time visitors, maybe the major spots like Super Potato and Tsurugaya have lost their luster.

[01:35:28] Can somebody swoop in and save us? Enter Rare Item Studio. The savior of retro gaming in Akihabara is here. Okay, not really. But it is a fairly off-the-beaten-path shop with a solid inventory, albeit the prices are nothing special. They know they are a retro gaming store in Akihabara in the year 2026. But they aren't in the main shopping area, but instead about a five to ten minute walk away, down a quiet street with almost no other businesses nearby.

[01:35:57] So you're not going to just stumble upon this shop as you're walking down the main strip with thousands of other people, but instead you're only going there if you know it exists. But I will say that it's laid out in a visually pleasing way, and it does have a new atmosphere, and it doesn't feel like it's been there since the Meiji era. The walls have huge framed posters on them. There are decorations, aka old toys and consoles near the front of the store. And the shelves are about five feet high, so it doesn't have those towering shelves like Tsurugaya that feel like they could crush you if they fall down.

[01:36:26] Also, the aisles are not two inches wide. It's also brightly lit. It has a glass door front so you can easily see inside. I know it might be silly to highlight that a store is well lit, but some retro game stores feel like you are entering a cave. I've been here twice, once in January and once in May. And even after a few months, they changed out the layout somewhat. The big forward-facing display was totally different each time. So you go in, and the first thing you see is a big display. On top, there's a TV.

[01:36:52] And on the left, there was a Pokemon section where the top of the shelf had some retro Pokemon books, and under that were used copies of all the pre-switched games. Did they have absurd prices? Yes, they did. Emerald was 26,000 yen on my first visit, for example. So seeing this and also the Gen 1 game's inbox at over 50,000 yen, it did leave a bad first impression. Take a guess, what is the highest-selling game in Japanese history?

[01:37:20] It is Animal Crossing New Horizons. But the second-highest-selling game that kept the record for nearly 25 years, Pokemon Gen 1. So theoretically, it would be more abundant in retro game stores than any other game. Yet it's always the most expensive. Somebody please explain supply and demand to me, because I'm not getting it. But under the Pokemon section was a bunch of random CDs, including Neo Geo DJ Station Live 99, the OST for Dragon Force, and even a CD from Zuntata.

[01:37:50] And if I had to pick what is the X Factor for a rare item studio, it would definitely be their music selection. But on the right side of the first display section, it was just a bunch of random games like Einhander, Dragon Quest VI on DS, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus. But they also had Kirby and the Amazing Mirror OST at 90,000 yen. Did Sakurai sign this or something?

[01:38:12] So yeah, the main thing that stuck out to me at Rare Item Studio was the extensive collection of retro OSTs, mostly in the CD or mini-CD format. The mini-CDs come in these long cardboard boxes, which are novel and also kind of hard to search through, because when they're all in a big box, the spines are really narrow and hard to see. But a lot of the CDs are displayed with the cover art facing the customer, which makes for a really striking showcase. And you don't need to thumb through rows and rows of CDs to find what you want.

[01:38:38] And I'm not really a collector of OSTs or anything like that, so there was plenty I was seeing for the first time. They had everything from the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack, to Muramasa, to Romancing Saga, to Twinbee. There were a lot of anime soundtracks as well, which I feel shouldn't have been allowed, but it is Rare Item Studio and not Rare Game Studio. The shop's entrance does have a lot of random anime merch scattered about, like old building kits and figures, but it's mostly a game shop.

[01:39:03] But the name Rare Item Studio, I am kind of wondering what is actually rare in here, in terms of what is super rare. They didn't have anything that truly shocked me. It's not like they had a Net Yorose or even like a Panasonic Q on display. But there were plenty of fun things that just happened to be in the store, like the Epoch Card Battler, typing of the dead for PS2 with the keyboard, and a lot of Virtual Boy games, including Virtual Fishing, which was just added to NSO a few days ago.

[01:39:29] It was priced at 30,000 yen, so it is like Nintendo just gave me 30,000 yen. That's like six years of NSO right there. They also have a pretty sizable retro book collection, mostly old magazines and strategy guides. The first time I went there, I did pick up a Pokemon guide, and this is a type of collection I want to arbitrarily start despite having no room in my house. That being retro guide collecting. They are relatively cheap and very unique in terms of them having a lot of custom and unusual art.

[01:39:57] Now, if I buy 10 guides for a Pokemon Gen 1, am I going to read all of them cover to cover? No, but I will flip through them. Sadly, the books are kind of on the lower shelves, so you do got to bend down to see what's even in there. Sorry, I haven't really laid out the layout of the store. You've got the main display when you enter, and on the right side are books and CDs. Then in the middle, you've got more CD and cartridge game shelves. And on the left wall, there are more CDs and games from disc consoles.

[01:40:26] And the store isn't just your typical Super Famicom and PS1 stuff. They had a wide breadth of games, including stuff like The WonderSwan, Sega CD, PC Engine. Not comprehensive, but their stock might be better than a lot of other stores in the area that really only have a sampling of the more common games. The back wall where the register is also had a lot of collectibles and other games. Not sure if these are also for sale or just for display to give the store some flavor or if they will cycle it back in. But both times I visited, I noticed the store was being manned by two young girls,

[01:40:54] and one of them was testing N64 games. And man, what a cool part-time job. I'd love to just test Smash 64 for a few bucks an hour. Now, the prices, they do seem high. I don't know if you're going to get a genuine deal here. For example, the second time I visited the store, the front display was a mix of Pokemon and Kirby. Kirby 64, 3500 yen. I'm pretty sure I bought this for under 1000 yen a few years ago. But a few years ago is indeed a few years ago.

[01:41:25] Times have changed. Even so, ain't no way Kirby 64 is that much at any book off. So like I said before, everything is indeed Akiba priced. They do have an online shop though, and ironically the prices there seem to be more palatable. But not everything in the physical store is online. The website also has a little section detailing stuff they've bought from customers recently, including several Wonderswan games. And it was updated just a few weeks ago, so I guess they do update this thing fairly regularly.

[01:41:52] And a big part of their site is that they emphasize they have a very fair trade in value. So that might contribute to the higher prices. So Rare Item Studio. It is kind of quote-unquote another Akiba retro game shop. But I do think the variety of items, including some fun oddities, the focus on music, and the clean layout do make it stand out compared to a lot of other shops. It is also very photogenic since a lot of the CDs and games are forward-facing. So you're not just looking at the spines, but instead the excellent cover art.

[01:42:20] It is very fun to just walk around and browse all the amazing OSTs you didn't know existed. And it is still a little bit under the radar compared to a lot of other shops. I was there a few weeks ago, and after a few customers filtered out, I was the only person in the store. The only person in a retro game shop. Is that not the dream? I think Rare Item Studio is certainly worth at least checking out, especially if you collect physical OSTs. But go in knowing that you're not going to make out like a bandit. That's all for the feature. Let's check out the news.

[01:42:54] Big news. Nintendo released a new game semi-out of nowhere. Picto Nico from Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. It's out now. This is basically a WarioWare-inspired mobile game where the game manipulates your photos and you play little mini-games about them. This is the second mobile game from Intelligent Systems in the past two years. With the first being... Do you remember? That's right. Fire Emblem Shadows, which I did cover on the podcast once upon a time. I might do a deeper dive on Picto Nico later, since it is more fun than Fire Emblem Shadows.

[01:43:24] But my knee-jerk impression is that... Hey, it is making me laugh. It turns your pictures into WarioWare mini-games. This is basically a mobile WarioWare game in everything but name. The music, the aesthetic, the nose hairs. It's all here. They touted it as a free-to-start game, but realistically, it's a demo and then you gotta pay for the actual game via mini-game packs. I bought the first one and you go through a WarioWare-style campaign where you run through 10 mini-games for each node, then you move on to the next.

[01:43:53] There's also Score Attack and you can freely choose games to practice, so there is content there for people who get really into the game. And just like WarioWare, one mini-game has different difficulty levels. You can also spend your coins on silly things like your daily fortune. Nintendo's mobile efforts these days are quite fascinating since they basically hit the brakes on that initiative once Switch became a big hit. And the mobile game market has rapidly changed, with gacha games becoming the apex predator. There's a reason why Fire Emblem Heroes is still around and Miitomo is not.

[01:44:21] This definitely feels more like an old-fashioned mobile game, if such a thing exists. Something that takes advantage of the device's unique features and form factor. I'm enjoying it so far, though I guess it really does depend on how many pictures of your friends and family are on your phone. If it's thousands, then you'll get a kick out of storing a pattern of your mom's face into some matcha. Other games on the Nintendo front, Donkey Kong 64 is being added to Nintendo Switch Online on June 4th. Wait a minute, June 4th? 6-4-64.

[01:44:50] It's all coming together. I think Donkey Kong 64 is maybe my most wanted gaming remake ever. Not because I love the game and I want to play it again, but because I think it is the game that could benefit the most from a remake, where they go back and fix a lot of things. I think Donkey Kong 64 has a bad reputation now, but back in the day, it sold millions and millions of copies. It was Nintendo's big holiday game in 1999. And it got really good reviews. I'm talking nines and tens.

[01:45:17] But I remember having a lot of fun with the game back in the day, although I did find it very annoying and also very difficult. I think I still kind of want to wait for a DK64 remake. Which could happen if they don't want to launch themselves into Bonanza 2. Dragon Quest XII, a game almost as hyped up as Pikto Niko. Square Enix had a big DQ Day presentation and they finally revealed Dragon Quest XII Beyond Dreams. Now you might be thinking, hey, wasn't it supposed to be Flames of Fate or something like that?

[01:45:45] Well, Horty confirmed that they worked on that game. Then it wasn't going so well, so they pulled a Prime 4 and restarted development. Instead of the darker, more mature aesthetic and theming they hinted at earlier, it does kind of look like what you would expect from a Dragon Quest game. Which is good, of course, but I was semi-curious just how crazy they would get with a quote-unquote dark Dragon Quest. The release date? Unknown. Consoles? Unknown. It is still quite far out, it seems, and I'm talking late 2027 at the earliest.

[01:46:15] Which means we will have gone over a decade without a new numbered Dragon Quest game. Square, what is going on? I just don't understand how you don't have a clear roadmap for one of your bigger IPs, especially in your home country. A few weeks ago, there was a story that said Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have fallen out of favor with younger audiences due to the lack of releases. I mean, yeah. If you were 10 when Dragon Quest XI came out, you're going to be in college or maybe have graduated from college once Dragon Quest XII hits.

[01:46:45] Obviously, there are many spinoffs and remakes, but they can only move the needle so much. The ratio between adults playing Dragon Quest III HD 2D and kids playing it can't be that close. But this new game, I mean, it looks nice. Toriyama can do no wrong. And the main character design is pretty distinct from a lot of other Dragon Quest heroes, who I would consider to be a bit more safe or conventionally attractive. But here we've got a guy with a weird haircut and droopy eyes. And I'm liking it. And you also have a lizard companion, which is a unique party member for the series.

[01:47:15] But I have seen some people theorize that maybe you are the lizard, as in you turn into a lizard. Beyond Dreams is the subtitle. And the Japanese subtitle is also very close to that, which is kind of unusual for Dragon Quest games. So is there some sort of dream world mechanic? Are you a human in real life and the lizard in the dream? Also, we didn't see any of the combat. So I do think a big mix up on that front is one of the game's bigger hooks. I'm excited for Dragon Quest XII, but it's going to be a while.

[01:47:42] But in the meantime, they also did announce Dragon Quest Monsters The Withered World, a game that is quote unquote coming soon to Switch 2. Like how Dragon Quest Monsters 3 pulled from Dragon Quest 4, this game seems like it's going to pull from Dragon Quest 5. Monsters 3 is one of those games that I feel bad for not playing. They announced it. I thought it looked interesting. It reviewed pretty well. And then I just never bought it. I'm so sorry. Maybe I should just jump into this one instead. But I have a bit more affection for 4 than 5, since I have barely touched 5. I'm sorry.

[01:48:12] I will pick up the Deku 5 remake though in, I don't know, 20 years or whenever they make it. Tokyo stuff. Speaking of Square, the Square Enix Cafe and Shop opens on June 12th in Pase Labo Tower in Shinjuku. I'll try to head over there and report back. And if you want more Dragon Quest food, Baskin Robbins is having a Dragon Quest collab from June 1st with a new golden pineapple lemonade flavor. You would think it would just be a big blue scoop, but no, they are actually going outside of the box a little bit.

[01:48:39] There's also a new Dragon Quest ice cream cake, a keychain, and you can get a slime plushie based on their popping shower flavor. And Village Vanguard is also having a crossover with Super Bomberman featuring new shirts, stickers, badges, so forth and so on. Hmm. What is my favorite Bomberman design? I do kind of like the N64 era Bomberman or the Bomberman GB style. I suppose I need to buy the collection before I buy a shirt though. And Human Made is also having a Pokemon collab featuring a very cool far-fetched inspired jacket

[01:49:09] that comes with a plush leak. Now, is it 85,000 yen? Yes, but you can freely hit people with the leak and nobody can stop you. Other stuff, Parko Shibuya is having a Death Stranding collab from June 6th where different shops will sell Death Stranding inspired gear. Do you want some Death Stranding flip-flops? Run straight to Shibuya Parko on June 6th and nab them. But before you do that, let's wrap up. Thanks as always for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app. Leave a five-star review as well. It really helps.

[01:49:40] This podcast is also available on YouTube, so like and subscribe there as well. I'm on Twitter, Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram. Just search for Tokyo Gang Life or find the links in the podcast description. If you like the podcast, be sure to share it with your friends and on social media. The next episode is on June 14th. See you next time. Matane!