In the past few months, I’ve become pretty disillusioned with just about everything having to do with video games. From the unrelenting circular discourse (pricing! difficulty! boycotts! emulation! indie vs. AAA!) to AI everywhere, ruining everything, it seems like there’s never been a worse time to care about video games. On top of all that, I tried a bunch of well-regarded modern games, from indies to AA to AAA, and none of them did anything for me. With all this in mind, I did the only thing that made sense, which was to step away.
For a few weeks I stopped playing games, posting, and following gaming news. I devoted more time to reading, and created a new account to post about comics. and honestly, it rocked. It was definitely a much better alternative to being Annoyed and Jaded on the Internet.
However, after a couple of weeks I started to get the itch to play some games. I started a new character in World of Warcraft Classic, which was a nice way to zone out and disassociate a bit. But what really pulled me back in was the random Star Fox Nintendo Direct. Once I got over the disappointment that this was yet another Star Fox 64 remake that initially didn’t seem all that visually impressive (when I first saw it in action, my initial thought was of the chintzy recent Panzer Dragoon remakes- not a good sign), I couldn’t help but get a bit excited. I love Star Fox 64 (it’s number 12 on my list of the 100 Best Nintendo Games of All Time), so there’s no harm in being open minded about this remake.
But really, the announcement inspired me to replay the original. While my PC and other consoles have been neglected for a few weeks, my Switch 2 has been unused for even longer. I (literally) dusted the console off, hooked it up to an old 1080p monitor in my office, and played through Star Fox 64 on NSO in a single sitting (using an N64 controller, of course).
It had been a few years since I had done a full replay, but the game was just as good as I remembered. With this down, I decided to poke around in the NSO apps for another old favorite to play through. I settled on Super Mario Advance 4 (which is, confusingly actually Super Mario Bros. 3) (number 3 on my top 100 list). Again, just as good as I remembered.
By this point I was fired up. I had an insatiable desire for more NSO bangers. I popped over to the GameCube app and chose… a game I had never played before: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I’ve only played a couple of hours, but so far I’m really enjoying it.
One thing that struck me while hopping around the NSO apps was how nice the Switch 2 is as simply a place to play games. I know this isn’t a new take, and I know Nintendo has its share of problems, but I really appreciated everything just working, the lack of ads for stuff unrelated to games, and honestly the complete absence of any other people outside of those on my friend list- no user videos, reviews, etc. For better or worse, the Switch 2 is a simple place of pure escapism.
I should use this thing more often. Maybe I’ll even try a modern game on it!
All screenshots captured by me on a docked Switch 2
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