The Nintendo Switch Online Service should have been a celebration of all things classic Nintendo, but instead it has fizzled out into dust, writes Emerald Rangers' Cameron1391.
Since the announcement of the expanded Nintendo 64 Upgrade, there have only been 26 Nintendo 64 games released on the service. Since the announcement of Game Boy games that have become available, there have only been 18 Game Boy games released. Since the announcement of the Game Boy Advance games that had been added, there have only been 12 released to the service. What's worse, is that Nintendo seem to trickle out these releases only once a month instead of adding a bunch at a time. Remember the Virtual Console on the Wii, 3DS & Wii U? Every month they would add a wave of classic games for us to purchase flat out to enjoy and own. Sadly the Switch never got a Virtual Console and feels so backwards and limiting without one.
If you're like me and also own the vast majority of Nintendo's back catalog on physical format, then you've got nothing to worry about. But what bothers me, is the way Nintendo are distributing these games for a very lackluster online service.
From the start it's safe to say that NSO has been struggling. Nintendo's online services in the past have been free, and they've been amazing. To be honest, I don't even pay for NSO, i'm on a family account. But I hardly even use it. It's crazy to me that there are Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games on Switch, but absolutely not one mainline Pokemon game. No Red, Yellow, Blue, Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby, Gold, Silver, Crystal etc. If Nintendo are serious about battling piracy, there should have been a wave of several different games released on NSO from the back catalog per month.
Which makes me ask, why are Nintendo so shy of recognizing a lot of the other games from their back catalog? Why is it taking them so long to shove all the other games to the sevice? There is a huge library of NES & SNES games now, but they are only adding ones that nobody cares about. Some of them are completely in Japanese. I don't read Japanese!
Playing the classic games online with friends was a hugely advertised feature from the start and it works well when it works. It's just a shame Nintendo are not implementing the feature more enough. Maybe they are willing to wait until the Switch has had enough and will dump everything on at the last minute, or convert NSO to the next console? Either way it doesn't make sense. The Switch has long overstayed its welcome, and people are hungry for a new Nintendo console, but also want to see improvements to the Switch Online service, because it is a paid service. It just doesn't make any sense to me why Nintendo are so hesitant to add a bunch of their games at once and not one per month, without even scheduling proper releases for them, we have to guess every time when the next game comes on before it's announced. It's dumb.
I'm actually surprised we don't have any more Gamecube or Wii ports yet, as Switch has been shown that it can run them with releases such as Super Mario 3D All Stars collection & Metroid Prime Remastered.
Do you want to see Nintendo improve the service as well? What do you think they should do? Let us know in the comments.
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