Yes, The Nintendo Switch Showcase Really Was Seven Years Ago

Yes, please show it tomorrow Nintendo, the waiting is too painful

And it eventually became a behemoth.

Funny how things can work out.

That means it's been 7 years since 1001 Spikes and Metroid Prime 4 were announced, and we still don't have them on the Switch...
Those were seriously the 2 games that sold me on buying a Switch 😄

could Nintendo do something similar of the Switch presentation for it next console?

At that time I just got back into gaming again. Got myself a Wii U a couple of months before just to play Twilight Princess HD and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.
Didn’t get any info about this event at the time. But ended up buying Breath of the Wild for the Wii U at launch 🤣
Still great times.
Got myself a Switch in 2018.
And BotW not long after.

Man, I feel ancient right now. This system really gave us some high highs and low lows. Mostly the former thankfully, this system turned out to be one heck of a machine and has given me the opportunity to play many games both old and new. I wonder how much more it will be selling in the end, if Nintendo can keep the momentum going it could maybe even be the best selling console of all time?

I remember I didn’t buy it day one because I thought it was too expensive (ended up getting a great deal on a barely used second hand one a couple months later). If I’d realised just how much I’d end up using it I’d have been there on launch day. Not just the best Nintendo console ever made but the best system of all time in my eyes.

@Yosher Out of curiosity, what “low lows” are we talking about?

I just got a switch in August 2022 so I’m not really clamoring for a new console. tbh it’s be annoying for Nintendo to have another console this year. Hopefully it has backwards compatibility.

Seven years of abundance (hopefully not followed by seven years of famine!)

@OctolingKing13 It’s getting close to a decade since the Switch released, how is it annoying that they’re likely coming out with a new machine?

If anything you’ve got tons of great games to get through on Switch before you even have to think about getting the new one, why does a new console being on the market matter to you?

Oh common you young farts - this is probably my seventh generation of consoles. Blindme the switch is youth! What about the commode or even older the Atari...

I'm having a harder time accepting that Kirby: Triple Deluxe, a game I played for the first time a few years ago is now 10 years old and eventually games such as the original Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U will be as well.

Normally Smash Bros. would've been the game to get me hyped and actually want a Switch, but when I finally played it, it just didn't do it for me as a justification for my purchase.

I really got a Switch for Metroid Prime 4, but that game is now basically like Kirby for Nintendo Gamecube and became MIA, even if the former was eventually released as Kirby's Return to Dream Land. For the record, I don't consider Return to Dream Land and the cancelled Kirby for Nintendo Gamecube to be 100% the same game.
I'm sure MP4 will be released eventually, just not on Switch.

Now my Switch purchase justifications are Metroid Dread, Metroid Prime Remastered (yes, really) and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Not even games such as Super Mario Odyssey got me hyped for a Switch.

@sketchturner I have seriously never heard of 1001 Spikes, but I will point out - just to be that guy - that Metroid Prime 4 wasn’t revealed in the January showcase. It was announced in the E3 showcase in the summer.

If it’s any consolation, the games that sold me on getting the Switch at launch, beyond BotW, were Shin Megami Tensei V and Dragon Quest XI. It was a long wait even for DQXI.

I remember all the hype and confusion around the Switch's reveal at the time. After the travesty that was the Wii U, overall I liked what I saw and was cautiously optimistic. Look at what the Switch became!

And it’s been an awesome 7 years! I hope the Switch 2 is fully BC and I can just transfer my library like one would do with PC.

I also fully expect the Switch life cycle to last until year 10 at minimum. Install base to too big to phase out any faster really. Devs will still likely be making games for a few years after production has ceased just like Ps2, DS, Wii, and NES.

It was a great presentation. The Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild trailers are still some of Nintendo's best trailers ever.

I'm not even that old but...damn.

Purchased my original Switch day one with BOTW of course and Mario Odyssey releasing the same year later on was the icing on the cake.
I know have a Mario red switch OLED.
But even though I still enjoy, it’s time for Switch 2 and a new Mario 3d platform game.
Also being more powerful we can have some of those newer highly rated third party titles on a Nintendo Switch 2 console. Maybe Elden Ring and a few more for release day.

It's been an amazing 7 years, so many great games released and the switch is actually my first Nintendo console I've bought day one and stuck with it the whole way. My only hopes for the Switch 2 is that is has more than one proper exclusive game on launch day and has atleast digital backwards compatibility.

I bought the Nintendo Switch on Day 1 because its premise captured my imagination. I'm so thankful that it provided me so many great gaming memories, from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Astral Chain to Moonlighter and Octopath Traveler. I'm especially grateful that it gave me a chance to get into a genre I never thought I'd get into: sRPGs. Some of the best time I had were with Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Triangle Strategy. I very much look forward to Super Nintendo Switch.

Man, those 7 years went by so fast. I feel so old now.

Loved the reveal.

Loved being invited to the pre-release event in London - where my brother and I broke Snipperclips and the developer was there looking worried at how we had managed it

Loved launch and glad I picked up the pro controller along with BotW

The Switch has definitely been my favourite console in my lifetime and hopefully the Switch 2 carries that momentum.

when Nintendo finally go next gen I don't expect anything like this to happen

I lost my entire mind. Such a great showcase.

It's really been that long? I swear it feels like just yesterday it released.

@Luminous117 I know right? It’s crazy how fast time flies. And before we know it, the Switch will be a decade old.

I wasn’t big into gaming when it was revealed but a friend of mine told me ALL about it. Didn’t even buy one until 2022. But I do remember how excited he was!

Me and my friend stayed up late to 4 or 5am to watch it. We played some Minecraft on Wii U while we waited lol

@Solomon_Rambling dude it's crazy how mad everyone was, really funny how they thought it'd be a bigger flop than the WiiU (as if). What a great reveal, and and an even greater console!

Gosh, that long already?! So it was initially revealed in October- was that the trailer with the White Denim track playing? I'm thinking of my mom- she agreed to buy the Switch when it would come out, but sadly passed away in November. So actually owning the Switch was bittersweet for awhile. I'm not sure I watched the 2017 presentation 🤔 but who'd have thought the Switch would become so big, after the Wii U era? Time flies! And it's certainly now one of my favourite consoles of all time 😊

Time flies when you are having fun 🥲🥲🥲

Beyond just having a great library, I'll never be able to separate the Switch from what I was going through when I finally got one. I had been homeless for a while after a rough go of it in the Army and a divorce. Before that, I ran a Gamecrazy and had a collection of games going back to my first NES, that I got when I was 4 in 1985. I had to join the Army to get insurance for my wife because GC just laid me off. America. Anyway, she left me during a deployment and also sold my collection. For $100. EX wife. So, after a few years of being a miserable, homeless drunk, the VA helped me get back on my feet. When I was finally able to get a Switch and start collecting again, it was kind of like finding myself again. I know, silly. But it was.
So yeah. I love the thing.

@Solomon_Rambling There was a lot of blood in the water because of Wii U. Whether someone disliked the Wii U and thought Nintendo was dying or loved the Wii U and felt betrayed by its early death, there was plenty of frustration and skepticism to pour onto the Switch.

I feel okay about what I said back then, but I was needlessly argumentative about how Mario Odyssey looked... though I do think I had a point, hahah.

Well, Nintendo has not let me down with their hardware, except maybe for never building a portable device that my big hands could wrap around without cramping up after a short time (and "trapping" great games on them I could barely play!). I even had fun renting the Virtual Boy from Blockbuster but I don't count that one — it was never going to work and Gunpei Yokoi made the cross-shaped control pad, the Game Boy, and produced Metroid and Kid Icarus, so no problem.

NES was the first console of my own (played Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man all near when they first released...) and I didn't miss a console or handheld. Even from the worst sellers, Gamecube gave me Metroid Prime and Wii U gave me Nintendo Land (it was our daily family game for years).

Yes, I'm looking forward to whatever Nintendo shows us next.

My overall thoughts on Switch are positive, just about. The quality of its game library is outstanding, and that is just strong enough to paper over the cracks of awful controllers, paid online, cartridges that aren't large enough for some games, expensive console, tiny internal storage, having to buy another set of controllers or charging grip if you want to charge controllers while playing docked (I mean really, that is unforgivable), etc. But its games are great, it's brilliant for local multiplayer, and of course being both handheld and home has its advantages.

Time sure flies. So much cool stuff announced out the gate, some of it taking years to come out indeed and some never materializing at all (Steep says hi). Funny how BotW wasn't even the main headturner for me (primarily because I didn't expect to binge my way down to it in the visible future... but ended up getting and playing months later anyway), and Xenoblade 2 announcement was but a "oh, neat" moment to my uninitiated mind as well... although IIRC it did catalyze my eventual purchase of XC3D later that year... and the rest is history.

"but it's Nintendo in 2024. What can you do?"

Well, I already mentioned what one can do. To paraphrase an immortal quote, "don't you guys have games?" It may honestly take an estimated interest in the paltry few dozen of Switch games to exhaust its offerings anytime soon, so what can't such people wait to spend more money on - another handful with "Mario" and "Zelda" in the titles? You do you, killer apps are a thing, but unironically starving for stuff to play in the interim still sounds conspicuously first-world. Personally, I have enough Switch games alone to last a couple lifetimes (and still buy more every month😏), so while I'd probably save up towards getting a hybrid successor sooner rather than later (it's pretty much the only piece of gaming hardware I can see myself realistically pursuing in the visible future at all), I'm struggling to relate to the supposed urgency of its advent from a customer perspective. Or even from a business one - many a console could cast a wistful look at Year 7 sales numbers like our hybrid queen's.

To think that Retro made the entire Metroid Prime trilogy in less time than 4 here.. At this point I've given up pretty much all hope it is coming to the Switch...unless Nintendo pulls a Zelda with it ala Twilight Princess and BotW where there's a Switch version that gets completely overshadowed by the version on the new console. Why do I have a feeling MP4 is going to be a launch title for the Switch successor?

@themightyant True about third party support. They tried on the Wii, but Wii Sports people really weren't interested in Nintendo games (even Nintendo got frustrated chasing casuals, there).

However, Nintendo started attracting indies during the Wii U days. Even some exclusives that we still go back to, like Affordable Space Adventures. Shovel Knight even had the first third party amiibo with Shovel Knight for Wii U.

(Side note: Hollow Knight released on Windows, first, then Linux and macOS. Switch version came over a year later, a few months before PS4 and XB1. They had originally promised a Wii U version in the kickstarter as a stretch goal that was reached but transitioned to Switch)

@Solomon_Rambling said, "I love how the company is a trailblazer in video gaming, even if it forgets its backpack or how to start a fire from time to time."

Great analogy, haha.

I remember the hype and excitement leading up to the Switch launch. Good times.