Switch 2 eShop
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

I love browsing the eShop, and the clicky sounds as you scroll across it.

The pleasing crispness of the chick! sound goes so well with the Joy-Con button feel. There’s that camera shutter snap! if you scroll across a game’s gallery in quick succession, and on Switch 2 there’s a thumb-cheek pop! when you hover over a 2-wide box. Genuinely, big fan.

It’s partly why I even liked OG eShop — or at least found it absorbing — with its weird Y2K modem lag every time you moved and that old-school anticipation of waiting for things to load or change, wondering did I even press the button? but not daring to re-press in case I did. You might overshoot!

I do like the new one better, obviously. Now nicely responsive as I scroll down the Coming Soon section with OCD completionism - middle down, left right right left (and the reverse obviously for the next line down, I don’t want to unbalance the universe) - click click click, and everything is tactile like digi-brail, everything touched like I'm thumbing across book spines. I think this is fun?

But even more fun (!) than all this is then adding things to my wishlist.

I don’t just add games I recognise and would like to buy or play, but — I’ve now realised — use it as a sort of scrapbook; of thumbnails I liked, weirdness I was intrigued by, a repository of ideas, nostalgia triggers, or more. The wishlist heart is my eShop ‘like’ button, and I try to not self-censor if something catches my eye (barring blatant anime boobs, etc).

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Image: Redblack Spade

What can we learn from this silly habit, from the patterns and trends?

For one thing, I seem to really, really like hand-illustrated fantasy art overlain by serif font and a vaguely wistful title.

Why else would Harvestella (bucolic name, tree in thumbnail), Trinity Trigger (illustrated artstyle, tree-adjacent thing in thumbnail) and Various Daylife (nonsensical/wholesome name, treeless thumbnail but appealing screenshot of characters walking through gamecube era grass-textures in gallery) be in my wishlist?

Star Ocean R Hyper Turbo (or something) has a gallery image of characters traipsing through a golden hour wheat field in pixel-grained glory, and Egglia looks like an homage to the Legend of Mana style, the original website of which I used to hang out in just for its gorgeous pastel tones and Victorian-storybook style of fantasy illustration (and trees). I will not play any of these games.

In general, there’s lots of open-air adventure suggested by JRPG thumbnails. Atelier Yumia (which I think is set in a kingdom of genetically thick-thighed females?) has been there for ages even though I played the demo and it was very not for me. But the image has a lovely pea-green sunset behind Yumia (?) in the classic rule of thirds and it doth please my eyes to roam across it.

Beyond fantasy, Milkmaid of the Milky Way has a lyrical title and evokes an old book cover, with its strangely proportioned golden ship and enough sky to suggest sci-fi scope. But I've now actually read the description for the first time ever and apparently it's about some Norwegian lass and rhyming couplets? Whatever, the cover is evocative enough to keep.

To be honest, I may actually play A Space for the Unbound. But what about Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch, with its bifurcated thumbnail that looks like a PowerPoint slide? Looking at the screenshots I can confirm I will not - it looks like a visual novel and so I worry it won’t have a jump button. But both give vaguely (or in the case of ASFTU, explicitly) Shinkai vibes of hanging out with cleanly drawn anime teens and spiritual themes in pristine urban evocations, and both use a blue-purple in their art and character outlines which looks lovely. (Also, ASFTU’s title writing is nicely aligned.)

Scrolling through my wishlist I also see unintended rhymes, like Bahnsen Knights, Tenement, and now Bermuda Survivor forming a trio of black backgrounds burst through with '80s-neon pop.

But let's go further, to things wishlisted mainly for their titles or phrases.

Qualia looks like a hentai game? There are certainly girls with improbable-looking breasts. But it's called 'Qualia', which an English professor once told me means the whatness of something (or something?) and transports me in time and space and perspective enough to add to the list. See also: Room of Depression and Looking Up I See Only A Ceiling (which is practically a poem in itself and actually looks pretty interesting).

Less lyrical are the ‘games’ I add because of their pleasing, Ronseal-like directness, like Easy Dice for RPG/Tabletop - GOLD EDITION (what makes it Gold-er though?!).

Others have legitimately good thumbnails a YouTuber would be proud of, like Car Parking Madness School Drive Mechanic Car Simulator 2023 - with its strange Pro/Noob arrows in the thumbnail for two different cars, both of which frankly look perfectly well parked. But there’s almost a question in the image, the tension of wait, what? The game has already started!

Some games I wishlist to preserve my baffled curiosity. Who exactly made America Wild Hunting, with its overexposed photo backgrounds and stock military MASH-style font and thumbnail of an eagle in crosshairs? Where do they live? What do they love (except hunting)?

And what exactly is About An Elf (which has been in my wishlist for ages as a sort of fringe outpost that broadens my impression of the gaming landscape), and why is the thigh-high riding face-painted woman riding an animal that looks like a polar bear shagged a ferret? Why are there gnomes? Did someone make this out of passion? Art? These are questions that provoke the soul, so I guess just the page is art. Get on the wishlist.

GORSD might be one of my favourite thumbnails, of a disconcerting goat-head smiling a human-teethed grimace no one could love.

Nicely, the game’s vibe actually lived up to this strangeness — I do actually buy games, too — though I could never get the hang of the play proper. The surrealism was worth the coffee price, enough to keep it on the list even though I’ve bought the game, though the wish has been granted.

Indeed, games like Beyond Good & Evil Anniversary Edition I’ll wishlist partly with some vague intention to one day replay it, but mainly because I already know it and love it and enjoy the shorthand associations of seeing the cover thumbnail.

Whereas I've never got round to looking up what EGGCONSOLE games are, and don’t really want to just yet. Instead, I get to enjoy the uncollapsed Schrödinger potential energy, the ongoing mystery.

Also, did you know there's a Chubby Cat 2?

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Image: Springloaded

The point is, I love all this, my own skewed-kaleidoscope of gaming paraphernalia, of images and words and those big background-colour changes on pages with galleries I can scroll through with face buttons and 'R'/'L' clicks.

It reminds me a little of a mispent youth poring over video game magazines and experiencing most games as things described, screenshotted, mysterious allusions instead of things I actually played. An ecosystem of enthusiasm built as much from the discourse and the depiction as the game itself, and a hobby that was also a portal into different worlds and art styles and ideas.

Would it be a stretch to call eShop browsing a 'game', this engaging thing done with pad in hand?

Maybe I should just get Instagram.

Do you play eShop games, too?