Epona?
Image: Nintendo Life

It's a strange thing to see Nintendo swing so wildly from one extreme to another, at least in such a short timeframe.

Coming hot on the heels of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the company has gone and quietly — very quietly — announced Everybody 1-2-Switch!, the follow-up to 2017's launch title 1-2-Switch. It is largely agreed amongst critics and fans alike that the original should have been a pack-in title to showcase the features of the then-new Joy-Con and the local multiplayer focus of the console rather than a full-price purchase. But here we are.

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Everybody 1-2-Switch is the sequel that absolutely nobody was clamouring for, not even Nintendo, it seems. Rumours of nightmarish results from internal focus tests did the rounds last year when the existence of this game was first detailed. It looked like it might have been quietly brushed under the rug, but here it is. Sometimes you get pure gold when Nintendo casually reveals a game it's been sitting on for a while (see Metroid Prime Remastered), and other times... well, let's not judge this before we've played it, hmm? Who knows, this could be a real winner. This time next year, this horse might have established itself as a grand addition to Nintendo's glittering canon of colourful characters. It's possible.

On paper, a sequel probably made sense, at least at Nintendo HQ. The almost immediate success of the console and relative lack of other software options meant that 1-2-Switch sold very well — 3.63 million copies as of December 2021. Despite the ire it draws, it's not a bad game, either. There's plenty of family fun to be had with its cow-milking and gun-drawing, and we maintain that the ice cube HD rumble trick is still one of the most impressive things about the Joy-Con controllers.

With the right framing as a budget title or even as a free-to-try affair with separate minigame packs available to add, it might not have raised so many eyebrows among the Nintendo faithful. As it is, many of the hardcore fans who did spend $60 on it ended up dissatisfied.

We discussed ways in which a sequel could improve on the original before, and it seems Nintendo is taking the 'budget' route, although for many we don't imagine $30 will be budget enough. With all the people featured on the front cover holding their phones and Joy-Con — not to mention the 'Everybody' in the title — we assume there will be a wider multiplayer focus this time as opposed to the 1v1 focus of the original. We'll find out in due course, although we don't see this one getting its own Direct presentation.

Perhaps with Switch entering the latter stage of its life, Nintendo just thought, 'What the heck, we've got the game, let's just send it out and plug a gap in June — may as well!' And while it's unusual for a first-party game to be introduced with so little fanfare (none, really), we have to agree that it's definitely the right approach for this particular title.

And it's been a minute since Nintendo released a 'casual-focused' game. 2022's Nintendo Switch Sports was probably the last one with a focus on the blue ocean audience the Wii helped attract; in 2023 we've had a spate of more specialised genre titles including Fire Emblem Engage, Bayonetta Origins, and Advance Wars.

It's fitting, in a way, that there's another 1-2-Switch pulling up alongside another Zelda. Once again you've got an emblematic pair that showcases the wildly varied play experiences Nintendo experiments with on its hardware. The difference this time, however, is that you've got one of the company's most highly-anticipated sequels ever — a game with a huge marketing push that, anecdotally, we've seen more posters for around our hometowns than any Nintendo game ever — juxtaposed with a first-party game that even the first party is keeping quiet about, shiftily adding a page on its website and otherwise keeping shtum.

Everybody Switch
Image: Nintendo

Oh well. Maybe having this release just prior to Pikmin 4 might make the latter look more impressive by comparison. Don't get us wrong, we're very excited for Pikmin, but it was never going to be a marquee title for the masses to rival Zelda and we honestly felt a bit sorry for it being the first-party follow-up to such a monumental game as TOTK. Everybody 1-2-Switch throws that into stark relief, that's for sure.

Is anyone actually excited for Everybody 1-2-Switch, then? Let us know below if the budget price or the big (or not-so-big) horse has you tempted.

Come on, there must be SOMEONE excited for Everybody 1-2-Switch! Is it you? (1,953 votes)

  1. Yes, it's meeeeee! Giddy up!10%
  2. I don't dislike the idea!19%
  3. I have zero horses in this race29%
  4. I dislike the idea5%
  5. I don't remember being less excited for a first-party game. Quit horsin' around, Nintendo!38%

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Everybody 1-2 Switch!
Everybody 1-2 Switch!