God bless the screenshot. Ever since they were first invented, and then brought to consoles, the world has been a brighter place. Where would we have been in the Animal Crossing Pandemic of 2020 without the images of our homes and islands to share with others? Would Spider-Man be less of a good game without that photo mode?
Granted, the Nintendo Switch is not known for its ability to take super-realistic 4K screenshots (because it can't), but a good screenshot is not defined by how many pixels it has — it's defined by the memories it holds.
We've put together some of our favourite Switch screenshots, complete with little stories for each one, and we'd love to hear about your screenshots in the comments below!
Gavin: I’ve got dozens (in fact, my Album says I’ve got exactly 142) of Breath of the Wild shots I could have included, about 50% of them on Satori Mountain with that gorgeous cherry blossom tree, but I decided to impose a strict 'No-BOTW' rule today for the sake of variety.
So, my first shot is from Blasphemous. I came late to this game but absolutely adored it. The Game Kitchen did an incredible job in every department, but the game’s violence and gore was juxtaposed with an incredible beauty that I still think about occasionally. The decaying architecture of Cvstodia and dappled light on the underside of the clouds in this sunset shot (sorry, I had to do one sunset shot, okay?!) highlight the game's striking pixel art and palette. Unrelenting bleakness permeates the world and the lives of everyone you encounter, but it sure looks pretty.
Kate: Super Mario Odyssey pretends to be a game about platforming and hat throwing, but it's secretly a game about avian photography. The photo mode is brilliant, which makes it not only easy, but incredibly appealing and fun to take snaps of Mario doing stupid things.
This shot obviously took a while to set up — I was very interested in getting it more or less symmetrical, and I have to applaud the game designers for adding the ability for birds to land on you when you're idle. It's such a sweet touch, and as you can see, it makes for great photos.
Ollie: I don’t think I was ever really prepared for how ludicrous some of the writing is in Disco Elysium: The Final Cut. There are countless moments of genius peppered throughout the game, but the first scene that really got in fits of giggles was when you first catch a glimpse of Harry du Bois’ face in the mirror. The entire scenario is utterly ridiculous and really demonstrates the impact that Harry’s hedonistic night in Martinaise had on him.
I had to take a screenshot of this moment to remember the details: the off-putting, yet beautifully painted depiction of Harry filling the screen; the absurd internal dialogue choices presented to you; the new avatar picture in the bottom left corner. It all works wonderfully in setting up the wild ride you’re about to face in the world of Disco Elysium.
Kate: My first time playing Skyrim was on the Switch. My expectations were somewhat low — it was a five or six year old game by the time it came out on the Switch, and it's not a console known for its high fidelity graphics — which perhaps is part of the reason I was so utterly blown away by how gorgeous that game is.
Sure, Skyrim's got its fair share of lovable jank and repetitive dialogue, and vast swathes of the map are either green forest or grey cities, but it's screenshots like this one that remind me how breathtaking Bethesda's worlds can be. When they're not all blasted Fallout landscapes, anyway.
Gavin: My second shot is from Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For an extended period in 2020 I would spend great chunks of time doing nothing but designing Star Trek costumes. Well, in between catching bugs and fish, that is. This is me rocking a serious Seven of Nine face with my pal Audie. Good times
Show us your best Switch screenshots in the comments below!
Comments 63
I have so many screenshots on my Switch that if I took anymore, it'd be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
My question is: How many screenshots on your Switch are of menus or non-interesting situation that taken by someone accidently pressing the screenshot button?
I had like 1000+ and my Switch was crashing constantly.
Turned out the Micro SD was getting corrupted.
Got a new Micro SD and now it’s all find
Is that a Nickleback reference?
‘Everytime I do, it makes me laugh
How did our eyes get so red?
And what the hell is on Joey’s head?’
I have a ton of videos and very few screenshots. My videos mostly consist of MHGU or Rise moments of me dying in a funny way or doing something cool. I also like to capture all my Tetris 99 victories so I can rewatch the intense final battle. Hard to notice how crazy it can be in those final moments of back and forth battling when I'm super zoned in the game with the pieces falling like lightning bolts!
I don't know how many I have, but a lot of them are just from my siblings pressing the capture button tons after they lost at Smash.
Miiverse was awesome
90% of the screen shots taken on my switch are accidental ones taken by my son when where using the joycons sideways and playing two player games 😂
I like to look at them though when he’s not with me they make me smile !
So many of my Switch screenshots are from Blasphemous. Those odd, quiet moments that are just darkly beautiful.
I think the other major contender is Gris. That game is just an excuse to take instantly breathtaking screenshots all day long.
The question should be, how many unintended screenshots do you have? I'll clear them out one day.
I use the screenshot/share button a lot on switch, XSX and ps5. Mainly for pretty sceneries, sometimes funny moments and when a funny glitch happens I record it. The shard button is probably the best addition to controllers in the past 15 years.
It’s around 1,000 total. I moved 300-something onto my laptop when I was running out of room on my previous, smaller SD card, but there’s now about 600-800 on my Switch since then
I capture screenshots and video all the time. I wouldn't even be able to begin hazarding a guess at how many since I have done multiple backups across multiple storages. I think my favorite though is still the perfect end of hunt screen I got last summer in Monster Hunter Rise. I was doing a rampage hunt and was crashing a Bazel into the target monster. This became my desktop wallpaper for a good while.
Colton gets me.
I love the Blasphemous one!
My favourite would be one from Botw, Friends of Ringo Ishikawa or ACNH.
All my screenshots are when I press the wrong button
Hmm I don't take like a lot of screenshots, but I like my DKC glitches, Pokémon Legends shiny flexes, and one in Animal Crossing where Bill said he pooped his pants.
I took so many in BOTW! You can just stand still in some places and watch a masterpiece develop as the weather and time of day changes. I took a lot pics of the cherry blossom tree on Satori Mountain too.
I play long, text-heavy games (think Disco Elysium, only more so) in multiple languages, in part to learn/improve comprehension of my newest one. I put my 3rd Skyrim playthrough on the back-burner recently, which was a very good thing for my microSD card - I've taken many, more than 7000, let me tell you.
I have too many to list to be honest, I am an absolute screenshot fanatic. I do have a few that I'm a big fan of though such as:
If I had to narrow it down to a favourite though, it would definitely be my shiny Galarian Slowpoke from all the way back in June 2020, right before the Isle of Armor came out. It was my first ever successful shiny hunt and being able to use a shiny on my first ever playthrough of the IoA was so cool and something I'll always cherish. I evolved them all the way up to Slowbro and they've been a fixture of my team ever since.
Though I will say, this moment from Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations is probably the most well-timed screenshot I've ever taken.
I reached the 10k screenshot limit twice so...um yeah I am a weirdo.
I also like to capture all my Tetris 99 victories so I can rewatch the intense final battle.
@Ganner My most-prized screenshot was taken during the pandemic, when I first managed to complete Enter the Gungeon. It hangs on my wall even now. I often wonder why more people don't do this.
I usually find myself moving screenshots and videos to a PC, I take a lot. As it is right now, I believe my Switch must have about 5000 screenshots and videos out of the tens of thousands I've taken.
I don't think I have a defined favorite, maybe one from Super Mario Odyssey where Mario is in the frozen kingdom with nothing more than his underwear/swimsuit freezing to death. Either that or some pictures of the ending where Mario proposes his love with his normal attire (it feels more legit this way than with the Wedding suit).
I am too busy laughing at anything worth taking a screenshot of before my brain even kicks in and thinks that would be worth taking a picture of.
I have so man screenshots from my Switch.
For example when I play Diablo 3 I take a screenshot on EVERY level-up!
Every boss encounter in a game every rare item or an achievement
I love collecting them!
I’m an amateur photographer who loves taking photos of almost everything, this has branched off to include my Nintendo Switch screen shots where I have at least 100+ noteworthy photos. I haven’t found much success in the field as a hobby so I have never posted any. Taking screenshots on the switch is fun, and having features like what Super Mario Odyssey offers brings a table of creativity. I’ve always wanted to see Nintendo do more with their Nintendo Switch online app. There could be a whole social section for displaying your screenshots, commenting, getting followers and more. Maybe one day Nintendo will realize the huge missing opportunity the screenshot feature and Nintendo Switch online app could have.
Maybe the best game on Switch.
So I have a gallery that's mostly full of screens I took early on when I was trying to hit the home button. I've got it down now, but it's interesting to see the state of games when I was trying to hit home. Often, I was prepared and ready to quit for the day, and other times I was clearly rage-quitting..
A good 80% or more of my screenshots are still from Splatoon 2 of peoples plaza posts - some where funny while others had genuinely good art.
The other 20% are just from every other game I played where I just take screenshots of some funny glitches, story segments i found interesting, good views like in xc2 etc.
@sanderev Agreed, this spectacular game proves that it’s not the destination, but the journey you take that matters.
I'd have a lot more if they let us have folders. I also lost loads of screenshots and videos when my Micro SD card died.
Do video captures count?
One of my favorite screenshot from Animal Crossing New Horizons.
@gcunit
Mario have sax with Captain Toad ? 😆
framed topless Shulk picture from Smash Ultimate
My Switch tells me I've got 4,679 screenshots and 372 videos on it currently (7gb in total). But I have previously exported captures to my PC once if not twice, so I'm pretty sure I'm over the 7,000 line.
@Anti-Matter When you gotta get down, you gotta get down! 🙈
Even a professional football match can't stop people who just want to get down:
I like your screenshot, looks like a clip from a sitcom.
My beloved Chaosbringer and Lightbringer miss my girls so much 🥹
https://twitter.com/gcunit10/status/1546606341858308097?t=8w8UB-kQjwuuGe5MlOlbbw&s=19
Sound required.
Dunban lookin fine...
This article is just an excuse to spam screenshots, right?
My favourite screenshot was in SSBU at the very moment Lucina countered a Bullet Bill. The zoom in and effect was dynamic. Won me a Roy amiibo in a Nintendo UK competition
https://twitter.com/martynstuff/status/1106302077465092097?s=20&t=TF3VymNODAa_cPxh5X_kAQ
What more do you need?
Haha, I've taken so many screenshots I hit the system's 10,000 picture storage limit and had to move most of them off-system months ago. I've probably taken at least 1,000+ since then, too.
The screenshot function is just so convenient and accessible on Switch that I can't help it. I reflexively click the button any time anything vaguely interesting happens.
My one and only screenshot.
Removed - inappropriate language
On a side note though I do find it interesting there are some games that don't allow video captures. Friday the 13th The Game didn't allow video captures. I used to play that soooo much (before they killed the servers R.I.P ) and had ridiculous amount of crazy fun and bad@ss cool moments of being Jason or a counselor (or even just viewing others getting caught or narrowly escaping) I wanted to capture so much! If you tried a message would pop up saying something about "this software doesn't allow it". B@stards!
I do have some screenshots though, but a standalone screenshot just doesn't properly capture the essence and scope of what was happening in that moment.
Most of mine are from animal crossing with friends or villagers or artistic scenes. I also have a couple cute pokemon screen shots from Arceus and a couple accidental screenshots from random games. I only have 50 or so altogether because I periodically delete the less pretty/interesting ones.
I got lots of action, RPG, fighting games, and arcade screenshots on mine, it's too bad I can't upload it here but if it could it'll look something like this.
My favorite is probably the one where I recreated the infamous 7 Grand Dad title screen in SMO.
I've created more than 10 Gmail accounts just to store away these screenshot
I have an external hard drive full of individual games I’ve been saving since 2017 with nearly every new game I always check if the button works immediately on the splash screen. I’ve thought maybe someday I’d make a review or use them for a video but I haven’t yet. I like looking back at the photos with the file info showing the date as well a the resolution and more. It’s fun to see pictures from when I first played Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey because they were game that had me so incredibly hyped and had a big emotional & happy impact on my life. I can remember where I was and what I was thinking with those special games. I also screenshot and screen record couch co-op multiplayer with my brothers and friends as well as online multiplayer as it’s a special occasion and I remember those days as well as who won. So far I’ve recorded nearly all of Neon White and the 30 second time limit for Switch video capture has pushed me to get my speed runs in 30 seconds or less although the game does a good job at making you want to speed run naturally. I think I will use the Neon White screenshots for a thumbnail and the videos for either review, video summary, or talk about the game when I’ve had more time to sit with it and soak in the community a bit more. Neon White is easily my game of the year and it was totally unexpected despite seeing the videos pre launch. Once you play it everything clicks immediately and it’s a blast; I even like the cliche cringe story! The developer did an interview and said they essentially made the characters stereotypical anime archetypes to evoke an Adult Swim/Toonami cartoon feel from the Y2K aesthetic.
@Fizza Your Slowpoke looks like he's shocked that he is alive!
NINJA APPROVED
"but a good screenshot is not defined by how many pixels it has — it's defined by the memories it holds."
I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I read this.
Lol
Ooooh, I LOVE those Star Trek costumes! Always loved the uniforms from the early seasons of DS9 (and the entirety of VOY's run, at least on Voyager's end; Starfleet HQ adopted the new uniforms by then).
I've love to see them make outfits based on the TOS movie (Wrath of Khan-onwards) uniforms, the TNG movie (First Contact-onwards), and the DIS (Season 1-3) uniforms, as those are my favorite. I always prefer the more standardized uniforms compared to the color-coded ones we see in TOS, TNG, LDS, SNW, later seasons of DIS, PIC, and the Kelvin/Abrams movies. But then again, even those are all better than the ones from TMP (Good Lord, those were awful! What were they thinking?).
I've got like 500ish. I like to capture the memories, you know? Sometimes I like looking back through mine and remembering a game I played and the things I was doing in life during that time.
All of my screenshots are accidental button presses, but sometimes interesting to see
For the first few years I kept screenshots to the internal memory and had to erase the ones that weren't precious to me every time I reached the limit. Then I moved to a newer, gigantic SD card (okay, I did that twice) and realized there's not a limit when the screenshots are on the SD card... so now I just don't have the will to cull them anymore and probably won't even look at them because there are THOUSANDS.
@cyrus_zuo My son apparently loves taking screenshots of menus! Just the other day I found about 30 of the title screen to the Pikmin 3 demo.
@Ralizah Funnily enough I took more screenshots in DQXI S than I did in BOTW.
@WiltonRoots I took around 150 screenshots in BotW vs 700+ in DQXI S, lol. Almost 900 in XC2. 700 or so in SMT V.
Although those numbers will go down a bit once I work up the energy to go through and delete ones that aren't worth keeping.
@cyrus_zuo I actually go thru it now and delete these very items.
I don't have too many favorite screenshots. I have more affinity for some of the videos I've captured though. I have a video of me coming in first place in Mario 35 with just 1 second left on the clock.
I also have another video that I watched 10 times from Mario Kart 8. I was in first place when I cross the finish line and I couldn't figure out why I was ranked second! Then I noticed a quick shadow passing near my racer. Someone had flown over me, but wasn't caught on camera.
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