John Cena plays Nintendo Switch
Image: John Sciulli / Nintendo of America

We recently reported on John Cena's involvement with the Nintendo Switch pop-up tour, and it seems the WWE beefcake has lots more to say on the subject of Nintendo Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Cena had high praise for the technology within Nintendo Switch:

I'm floored by the technology of the Switch, and the versatility of the console is second to none. It really is a home console that you can take anywhere. I've seen situations where home consoles can be transported, and it's like a big over-the-shoulder carry-on bag, but the versatility of this thing is groundbreaking. When you undock the Switch from its home console and go into handheld, the controller feels the same, it is the same, and it reacts the same. The screen on the undocked handheld system is big enough to be its own world, but small enough to carry anywhere.

The Cenation Leader also predicts a lot of excitement from Zelda fans too:

I was in this confined living room space where you got lost in the game 'cause I'm playing on this 60-inch TV, and then you undock and continue to play the game. They had this molecular glass, which dropped and revealed I was in the middle of the desert. I never once knew the change in environment. It's truly, truly tremendous. In typical Nintendo fashion, I was playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Now I haven't played Legend of Zelda since the gold cartridge eight-bit versions, so I just needed to pick up and start going, and I did. The go-anywhere aspect of the game is incredible, and I know for fans of the Zelda franchise, they're going to flip. I know for fans of Nintendo, they're going to go crazy. Everyone is speculating about how good the game actually is—it's going to exceed expectations and, for a dude like me, a 40-year-old [in April] who hasn't played Zelda since the gold cartridge, I sat down and was hooked. In a matter of 30 minutes I didn't want to put it down.

While we could write off some of the enthusiasm of this celebrity endorsement as Cena is 'on the payroll' from promotional work, but he does seem to have a good working knowledge of NES games (in the rest of the original interview) and indeed Zelda's gold cartridge.

If the Nintendo Switch can win over the leagues of old-school Nintendo fans, it could certainly be a big success.

[source si.com]