Summary
- The March 27th Nintendo Direct had a surprising dose of important non-game reveals, including Virtual Game Cards and the Nintendo Today! calendar app.
- Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A were shown in greater detail, and Rhythm Heaven and Tomodachi Life were revived for release in 2026.
- The Switch 2 Nintendo Direct will air next week, detailing the new console’s features and hopefully filling out Nintendo’s 2025 game release schedule.
With the Switch 2 Direct only a week away, it was quite a surprise when Nintendo announced a 30-minute showcase to ring out the Switch 1 era. The Direct was predictably (and enjoyably) niche, though two non-game announcements have important implications on the Switch’s successor.
The Most Important Announcements Weren’t New Games
When Nintendo has information to share regarding non-game endeavors, it likes to segregate it into stand-alone presentations, social media posts, and the like. Yet in a move particularly surprising given the Switch 2 info dump is less than a week away, the company bundled two such bombshells into this Direct.
The most crucial of these is the new Virtual Game Card feature, which is Nintendo’s attempt to simulate the experience of swapping physical cartridges between systems with digital games. It’s also an improvement over the current game-sharing feature.
Their approach comes in two flavors, the first of which involves linking two Switch systems to freely swap digital games between them. This means you and one other person can share your digital library, though the license can only be used by one system at any given time, just as if it were a physical card. A point was made that a local connection was only needed for the initial system linking; it’s unclear if the service will work as an online transfer after that.
The second use for Virtual Game Cards is lending games to members of your Nintendo Account family group. These loaned games can be played for up to two weeks by the recipient before they’re automatically returned to the account holder they were purchased by. This is a great way to give others a chance to check out a game without worrying about the awkwardness of having them return a physical copy, though like with linked devices, you can’t play a game when it’s loaded onto another system.
It’s fair to assume this feature will carry over to the Switch 2. It’s entirely possible this is Nintendo’s new approach to data, though hopefully not as it would negate the value proposition of the service if it resulted in eight years of digital purchases being locked to an eight-year-old device. It’s also unclear if every digital game becomes a virtual game card, or if third parties need to opt into the program. We’ll learn more by (or at) the time the program launches at the end of April.
Nintendo closed out the presentation by announcing and shadow-dropping a new app called Nintendo Today!. This is a calendar that provides information on upcoming releases and content updates across Nintendo’s services. It’s also a delivery system for fun content like comics and video clips, with the option to opt into which franchises you’d like to receive daily drops for. It’s not much more than a bit of fan service for die-hards, but it’s nonetheless fun.
However, if I’m being honest, I’m not enthused by this one. At best, it’s a vehicle for a Nintendo-themed calendar widget for your phone’s home screen. Realistically, it’s little more than a marketing arm in a form factor few will bother checking. This functionality doesn’t warrant its own app when Nintendo already has an increasingly superfluous number of these things floating around, be it the Nintendo Switch Online app or the Nintendo Music streaming service. I would’ve been much more excited if they had taken this opportunity to consolidate these apps into a one-stop shop.
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New Information About Two Heavy Hitters
The only major Nintendo titles shown in this Direct were the two we’ve known about for a real hot minute: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Neither got updated release dates (they’re still a vague “2025” window), but the extra insight was nonetheless appreciable.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond showed off a lush jungle planet scattered with ancient ruins and bug and plant-like enemies. A special focus was put on Samus’ new psychic powers, the coolest of which is her ability to control energy beams to pass through multiple enemies. Seeing features like this is also a good sign that the game will be accessible to players who may not be experienced or comfortable with first-person shooters, an atypical genre for Nintendo. Also, if this visually impressive footage was indeed from the Switch 1 version, I can’t imagine how good the plausible Switch 2 boost will look.
The new Pokémon Legends: Z-A information was even juicier, outlining the gameplay loop only hinted at in the two trailers released earlier this month on Pokémon Day (the franchise’s yearly anniversary celebration). During the day, you capture and train Pokémon in designated zones throughout Pokémon X & Y’s Lumiose City, and at night you face off against trainers in a competition to rise from rank Z to rank A. More of the series-first action-based combat system was shown in footage, and though we’re yet to get a detailed breakdown of how it works, it sure looks more and more inspired by Xenoblade Chronicles.
Both of these trailers could have easily shown up without a raised eyebrow during next week’s Switch 2 showcase, so their inclusion here largely served to excite me about what other surprises Nintendo still has in store for this year. Aside from a new Mario Kart, we really know nothing about what 2025 holds for Nintendo game-wise.
Niche Franchises Make a Shocking Return
The most exciting reveals for me during the Direct were new entries in lesser-known series I figured Nintendo had given up on.
Rhythm Heaven Groove is the big one. It’s been a decade since the last entry in Nintendo’s bonkers rhythm mini-game franchise, and even longer if we consider that was a best-of collection. The idiosyncratic series never caught on outside Japan, so hopefully the Switch can work its magic and turn around its fortunes.
In a similar vein, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is banking on the Switch’s hit-making potential to turn an obscure 3DS social game into a beloved franchise. Miis return at a higher fidelity than ever, and it seems this entry may grant them the ability to freely roam about the game’s island. I think this concept has a lot of legs with a Switch base that bought the console to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons, though I wish this was being baked into the Switch 2’s OS as a social hub. Perhaps it’s a sign of things to come, at least.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until 2026 for these. They’re likely indicative of the type of cross-gen support we can expect to see from Nintendo as both games demand little of the original Switch’s hardware.
Cozy Game and RPG Fans Ate Well
Not a Nintendo Direct goes by without its fair share of RPGs and cozy games, and this was no exception.
The headlining cozy game title was Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, which remakes the Harvest Moon predecessor of the same name but will need to spruce up its offerings if it wants to compete in a now-crowded market. A sizzle-reel appearance of the long-in-development do-whatever-role-you-please simulator FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time was also welcome, though the frame rate worryingly felt like watching a slideshow at times (the full trailer only reinforces this).
Perhaps the most promising game shown in this category is Witchbrook. It features stylish pixel art depicting player characters going about their lives in a world that evokes anime like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Little Witch Academia. Also, if we consider serving magical caffeinated beverages to evildoers to be cozy, Disney Villains Cursed Café was announced and shadow dropped.
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Admittedly, the usual crop of JRPGs is more my speed. DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake was an impressive first showing, if a bit predictable given how it’s stylistically identical to last year’s remake of the series’ third entry. I’m intrigued by the teasing of a new plot point, though, and also respect Square Enix continuing to revisit its classics (though, especially on its 30th anniversary, where’s Chrono Trigger?).
RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was also revealed, bringing the PlayStation 2 title under the Shin Megami Tensei umbrella to the Switch. SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered continues the revivalism trend as well, following up the 2021 remaster of its predecessor.
However, I was most tickled by No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, which looks to be a smaller-scoped entry in the wonderfully weird detective visual novel series. The only issue is that these games have been notoriously less polished on Switch than on other platforms. Hopefully the Switch 2 can bridge that gap, or I’ll be playing elsewhere.
The Best of the Rest
There were other noteworthy announcements that didn’t neatly fit into my rundown.
Shoot ‘em up fans will assuredly get a kick out of the Gradius Origins collection, which features an entirely new game, and beat ‘em up fans were served well with Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which is being developed by the team behind the highly regarded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Two Metroidvanias also caught my eye: Shadow Labyrinth (that edgy Pac-Man spin-off based on the short from Amazon’s Secret Level anthology series) and The Eternal Life of Goldman (DuckTales pogo stick platforming with hand-drawn animation).
Sony franchises (published by way of Bandai Namco) also had a bit of a presence here. PATAPON 1+2 REPLAY brings the first two rhythmic battlers in the PlayStation Portable franchise to the Switch with some enhancements, and Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots was revealed as the first non-VR entry in the franchise in nearly a decade. (Gotta love how they worked the original localized name for the social golfing franchise in there.)
The Main Event Is Next Week
While there was a lot to like in this impromptu Nintendo Direct, it’s only an appetizer for the Switch 2 blowout happening on April 2nd.
We’ve been waiting years for a holistic look at the next generation of Nintendo gaming, and we’re about to get just that. Outlying hardware questions will be answered, such as how the colloquially dubbed “mouse mode” works, and what that extra button on the right Joy-Con does.
Plus, with how empty its 2025 schedule is, Nintendo’s going to need a heap of barn-burner blockbusters to pair with its console rundown. Here are the Switch 2 games I predict Nintendo will reveal.
