Sunday April 5, 2021 marked my family owning a Nintendo Switch for 100 days. Pretty soon we’ll be inundated with articles about Joe Biden’s first 100 days as president. So I figured I’d offer my thoughts on the first 100 days of owning my Nintendo Switch.
Owning a Nintendo Switch has been momentous for me because it was the first video game console I have owned since the Xbox 360. There were no games that interested me enough to shell out the money for a Xbox One or PlayStation 4. I also wanted to spend more time playing with my kids and didn’t want any of us sitting in front of a screen. My young children didn’t have the coordination to play most console video games anyway.
I tried to stay interested in video games. I dipped my toe into mobile games but nothing grabbed me. A friend gifted me a RetroPi a few years ago but I never got into it very much since my kids couldn’t handle the game play. It was also just difficult enough to load new games on the RetroPi that I never did it.
Then Nintendo released the mobile game Mario Kart Tour. I had not really played Mario Kart since the original on SNES but I still had a fondness for the kart racing game. Tour greatly simplified an already simple game. It was still super fun. I loved the biweekly cycle of new tracks and new unlockables. The game reminded me how much I love all these Mario characters.
Around the same time I was playing Mario Kart Tour, my kids discovered Mario Kart Arcade GP in the local bowling alley arcade. We had a summer membership in 2019 so we went bowling a lot. I love bowling, but my kids loved Mario Kart even more. As we continued to pour money into the arcade machine, I brought up the idea of buying a Nintendo Switch and playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at home. Both kids talked about saving up to buy a Switch but never managed to accumulate that much money.
Enter the year 2020. Suddenly all those activities we used to do with the kids dried up; no more camps, no more after school activities, no more sports, and no more arcades. The game Animal Crossing: New Horizons was all over the news as a common retreat from the pandemic anxiety. The Nintendo Switch was selling out everywhere. And unlike too many unfortunate people, we wound up with several monetary windfalls throughout the year. So when Nintendo Switch started to become available around Black Friday time, I finally decided to pull the trigger.
On Christmas 2020, my kids unwrapped a brand new Nintendo Switch console. They also unwrapped a pile of physical games. The 100 days since opening the Nintendo Switch have brought me back to the world of video games. And as a 40 year old who grew up with video game consoles my entire life, I have thoughts about playing games on a modern Nintendo system.
So, stay awhile and read.
Playing old games with kids
One of the best aspects of owning a Switch is the access to a plethora of retro games. The Rampant Discourse staff has been discussing older video games lately and it’s great to turn on the Switch and fire up an old NES or SNES game. It’s also a fantastic way to show my children what I used to play when I was their age. I’m surprised how well many of the games hold up after all these years, and it’s not just nostalgia since that usually burns off pretty quickly for me when it comes to games.
One afternoon I spent over an hour just scrolling through the NES games and playing ones that I wanted to show both kids. They had never seen Super Mario Bros 2 or Kung Fu Heroes or even The Legend of Zelda. My love for the original Castlevania is well known to my kids, so showing them Konami’s Castlevania Anniversary Collection was like taking them on a walk down memory lane with me. Sure, they kind of knew who Mario, Link, and Simon were, but actually seeing the original games helped bring it home.
I sold all my old video game consoles many years ago. My last reason to hold on to them was to eventually show my kids, but that was before I even had kids. I figured my future kids would likely not be all that interested in my vintage video games. And for the most part that’s true. Both of my actual children would rather play a modern iteration of one of these classic franchises. But I feel like I’m doing my part to preserve video game history by showing them the roots.
And, much like many people of my generation, the biggest entry point to these old games is Mario.
My son specifically requested I show him Super Mario Bros 2. He picked up New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Super Mario 3D World on his own. It was a joyful moment for me to see him playing Super Mario World on the SNES, without me even having showed him the game was there. He also surpassed my ranking in Mario 35. However, when he was shocked at how few times I had played World 1-1 compared to his 100+, I reminded him that I’ve played that level thousands of times in my 30+ years of playing Super Mario Bros.
Speaking of Mario 35, the other 35th anniversary Mario game was Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. I loved Mario 64 back in the Nintendo 64 days but had never revisited it, so this collection was a a treat. But even more than me getting to play these classics, my son dove into 64 and Sunshine.
I restrained myself from helping him at all with Mario 64. I wanted him to figure out things on his own just like I had to do; of course, I was closer to 16 and had far more video game experience under my belt by the time I encountered Mario’s first 3D adventure. But my son was starting to get the hang of things. Then he fired up Sunshine and kept playing that. For a while I think he preferred Sunshine to 64, but now he’s right back to Mario 64. And I still don’t offer any unsolicited advice or hints.
Playing new games with kids
I anticipated personally enjoying New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. What I didn’t anticipate is how into these games my kids would get. I think being able to play New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe with simultaneous co-op helped show my son how to tackle the various obstacles a Mario game throws at you. And it’s cool to show I still have some platform gaming chops when I pull off an intricate set of maneuvers on my first try with no lives left, which leads to my son exclaiming over and over “How are you doing that?” Yeah, the old man still has it.
While my son slowly worked his way through Bowser’s Fury, I beat it in a single afternoon while recovering from my Covid vaccine. The look on my son’s face when I told him I beat it that quickly was priceless. Of course, now that we’ve both beat it and got all 100 Cat Shines, he likes to point out I didn’t 100% the game in that single session. So, yeah, the video game competition has begun.
Speaking of friendly competition, I tried to spark one with Ring Fit Adventures. The day we got the game my son and I both fired it up and went through the initial courses. He kept at it for a few days, reaching level 20. I am still playing it as my regular exercise, reaching level 70 a few days ago. My cajoling about being more than three times his level fell on deaf ears, apparently, since he has not returned to it. To be fair, he’s an active kid so he doesn’t need to work out in front of a TV to get his exercise. But that attempt at competition wound up keeping my momentum going long enough to form a habit, and now I look forward to my morning session.
One goofy game united my son, my daughter, and me like no other. Donut County is sort of like Katamari Damacy. Instead of rolling a ball to pick up objects you control a hole to suck up objects. When my son realized that’s what you did in the game, he excitedly said “Oh, you’re buying that!” And I’m glad I did, because it’s a great game to entice my daughter into playing a video game. The controls are pretty much just using the left stick to move the hole. My daughter is so proud she was further in the game than me. She constantly offered unsolicited advice when she watched me play, which wound up spoiling some puzzles for me but giving her a good sense of helping her dad. And I’d rather let my kids feel accomplished than worry about getting some help.
I talked about Mario at length already. But I’ve always preferred another classic Nintendo hero: Link. If I’m not humming a Castlevania tune around the house then I’m humming a Legend of Zelda song. I bought my groomsmen Master Swords to display. One of my friends can play all the Zelda songs on piano. So my kids were already somewhat versed in Link, Zelda, and Ganon.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was still unexpected for all of us. The game is astounding. It’s not hyperbole to put it in the discussion of greatest game of all time. Neither of my kids has an interest in playing Breath of the Wild but they both will ask on a daily basis if I can play it so they can watch. The game’s characters have entered into our play battles. We can reference shared experiences of unscripted events that happened in the game. Every time Hyrule Castle, surrounded by Calamity Ganon, is visible my daughter will it point out in awe.
Rather than Breath of the Wild, both kids enjoy Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. It’s a musou game, which means you basically button mash as your hero defeats wave after wave of bad guys. I played Dynasty Warriors 2 back in the early days of the PlayStation2 but had not picked up a musou game since. The inclusion of characters from Breath of the Wild really makes a difference. Slashing through a herd of Bokoblins is cathartic after being taken out too many times by just one of them in Breath of the Wild. Seeing Link, Impa, Zelda, and the Guardians rip through Ganon’s minions really does make you feel like a bad ass. While Breath of the Wild is my game of choice, I’m glad Age of Calamity lets my kids get some of that same experience with their own hands.
Getting addicted to games again
One thing that is painfully obvious to me after just a few months with a Nintendo Switch is how easily I fall into doing nothing but playing video games. I can dimly recall whiling away most of my free time in my 20s with games. I played almost non-stop while my wife was pregnant with our first child (she slept a lot, and I loved Final Fantasy XIII). One of the reasons I stepped away from gaming years ago was because I wanted to spend my time doing other stuff, and so I changed my priorities.
The Switch was ostensibly for the kids. But who was I kidding, I wanted to play even more games than the kids. All they wanted was Mario Kart and Pokemon. My son has fallen hard on all the games, especially Mario. Thankfully it hasn’t become a problem for him. He still does well in school and loves baseball. And I’m happy to share a hobby with him. I just don’t want video games to become our only hobby.
The game that gripped me the most is Breath of the Wild. By its nature as an open world game it can suck you and be a time sink. And my children actively request that I play it so they can watch (the little enablers), so I feel like it’s partially a family activity. But that’s just rationalizing. Too often we fire up the game after dinner only to let way too much time pass. Several admonitions from me that I should stop playing and go to bed, I finally break myself away from Hyrule. I know in the moment that I need “adult” better and get the kids to bed on time, but there’s always one more thing for Link to do.
The allure of Breath of the Wild is similar to games like Crackdown or Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Obviously they are all open world sandbox games. But these three stick out in my mind. They all kept me enthralled with looking across the map at something on the horizon and spending the time getting over to it. Of course, all sorts of hi-jinks ensue along the way. And once I reach that destination, you turn around and see something else to go after. It’s the same “just one more” of the best 4X games but with way more action.
Another game that epitomizes the “just one more” mantra and is destined to be a huge time sink for me is the recently released Pac-Man 99. I played Tetris 99 a little and enjoyed it greatly. I waited way too long to play Mario 35 but loved the month I got to spend with it (R.I.P. Mario). But Pac-Man always grabs me. I climbed close to the top of all the leaderboards in Pac-Man Championship Edition on Xbox 360, putting in tons of time to shave off fractions of seconds on my runs. But Pac-Man 99 is a live competition against 98 other players. That’s far more exhilarating than comparing solo scores on a leaderboard.
The night Pac-Man 99 released I fired it up after recording a Rampant Discourse podcast. I only meant to see how it played for a match or two. I wound up playing for over an hour. Even when you win (or get close, since the best I’ve managed is 4th) each game only takes a few minutes. Tetris 99 and Mario 35 games could stretch out for a lot longer. Pac-Man 99 appears to ramp up way faster.
I find myself constantly wanting to play anything on the Switch. And while it’s good to have fun and share a hobby with my kids, I have to remember I’m supposed to be an adult and a parent. For better or worse, I have to set the example for my children that it’s not healthy to obsess over a game. I know “addiction” gets thrown around too often, and I am not addicted by a long shot. But I do have to ensure I don’t step over that line.
Why Nintendo?
The easy answer is I never really left Nintendo. I owned NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Cube, DS, and Wii. So I’ve owned every major Nintendo system (I’m obviously excluding all the iterations of the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and DS, along with the Wii U). But there was a sizeable gap between selling my Wii and acquiring a Switch.
The rest of the answer comes down to my kids. My childhood was filled with Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, and Samus. Sharing those characters with my kids lets me relive my childhood while bringing them the same joy I had.
The core Nintendo games are also safe. I don’t want to drop my kids into Fortnite or Halo or most of the other popular games on other systems. I actually have a similar issue with comic books, since the core DC and Marvel books are far too mature for young children anymore. Just because Mario and company are safer doesn’t make them any less cool or enjoyable. There’s a reason all these franchises are still going strong after 35 years. I applaud Nintendo for sticking to their family friendly stance.
Mario and Link in particular tap into a sort of pure form of fun. The older Mario games required a Zen like focus to nail the difficult platforming. The newer Mario games feel like you can run around and play and do almost anything. That’s the most charming aspect of something like Bowser’s Fury. The Legend of Zelda games have always been about exploration and going at your own pace. Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild open up that exploration to the nth degree.
Being able to play as the same character in such diverse games as the Mario and Zelda franchises offers an anchor. The settings change. The graphics get better. The game play evolves. But you still get to step into Mario’s hat and overalls or Link’s green tunic. Playing a Nintendo game is familiar but each still provides innovations that lead the next generation of video games.
Physical vs Digital
The majority of games I own on the Switch are physical cartridges. I have no problem with digital games, having owned a lot of Xbox Live Arcade games and even firing up Steam last year. Before buying any games, I consulted a seasoned Switch owner whether he bought physical or digital and he said physical. The game boxes were more enticing to the kids, especially since the initial batch were the centerpiece Christmas gift. We still buy major games in physical form, but many games are only available digitally.
The “death” of Mario when Mario 35 and Super Mario 3D All-Stars were delisted points to the potential need to own physical games. I’m not even sure I could still go back and download all my Xbox Live Arcade games at this point. As many NES and SNES games that Nintendo Switch Online offers, there’s still many absent games and no Nintendo 64 or Game Boy or Game Cube games. I understand many gamers essentially rent games via something like Microsoft’s Game Pass. The Rampant Discourse podcast has discussed the pros and cons of digital goods. And while I’m fine streaming all my movies and music, I still feel the need to actually own my video games.
One reason is pure pragmatism. If all my games were digital, then I could switch between them almost instantly. Given my penchant for falling into gaming for too long, I need the small speed bump of standing up, walking over, and swapping physical cartridges. That little bit of dissonance slows me down enough to often just stop playing. And if I can’t be bothered to put forth that amount of effort to change games, then it’s probably time to put it down and do something else. The same goes for my kids, too.
The second reason is also pragmatic. The Switch has some internal storage but not a ton. I do have a SD card that I picked up on Black Friday. But if I was downloading full size games like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, I imagine I would fill up all that memory awfully fast. And then I would have to keep making the decision of what to delete and redownload a game if it had cycled off. With physical cartridges, I don’t have to worry about that and can use all that space for digital only games.
I could even, gasp, let a friend borrow one of the cartridges to try out a game. What a novel idea!
Waiting for sales
While I’m talking about pragmatism, I have to mention that one way the Switch has sucked me in so much is thanks to the allure of sales. All the physical games for Christmas were Black Friday sales throughout November. Every digital game was on sale when I bought it.
It’s actually easier to list the games I didn’t buy on sale: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Ring Fit Adventure, and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury That’s just thee games out of a total of 27 games. Note that Pac-Man 99, Super Mario 35, and Tetris 99 are all free with the Nintendo Switch Online membership… which I also bought on sale.
Mostly I buy games on sale to save money. That’s fairly obvious. But it’s also about not overwhelming myself. If I bought every game that sounded interesting, I’d have no money and no time to play them all. Instead I can add the game to my wish list and wait it for to go on sale. Of course, checking for sales then becomes a small obsession, especially since I might have missed the two days Hades was on sale.
I’d like to think waiting for sales is helping to teach my kids about delayed gratification. But they don’t pay attention to that. They just know Daddy buys more games than he should and they can reap the benefits.
I have instilled some lessons by buying physical games. We own Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity because my son pooled his money and gift cards to go to Target and buy the game himself, for full price in cash. He loved the demo for Captain Toad but I told him he should save up and buy it himself. And you can bet I’m going to make the kids pay for New Pokemon Snap since I won’t be playing it.
Man in the Mirror
All in all I love having a Nintendo Switch. The games are super fun. The retro nostalgia lets me relive my past while showing the kids some video game history. I appreciate sharing all these experiences with my kids, especially in the midst of a pandemic that greatly reduced our opportunities for venturing away from the house.
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my meandering musings about my first 100 days owning a Nintendo Switch. Let me know what your experiences have been gaming with your kids or however you play video games.
Complete List of Games
- Castlevania Anniversary Collection
- Celeste
- Donut County
- Hades
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
- Luigi’s Mansion 3
- Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Mario Tennis Aces
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
- Overcooked Special Edition
- Pac-Man 99
- Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu
- Rayman Legends Definitive Edition
- Ring Fit Adventure
- Streets of Rage 4
- Super Mario 3D All-Stars
- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
- Super Mario 35
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Super Mario Party
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate
- Tetris 99
- The Last Campfire
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
- Yoshi’s Crafted World
This article has 1 Comment