It’s definitely MK9. Art style is noticably different.

I’m counting both Pikmin ports, that’s 22.

You asked “has Nintendo even released a game?” and the answer to that question is “yes”. They released 22 of them. I don’t care where you wanna move the goalposts to, you can’t say 22 games is “not really”.

That is 22 first party releases. The answer to your question was “yes”, not “not really”.

Sort of, though Wii and Wii U are a bit more complicated than that so this somewhat of an oversimplification. The ELI5 answer is that some hardware components are directly upgraded and can run in a compatibility mode, other components are just the original hardware thrown in separately.

New3DS is the most recent and most notable exception. It’s directly upgraded 3DS hardware, but the CPU downclocks to run at 3DS specs on all legacy titles (and there are almost no native New3DS games so this upgrade was pretty pointless). Softmodding can unlock the full clockspeed, and most games do work fine this way but there are a few rare bugs.

I expect Switch 2 will just be the same architecture upgraded, because that’s a lot easier to do now, while the old style of true redundancy would inflate costs too much today. It’s also worth noting that Switch titles already expect variable performance in order to support handheld and docked modes, so I doubt much would break if allowed to overclock. But I could also see Nintendo not even trying to support it if even one bug might exist somewhere.

I wonder if that and/or Labo might be what they meant by the disclaimer that backwards compatibility might not support all titles. Since it’s built around old Joy-Cons, might not work with new ones, unless the Switch 2 can just use original Joy-Cons.

Could also be an excuse for Ring Fit 2 built around new Joy-Cons.

Assuming you mean Tears of the Kingdom (May 12 2023) and not Echoes of Wisdom just a few months ago? Sorting by release date on the eShop for first-party titles published by Nintendo since then:

• Pikmin 1/2 ports
• Everybody 1-2-Switch!
• Pikmin 4
• F-Zero 99
• Detective Pikachu Returns
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder
• WarioWare: Move It!
• Super Mario RPG remake
• Another Code: Recollection
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake
• Princess Peach: Showtime!
• Endless Ocean Luminous
• Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door HD
• Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD
• Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
• Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• Mario & Luigi: Brothership
• Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer
• Donkey Kong Country Returns HD

Who’s going to read this and think, “I was totally about to try Pretendo, but now that Nintendo told me not to I guess I won’t!”?

So it’s not that “modern games suck” either?

At this point I think you gotta look inward to figure out what it is that you even want.

You say that as if indie is a singular genre. There are so many different kinds of indie games doing so many different things, I can’t believe anyone who would write them all off and claim they can’t find anything to enjoy ever.

My tastes have increasingly narrowed with age as I know what I like most, and the niches I like are pretty detached from what mainstream AAAs chase after. That said, every year I find at least a few new releases that I enjoy. And I don’t think that will ever stop being the case. I ignore the games I don’t care about and play the games I do.

There’s also the fact that I’ve settled into a few games that I really love endlessly grinding, and so it’s hard for other releases to pull my attention away from just playing my favorites some more. I’ve got a backlog of JRPGs, a genre I know I’ve always liked, and yet I hardly make time to finish them anymore…

In what universe is 8k players dead?

I wish any of my favorite games had numbers like that.

Yes. GDQ has been running for 15 years now, it’s reputable.

Of course there’s still a lot of cool stuff coming from indies, but there’s a wide spectrum between indie with no budget and AAAA with $10 trillion budget. We’re losing everything that was once in between.

Also, spinoffs. I do like seeing alternate takes on IPs and characters I like, but those are rare now because all the resources go into developing one main project. Like I’ve always wondered, if Splatoon had debuted a generation earlier, what kind of DS companion piece would have accompanied it?

Do you really consider that to be a meaningful point worth "um, akshually"ing over?

To me, what I dislike the most about the direction the industry is going is that consolidating more resources into fewer megagames means there’s less room for experimental side projects and spinoffs. I especially miss all the kinds of B-games that used to go straight to handheld. Of course part of the reason they disappeared because we don’t have handhelds to put them on, but I think that half the reason handhelds died was because publishers weren’t going to make handheld games for much longer anyway.

Bit odd to complain that a console we know nothing about isn’t exciting enough. Maybe wait until they actually reveal the damn thing?

Interesting choice of words. Saying it’s not ‘official’ just means they’re not the ones who posted it.

Gimme a GBC one, in Atomic Purple

I’m a big fan of the 8BitDo Pro 2. Best pad I’ve ever used.

A few times, why?