290: Earn Your Nintendo License

You know, launch events are weird, right? Yes, I've been to a few and yes, they're all slightly different. So you're in this place, you're buying something that's probably pretty expensive. And you're in like a bubble of safety where they're like letting limited people in and like you're doing your you're doing your your your, you know, your consumerism and the people are excited and the thing's cool and everybody's really excited. And you step out on the street and you're like.

man, I have a giant ass target on my back. And you're like, I want the, I want to get a car to pick me up and drive me back to my car. And I, I just, I hadn't, it's funny. Cause I remember.

I think on the Xbox 360 launch, the target that I went to try to buy an Xbox 360, they kind of messed up the launch because they were bad at it back then. And there were a lot of really disgruntled people because they'd come out in the morning and they said, hey. Here's your ticket. Just come back at 10. And then a bunch of people, those people all left the line. And then another line formed. And those people thought they were going to get consoles because there was no line.

But then there weren't consoles and like target people had to escort people out to the car. It was a bad scene. And then anybody that did have a console suddenly was under some amount of threat. Yeah, like it was it was a it was not a friendly crowd that people were ready to play some Geometry Wars is all I'm saying. Now let's talk about taking a new video game console on the bus with you.

I don't like that. That feels bad. I've gone down to Stonestown more than once on the bus to buy a thing and come back with it on the bus. And that certainly feels weird. Yeah, I did. I remember doing iPhone launches like when we used to have to sit, Norm and I and sometimes Gary would go sit out in the parking lot at Stonestown overnight waiting for like iPhone four or five or whatever launches.

And you'd walk out of there and you'd be like, man, I have something in my pocket that's a thousand dollars and accessories and stuff. It's an easy mark.

So anyway, we left the Union Square Nintendo store. Adam, a friend of the show, Adam Patrick Murray, and I left the Nintendo store with a fair chunk of change in consoles last night. And. Yeah, it was exciting. Like we, we, we walked over from the PC world office, which like a 20 minute walk. It's a nice walk. Where is the Nintendo store? I haven't been there.

It's on Geary. It's on the corner of Union Square next to Victoria's Secret in the West, in the St. Francis building. Oh, Union Square, huh? Yeah, it's like it's Union. It's the one of two or three nice things that remain in Union Square.

I don't know why I thought it might be down at the Embarcadero for some reason, but that would have been a nicer place. Like, my guess is that the city gave them a fair chunk of change to open it up down there to try to, you know, bring some stuff back down there because it's been a little.

Like there's an urban outfitter still, but now the broken glass doesn't look ironic like urban outfitters always does. Now it just looks like, hey, man, this is kind of a crap neighborhood these days. And then the big flagship Apple stores down there, too, which is really nice. But also, you know, not a lot. There's not a lot going on up there these days. Well, hey, welcome to the neighborhood, Nintendo.

Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod. I'm Will. I'm Brad. Brad, it's Nintendo Switch 2 launch day as we record this. What is today? Holy crap. It's also the first day of Summer Games Festival. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the big travel day tomorrow. We're recording this Thursday afternoon very frantically before I have to go get on an airplane. I assume that like tonight there's going to be a lot of really intoxicated people.

at the JW Marriott bar. Probably. Yeah. It's switched to launch day. It is kind of summer game fest, like unofficial kickoff day. It is Trump and Musk narcissistic explosion on Twitter. There's just a lot. Yeah. A lot going on right now to keep up with, but I think we're, we're going to pick the happiest of those topics. I think we're the, the purest of them. Yeah. So definitely the most tech oriented of them. Yeah. I think that's.

I mean, look, the Elon and the battle of the narcissist is happening over social media. That's technology, right? We wouldn't we wouldn't be here in this situation without social media. So thanks, Twitter, I guess. Yes.

But yeah, no, I went to the launch event. You're still Switch 2-less, is my understanding. Yes, I, you know, I've been getting ready for this event and I'm about to leave. Like, if I had ordered one, there is every possibility that... It would not have shown up until tomorrow after I was on an airplane. I'm leaving first thing in the morning. I was going to say there's a lot of I saw a lot of posts this morning from game developers on their way to SGF that are like.

Man, my switch arrived 15 minutes after I left the airport. And that that feels bad, man. And I live in an apartment building where certain carriers, not all of them, but some of them are prone to just. tapping the doorbell, dropping the box on the sidewalk outside the gate and leaving. So depending on how it got shipped, that could have been a real bad scene. So anyway, long, long story short, I am, I am.

Kind of actually just fine waiting until I get back next week to think about a switch to. So it seems like there's a lot of them. Yeah. Like just not to bury the lead here, but this is the first console launch in since like the Wii U probably that I remember. like day one consoles being pretty easy to get. Yes. And honestly, like I, okay, look, I am not in any way like banking on or putting money on being able to just go buy one in a store next week. Yeah. But.

it does sound way more likely than I think we assumed it would be previously. And like, frankly, I actually am kind of happy to track that for a couple of weeks and see. like see what that experience is like. Because if you remember the switch one was very hard to get your hands on for a very long time. And that was, that was way pre pandemic and even maybe pre like, you know,

microprocessor fabrication is just completely eaten up by Apple era. That was 2017. So that was like, it was definitely, definitely right in the heart of that time. I think really at that time, but like, It was really hard to get a switch for like six months after it came out. Well, the Wii was the same way, right? The Wii was like six, eight months. You like went and got in line at GameStop in the morning. Sorry, I did the thing.

Look, I got past that two decades ago. It took me it took me six months. The switch one came out in March and it was like late August before because I told myself, I mean, we had them in the office so I could see what they were like. But I told myself like.

I'm not going to get one of these until they are just in stock in a store and I can walk in and buy it. And that took, that took until late August. We, we ended up with a switch one early and I don't remember why I might've gotten it to cover. It was 2017 is when it came out. Yeah. I can't remember how I got a Switch 1. Gina is real good at Nintendo. She likes Nintendo games and she has a good history. We got a launch day Wii because she was in the...

by what used to be the second Colma GameStop. She was going into Bed Bath & Beyond and she saw a line outside that store one day, months before release, and she went and was like, hey, what's the line for? And they're like, we're at Switch pre-orders.

And she got a day one, like pick it up at GameStop launch switch launch. We all right. And then the Wii U friend of the show, Gary Widow, was at a target the morning of the Wii U launch and was like, hey, they have a whole shitload of these. Do you want one? I guess. I bet they did.

Yeah, they had a lot of Wii U's. I like the Wii U. I have a fondness for it. There was a lot of smack talk about the Wii U last night at the launch event. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I went downtown to Union Square, went to the Nintendo store. Full disclosure, they invited press and influencer type people and PC World. I went with Adam Patrick Murray from PC World and we were we were invited to come and enjoy the festivities.

hear a brief speech from a Nintendo executive. Wait, which one? I didn't recognize her. Okay. They didn't say. May have just been like the person who runs the store here. I don't know. And then we could buy our Switch 2 hardware at the venue. So nothing was provided by Nintendo except for a kind of a short line skip. But even when we got there at like eight o'clock.

The line was only like 40 people deep, I think. Interesting. I was seeing a lot of variation out there. I like this, this, this whole cycle since pre-orders opened God, like a month ago, six months. It's not been that long. I guess this has been an exercise in like what a console launch is like in 2025 because it's been five years since consoles came out. And I'm seeing a lot of variation out there. Like some stores, some stores I was seeing people like, oh, there are.

30 people here for 50 units at the store that they got. But then I saw like from friend, friend of the show, Steve Kim, I guess is, well, I will say where he lives, but I think his, whichever store he went to, I think it must've been a big area store. There were like 800 people in line. I saw that post too. Yeah. So like there is definitely a lot of variation, but it definitely seems like there's a good amount of stock out there.

Yeah, it seems like they're less like my sister-in-law went and picked one up at Costco this morning on the way to work. Like didn't wait in line or anything as far as I can tell. Now time will tell again as far as ongoing availability goes if even those pickups this morning at places like Costco.

we're just part of this big initial allocation for launch and that it's, who knows, it could be a month before more, more show up. We'll see. Yeah. But I would hope that they're probably pumping them out at a pretty steady clip. I mean, the benefit of them pushing this back kind of quietly without saying anything about it seems like they have a whole boatload of them available. And there's not multiple.

The multiple hardware SKUs are, do you get the cheap version of Mario Kart World or do you not get the cheap version of Mario Kart World? Which is nice, I guess. I don't know. And I think I think where where I landed on the next lander podcast this week was you might as well get that bundle because Mario Kart is the new game.

It's the only game to play right now. Really? The only new full price game. So, and you're, it's, it's literally 30 bucks off if you buy the bundle. And so, which is a pretty good discount. So if, if you're not interested in the new Mario card, like there's really no reason to even get the new switch, frankly.

No. So so so let's see. I got home at about 10 o'clock last night. I plugged it in. It updated immediately. The update was real fast. I was pleasantly surprised by that. But like the onboarding and the console setup thing is maybe the thing I'm the most curious about here because, you know.

somewhat notoriously now they did not send these out early for press yeah like i think some press members got them like yesterday midday or whatever yeah but there was all that talk about like oh there's a big day one system update that you can't use the thing at all without and so It took like 30 seconds to download. I don't want to get into conspiracy thinking too much here, but I really wonder how much of that was them kind of just flipping on features that were probably already ready to go.

My guess is that they didn't want to have like there was a Russian streamer who bought one from the UAE, I think, or Dubai or something a week ago or a few like several days ago. Yeah. And and I think they just wanted to avoid.

Any early anything going out early. That's exactly my feeling is that I don't think there's a lot of people were like, oh, is it coming in hot? Is it going to be broken on launch day? Especially with the delay from last year, because this thing is supposedly was going to ship last fall.

Yeah. And for how bad like switch emulation has gotten and how compromised that system became within its lifespan, I wonder if they were just very skittish about wanting to make sure this thing was locked down as much as possible until literal launch day.

Well, I also think that they were I almost wonder if the thing they were worried about is that is the Wii U problem where people thought the Wii U was an upgrade for the Wii. Like I think like you buy the tablet to go with your Wii. Right. Because like. And anecdotally talking to people that are not gamers, but that ended up with switches because of pandemic stuff and Animal Crossing and all the all the things that we did weird in 2020 and 2022. Like people who.

are games adjacent but don't really play games had questions about that like my my wife was like hey i can play the new mario kart on my switch right on my oled switch i was like oh no hon that's that's not gonna work um so

So yeah, I got it home. I set it up. The system update went really fast. I had a little bit of trouble getting the dock to work. So it has a new power brick. And if you plug an old switch power brick into the new switch power brick, even though they're both USB-C. The dock just doesn't turn on your TV at all when you when you drop the switch in. Sorry, you're saying if you plug the new dock into the old brick, is that what you're saying? Yeah, I know.

like i wouldn't expect that except for the power brick for my switch is way back behind the tv and i have to move the whole thing out off the wall and it's pained i mean i think the output on the old brick is dramatically lower 29 watts versus i think 60 or something so people people on the discord did some

testing already with the ones they've gotten their hands on it's a 60 watt brick and some people said they checked like what kind of power is coming out of it and that it's like standard spec usb pd power delivery So that means I can plug in my like iPad 60 watt brick and it'll go. Yes. Or it sounds like you can travel with this thing and use it to also power your laptop or whatever. Oh, that's nice. Presumably. I think I'll quote me on that, but that seems like the early word.

Uh, I wonder what my steam deck brick is. I mean, it's good to know the thing, that thing is PD because like, I swear to God, eventually I'm just going to buy one of these like nice big gallium nitride, like three or four ports, a hundred watt chargers. and then you could just use that for your switch so the steam deck is 45 watts so that means this will do pretty much everything okay i um

The problem with the first one was that it was USPPD, but it only worked at 29. The switch only accepted 29 watts or base 500, half a watt. Right. Like it was weird and custom, right? Yeah. Well, there was just no finding the least common denominator if your charger didn't support 29 watts was really challenging, as I recall. Yeah. Anyway, it's going to take some time to, you know, we should probably caveat like everything we say here about.

power and specs and stuff like probably take a few days for that stuff to really get figured out yeah like definitively yeah and i as far as i know i don't think there's a i don't think there's a df post yet about like

with the grim details about how everything works yet. I've, I've been following John Lindemann. He's been posting a bunch about various things. There's a couple of tidbits in here from him that he's discovered, but yeah, I think they're, they're in the same boat as everybody else there. They just got their hands on it.

Yeah. So the bummer for me was that so I got a Mario Kart bundle and when I plugged it in, it there's apparently it seems like from talking to people on Blue Sky, there's two types of Mario Kart bundles. There's. One that has a code in the box and one that the game is just tied to the hardware. Wait, what? Uh-huh. And is there any way to know which one you're getting? I don't know. That sucks.

Well, I mean, my assumption is it's because they've been manufacturing for a long time. They had the opportunity to just say, hey, here we go. I mean, that's not unheard of. I want to say, what was the XBLA pack-in with the 360? It was Hexic HD, right?

I believe if I'm not mistaken, that was a similar situation. If you didn't have a code for that game, it was just tied to your console. I thought you got that if you had a hard drive attached to your Xbox 360 might be something like that. I can't remember, but. Anyway.

The problem there is that what happens if you get an OLED Switch 2 in three years and you had one of the ones where the game is just tied to your old Switch? So once you when you activate it, it says, hey, once you turn once you press the download button for this, it's going to hook it up. the account that you're logged in permanently. So it's licensing your account either way, whether it's the same as typing in a code. OK, that's fine. But yeah, so but the problem was.

I was on the way home. We were in the Lyft, went back to the office to grab cars and pack up our stuff from work that day. I was watching people on the East Coast be like, oh, man, I'm already playing. This is awesome. I was like, hell yeah, maybe we'll go home, download this. Downloads are going fast. The servers are holding up. This is going to be fantastic. And I got home and I did the update and I went to the store to download the game. It was like, yo.

It's like, hey, do you want to download the game? I was like, yes, yes, I do want to download the game. Do you want to attach your car? Yes, yes, I do. The game's not released yet. You can't play it. I'm sorry. What time was that here? 10 o'clock. OK, so wow. So they were actually staggering it by time zone. I don't know. I think the thing is the people who were able to play had the codes, which probably bypassed the time zone requirement and the download attached to the hardware did not wait.

So that would mean people on the East coast with the hardware attached also got screwed. Yeah. You get to play until 3am. Yeah. Cause I tried changing the time zone and that didn't do anything. Oh, that really sucks. Yeah. I was, I was, I would have been fairly raw if I was on the East coast. It wasn't that bad. Cause I, so.

Anyway, I thought, look, I'm shout out to Johnny Vignocchi. I think if Vignocchi was just trying to force me to buy that switch, that Nintendo switch to tour app, because that's what I ended up doing. And I ended up flexing around with that for a while. So congratulations, Nintendo. You got.

I used my gold coins. Uh, so I paid $3 for the $10 switch to tour that should have been packed in with the thing. Yeah. Um, any, anything, there's nothing feature wise new about the doc, right? It does have an ethernet port built on, right? So the switch OLED has an ether port built in as well. It has, um, it seems to have some, like, it seems beefier, like the, the side of it that faces the back is like rounded and big. Yeah. There's a fan in there.

Yeah. And I was going to say, I think it has active cooling. Is that okay? But there's not like extra ports or anything, right? It's basically the same as like a lid. I don't, I think it's actually, I think there was one internal.

one port under the cover on the switch one dock but that's i don't think that's there anymore oh i think that's gone now interesting it has two ports on the front though so i think you end up with the same number of reports there used to be one in the back one in the front and now it's two in the front i see And that's where you plug in your webcam, presumably, if you're going to do the game game, the video chat stuff. Yeah. Are the external ports USB still the USB still really?

yeah and well but i think that's a backwards compatibility option thing because you like the way you pair switch pro controllers with it is by plugging them in with your old nintendo usbc to usba cable that's fine adapters are cheap Yeah. And like cables are honestly cables are cheap. Yeah. Um, they're just also the Nintendo store downtown. I have the, I've been to the Nintendo world store in New York. They had, they wouldn't, we were only allowed to buy switches cause it's launch day.

You couldn't go around and browse and buy other stuff. It's a good thing because I was primed to buy some merch last night and and like they have a wide variety of tasteful merch. That doesn't necessarily like they have like normal T-shirts with Mario and shit on them. But then they also had some like really fucking good cardigans that are just like low key Zelda cardigans and stuff like that. And it was it was very nice. Did you peep any coffee bugs?

They had coffee mugs. They had entire plate sets like with placemats and the whole thing. That might be a little much for me. They were pretty good. They were like, they looked like they were handmade. Like they looked. Yeah. Anyway, it was it was I'm going to go back. I'm going to take the kiddo back next week sometime when it's died down a little bit, hopefully. But yes, we talk about hardware a little bit. Yeah, sure.

It feels much sturdier than my Switch One does after eight years of regular use. I've seen that comment over and over. Like, does that you just mean like fit and finish build quality? Like it just feels like literally assembled more tightly or. And also, can you hold it up right now? Because this is the closest I will have ever come to seeing Switch 2 in person as of right now. The big thing is, even from the very first day, the metal to plastic.

join where the switch uh where the switch joy cons connected to the main body of the of the console always felt wobbly yes yeah on the switch one These move a tiny, tiny bit, and you can force them off if you really wrench it. Oh, really? Well, because it's just magnets. Yeah, yeah. So did you just pull it without hitting the release? I just...

Pulled it without hitting the release. I heard a little bit of effort in your voice when you did that. But yeah, I like I had like my you can see tendons on my forearms when I do that. Now, now, when you do that. Do the magnets remain kind of like electrically active to the point that it'll just re-magnetize if you push it near again?

I don't think the magnets are electrically active magnets. Or sorry, I know they're not electromagnets as such. I guess they never have actually confirmed how this technology works, but the rumor was that they're whatever that...

type of magnet is where you just supply a jolt of current and it makes them active i don't think that that's the case i think they're just magnets oh really i think they're just strong ass magnets so how does the how does the release work then so the release is a mechanical lever

that pushes can you see the little post coming out there oh does that just put physically or mechanically push the joycon off enough that it separates the magnetism or yeah i believe that that's the case so see the little wild it just pushes it off far enough that it like

pops loose at the top and then the bottom tilts off and it just falls out. Just, just far enough that you can pull it off easily. Yeah. Like it's, it's a, I do the hard thing when you can do the easy thing. Sure. That's, that's hilarious after all those rumors about exotic magnets in there.

Well, so the other and it may be that there's smart magnets or something, but also you can do things like put it on backwards. So that's the back of the switch with the controller on upside down and backwards facing away. You can switch them. You can put them on the opposite sides like this and essentially invert the screen and essentially invert the screen. You can put them on upside down facing this the wrong way. Like you can do all sorts of things.

i the first thing i did was the classic first nintendo switch move and put the friggin joycon on upside down and And it, I just popped it right off and it was fine. I heard the mechanical force. Yeah. Yeah. I heard the onboarding immediately comes up with an infographic showing you which way is up on the screen. Just in case you did that. Yeah.

Um, it also during that switch to tour, there's a thing that shows you how the joy con magnet. So they, they, the cool thing about the switch to tour for people like you and me, right. You're talking about welcome to our, yeah. Is that they give you like blow ups of their look, you walk around, you have to click on all the all the buttons and all the plugs and all the stuff, which is kind of BS and takes a long time. But then you get to take quizzes where it's like, hey.

The joy cons are held on with magnets. Are the magnets in the console, the joy cons or both? And it's like they're in the, they're in the console. Got to pass a test to receive a license to operate your switch to you. Yeah. But but then once you get past the different points, you get to go inside the switch and see the boards and all that stuff. So it's pretty cool. All right. They show they have like physical.

video ways to show how the new HG Rumble 2 stuff works. For the right kind of nerd, it's surprisingly good.

my daughter ended up playing the there's a bunch of demo games that show you how to use the different new things like you you shake maracas and feel the feel the little pellets inside the maracas bouncing around inside the joy cons you use the mouse mode and um you have to like move your cursor to avoid a bunch of falling balls and my daughter was like this was the best game she'd ever played she played it for like 30 minutes last night waiting for mario kart to be downloadable all right um

they also highlight things like the 120 hertz mode so if you're not hooked up to 120 hertz tv it's like hey you got to take this out of the dock and then do it over here because your 60 hertz garbage tv that you have isn't going to do what you want um

It's motion blur on that note. They have motion blur turned on on everything, including the high refresh rate modes, which makes me a little bit crazy. But but whatever. At 120 hertz, that sucks. It feels goofy at 60. That arguably sucks. But OK, screen. Overall, yeah, good. It's good. It's not, you know, the color reproduction in the black levels and all that stuff are not. It's really good for an LCD. It doesn't match the OLED switch.

mid-cycle refresh. Yeah, I mean, that's to be expected, I guess. Not a surprise. Can we assume there's no amount of local dimming going on here, probably? I would assume in a screen that small, there's not. I don't think so. I like I was not unhappy with the black levels. I haven't played anything that has a lot of really dark areas yet, though. OK, I bet it gets nice and bright, though.

it is i played i took it outside this morning when i we were watching a friend's dog and i went outside this morning with coffee to let the dog poop and i like a maniac carried the switch to out there and sat in the full full ass sun playing uh mario kart of course and it was fine okay Cause I mean, that is still the one thing LCDs have over OLED is brightness. Well, but, but it's interesting. So I'm comparing, I was comparing it to the launch switch one.

And that launch switch one is not that bright anymore. I don't know if it was never that bright or if it's not that bright anymore. I think it never was. I think the switch one, the launch switch one screen is just not great. It predates the thousand nit LCD screens of the, of the modern era. So, um, yeah, but, but the screen, the screens, it looks, it looks really nice. It's much bigger. It's like noticeably bigger. Even though I think it's even than an OLED.

Um, that's great for me coming from a switch one, especially where, you know, my eyes are not great at this point or to see small things up close. Well, the thing I'll say is that coming, like if I, if I was going from an OLED to this, I'd be a little.

It would be kind of lateral going from the launch switch one, which is one I've used as my switch for the last eight years. It feels like a real like this feels like a substantial media upgrade. Yeah, that sounds very exciting to me. Pixel density on the screen. It's portable.

It's fine. Like I've been, I've spent a lot of time with the steam deck lately. I've also been testing some of the new Legion goes for PC world that are the, the steam OS you know, the first non valve steam OS handhelds. It feels very much like the Legion Co. That has a bigger screen. It's a 1080p screen, I believe. I don't feel like it's hard to say. It doesn't feel like not enough pixels. It doesn't.

feel like i don't know if it feels like too many pixels because you can't adjust the resolution on this thing right so but it but it feels good and like small detail was visible i i felt it playing breath of the wild Like I was seeing detail that I don't think I would have seen on the switch one, but it's hard to say. Yeah. Did you do a dead pixel check? I did do a dead pixel check. It's a check. It's fine. It feels like LCDs have gotten way better about that.

I think that that's a problem from like 10 years ago at this point, for the most part, unless you're buying something cheap. Either quality control has gotten better or I mean, or I guess quality control would mean that they are only that they are trashing the ones that don't stand up. Or they're just turning off the.

Like, because the thing that the thing at this pixel density, I don't think I'm going to notice a dead pixel. I will absolutely notice a stuck pixel on green or blue. Stuck is maybe worse than dead at this point. And I think this is a place where, like, machine learning and our camera.

Our camera fidelity on the QA tests for screens is probably much better than it was a decade ago. Yeah. It's still uncomfortable to hold. Yeah. I'm sorry. Last thing I'll say about screen real quick, just since we're in early days and they didn't send it out for teardowns and stuff, I will be.

I'll be curious to see when people start tearing them down frequently, like, do they all use the same screen? Are there two screen suppliers? Like, you know, the more obsessive parts of the internet, are they going to identify, like, you know, you want the Samsung screen, not the LG screen or something like that?

Yeah. It's always, I'm always curious about like what parts are in these things, but that's me. I try not to worry about that stuff too much because it'll make me crazy. Of course, that's the right thing to do, but I can't help myself.

But yeah, I thought it was interesting that they called out the 120 hertz panel in that switch tour. I'm having spent some time with that switch tour thing. I'm shocked they didn't just put it on all the devices. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's only 10 bucks. It's not that much, but it really for. how tech demo this thing is and especially contrasted against Astro's playroom on the PS five. Like that was a whole ass game for free. And, and like,

It's a game that's designed to make you feel good about spending $500 on a new thing. Yeah. And it's also a game that is like laser targeted at people's nostalgia and like brand affinity for the PlayStation, you know, like. Yeah. And this is less that there's no like Mario hanging out in this thing. What I mean is like our arguably, I would not be shocked if faster playroom, like quietly kind of primed people to maybe buy more stuff because it was such a fun intro to the PS five in general.

But Nintendo doesn't need that. They're going to sell things as fast as they can make them. Yeah. And like, look, if there had been a way to buy Ape Escape when I played that Astros Playroom game, I would have absolutely gone out and bought Ape Escape that moment. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. So you were saying it's still a bit unwieldy to old.

It's so after using a lot of the PC handhelds that have like the more contoured grips that are designed to like give you something to hold on to. Yeah, it feels it feels a little like the flat design is a little hard. Honestly, what I've been doing while I've been playing it on my lap is breaking the Joy-Cons off and putting the kickstand. The new kickstand is fantastic because it goes all the way back like a surface kickstand. Okay.

So I just rest that up on my legs and then have the joy con separate. So I'm not carrying the weight of the screen on my hand. So it'll, it'll actually balance on the kickstand on your lap. Yeah. Cause the kickstand goes all the way across. Now it's not just that one little, like two inch wide thing. Like it was before.

And the problem, actually, it's funny because like Mario Kart is fine holding it because I'm using both hands fully and my fingers are on the buttons on the right side. When I was playing Zelda. What ends up happening is that my fingers end up holding the entire weight of the device with my left hand. Because in order to hold the right Joy-Con stick, which is halfway down the Joy-Con, you end up...

You end up not carrying any of the weight at all in your right hand. It ends up being really uncomfortable for me. That's a shame. Yeah, I got even with switch one. I got to the point where I would only play it handheld like. balanced on like a pillow on my lap or like on an airplane tray table or something that would bear the weight.

Well, I bought them for everybody because I didn't want my daughter to mess up her hands either. But we bought those clip-on grip things that give you that same kind of textile feel. And that was... that that solves the problem and they're it's not like they're like 10 bucks or 20 bucks usually so it's not like they're expensive but um i i still having used the handhelds that have the symmetrical stick placement

I would much rather have the two sticks, even with each other on the top of the thing and have the two D pad buttons lower, but whatever, here we are. Well, but I mean, they want to, they want to maintain that single joy con controller orientation.

Yeah, but it doesn't do that. I know, but it's anyway, it's I think that I think that's goofy. They they should just resign themselves to selling a whole bunch of ninety dollar game pads. We'll talk about that in a minute. Probably. I mean, I do know small children that use those small.

Let's enjoy as controllers. Yeah. Um, the mouse is surprisingly good. Called it. People were so skeptical. I'm not saying you were, but like a lot of people were so down on the mice and I was like, they're going to be better than you think. It's, um, They talk about this in the Switch 2 Welcome Tour 2, but they talk about how incredibly low resolution is and how fast it updates and all that. I used it on my shorts leg. I used it on my skin. Yep, called that.

I used it on the arm of my leather chair. I used it on the couch cushion. I used it on the Persian rug. I used it on the hardwood floor and comprehensive. It worked everywhere. Great. Does it glide well? So if you use the thing that has the wristband, the little Joy-Con holder thing. So these the new ones are you kind of just.

tilt them in and they just barely clip in they're much less like it doesn't have the whole fiddly slide mechanism as before um they have guides on the on the surface that faces down And and yeah, it's pretty good. Like, I don't think you're I don't think I don't think there's an option. Actually, I don't think there's like a right click option. I think it's only move the cursor and then hit the R button to left click. But but yeah, it's it's it.

Like I said, there's a handful of mini games in that in that welcome tour that are like, move the mouse, move the mouse to dodge things, move the mouse to collect things. And it gets kind of frenetic. And and like, yeah, it was pretty good. it's better than i expected i i can't imagine like i think here's the thing like when when metroid comes out and i'm like oh here's a game i want to use the mouse on

A, if they let me plug in a regular-ass mouse and just use that, I'm probably going to do that, which I'm sure they won't do. No, it's confirmed they will. Oh, they will? Let me caveat that by saying that maybe... supported on a game-by-game basis, but you absolutely can plug a USB mouse into this thing for...

I want to say it was Nobunaga's ambition that they showed that off in a video demo that came out a week or two ago. But like Civilization 7 also supports mouse control on here. So I'm waiting to see if you can also use an external mouse for that. If it's the situation that any game with mouse controls will just take a USB mouse and in addition to the built-in one, then that's great. That is fantastic. It's certainly possible that it could be the type of thing where like Nobunaga and Civ.

will do it, but Metroid will not because they didn't build support into Metroid. I don't know. But it is confirmed that USB mice will work. And I assume like this Logitech wireless that has a USB 2.4 gigahertz dongle, I would assume even that would work. Yeah. Cause that just presents, that just presents to the host as a, as a wired mouse, right? Yeah. So I might actually, I might take my very nice gaming mouse from my PC and play Metroid in the living room with it. That sounds fabulous.

So what I was going to say is I'm definitely going to put a mouse pad on my chair arm. Yeah. And like a hard mouse pad. Like a permanent one or just? No, just like put a little tray there or something. I was envisioning you like mounting it on there with rubber cement or something.

No, no, no, that's no, I'm not going to ruin my chair. Let's see. The kickstand is good. We talked about that already. The new HD rumble stuff is kind of amazing. I've actually seen more people say that than I expected.

Like the last one I was I remember being impressed by the last one and then like not a ton of games used it mostly first party stuff. But they have demos in the Switch Welcome Tour again. Like there's one where you're shaking maracas and there's a bunch of little pellets in and then you can switch it to have one hardball and you can absolutely it feels like there's it feels wildly different.

There's another demo where it makes a bunch of sound where it like plays like a speaker. And like it was making like Mario coin pickup noises and stuff like that. And it sounded amazing, like one up noises and all that kind of stuff. Wait, I'm sorry. The. Yeah. out of the rumble motors were making coin sounds so they're not motors this is the thing you learn by playing the welcome tour is it's it's a magnet that's on a linear shaft

And they use electromagnets to bounce it back and forth so they can make it vibrate at a really high rate. Oh, and then higher, like high precision patterns and stuff. Uh-huh. And when you do that, it makes it makes you can make it make sound with it. Oh, that's fucking crazy. It was it is.

Why? Like the demo is literally like you tapping the button. OK, that alone is going to make me buy that welcome tour. That sounds crazy. I have to experience that. I can load it up and show you if you want. But yeah, so it's like. But but the sensation is much as much as impressive. Like you feel it uses the one of the places he uses the rumble is when you're on like dirt and bumpy stuff on the on the on Mario Kart.

And it feels really good. It's really nice. That's cool. I'm excited to check that out. Real quick, since we're talking about hardware here, I mean, we'll get to Welcome Tour a little bit more in a minute, but... Did you bump up against any of the stuff in Welcome Tour that you didn't have the accessories for? Because like some of the mini games, it sounds like you need to buy those like extra steering wheels and stuff. I did not. I have not gotten that. I'm on. So.

It goes to I've seen a gate that goes to area I or K. I think already I'm only on area. I see. I see. OK, so that's that's like, you know, you know, any any new console or hardware launch, there's like a bevy of headlines that come out. That's like, oh, you know. These consoles are catching on fire or you have to buy this accessory to do this or whatever. So that's one of the kind of breathless headlines about Welcome Tour is that.

I think the number I saw was you need $95 worth of accessories to 100% every minigame in that thing. Some of the minigames rely on specific features of things like those steering wheel add-ons that you just can't do if you don't have those. Oh, yeah. No, I didn't. I didn't get to that point. I also didn't buy the steering wheel add-ons because every time I bought those, I've never used them. Yep. There's. OK, so here's here's some bad stuff. All right.

when you play mario kart world you know you have the lobby and you're like hit the hit the thing where you hit up on the d-pad and it's like you can do a quick quick hit message yes you can't say i'm using motion controls oh why not It's not one of the options. Bummer. I mean, that's been in there since the Wii. It's been a... time-honored way to show contempt for your opponents. I see. In the pregame. I see. Okay, now I was like, why is it a big deal to communicate that? Now I get it.

Yeah. Hey, I don't need to use a D-pad or an analog stick to beat you at this game. Hey, I'm about to style on you with the worst control option. Yeah, exactly. And they've removed the toxicity. Uh-huh. Hey, look, they know their audience. Uh-huh. They're doing a lot of audio processing with this just in general, like they're using the additional hardware in the new in the new GPU CPU combo SOC in here. And they talk about this in the tour as well. But but like there's demos of noise canceling.

where you can record voice and it shows you it plays back what the other people will hear when you're doing um when you're doing like the game the game chat stuff okay this is crazy welcome tour sounds like way more technically oriented than i expected it is

It is clearly a marketing item that also has a bunch of technical information. That's wild because Nintendo has normally steered away from that kind of thing. Not only do they not chase bleeding edge hardware anymore, but they also kind of... go out of their way to obfuscate what's in the console or like they I guess the way I like to think of it is that Nintendo likes to give the impression that their games are powered by like pixie dust and unicorns inside the console you know what I mean like

The idea that there's like code and silicon running inside a Nintendo console feels a little weird sometimes. This one, they actually even come in and say like, hey, here's to make the HG Rumble stuff work. We had to both. really isolate the the things from making any other components vibrate and like have it really tied into the plastic of the controller so it transmits that feeling through to you when you're when you're feeling it like they got into some

Like, it's still a little bit obfuscated in that Nintendo way. It's a mixture of, hey, here's some stuff that's going to make you feel good about buying the thing. Here's some cool, like a little bit of back end that tells you how stuff works. And then. hey, here's some demos that show you the cool stuff. And then also, you know, onboarding. Like they literally, there's a thing that teaches you how to use a mouse. Okay. Which I guess makes sense because like.

10 year olds, kids who've never used mice might use this, but also anybody who. doesn't know how to use a mouse, probably isn't going to care enough about most of the stuff that you have to do to get to that point. Anyway, it's it's fine. Like Nintendo's commitment to onboarding people smoothly remains unchallenged. So good for them.

They do noise processing, sound processing on the speakers in handheld mode, too, because they're doing some business where they shape the audio so it sounds like it's coming from different places. even though the speakers are on the bottom kind of facing down and away from you. It sounds really good in handheld mode. I was really pleasantly surprised. Much better than the last one.

Yeah, like I am somebody who generally only plays on TV or only handheld when I have to, but I'm actually, I think the handheld features I'm hearing about are the things I'm the most excited about to see on this thing. Or actually, put it another way, I think...

The handheld experience is sounding so much improved here that I might actually become more of a handheld player. I think maybe I think the other thing I'm thinking about is probably playing with the joy cons as the controller primarily instead of the pro controller. Interesting. Yeah, which I did for a lot of the breath of the wild early on as well. But I kind of fell away from it over time. Sure. I mean, if nothing else, I'm excited to have a way better Tetris 99 machine. Yeah. Yeah.

Give me a good D-pad. Yeah, well, yes, that's exactly it. That actually makes me realize I'm going to have to go back to playing Tetris with buttons if I play handheld because I'm sure replacement shells for Switch 2 Joy-Cons will come along with D-pads eventually, but I modded a nice one. into my icons that like that d-pad is indispensable for tetris so we you know you could also just pair those joy cons with this switch and not slide them in and just have it you know yeah yeah anyway

So I use the pro controller a little bit at the store when we were playing Mario Kart. I didn't actually buy one. It feels heavier than the old one was in a bad way or like in a solid, solid. Just yeah, it feels like a nice controller. OK, doesn't feel like it's made of plastic, even though it is. Yeah.

um there's there's uh trigger buttons underneath the back now which is nice like like are those mappable or are you saying those just replace the normal triggers they are in addition to i assume they're mappable but we didn't we didn't have access to like control

Like the switches that were playing Mario Kart were in kiosk mode, so we couldn't change settings like that. So I don't know what they're actually used for. That's cool. I didn't get to actually use them. I did a very informal survey on Blue Sky to ask people how much better the D-pad is or not on this thing.

because the d-pad on the switch one pro controller is shit like yeah it's really bad and it's bizarre because nintendo literally owned the patent on the cross-shaped d-pad for however many days it's It's worse than the Xbox 360 D pad, which I thought was the all time. I thought you couldn't make anything worse than that. Like it's I mean, the problem with it, it's a very functional problem is that it's very easy to hit false inputs on on diagonals.

And in something like I had to stop playing Tetris 99 on the, on the pro controller because, you know, hitting up on that D pad or hitting up in the, in that game drops the piece all the way down. And there were way too many cases where I was frantically hitting left and right.

And it would register enough of an up diagonal that it would drop the piece when I didn't want it to. So early words sounded like people were saying this is definitely better. Time will tell. And that's an $85 controller, so I hope it's better, but we'll see.

I didn't use the D-pad. I didn't buy a D-pad because I have a couple of old Switch Pro controllers for games that use analog. Yeah, those will still work. Yeah, they still work fine. I used them last night to play Mario Kart. I also have an 8-bit dough controller that's really... has a lovely d-pad that i use for stuff like tetris 99 on the old switch it didn't work out of the box for me like typically they're pretty good about updating um firmwares to support new devices like okay

They've added Steam Deck support for almost all of their old controllers at this point. Yeah, I mean, the Switch 1 or sorry, I'm sorry, the Switch 2 is backwards compatible with Switch 1 controller. So I would hope that they'll just update and not make you buy a new controller. That's that's my hope as well.

One other thing I'll say in the Pro Controller's favor is they put a headphone jack on it, which one Pro Controller very conspicuously does not have because I use headphone jacks and controllers like all the time.

Oh, that's interesting. So they, I was just saying they also have a microphone on the pro controller. If you're playing using game chat to play with other people, which I might actually invest in one for that as well. Yeah. Like I'm going to get one just for that headphone jack, if nothing else. Yeah. Um, and I actually just checked a, uh, checked the Nintendo Reddit or the 8-bit Doe Reddit. And they're saying that some.

controllers are working some are not so i probably just the version of the ultimate bluetooth controller or whatever i have probably just is not on the supported list or maybe i'm running an old firmware so yeah um

And then the last thing is that like the cartridge, they talk about this in the tour. The cartridges are faster, which doesn't like the load times feel really fast on the new Mario Kart. Yeah, the only the only thing I have seen is a side by side of Bowser's Fury on Switch one and two.

Okay. And it was like 41 seconds on the one versus like eight seconds on the two. So yeah, Zelda load times were better like going into shrines and leaving shrines and stuff like that. It probably popped up the press X to skip immediately, which I don't recall happening on the switch one.

So, yeah, it felt pretty good. I mean, we should just talk about software. I think that's that's like the gist of the hardware stuff for right now. I mean, I'm sure we'll discover more over time. But before we move on from hardware, you did not buy a micro SD Express card.

I did not because it's going to be a Mario Kart and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom machine for me for the foreseeable future. Yeah, like I thought I would get one at launch just to have extra space. But then like Mario Kart is like, what, 22 gigs? It's not big. Yeah.

And there's kind of no other big games that are not Switch 1 games. And it has 256 gig internal. Yeah. So it really seems like you might as well wait until there are way more Switch 2 games out. And Micro SD, or sorry, Micro SD Express cards will be cheaper by then anyway. and maybe bigger even too because right now i think it's like there's one terabyte ones is that right yeah there's a couple 512s lexar has a one terabyte out but it's like 200 bucks i think yeah

The thing I'll say is deleting and redownloading games is really fast. It took 20 minutes to install Mario Kart and download it last night when a million people were hitting the servers at the same time. I downloaded Mario Odyssey this morning and it was it took.

you know it just happened in the background took a few minutes um so and and it seems like the ethernet as is always the case the ethernet is faster than the wi-fi yeah that was very much the case on the launch switch i think i just talked myself out of getting micro sd express like

And I'm somebody who loves having extra storage in my consoles, but like it just doesn't seem worth it right now because that's a relatively new standard. Yeah. So you might as well wait until they're bigger and cheaper and get one when you actually need it. That was kind of my thought.

I figure I can live with it for a while. So software, I'm going to say that I've said this before, the virtual cards, the virtual game cards suck ass. They're terrible. If you had multiple switches before and you bought stuff the recommended way, it's a disaster now because like the games that my daughter plays most frequently are tied to my account, which means that she has to check out the.

games every 15 days or something stupid and you can't play them while they're checked out is that correct i can't i can't play them while they're checked out it's almost like they wanted to stop people from buying once and playing like three times Well, you could buy once and play twice. That was the only thing you couldn't buy three times. You had to buy twice. Okay. You had to play twice. But yeah, it sucks. It's bad.

I wouldn't be upset if they had just left the old switch the way it is and did this new thing on the new switch. That would feel a lot less gross, but it feels icky. Game share is kind of their solution to this, but it only works if you have a. Switch 2 in the mix. So like you can't game share a Switch 1 game that supports Switch. Game share lets you play cross-platform games. So Switch 1 and Switch 2 games.

across switch one and switch two is where everybody has their own console right and i think it does it with video streaming yeah i think it has to i mean didn't you said before we started like it's more or less instant right it's very fast yeah there's no way that they are transferring assets across the network ad hoc at runtime i can't imagine that they are um i like we tried uh gene and i played mario odyssey and big brain academy which are two of the like five games that support this

Mario Kart doesn't support this, which I guess is probably because they'd have to have. Wait, World does not? World does not because it's a Switch. It's a Switch 2 game. Oh, you're talking about sharing two Switch 1s. I'm talking about. I thought I was going to be able to solve my, hey, I have two copies of Mario Kart and three people that play Mario Kart on their own switches. So I don't want to buy a copy of Mario Kart 8 again in 2025 problem. Oh, you're talking about 8, not World.

You're talking about a world doesn't work with game share either. Oh, it doesn't. That's crazy. No, the new no switch to games work with game share. Is that coming later? I don't know. typical nintendo communication here that seems seems like a weird omission but okay yeah so there's there's games the switch one games that support this like odyssey and big brain and bowser's fury and um

Uh, something else. I can't remember the other one. Oh, uh, Mario party. Yeah. It's the new, there's two Mario parties that came out on the last gen. It's the super, whatever the new one, the newer ones, Jamboree, right? Jamboree. Yeah. Yeah. They you download a patch that is the that adds game share to that. And then you open up on the old switch ones. You open up the game share app, which is just like a bottom menu item.

And it says, hey, I'm looking for a room that has game share. And then you hit the button and they join into your game and the person who has to switch to starts the game. You can also game share over the Internet if you're in a game chat with people with supported games. to other Switch 2s. So you can, so the Switch 1, Switch 2 to Switch 1 only works locally, but Switch 1 to Switch 2 works, sorry, Switch 2 to Switch 2 works across the internet with the game chat feature.

So like if I'm playing with you and you have Jamboree and I don't, then you can game share out a Jamboree screen to me and we can just play together. Which is really that like, that's rad. It's neat. I'm curious to see how well it actually holds up though. Cause even, even the presentation they gave of it in that stream a few weeks ago did not look amazing. Like it looked kind of framey for the remote players.

Yeah, I think it's going to be entirely dependent on a how your Internet is and be what kind of Wi-Fi you have. Yeah, it's like I think I think you're going to want good Wi-Fi. I don't. I haven't actually looked to see what version of Wi-Fi this thing uses. I think it's regular six, if I'm not mistaken. Six would be my guess. Yeah. Makes sense, given where they are and when they released. It seems like it's come out that so they have been saying.

since that stream they did a few weeks ago that something like a dozen games at launch, Switch 1 games, would be getting free patches that make them better in one way or another on the Switch 2. Seems like it's actually way more games than that. Like they... quietly have added way more games to that list because the initial list was like ARMS, Mario Party, or maybe not Mario Party, it was ARMS.

The two overhead Zeldas, not Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but Link's Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom. Odyssey, Mario Odyssey. Ask me anything about the other seven. I think Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Big Brain. Big Brain Academy. Game Maker. Yes. Toolkit.

Stuff like that, but it turns out that way more games than those are also getting patches. It turns out that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom get a free patch, even if you don't pay that $10 upgrade to the Switch 2 edition. Oh, that's interesting. And then there were a few other... Pretty major games on that list that I like. There were a couple of the Kirby games from last gen.

I've gotten three patches. Yeah, I can't remember which one. I forget which ones, but the point is quite a few first-party games actually are getting free updates to be better in one way or another. Resolution, frame rate, something, something. Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe.

That was one. Mario wonder was another one. I was surprised Pikmin four didn't get it. Actually. I was kind of waiting to play Pikmin four until this came out. And I think one of the Pikmin's did get one, but I don't remember which one that was. Oh. Anyway, like, you know, nice, nice bonus that on day one, it turns out quite a few more switch one games are better than we're expected, which is nice because again, there are practically no new games launching on this thing.

Yeah. The thing I'll say about the new switch games is that it's, it is nice. It's also it's a little confusing how you get like, cause there's two tiers, right? There's. hey you get a patch that just automatically dumps out and gives you some switch to compatibility stuff and it's like it knows that you have joycon twos and stuff like that so it says you know

Make sure you put on your wrist strap with your Joy-Con 2 when you're playing on the Switch 2 or it gives you access to game share in the case of like Big Brain and Mario Odyssey and stuff like that. It doesn't. There's also the enhanced edition things, which is what Mario. or mario party jamboree i believe and the both the the 3d zeldas those are like the paid updates right yeah those are paid updates or if you're on the expansion pass for nintendo switch online

you get access to those as well. Right. For free. You have to download those from the shop, though. And it doesn't end like when you launch the game, it doesn't say, hey, you have access to this. You should go download this. It just launches it and you're you're.

you know, you, you don't, if you don't know to go download that, you're going to miss out. Yeah. I'm going to have to see if it's worth, I mean, it's 10 bucks, like whatever. I might just do it just to see what's in there, but I don't know if I actually need those $10 upgrades on the two Zeldas because.

Frame rate and resolution are what I want out of those. And that might be actually be in that free patch that apparently exists because they, because they also added, you know, that, that second screen app support and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah. I wonder if that's the thing you're getting in the $10 upgrade and it's not the graphical stuff. Yeah. I don't, it's unclear to me what you get in the upgrades, which is like, that's kind of an eternal Nintendo problem in the post. Keep paying us more money for stuff.

I played a little bit of Breath of the Wild this morning. I want to see if I have Zelda notes in here. Did you buy the upgrade or no? Well, we have the upgrade. No, I have the family. Got it. Like when you have the family plan, it costs basically nothing extra to get the expansion past stuff. And also we play a lot of Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. So I have it anyway. I've watched I've watched some side by sides of Mario Odyssey and.

Like Mario Odyssey looks better. It definitely looks sharper because that game was pretty low res in docked mode on the switch one. Like, yeah, it's noticeably sharper. Zelda is night and day, like absolutely night and day. Like it looks fantastic. I know there have been ways to play Zelda games at higher resolutions and frame rates before now, but still on a, on a nice Nintendo handheld, I am very happy to go play tears of the kingdom now in a much better way.

It feels so smooth compared to Zelda one. I, I wish, I wonder if you have mouse control for building for building the, the, the, the vehicles in Zelda and tears of the kingdom. I don't know. I don't think so. Um, so I have like stats and stuff in my Zelda notebook. It's, I don't know. This seems a little thin, but whatever. Yeah. I asked 10 bucks.

Yeah, you can I can share items. I can send you items from my Zelda game to your Zelda game if we have if we both have this, I guess. All right. That feels weird for a player game, but whatever. Yes.

This is real quick since we're talking about upgrades from last gen. I saw some side-by-side footage of Fortnite on a Switch 2. Oh, I love a Fortnite. If I can remember, I apologize to whoever put that video on YouTube, which had some nice information in it, and I can't remember your account name, but... I believe it is over 1080p 60 in dock mode. It was like 1,200-something lines at 60 frames, and it was 900p 60 in handheld, which I think is perfectly acceptable for a 1080p screen.

I mean, now maybe I have a way to play Fortnite mobile. Yeah. And it looked good. Like, like they, you know, they said like bigger draw distances, better foliage, better shadows, like the whole, you know, the whole nine yards. Like it looked, it looked like a good serviceable version of Fortnite.

It didn't look like potato mode like the Switch 1 version does. That's actually the one and only reason that I wish I had gotten one before Summer Game Fest, because the Death Star event is happening on Saturday. Oh yeah. And it would have been nice to play that on a switch to an LA instead of, I guess I'll bring my switch one and try to play it on that. I bet it doesn't run on your iPad. Probably not. My iPad is quite old. Um, anyway. Yeah. So.

uh oh the the let's see the other thing is the cartridges you just plug in networks it downloads an update just like normal uh they're keyed a little bit differently um but other than that like they just they just go in and the The the sticker faces forward. I can't remember which way the sticker faced on the old one, but you can you can see which game you're sliding in as you slide it in. Interesting.

Here's a quick tidbit that John from DF uncovered, which is really interesting. I mean, it's kind of a niche case. But if you buy a Switch 2 version of a Switch 1 game, you know, like the Switch 2 edition ones, because they...

Because they now have boxed versions of like the Zelda Switch 2 edition versions of Zelda. Apparently you can put that Switch 2 card in your Switch 1 and it will still run as the original Switch 1 game. Oh, that's nice. So like if you have older Switches, you can still pass those cards around and play.

both versions on both, uh, both consoles, which is kind of neat. It works both ways, which is cool. That's that's consumer friendly. Yeah. I guess maybe, maybe last thing here, it sounds like you tried some of the GameCube emulation.

Yeah, so there's only two GameCube games right now in that bin, I think. Well, there's four games, but it's two versions of two different games. What do we got? I believe I'm going to open it up right now so I can confirm that nothing new has dropped since I tried this. I'm going to guess. I know Wind Waker is one of them. I'm going to guess Luigi's Mansion, I guess, maybe for the other one. Oh, man, I wish it was Luigi's Mansion. That would be dope.

It's, sorry, sorry, three games. It's F-Zero, GX, PAL, and NTSC. It's Zelda, Wind Waker, PAL, and NTSC, and Soul Calibur II. We're all an NTS. I assume. Yeah. So caliber two, that was the one rare case where the GameCube version was by far the most popular version of a multi-platform game that generation because it has a link.

Is that is that like what was the other one was like Yoda and spawn or something? That sounds right. Maybe that was three. I think it was spawn on the Xbox and maybe Yoda. I'm getting it mixed up. I think that's right. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was later. Anyway, the point is, yes, like the link was link made that GameCube version highly desirable. So I guess I can see why that would be on there. But. Yeah, it's a it's a that's a weird like I would have put.

I guess Mario Sunshine's divisive. I don't know. It is. I mean, they should still put it on. They should put all the big marquee. They should put Metro Prime 1 and 2. Well. Those are pretty heavy hitters. I'm sure they'll hold some of those back, but like I should put Sunshine and the Primes and Luigi's Mansion and maybe Pikmin one. Oh, this one. Yoda was later. This is Heihachi from Tech. That's right. Okay.

Heihachi, Spawn, and Link? And Spawn and Link, yeah. Okay. Is Heihachi on PlayStation and Spawn on Xbox? That's correct. It was originally going to be Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, but the licensing deal fell through at the last minute. I don't think I ever knew that. That would have been crazy because which one of those would have pushed more units? Yeah, right. Who's actually a more popular character, Link or Cloud?

Link would have pushed more. I'm sorry. I think so. But there were so many more PS2s in the market at that time. That's true. So many more. Yeah, like I it's interesting, though, because like. The N64, I haven't fired up the N64 emulator to see if it's still the crappy, fuzzy version from the last, from the Switch 1. The, it looks really good.

It looked like Wind Waker looked fabulous. Is it four by three? It's four by three. OK, so that's the original GameCube version then. Yeah, they didn't do that. It's not the it's not anything to remastered version. Yes. Or Wii U version, I guess. Which some people absolutely prefer.

Did you play it? I played both versions, yeah. I finished original Wind Waker and played a lot of... I didn't mind Wind Waker HD. A lot of people hate what they did to the art with the extra light bloom and stuff. Yeah, I didn't... I played the first one all the way through multiple times. It's probably my favorite Zelda, I think. The back half of that game, I get why people want it changed, but also...

I mean, it's a product of its time. It looks really good. This hell shading looks fabulous. It's interesting because we're at a point now... Like the N64 games have aged really poorly just because of the era that they came from. I think this game, this, this game looked unbelievable on the, on the modern hardware with the.

you know, the high resolution and all that stuff. So that's cool. Anyway. Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of, I guess that's kind of it. Yeah. That's sounds like that's, that's basically the full kit and caboodle for at least for what you can say, having owned it for about 15 hours now.

Yeah, that seems right. It's, um, you know, pleasantly surprised. It feels expensive. It feels as in feels premium. You mean like feels like, well, both. Like 500 bucks feels like a lot for a handheld. It is. Well, 450 for the hardware. But yes, that is absolutely a lot for a handheld. But like I didn't know if you meant like it feels good in your hand, like it earns the price or what you meant. It feels it definitely feels like a nicer.

So the Wii U handheld unit felt really good, right? It felt really sturdy, even though it was made of shiny, mid-2000s plastic, right? Yeah. This feels like this has a nice matte finish. It feels expensive.

The screen looks really nice. It looks good. I'm terrified carrying it around without a screen protector on it yet. That's getting here tomorrow. I was so I'm I'm torn because I didn't own an OLED, but apparently they're doing the same thing they did on the OLED where there is a built in screen protector already. But it's like a.

glued on it's like a shatter protection protection yeah layer i'm gonna put something on on top of it so i don't get my so i can replace the thing that gets micro scratches yeah i'm using i might do that too my my first my switch one picked up like i mean it was over the bezel not the screen so it's not a huge deal but the the dock itself scuffed up the screen cover of the switch one which was really annoying well here's like for me though like i want to just be able to chuck it in my bag yeah

And I'm not going to get a case. Probably not. Oh, OK. So that's very different. Like, I absolutely will get a nice hard case travel in. Yeah. And like, so with that context, like, I don't mind if the plastic bits get scratched up a little bit, but I don't want the screen to get scratched up.

And I'd much rather replace an $8 screen protector than a, than an, you know, screen cover. Does this, uh, does this use the same like kind of soft touch, uh, finish that the switch one joy cons had where there's like a, there's a softness to them or, or is it more of a traditional like matte plastic?

It feels soft. It does not feel like squishy in the way that that soft plastic often does. Interesting. That makes sense. It's like, it's like a mat. It's like a, it almost feels burnished. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. So anyway, that's it. There's been drama as always with any new thing. Are you referring to staples through the screen? I would be so pissed.

There are multiple reporters out there I've seen trying to do follow-ups on this story. It could be an isolated incident. Apparently at one GameStop, they were stapling people's receipts to the front of their box, and apparently the way this thing is packaged... The screen of the Switch 2 is basically flush with the front of the box. It's on the top of the box. And there are pictures out there of people's screens, people's Switch 2s with two little staple puncture holes in their screen.

That feels real bad, man. Which really stinks. Yeah. I don't know why they would do that. Probably because they didn't know where the thing was. No, I did not have staples through my screen. That would that would feel bad. I would, you know, at the at the not not the world store in New York, but the second flagship store in the US, I would hope not. They let's see. They had some nice swag that they get. Like we got a pen for buying the.

$500 console from them on launch day and a Nintendo lanyard that I can put my, I guess my work, if I had a work badge, I could hook it up to that, I guess. I don't know. But no, no staples through the screen. Nothing like that. uh the box wasn't even sealed from the nintendo world store like it had it was just like cardboard there was no like little plastic thing over the over the the buying edges um but yeah that's that's

Pretty much it, I guess. OK, well, there you go. There is there is some up to the minutes. Console launch coverage. Yeah, lightning fast. Like in a perfect world, if people have questions about this stuff, please send them in. We'll we'll tackle them in the Q&A when I've had some more time.

uh when when hopefully we both had some more time with it yeah um that email address is techpod at content.town yes that that gives me to the end of the month to get one before yeah questions might come in and um it's it's

I mean, normally it's a lot of game stuff, I guess, lately. So sorry about that. I guess we have been very games heavy. Let us know if it's getting to be too much. But some of that is just scheduling reasons and that we both do enough game stuff outside of this. That is something we have ready access to.

Well, and it's also like new console launches are a big deal. Yeah. We only get one a decade pretty much. So, yeah. And, and, and like, there's a lot, there's always a lot of new tech and even new, new or interesting implementations of old tech crammed into consoles. Yeah, this I wouldn't when I when I went to pick it up, I wasn't sure we're going to do the episode about this. We had another plan in mind, but it's it's there's enough.

Like, I honestly, I'm so stoked about the stuff like the HG Rumble and the way the mouse works that I'm excited to see what they do with it over the next 10 years. So, yeah. Anyway. So this is thanks for listening to this week's tech pod. As always, this is a listener supported show. So we wouldn't be here without you all. We will listeners. Oh, no. Would we just be hanging out in discord talking about this and being like.

Oh, man, I can't believe what he said. Oh, I can't believe what he said. Wow. Have you used the new switch to have you pressed the C button yet? That's wild. Yeah, it just takes a screenshot. But if you long press it, it makes a video. Okay, can I insert some profoundly not video game related content into this really quick? Yeah, what you got? My favorite TechPod Discord experience in a while the other day.

I was very briefly in the networking channel talking about why I had moved from PyHole to Blocky, just talking about some config stuff or whatever that I thought was better. Someone responded, and this is one of my favorite things that's ever been said on this Discord. Somebody just responded and said, yeah, that's why I ended up writing my own DNS server. Which got some kudos in that channel. I was very excited to see that. That is rad as hell.

Nerds. That's amazing. So if you want to be part of that, you can. You pay five bucks a month. It's a gated community full of lovely people.

uh there's it's very low drama we just hang out and we talk about things that we're interested in and there's a wide variety from like hey you have a house and you don't know how to maintain it you need help with that or you want to share some cool shit that you've done with your house all the way through to hey man i built my own dns server because i was annoyed by all the other options yeah

Maker stuff, cooking stuff, job stuff. Yeah. Lots of stuff. Yeah, I got a recommendation. I got a referral for the job that I talked about, like a little bit of a difference. But we have had multiple people that have gotten jobs as a result of the tech pot at this point. Job not guaranteed.

job not guaranteed should be clear yeah it's not a job board but um you can find out how to back the the tech pod it's five bucks a month you can go to uh patreon.com slash tech pod again that's patreon.com slash tech pod and get access to all of that Plus the monthly patron only episodes where we talk about projects that we have going on and sometimes we answer some more questions and you would just kind of chat. Yeah. Yeah.

So that'll do it for us. Oh, I got to thank our executive producer to your patrons, including Jason Lee, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippet, Bunny Meme, Twinkle Twinkie. David Allen, James Kamek, and Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer. Thank you all so, so much. Thank you. That'll do it for us this week. Brad, have a fun time in LA and getting your summer game fest on.

Are you excited about anything? Yes, I've got some stuff lined up. Can you talk about it? Last year, there was an embargo on everything, so maybe I should keep it to myself now. We'll talk about it next week. Maybe we'll do a patron episode about Summer Games Fest or something. I don't know. But we'll be back next week with another edition of the TechPod. Until then, please consider the environment before pinching this podcast.