Six months with my Switch

Six months ago I started the third of March in a slow moving queue of fellow geeks, waiting impatiently for the Game store in Belfast to hand us our new babies. Once home I opened that box with the finesse of those antique loving folks on the telly. I looked at each part in child like awe, still amazed at how tiny it all was. So tiny. Then came Zelda and more wide-mouthed gawping at this new born loveliness. Cut to today and my little Switch is six months old. They grow up so fast.

Seems like a good time to review the box's life so far, especially since it's fast approaching it's first Christmas which will be a really interesting time. It no longer seems to be a question of will people buy the Switch but more can Nintendo make enough to meet demand. In Belfast here I think you can still walk in to a shop and buy one but the UK has never been filled with Nintendo lovers. In Japan it's a different story, with literal queues of 3000 people waiting for a raffle ticket which lets them 'win' the ability to buy the thing. What-in-the-name-of-f***

So it's a success then! Nintendo are back after the colossal failure that was the Wii U. I loved my Wii U too, I defended it blindly and enjoyed my time with it but Nintendo has lessons to learn from it and learn them they did. The hardware itself is sleeker, smaller and more in line with rival tech as opposed to Fisher Price toys. The OS is snappier and leaner than any console I've played. The speed with which you can boot it up from sleep mode and be playing a game is both insane and glorious. It makes my PS4 look like a geriatric climbing stairs.

This is all stuff I could have said six months ago though. The difference since then is the games. Zelda Breath of the Wild is currently my favourite game in all of time. I racked up 70 hours in three weeks (for comparison, despite loving Horizon it took me six weeks to finish on 50 hours) DLC is coming before the years out and that'll probably be better than most full games. There was a bit of  a lull after Zelda which I filled with Snake Pass and Mr Shifty but I was still yearning for more.

Mario kart 8 Deluxe hit at the end of April and although it was port of the Wii U game I still jumped in and fell in love all over again. The game was mostly the same but the console makes the difference. Four player on the Wii U consisted of handing out a gamepad, pro controller, Wii remotes and maybe a nunchuk or steering wheel. A cluster of nonsense. Switch? Four joy-cons. Tiny, neat and simple. As strange as it makes me, I love my Switch for being so tidy and neat. Other thing I couldn't (be bothered) doing with the Wii U version; playing against my mum! Took that Switch up home, plonked it on a kitchen table and tried not to laugh to much as she finished in 11th. Beaut.

The summer is when it really clicked in to gear. ARMS launched in June and took the mantle of only fighting game I don't completely suck at. Not that I'm good at it either but I always have fun. Even my wife managed to hold her own and kick my arse occasionally. A mere five weeks after that Splatoon 2 released and pretty much consumed my life for the next month. I'm still only halfway through the single player and I've barely scratched Ranked mode because the Turf War so is so blooming addictive. Its fast, vibrant and unlike anything else out there. Apart from Splatoon 1.


I need to play more of it and I need to go back and play more ARMS. Which makes it really daft that I just bought Mario and Rabbids. Too early in to say much about it but it's off to a good start. In three weeks time I'll be buying SteamWorld Dig 2 and at some unspecified date I'll be needing Stardew Valley. Then Super Mario odyssey comes out on the 27th October and oh dear god there's not enough time to play all the damn games. To solve this dilemma I've had to start bringing it to work so I can play on my lunch.

Until now I've been pretty precious about carrying it about to much but then that's really one of the best features. There was one day back in March when I watched some colleagues play Snipperclips and laugh away at that quirky oddity. The Switch has been on two train journeys, both times used for multiplayer hijinks and each time impressing whoever got a go. I even braved it getting it out in a pub one time. I'm such a bad parent.

Most of the time though it's been kept safe at a home. Either I'm saving Hyrule on the TV or I'm losing at Splatoon in handheld because I'm secretly trying to follow the wife's Greys Anatomy marathon at the same time. Either way, I really love that tiny wonder. So tiny.