Despite similar art styles and narrative elements, this ain’t ya mama’s Danganronpa.
Nintendo just updated its Switch Online subscription service with a nice mix of four retro handheld titles: the survival game Survival Kids, sci-fi shooter Gradius: Interstellar Assault, puzzler Kirby’s Star Stacker, and RPG The Sword of Hope.
PowerA recently debuted its first Switch 2 gamepad, a wired one with Hall effect joysticks (no rumble, motion controls, or Amiibo support, though) that costs $39.99. It’s available to preorder at Best Buy, launching June 9th. PowerA’s model seems like a better value than Hori’s, which will cost $10 more.
We haven’t yet heard from some other major third-party players on Switch 2 plans yet, including 8BitDo, GameSir, or GuliKit. But with two weeks until the Switch 2 launches, I’m expecting a deluge of announcements soon.
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Pokémon TCG Pocket’s Alolan era is set to continue with Extradimensional Crisis, a new expansion featuring the (technically not legendary) pokémon known as Ultra Beasts. Following the set’s launch on May 29th, there will also be new Drop, Wonder Pick, and Mass Outbreak events running throughout June to help add even more beasties to your collection.
Following the addition of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe scenes (what Nintendo calls its alarm clock’s wake up experiences) last December, Alarmo is getting another free update with a collection of seven new Animal Crossing: New Horizons scenes. Samples of the new alarm sounds are available on Nintendo’s Japanese site and include Isabelle doing morning exercises and K.K. Slider singing the game’s theme song.
Universal is opening its latest theme park expansion in Orlando today, which includes the third iteration of Super Nintendo Land, following locations in Osaka and Los Angeles. The park comes at a busy time for Nintendo, which is just about to launch the Switch 2 — but it’s also part of a larger plan to turn it into more than a games company.
Storage and component company PNY announced that its 128GB and 256GB microSD Express cards for Switch 2 are now shipping, costing $44.99 and $55.99, respectively. Its lineup brings the same PCIe 3.0 spec as the other microSD Express cards out there (blowing regular microSD cards out of the water when it comes to speed).
Let’s hope that PNY launches a 1TB model soon, because the Switch 2’s 256GB of built-in storage can only carry a handful of AAA games.
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Nintendo showed off the sound design of the Switch 2 this morning in its Nintendo Today app. There’s definitely some of the original Switch’s vibe here, but speaking for myself, a few of these are going to take some getting used to.
Check it out in the Reddit post below.
The original Switch included a feature for finding missing Joy-Con controllers through vibration, but if they were buried under couch cushions, or lost somewhere with a lot of noise, it was difficult to hear. That feature is being carried over to the Switch 2, but as demonstrated in the Nintendo Today app, the new Joy-Cons now vibrate and make a pulsing beep sound, potentially making them much easier to locate.
The console version of the Killer Instinct 2 arcade game, called Killer Instinct Gold when it launched on the N64 in 1996, has been added to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. The arcade version of the game used pre-rendered clips for backgrounds of various stages, but the N64 version replaced them with fully 3D environments that moved more realistically with the game’s camera. The fighters themselves, however, remained 2D animations.
Nintendo’s official Switch 2 tech specs page doesn’t have a ton of details, but to help fill in the gaps, Digital Foundry has a written report and a video featuring more details it has been able to confirm.
During the Virtua Fighter spring 2025 direct, Sega has announced that Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O., released on Steam earlier this year, will be coming to PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and the Nintendo Switch 2.
R.E.V.O. is actually a port of 2021’s Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown with the extra bells and whistles of 4k resolution and other goodies including the fighting gamer’s favorite feature: rollback netcode. The console edition of Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O. doesn’t yet have a release date yet but hopefully we’ll get one soon.
As part of its most recent earnings release, Nintendo revealed that it somehow sold 6.23 million more copies of Mario Kart 8: Deluxe on the Switch, bringing its cumulative sales to 68.20 million units. Despite launching in 2017, it was the company’s second-best selling game for the fiscal year. No wonder the Switch 2’s big launch title is Mario Kart World.
Nintendo’s first round of Switch 2 preorder invites go out on May 8th, 2025, so sign in now to register your interest. To qualify, you must have logged at least 50 hours of gameplay on the original Switch and have purchased at least a 12-month Switch Online membership as of April 2nd. If you get an invite, you’ll have 72 hours to place an order.
YouTuber Geekerwan has obtained what appears to be a Switch 2 motherboard component for about $150 on Xianyu, which he describes as a Chinese eBay equivalent.
Even without being able to power it up, microscopic evaluation suggests that the “T239” chip was taped out in 2021 with Nvidia’s Ampere tech. Combined with leaked clockspeed specs, they were able to demonstrate some performance estimates on current games, but maybe we’ll get even more hardware details soon.
Nintendo’s news app revealed that the Switch 2 will have 258 default profile icons, which is an increase from the 147 icons available on original Switch. Here’s a repost of the video from the app showing all of the icons.
It’s almost as exciting as the last Nintendo Today bombshell, IMO.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade has already been announced for the Nintendo Switch 2, but based on a new Nintendo video featuring the series’ director, it sounds like the entire FFVII remake series is coming to the console, too.
See you in Midgar... and all of the other iconic FFVII locations.
The retailer lists its Mario Kart World bundle as available to buy on the console’s June 5th launch day and including a 12-month subscription to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack — with the caveat that it’s “for NEW members; cannot add to existing membership,” as deal-hunter Wario64 spotted.
Whether that’s as a free bonus or added onto the price of the system isn’t clear, since Costco hasn’t posted pricing yet.
