I remember the room clearly. An old CNET colleague, Jeff Bakalar, and I were running through a room full of Nintendo Switch games to play. But what we flocked to that January day was an experience that involved milking cows with our Switch Joy-Cons.
What exactly is going on here, we said. We were stunned by the absurdity.
That game was 1-2 Switch, and it wasn’t discussed or shown during the Switch’s first Fall 2016 announcement trailer. It was left as a surprise, revealed closer to the Switch’s launch. And it’s the sort of thing I’m keeping my eye out for when the Switch 2 details and games are fully unveiled soon. Whimsy is Nintendo’s calling card, and the Switch 2 is due for a dose of weirdness that I think might be around the corner.
I was eating a hot dog with the Joy-Con, using the IR camera, circa 2017.
1-2 Switch was like a game tutorial for new ways to play on Switch
The collection of weird little collaborative two-player games encouraged you to look away from the TV or Switch screen and face each other to play virtual ping-pong or cast spells (or milk cows or eat hot dogs). There was something totally odd and immediately conversation-starting about it. It was also a relative failure for Nintendo, something that the Switch tried to bring back with a sequel that also didn’t seem to ignite significant interest. But my kids still love to play it from time to time. It is, unmistakably, something that feels extremely “Weird Nintendo” and extremely Nintendo Switch.
Watch this: Nintendo Switch 2 Announced: Everything We Know
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Nintendo deals in whimsy and the unexpected. As much as the company plays it safe with franchise sequels to Mario and Zelda, and frequent re-releases of classic games, the company’s toy-making origins always emerge with unexpected curveballs. So far, there have been very few surprises when it comes to what’s been announced of the Switch 2: a similar-looking design, a familiar-looking new Mario Kart game and a few small features that seem to match what reports have been mentioned for a while (snap-on magnetic Joy-Cons, for instance).
But my favorite Nintendo moments are always the weird ones. The Wii Balance Board (and the whole Wii U, for that matter) is one. Nintendo Labo is another, which shocked everyone with totally improbable papercraft creations that turned the Switch into a robot backpack, a VR headset or a fishing kit. The plastic hoop fitness accessory that’s Ring Fit Adventure and Mario Kart Live, a whole RC car kit that live broadcasts an AR racing experience into the Switch. Or hey, those little surprise Game & Watch collectibles with Zelda and Mario on them… or Nintendo Alarmo.
Nintendo alarm clocks are already here. What else is in store?
Good weirdness: A Nintendo cornerstone
In 2017, I spoke with Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi, then the general producer for the Nintendo Switch, about exactly this sort of thing. “Good weirdness is really important to us. You might play Milk, and you’re laughing, you’re enjoying yourself, but you’re going to refer back to it later and think about how wacky that was and how much fun it was.”
Back then, Nintendo even made a connection between the instant versatility of the Switch and the company’s oldest product, playing cards. The release of a classic games collection for Switch later on, Clubhouse Games, followed through on this even further with unique ways of playing.
Nintendo’s been down this road with other spinoff games, such as WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven (which just got announced for the Switch), and Switch-optimized new games like Arms, which used in-air boxing moves, or Snipperclips, another Switch launch game that was utterly charming and involved paper creatures solving puzzles (or attacking each other), as ways of exploring the Switch’s then-unique collaborative controller sharing.
Mario tends to be a vehicle of surprise.
Whimsy as game design
More recently, Super Mario Bros. Wonder even pointed out how unexpected Nintendo’s own cornerstone games could be. The 2D Mario wasn’t on anyone’s radar, and the game itself celebrated throwing players for a loop at every stage with new level-melting twists and strange new characters.
The director of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Shiro Mouri, told me in 2023 about the game’s pursuit of mystery and wonder. “The baseline fundamental concept we were going for was to create a game that’s filled with secrets and mysteries,” Mouri said. “The original Super Mario Bros. was exactly that, a game filled with secrets and mysteries.”
The last Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom — a similar out-of-nowhere surprise — had a similarly table-turning way of reinventing the idea of how Zelda games are played.
Nintendo is expected to make a new 3D Mario game a centerpiece for the Switch 2 launch, and once again, it makes me wonder how much Nintendo will lean on Mario as a vehicle to introduce similar surprises and shifts.
Yes, the Labo robot backpack.
Labo lesson: Don’t discount the accessories
The cardboard-folding Labo kits didn’t arrive for the Switch until a year into the console’s life, but they followed a similar path of clever daydreaming about the Switch’s modular possibilities. Many of the Labo forms involved types of accessory ideas Nintendo would normally make in plastic but this time played with in cardboard: steering wheels, fishing rods, pulleys, musical instruments, giant birds and VR headsets. Many of the accessories used the Joy-Con gyros, accelerometers, vibrational haptics and IR cameras in programmable ways.
Labo was also a sign of Nintendo pushing the boundaries of new ideas. Tsubasa Sakaguchi, the director and software lead for Labo, told me in 2019 that the overlap between the familiar and the strange was always a part of Nintendo’s design thoughts. “Something that you feel like you’ve known and something that is new, that point that overlaps, that’s what we’re always seeking. But because every day everything evolves and everything changes, that overlap changes,” Sakaguchi said.
Where could that overlap point be in 2025? The new Switch 2 has its own redesigned mystery Joy-Cons, which looks to have connection possibilities. The controllers reportedly work like optical mice, capable of reading table movement. Could they both have sensing cameras? And they snap magnetically, it seems, into new ports on the Switch’s sides. Could those ports allow for other snap-on extras?
Finally, the Switch 2 has a second USB-C port, meaning there’s one on top now as well as the bottom. That immediately caught my eye. The existing Switch and handhelds, like the Steam Deck, have only one USB-C port, mainly used for charging and docking. However, the Steam Deck and Windows handhelds can use USB-C to connect external displays and display-enabled glasses, meaning you can put on a pair of Xreal glasses, for instance, and play games on the go on a big virtual screen.
Nintendo has already dabbled in VR and AR, but could this new handheld introduce a pair of Nintendo glasses or at least compatibility with glasses from others? Or what exactly is that port for? What about a snap-in camera with sensors to track movement or a second screen? I could daydream forever, but my real point is there are all sorts of ways a new Switch 2 could introduce pathways for future accessories… and Nintendo is a company that loves to play with new, weird, whimsical accessories.
Subscription curveballs, perhaps?
A final area for surprise could be in what Nintendo dangles for Switch Online on the Switch 2. The subscription service has added a lot since the Switch’s debut, and a ton of retro virtual console games in two price tiers already make the Switch one of the best ways to play old Nintendo and Sega games on the go.
But Nintendo hasn’t introduced any subscription support for classic games on the GameCube, Wii, or Wii U — or the Nintendo DS and 3DS, for that matter. The two-screen DS is its own weird problem to solve, but I also wonder if Nintendo might offer some of the Switch’s back catalog games in subscription form too. Microsoft and Sony have already done this for years at higher prices. Would Nintendo also flex this way and test how much Nintendo fans would pay? Already, Nintendo has pre-announced a new way of sharing digital games on the Switch and Switch 2 and a new phone app. More changes could be in the air.
We’ll know soon
The Nintendo Direct presentation for the Switch 2 is April 2, and we expect more details on the still mysterious console. But for whatever the functional upgrades will be, I’m waiting for the weird from Nintendo to appear and woo us with strangeness again. I’m ready to milk the cow.
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