First Impressions of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Big Update and Switch 2 Edition - NVC 795

Animal Crossing, a new horizons, big update is here. We'll talk all about it this week on Nintendo Voice Chat. You've switched to an Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of January 15th, 2026, I'm your host, Logan Plant. Join this week by Rev Valentine. Howdy, howdy, howdy. And for the first time this year, person-eater, hi, Pear. For some of the ziomini episodes have you done. Two, this is number two. I'm a fan of the fair. Okay, good. It feels like it's just, it's like the first of January right now. Yeah, did you listen to last week's episode, Pear? Which one was it? But gosh, our predictions won. Is what we talked about? Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah, I am. Okay. Yeah, and I read you. I called you out and I expected to hear from you about it, but I didn't. Okay, then I haven't gotten to that part yet. Okay, yeah, little little tease for you. Well, we're excited to hear this week. We have a fun episode. We are going to talk about the Legend of Zelda, the Ocarina of Time, because we've all played it within like the last six months. So it's very fitting time to talk about it for Zelda's 40th anniversary. But we're going to start with first impressions of Animal Crossing New Horizons on Nintendo Switch 2. The version 3.0 update is out now on Switch, as well as the Nintendo Switch 2 edition, which adds mouse controls, higher resolution, some other bells and whistles, and like a megaphone literally is added. And, Rob, I know you've played it so far. What do you think? I, okay. So in our planning meeting on Monday, I told you I wasn't super high on it. On the idea of it, because it actually like dropped on Tuesday. I'm kind of into it. A little bit. So I still think it's true. I've said this on previous episodes, like after it was announced that I think that the content here is not revolutionary. Like I don't think this is going to result in a massive resurgence of everybody coming back to this game and a renewal of every Animal Crossing fun thing that was going on in 2020. Like I don't think that's happening. I'm kind of having fun. Like this was a nice excuse to come back. So like it's, we've got this hotel on the island now. I can go over there. I can decorate some rooms. It brings some more villagers to my island that have new dialogue that I haven't seen yet. Some of them are kind of cute and they wander around and they're really nice. It's got a lot of furniture. I actually, the thing that sort of turned me around on it was seeing someone made a reddit post with like, just a catalog of every single new furniture item. And it's a lot. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. And I, like I was surprised at how much there was and seeing, and not just how much, but like seeing some of it, I was like, oh, that's actually really nice. Like I would redesign a room around that. And I think that was kind of part of my cynicism about it is my island's done. Like I played 500 hours of this. My island is the way I wanted. I don't need to change anything. My house is the way I wanted. And I have the villagers that I want. Like I don't, I don't need to do anything else here. But then seeing there was a new stop, like I can, I can mess around with that. But in order to get that, I probably need to play for like several days in a row. And then I started getting up early and, you know, going around and catching some snowflakes and going over to the hotel and decorating a room every day. And like, I don't know. I'm kind of getting into it. Some of this stuff doesn't, like I don't care about, like it's got mouse controls on the Switch 2 now. I don't care. I'm not going to play with that. I think some people who are really savvy at decorating probably will. But like, or like the patterns. Yeah. I'm not artistic in that way. That's fine. I was good with the way it was before. I'm happy it exists for people. I think like the 12 people on an island at a time thing is appealing to me in theory. But I don't know that I have 11 friends who are all going back to Animal Crossing who would be into this. So like, I don't know if we're going to get into that. It looks nicer. Shoot. What else? I haven't tried the amiibo yet. I have. I've welcomed some Zelda villagers to my town. And the Zelda items that you unlock in the catalog are very cool that you get theirs. And it goes all the way up through Echoes of Wisdom. There is Tribe. From Echoes of Wisdom. There's the kind of Zona activation hand device from Tears of the Kingdom that you scan it every shrine. There is a Decade Guardian from Breath of the Wild. So they've really brought in kind of the new generation of Zelda stuff into here. And you unlock that through the hotel. My farm, I biggest complaint of New Horizons was it was missing Nintendo items. They added some Mario stuff on a Mario day at one point, but it still just wasn't that much. But now you have Mario, you have Zelda, you have Splatoon, and you have the Classic Nintendo consoles, which I'm going to complain about in a little bit. But I think it's cool they're here. So there is a lot of awesome Nintendo stuff now, which is my favorite edition by far. You do quite a bit to unlock those though, right? You do. Well, for the Zelda and Splatoon items, you just have to scan an amiibo of the related series. And I have 30 of each behind me on that shelf. So that was very easy. But for the Classic Nintendo systems, you have to build a ton of all the hotel rooms and then even have to redesign some of them. So if you don't time travel, which I'll admit, I time traveled for the first time in my annual crossing life. I've never done it in any game, but just to kind of see all the stuff in this update, I did do it this time just to get to all the items. And it takes, I don't know, probably two weeks of work on the hotel to get to the Nintendo items in real time. So it is a bit of legwork. OK. That makes sense. What I'm realizing with the DLC, the Happy Home DLC, and then this update, and then some of the other, just the stuff they've added, is the long game of this specific animal crossing of New Horizons is decorating. It is for people who like decorating. The dream islands are for people who like decorating. The all the new pattern stuff is for people with mouse controls is for people who like decorating. All this new furniture decorating. The hotel rooms, the stuff in Happy Home, it's all for decorating. And I enjoy that aspect of Animal Crossing, but it is not the primary reason I come to Animal Crossing. I primarily come to Animal Crossing because I think it's fun and weird. And I love all the weird little guys running around. And I want to talk to them every day. And I want to see what silly little things they're doing on my island. That's kind of why I play. And so I think the one thing this is sort of missing for me maybe is like new reasons to check in on my villagers, I guess. Like I wish they're all still saying the same stuff they said. You know, four years ago. And I love them. They're very sweet. But I marry. We have played pretending to be pop stars so many times. Like we don't get to do any of that. Which is another weakness of new horizons is that it did not really focus on the villager stuff as much as the prior ones did. And they've never really updated more in. I disagree. I think one of the things I loved about new horizons is that there were so many little behaviors that villagers could do. And so I put 500 hours into it. I remember a very specific moment, like 400 hours in, where I saw multiple villagers standing in the town square around a barbecue. And I had never seen them do that before in like 400 hours. And there's just all these little tiny behaviors they can get up to. They can read books. They can catch fish. They can do the little Naruto run around for some reason. There's all sorts of things they can do. And they all have little dialogues to sort of reflect all the little things that they can do. And I always thought that was really nice. I thought that the dialogues was varied. I think one of the issues I had and people had is in expanding the amount of people who could have houses on your island, they didn't expand the villager personality types to match. So if you have every single slot on your island filled, you inevitably have a couple duplicates of villager personality types. And therefore you have two people who are reciting the same dialogue to you every day. That's where I think it got repetitive for people. And as you point out Logan, that has not changed. Like, you know, six years now, almost six years. And no changes whatsoever there. So that's a little bit of a bummer to me. But I am enjoying just taking it slow, coming back once a day, making a room in the hotel, walking around talking to everybody, caching a couple snowflakes and making a couple snow items that I still don't have yet, wishing it was spring, because winter's kind of a lame season at this point. And yeah, it's just nice to come back. But I don't think this is going to result in an animal crossing Renaissance. Reb, it was 75 degrees here in real temperature yesterday. So yes, we're waiting for spring too, but I don't know. I think there's icicles on you all behind you. I actually never transferred my town to a switch too. So that was, because at the time I thought this game was done, and I'm like you, I decorated all my rooms and I felt closure. I'm like, this is what I wanted. This is done. I would have anxiety over breaking down one of the rooms and I completely redoing it, and having to collect new items and things. So I sort of compartmentalized it as it's done. I'm walking away from it. I'm going to leave it on an old switch. So now, of course, I have FOMO because this came out this drop last night, right, for us, heathens. And now I'm really tempted, but I'm thinking maybe I'll just start over. I don't know. I don't know this. I don't know if you know this, but I have a fair amount of Zelda Mabel. So I could scan those. I feel like you're going to regret it if you start over here because it takes time. Like it gates you and it takes time to build up. And I don't know what, I'm sure our guides people are working very hard on figuring this out right now, but I don't know, I don't think we know exactly just yet or just figure, maybe we do by the time this podcast goes up, how long it takes to actually unlock the new features. Like we know, I have 500 hours of my island and it's all available to me right when I sign in the first time, but a brand new island, I don't know how long it'll take you to unlock the hotel and you start with nothing in that game. All right, then I have to look through some old pictures. I have to look through some old pictures of me on NBC to see which version of a switch I was using as my main cause I forget and I have to find it and transfer my island using the transfer tool. How many switches do you have that is faster to do that as opposed to just checking all your switches? Probably eight switches. Yeah, yeah, I would just check them all. You got to find it. What's your town called? Do you remember what you named it? No, probably something like high rule. Yeah, I had Termina and New Leaf for sure. It's usually a pun. I actually don't remember, man, I don't even remember what my rooms look like, but it was spectacular. You see it? It's gonna be new. It's gonna be a new place for you, even if you go back to your old town. It's gonna have cockroaches in it. Yes, it will and they're very easy and quick to talk about. And now you can pay resetty to eliminate the cockroaches for you as part of his island cleanup fee, which is a new feature in 3.0. I'm very of two minds of this. I think that version three and the switch to addition, this is an undeniably better game. I think they've made some really cool changes to new horizons that I love this game. So when I criticize a lot about it, but it's very minor things I criticize. I think the new horizons struggled a little bit under the weight of all of the new kind of survival crafting things it was trying to introduce. Like crafting was so dang slow in new horizons for how much they wanted you to do it. Now there's both crafting. They finally fixed it. You can craft up to 10 things at once now. You can craft straight out of your storage now. So you don't need to go into your storage, pull out all your raw materials, then go to a crafting table and then do it. Like they've made a ton of little changes that if you are either picking up new horizons for the first time or you are someone who never put it down. And just this is still a part of your gaming routine. You don't play many games and this is kind of your game. It's this is huge and the one thing you really liked was they added kind of this grid based movement, which I know you really liked. Yeah, I enjoyed that just because it was silly. It's really, see they have a thing now where if you push the L button, you'll do a little hop. And if you hold it down, you can then use the stick to move in any of the cardinal directions and you'll move in a very precise way. So you'll move like exactly one, I guess, like square or whatever to the left, right forward or back. That is fantastic for a lot. Again, that's very much a designer sort of thing. Like it allows you to get very precise placement of furniture if you're trying to put something in an exact spot but can't quite get the right angle. It's really good for other things. Like I saw someone in our wiki's discord talking about using it to get exactly in the right spot behind a rock. So you can hit it with your shovel without sliding all over the place. I've seen a couple other uses for it that are really neat. I just think it's funny because it looks funny. Yeah, it does. And I think it's hilarious they added a jump button to Animal Crossing. Well, it's a hop, right? It's a hop. It's a jump. They added jumping, strafing and backsliding. Which like, I don't know, when are we getting our air dash? That's right. After they added sitting at the start of this, this one, which was a big deal too. Yeah, I remember how crazy it was when we all looked and we saw that you could, the one trailer, there was a character sitting on the ground. Like, that's huge. People get, whenever everyone got excited because your characters had kneecaps. Like, that's what people love about Animal Crossing. I'm just strafing. I'm so curious about like, how, whether people are going back and whether this is a success or not, just because this was the pandemic game. And like, we were excited about doing these sort of mundane things because we couldn't do them in real life, right? Like, in many ways, like that really heightened the experience for this game. Like, we were getting together and going, oh my god, it's a friend I haven't seen in person in weeks. And like, you're doing simple things like sitting on the ground and being really happy with it. So I am super curious. Obviously the game is good. I had a ton of time. I played North of a hundred hours in it as well. So, yeah, but now I have to find that switch. Yeah, you do. Yeah, like Rebs said too, I don't think this is going to bring back people in droves. I think that this is for people who, they love this game. They have a thousand hours in it. They play it every day. These changes are enormous. They're life changing for these players that you can now decorate on a grid and bulk craft and do all these things. But me who played my 120 hours, mostly concentrated in the first two months of its release and then just slowly trailed off, I find Animal Crossing a very hard game to go back to. I think like it, you binge it at the start. You do everything you can. And then slowly, there's less and less you can do each day. And then it becomes, I'm going to turn it on. I'm going to get my money rock. I'm going to check my mail. I'm going to check the turn up prices. I'm going to go to the store. I'm going to put it down until tomorrow. And I find it really hard to get back into that routine once you're done because it's like, yeah, I'm done. My island is where I want it. I'm happy. I don't see a reason to go back to this. I don't see a reason to start over. So I don't really know how successful this is going to be outside of the extremes of I've never played this game. And this is the definitive version of it. And this is the only game I play. Yeah, I'm a concocted gamer. So I want the sort of like pay off your house and add parts to your house is sort of the driving force. And then being able to, like, then I feel, I have to fill every room and make every room look functional and right for my home. And then once that's done, the air sort of out for me as well. Like, yeah. I found that this update came in a good time for me personally because it's the new year. And so, you know, in the new year, you're usually trying out new routines. You're trying to get back into whatever it is that was good for you. So I've been getting up at the same time every day a little bit earlier than I had been at the end of last year. I've been, you know, getting up, working out, taking a shower, eating some breakfast. And my morning routine is, I found that it's allowing me about 30 to 40 minutes of time between all of that and when I have to start work. And this has been a really perfect thing to just slot in there. Just like, you slide into Animal Crossing really 20, 30 minutes, do all the things Logan just listed, maybe check out the new hotel and then call it good. My prediction is that even if people do come back to this game, we're in mid-January right now. By the time Zippertee Bunny shows up, it's all over. People are gonna be outskies when they see that guy. I hate Easter in Animal Crossing. Yeah, I remember how much people hated that the first year. It's our egg day. Egg day. Egg day. Egg day. Egg day. Egg day. Egg day. Egg day sounds right. Yeah, you can tell how little I care for this holiday. No one cares. Because every time you dig something up, it's a gosh dang egg. And I've already made all the egg furniture and I don't need any more gosh dang eggs and that rabbit is creepy. Yeah. It's like, is it an animal in a rabbit suit or is that actually him? It's unclear. However, he does have a zipper on his back and his name is Zippertee Bunny. And if you, they discovered this thing where when, he's sitting there going like this or whatever, if you walk far away from him, he stops doing his little dance and if you start to like creep back towards him, you'll see he's just kind of like slumped over. But if he catches, if he sees you coming and he sees you looking at his back, he'll suddenly turn around and be like, oh. Oh man, it's really a dark story. There's a dark story, right? Like he's goofy and you got fired from Disneyland and oh, yeah. No, he's just a man in a suit. It's just a man in a suit. Yeah. But it's an island populated mostly by animals. Like you're the only human. So is he a rabbit in a rabbit suit? Is he the only other human? Like, is he a different animal in a rabbit suit? No, I'd just, some cases like Jack the River were never solved. So who's to say? Is the zipper part of his physiology? Mm-hmm, hopefully not. I'm gonna go with no. I'm gonna go with problem. Look, I'm just gonna throw this out there. There is another character, one of the villagers an animal crossing who looks like an inflatable and they have like a little, you know, like, you know, the little tab that he used to like blow open inflatable, they have one of those on their body. And so. Oh, really? What is this, really? There's also a mouse meat of cheese, right? There's like a lot of mouse. I'm just looking at rabbit to like, there's, there's some questionable villagers. I'm just saying. Yeah, I want to talk about the retro consoles a little bit because I tease that earlier. You can get a few of them. You can get a Game Boy in NES, a Super NES, American or European versions and like a Famicom disk system. And that's so cool that's back. Retro games were in the original animal crossing. You could get a ton of NES games and play them in your house. And they try to bring that back here for the first time since that one. But it's really sadly limited because you can only play one game per console and that game is preset. It, on the NES, you are playing Ice Climber, which is not a good game. There's Clucluland. There's Dr. Mario on Game Boy, which is a great game. There's F0 on one of the Super Nintendo's, which is great. But they also require you to have a switch online membership to access this. So it is like, you already have access to the entire library of Game Boy games, but you can only play one of them here. It's like, I wish they had gone one of the other ways. No switch online required. Everyone can play this tiny selection of games or switch online, but this just acts as a portal to that app. That'd be so much cooler. But it's just like, I'm not as excited about getting a camera to play Clucluland. So I would even be behind a situation where you have to buy the console and then you have to buy it in animal crossing, a cartridge. And you find the cartridge you want and then you put the cartridge in and then that's the game that plays each time. Like that I think would even be fine and could even be fun, especially if they gated. Like finding the cartridges behind some sort of fun activity, but that sucks. I didn't realize that. Well, in the original, you had multiple versions of the NES, right? Like you had multiples. Yeah, so if you guys remember Mystical Ninja, Goemon, the first Super NES game, actually had a custom version of Gradius in it. So there's like one house you're going into. You can play Gradius, which is also a Konami game, but it was a custom version just made for Inside Goemon. Like that, that sort of thing would be really cool if they did sort of a, you know, maybe a changed version or one level version of one of those games. Logan, just to confirm, did you test this by buying like two of the same console? It always plays the same game every time. Yeah, it's the same game. Yeah, it is the one game. They say, well, maybe I'll play Ice Climer. Yeah. This is such a perfect example of Nintendo like doing something and we're all like, ah, and then the actual in practice thing is like, oh, you didn't understand this at all. Like they do this all the dang time, especially when it comes to like online related things. Ice Climer is so random. It's like, when you think of NES, you think of Ice Climer. Yeah, Ice Climer, yeah, exactly. Yeah, the most renowned NES game, of course. At least think of F zero, which is great. That's a great, super Nintendo game that you give up zero. But all that being said, this update is not going to draw me back in at all. I think it's really smart timing and we've talked about this a little bit on the show. You've got, this is a huge year on Switch and Switch 2 for this type of gamer. You've got on Switch 2, Pokemon, Pokeopia coming out in two months, which is right before Bunny Day that Rebs said everyone's going to be done with this buy and then that games out on Switch 2. And then on Switch 1, sometime in the spring, we have Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream, which made to the standard Nintendo listener not sound like a big deal. That was almost a top 10 best selling 3DS game. That was huge on 3DS. It was about 7 million copies on a system with a lower install base than Switch 1. If people are logging back on the Animal Crossing and they have that newsfeed on the left of their Switch that targets these games at them, those games are going to be boosted by this. So I think it is really good timing to draw in the casual audience, draw in the people that have a Switch light with only Animal Crossing on their home screen and show, hey, we're making these other games that are a lot like this later this year. Yeah, I agree. I always thought that Animal Crossing would have been the perfect choice for the sort of game as service that is the foundation for Nintendo's subscription network. Like if you subscribe to Nintendo's plan, you get Animal Crossing. And Animal Crossing is your new town square within the Switch where you celebrate anniversaries. When it's the anniversary of Metroid, you get Metroid items, right? Like they did this with the 99 series really effectively. Like I have always thought Animal Crossing would be the perfect evolution of the Wii U town square to become that celebration. But obviously, they feel like maybe it's a little bit too big to give away for free as part of the subscription plan. Well, I'm really surprised that they didn't do it because they were, I'm gonna get some facts like slightly wrong here, but I'm doing my best for memory because I didn't prep for this. They basically did what you're describing with new leaf for years. Yeah, new leaf, Animal Crossing, new leaf on the 3DS. On my Nintendo 3DS, yeah. You say it every episode. Because new leaf had support for so long. Like there was a period of time where it wasn't huge support, but they were adding new furniture items like every single month for years, like going on years. When they had that camping, whatever surprise update to new leaf, like that was a big deal, but they had been consistently supporting that game up to that point. And I remember looking at that and thinking, oh, that's like a template for what the next animal crossing could be, like maybe it's not just new furniture items every so often. Maybe it's, yeah, new festivals, new events, new people coming through your town square, like whatever, like that would make perfect sense to me. And it's weird that they went just like in the totally opposite direction. You know what irritated me? So I started, on every new years, I have a new, we have a big New Year's Eve party at my house. And instead of watching the ball drop in New York or whatever, we turn on animal crosses, watch animal crossings, countdown. And so I thought, okay, perfect. We're having an update coming in mid-January. So I'll start up my town again right around New Year's. I'll get it ready for the New Year's party and then I'll play every day after that. So that's what I did. And I was decorating for New Year's. And in 2021, or, well, I guess 2020 to 2021 and then 2021, 2022, they gave out new years items through, I think it was nook shopping or maybe nuffmiles, whatever it was. There was this big balloon arch that had the new year. I remember, yeah. 2021 and 2022. They didn't do any after 2022. So I have in my inventory a 2021 and a 2022 balloon arch, but there aren't any for any of the other years. And just pallets swapping and putting another number on the end guys, like give me a 2026 balloon arch, man. What are you doing? I'm so irritated that we didn't get that. There were two busy going out and drinking in the real world. I'm so new in here. I just want a balloon arch. Yeah. All right. Nintendo, listen, get Reb the balloon arch. Get it for. 2027. Yeah, they're updating this game again. It's on Switch too. So maybe they'll do it for you this time. I will be, I will have this open again for the new year. That's a great idea. I think that's really cool. Yeah, instead of watching a ball drop that already dropped three hours ago, on these coasts, at least for me over here on the West Coast. Yeah. It's a great way to do it. Well, that's Animal Crossing, New Horizons, and Nintendo's for Swedish and theirs. Wow. Amazing on the V-roll time. That's fantastic. Yeah, no 2023 balloon arch, maybe 2027. Cool. Well, we'll talk more about Animal Crossing. Maybe it's more people are playing it over the next week. But for now, I want to let you know that on next week's episode, we're celebrating 20 years of Nintendo Voice Chat. Can you believe it? And we need your help. If you have a favorite memory from the show or any other thoughts to share, send an email. 20 years since the first iteration of NBC started. We'll talk about it next week. I'll keep it in touch. I'm sick in his head, I'm keeping it simple for this house keeping. And we'll talk about it next week. I sent an email at nvcadign.com. And we'll read a few of our favorites on next week's show. And you don't have to have been listening the whole time. If you've been listening for 20 days, you can send an email to nvcadign.com. Anything is great, and we really appreciate it. Also, we want to let you know you can save the Starfall Islands with Sonic the Hedgehog or dive into classic tomb raiding with the remastered Tomb Raider collection. Head over to Humble. Right now, you can get Humble Choice for just $14.99 and score a curated bundle of PC games for January, including Sonic Frontiers, Tomb Raider 4th or 6th Remastered, Hunt Showdown 1896, Etri and Odyssey 2HD, Nice Day for Fishing, Metal Slog Tactics, Settlement Survival, and Wizard of Legend 2. This month's choice is available through February 3rd, so head to HumbleBundle.com and start playing today. Idle Money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money's always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change, and tops up your stocks and shares, Icer. It even helps you make sense, but for this can return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than your invest. Monzo, current account required, UK Residence 18 Plus, T-Sensees apply. Pair, do you not think that the Weak and Review counts as NBC, I feel like we've had this argument before on this. Yeah, counts, I think it counts. Okay, yeah. I never loved the name. It was a little too punny, as Weak and Review with two eyes, right? Because of Weak. I got to ask you this, I was looking this up, because Weak and Review was the original name of Nintendo Voice Chat. It was called Revolution Weak and Review. And for the first four episodes, the Weak's name was not announced yet. So it was the weekly roundup of rumors around the Revolution. And then when the Weak's name was announced, it became a pun. But did they know? Did you guys know that was going to be the name? Okay, so that was just luck. That was just random. It was luck that happened. Nobody could have predicted the name Weak. Come on. That was a huge shock. That would be a new, you know, come on, you've predicted like every Nintendo console ever knew. No, that one we didn't know. That's, yeah. We launched the website, the All GameCube website, day in date with the announcement. And obviously we had to have been working on it for a while. So, yeah. But you didn't know Weak and Review becoming Weak with two eyes, we just luck. You can ask Matt, but I don't think so now. Yeah, that was a, that was our very first podcast, right? I think it was, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I wasn't here. It's either, it's either, either that one or scoop. I'll have to check. I have it all written down somewhere. Yeah, we'll come back next week and we'll talk more about this stuff. But for now, we're going to move to some Zelda discussion. It's Zelda's 40th anniversary in 2026. And so we are going to, I want my goal is to have every month we'll do one segment dedicated to something Zelda related. And we're kicking that off. This month we're talking about the legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, because Rebecca Valentine has played and finished Ocarina of Time for the first time. Parasite or played Ocarina of Time last year for a different, very similar video we just had on IGN called, This Is Still Fun Today. And I just played it on my analog 3D for the first time on that machine. So we've all played Ocarina of Time very, very recently. And we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about it right now. Reb, I want to 30 first, because you pitched this segment since you just played it over the holiday break. I just, really quick, I want to get ahead of this before someone yells at me in the comments. I had played Ocarina before. I just quit at Jabbo Jabbo because it sucked. I see. And I agree with you. Man. Before, people yell at me for being on an Nintendo podcast and never having played Ocarina before. I had played it. I just got mad at you. OK, so we can't do any. It's about time puns and anything. No, no, no. But this is my first time beating it. This is my first time seeing everything from basically most of Jabbo, Jabbo onward. And honestly, it was so long ago that it all felt very new to me. I came away. So I've been cynical about Ocarina in the past. I'm a huge Majora's Mask lover. I think Majora's Mask is fantastic and brilliant and strange. And I think it's probably my second favorite Zelda, if you count Breath of the Wild and 2, is the Kingdom is the same game. Oh, wow. The very different game. One is way better than the other. Cheating. Yeah, OK. I know. I love Majora so much. And the contrast in my head between the experience I had playing Ocarina, which was butts, and the experience I had playing Majora's just always really confused me. And so I was trying to go in with an open mind and an open heart and figure out what it is that people really, really liked about Ocarina. And I think I came away with a more positive opinion than I expected. I came away both understanding why this is seminal, like why people love this so much, why people are so nostalgic for it. I also came away feeling a little bit vindicated because I do still think this game is kind of butts to play in 2025 or 2026, unless you have like an updated version of it or something that gets rid of some of its like, look, 3D and 64 games suck to play now. Did you what controller did you use? Did you use the Switch controller? I don't know how I can answer this appropriately on an Nintendo podcast. Don't worry about it. Because I don't know what version I played. Because for the longest time, right, the game on Switch was nerfed by a couple of things, right? Like the emulation is not perfect. And some of those issues still persist, but there was something about how the controller felt when you played this game and how Z-targeting worked. And I think reasonably now with modern controllers with the L-button targeting all of that works. But like it did, I remember picking it back up when it first hit Switch. I'm like, what is going on with these controllers? It was like the C-stick was designed for this, the C-buttons were designed for this game, right? Like and the game was designed for the C-buttons in a way. And like it's, it was interesting going back. I did, I did, I did go back and play it for an episode of a show we did last year, a late last year is called. Is it still fun? So look that up, we have a long discussion about it. And I was expecting to run into more Jank. And a part. I ran into so much Jank. Apart from the, I mean, like sometimes the game storytelling is not as clear. And they fixed some of that in the 3DS incarnation. Like when you meet in Castle Town in order to get sneak into the castle, that sort of stuff. Jabu-jabu is a really, really bad level. It just, it is, I really hate it. And it's because, it's because they were struggling with memory issues there. Like when you put the princess down and you leave the room and like, it's just not, like, and it's not clear sometimes with a verticality where you're supposed to go. But like beyond that, I actually thought it was really fresh till a really good and like, man, using the sound to track down the spiders and Kakariko Village and the event when you go back into Kakariko Village and the crap flies out of the well and stuff. Like it was so sophisticated for its time and I still think it hits really well. I agree with you on all of that. I think it's genius. Like I really loved so much about this. I was almost entirely struggling with the jake of it. I guess what I will say is I played a version of this game that is very close. It is almost identical, control-wise, to the original version, the original and 64 version. The one shortcut that I did give myself is I did put the iron boots, I was able to map them to a button. Yeah. Like the 30s remake, which is that. Yeah, that's one of the jankish. It's horrible. But everything else, everything from Kalei, I didn't have free camera movement. All of that stuff was as close to the 64 version as possible. And that's my argument is that if you go back and try to play like the original, or as close to the original and 64 version with its controls and camera and combat weirdness and targeting weirdness, it's kind of clunky. It's kind of hard to play. I got really frustrated in a lot of fights because I would be trying to target the thing. I was supposed to target and Nabi didn't want to do it. Or I was trying to throw items at something and they were going like bombs and they were just going all over the place. Or I couldn't see what was going on. There's just a lot of that. Or I don't mind how open ended it is and how not open ended, but how like it doesn't tell you what you're supposed to do all the time. And I think that's okay. I have a lot of funs of sort of running around and guessing. But on a smaller level when I'm in a dungeon and I can't find the way forward because of something that I just visually cannot see that I don't care for. There's like one specific spot in the water temple that really cheesed me off of that. What was it, which one? Oh, the hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big tower in the middle. Like there's one, I posted about this on social media and obviously everyone was like, oh, you were supposed to see it at this one point. And I'm like, yeah, okay, for one second, I had a view of it. I didn't see it. Okay, sorry. All that is fair, right? Like it is a product of its time. And so menu systems, like obviously the selection of the boots and all of that stuff is just not how you would do it today. And obviously Nintendo knows that too. But I just feel like I love this world, man. Like there's just something that when you play a modern game, like I played like 90 hours of Assassin's Creed shadows over the holiday break. And like that game you walk through a forest and you hear the reason. There's a moment you're having. And that's an exact moment. Yeah, there you go. And everything, everything sounds like the real world. And this was one of the first games where the world sounds real because they added sound in the dungeon. It's not quiet when you're in a cave. It has this dungeon sound, this sort of like echoing noise. It's not just the music, but just room sound. And like going back to it now, it's not just a head of its... It wasn't just a head of its time. It still sounds really cool and it's creepy and atmospheric. And like I just love this world so much. And like I was surprised there was still that good when I went back. I again agree with you. Like I just wanted to gripe about the controls for a second. Because that was my main beef with it. But I do agree with you. I love this world. I think it is so cool. It's really surprising. I love that it's just full of weird little guys. Just freaking gremlins. It made me think a lot about Dark Souls 1, honestly. Like it feel like I now understand. Oh, wow. The Dark Souls series was way more inspired by this than I realized. Just like little freak sitting in corners going, hehehe. Like there's so much... Like when you... When you... Yeah, when... When you first travel to traveling in time and you come out and you go into this room and you should have like pots in it and like soldier or something. You go in and there's this like... This ghost basically sitting in the corner in the music goes like full like... Bum-dum-ding-ding-ding. Like goes like super like weird Japanese. And like he's the guy who buys the souls of the dead ghosts from you. Like that game was just so cool. They... Nintendo historically has such an incredible sense of player-emotional reactions to arcs. And you can see it in this game too. Like I... I was sort of surprised at how much of this game I had just never seen before, including things that I am certain are very iconic moments. But like I had just never been exposed to them before. Like that... After you become an adult, that moment when you first walk out of the temple of time. And everything's just... It's wrecked. Yeah. And they got the... It's probably the first time you've seen the rededs. Like maybe you ran in a one in a cave at one point, but like conceivably it's the first time you've seen them when you walk into town and you realize Ganon or if it's just like totally nuked to the place. Yeah. Like it's really, really like striking and grim. And all you hear is the... All you hear is the birds in the distance, right? Like it is. It's really very strange. Yeah. Yeah. Or then the water temple is incredible. I had literally never ever seen that room where you fight dark link before. I had no idea what was going on. I had a bunch of people like... I went, friends staying over at my house at the time and my partner was in the room. And they all watched me walk into that room. And everybody in the room just like freaked out when I walked in there. And I'm like, all right, what's going on? But they have such a good sense of pacing because you walk into that room. You take a few steps in there. You get onto the water, you're like, oh cool. I've got a reflection. Wow. I know it's so cool. They could do that in a video game. And then you walk across, you see the tree or maybe a little wary. You get to the wall, you examine the door, you kind of like look around the side of the wall and try to figure out what's going on. You're like, okay, well, nothing's happening. I don't know what to do. So you turn around to see if you can figure out what you're supposed to do in this room. And what is that? Yeah. It's so good. It's really good emotional beat. The way it looks is really cool. I mean, and that dungeon has like basically the boss from the water alien, from the abyss in it and all of that. Like it's just a lot of cool stuff in that game. Logan, did you, did you love it? Like you loved it back in the days or? Oh, yeah. I love this game. I play it every single year. My sister and I have a tradition where we pick one weekend a year or one weekend day a year and we talk on the phone and we play the whole thing start to finish and it takes us about nine hours because we just know everything. We know where everything is. We know all the little shortcuts, all the little tricks. Like, oh, well, if you need to go back to the forest to learn, so I already saw you should save and quit and then reset your game because then you'll wake up and links tree heads. That's right. Five minutes. Like just the tiny things like that. So yeah, I play this every year. I haven't like a hundred percent of it in quite a few years, but I think this game is still just so masterful. I think I like how it controls, but it's so hard for me to assess this because I play it every year and I am just a master at this game. I know this game so intimately. Well, I know exactly how it controls and like the boots thing isn't even really an issue for me because I know when I, I never put them on when I don't exactly need them. So it's like, yeah, boots on, do the puzzle, get it right. The first time boots off. Like it's just, it's just like background. It's a machine, but I love it. I think it is still such a perfect adventure and calm that. They don't make dungeons like this anymore. They just don't. I had forgotten about when you face the Lysolphos, the first Lysolphos in battle. They're actually on the second floor hopping from platform to platform. Right. So first of all, they're they're teaming up to take you on. And so one jumps in attacks and the other one hangs back and then they switch. When you heard one of them, it flees from you and the other one goes, oh, you're attacking my buddy. And then you've got the controls where you lock on. You can jump sideways and do backflips. Like that entire sort of like combat scenario was so new and fresh because, you know, enemies used to not do this sort of stuff, right? Like enemies used to just always home in on you, think of the soldiers and link to the past. They spot you and then just come for you and just attack you relentlessly. And these guys actually seemed like they had a brain. And that was that was really eye opening as eye opening as, you know, a zombie opening a door and resin evil because we're all no monsters can't open doors. You can also see the bones of what they ultimately are going to go on to do and stuff like breath of the wild and tears the kingdom. I remember there is, oh shoot. Which which temple is it that has the ship the goat the ship that you say a lot in the middle and fight. Oh, yeah, the shadow temple. The shadow temple. At the end of the shadow temple, that thing where you have to shoot the arrows at the bomb flowers at the base of the statue to get it to fall over like that sort of environmental puzzle. I see that in this game. And now of course games are doing that all over the dang place. But I'm like, oh, people were not doing this when this came out. This is cool. They're flexing. Like in the forest temple too when they do the little twisty hallway and you walk in and out in the room's like, you know they're over there like, what we figured out how to do. It's so it's really cool. I love getting over the fence with the chicken in Cacarico too. Like using the chicken glide move to actually do something. But yeah, my favorite thing in that game is still the hunt for the disfigured spider restoration project here. Yeah. I know. We say that like, oh, Major is the weirdest Zelda in Ocarina times. Zelda is basically the winner, which one you're playing. Zelda is bizarre. Like if you think of the ones you think are like less weird, it's probably Ocarina, Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild. Like these are more like standard Zelda form games. But come on, they're so bizarre. And it's, yeah, I love them so much. And I love them going to get the horse in at Lung on Ranch. And then you play the game with Malin's dad to get with talent, to get the three chickens, to get the bottle. And you're like, do you want to marry Malin? You're like, yes. I'm just kidding. You're too young. And then you're like, I'm just, every beat of this game is just seared into my brain and iconic. And yeah, I still think it holds up brilliantly that the 3DS remake is usually the version I play. I played on the analog this time. But man, it's like the same. They barely changed anything. They added the boots as an item. They put some padding on the walls on the water temple and pretty much left most of the rest of it alone. And it holds up. Still. And now that game's 15 years old. I think it's pretty much. That's not we needed. I disagree. I disagree that it mechanically holds up. But I'm not sure because you like Majora's Mask, but mechanically those games are the same. Well, okay. So I think Majora's Mask is more janky because it suffers from framerate issues and it's easy to die because the game wasn't tweaked all the way through. Okay. I have done myself a bit of a disservice here. And my argument to be clear is that the original version is really hard to play. Yeah, yeah. I played Majora's Mask on 3DS. Oh, I see. And I thought that was fine. And I think, and I actually the first time I played Ocarina of Time, I played the 3DS version. And that was the one I quit at Jabu Jabu, but that was a different problem. This one I played basically with the original N64 controls. And I think if you are someone who has never played this before or maybe only played it like as a child and don't really remember it and you want to go back, you really are doing yourself a disservice unless you play a more modernized version. Either the probably the 3DS version is the best one to do. The 3DS version is amazing. Yeah, it's a perfectly playable one. I think that the original controls do not hold up. I think it is a huge blessing that there are many, many ways now that people have figured out how to let people play this game in ways that are a little more accessible, a little smoother, a little more modern that smooth out some of the edges. It's not just that, right? Like the framerate was 20 frames per second, right? So it is not as snappy as it should be, obviously. I don't know, were you able to overclock it on Analog 3D? Logan, does it run better? Yes, I did unleashed on the Analog and it was, that machine is so cool. I love that thing and it was really, really special playing Ocarina with the CRT filter on it on my big 55 inch TV. Look, it was just going, good, it looks on 3DS. Yeah. I just think, and I guess, I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from on this because people are going to like come at me about Ocarina because it's everyone's like beloved childhood game. I, having played, like linked to the past, I also played for the first time as an adult and top down sprite based games like that age, like fine one. Yeah, of course they do. Still so easy to play. Logan, you're playing Chrono Trigger right now and that has aged fantastically. Again, top down to D. That stuff, age is really, really well because it was so simple to control in the first place. 3D stuff has a harder time. No. That's just how it is and that is okay. I am so glad that we have better ways to play this nowadays. It's just like, it's something that I always feel crazy talking about because sometimes people get really upset when you criticize their darlings. No, I get it. I really did struggle with it. I got mad a lot at this game trying to play it at certain times in certain ways. Water temple actually wasn't that bad. Jabu Jabu really frustrated me. I had, I love the shadow temple with all my heart. I think that was the worst temple or my favorite dungeons, but I also had a really, really hard time with that in bottom of the well. I like a lot of the puzzles in it just trying to target things correctly, trying to find where things were moving around, seeing what I was supposed to be seeing in a given room, but also I still really liked it. I see what people are crazy about this. You should have played the 3DS version, maybe. But I mean, it still is the most realistic game ever made because adults can't use slingshots and kids can't use sticks. That's true. Yeah. It does not exist. It's not a fact. Yeah, there's one of the fights. They jump between the platforms there. It's so cool. I know what you're saying too, Rep, that it is, I just think I look at it from the backwards perspective where I'm like, this is the first game that ever had lock on targeting in 3D. It's not, it improved, but oh my God, they did it. They're still doing it out. They're still doing it right out. Yes, but I also just don't usually get angry at or mad at games. It's a product of its time, and to me when I play something from that, I'm like, yeah, sure. That kind of washes over me. But angry or mad usually, I think it became frustrating for me like contextually because this is a classic, and this is a game that everybody loves, and I'm coming at this trying very hard to see what people love in it. And when I'm stuck in like a dungeon or something, and I can't quite figure it out, like, I don't know. It's just, it's sort of frustrating to not be able to see what other people see or to feel like I'm not getting something. Yeah. That's okay. I run into this all the time, right? Like with modern games where people completely love a game. Like, I don't love it. But yeah, this is, I mean, we just, I feel like if we get a visual refresh off of this game, and they're just iron out some of the, some of the jank and maybe turn, jubble, jubble into a, into a proper, proper dungeon, some fashion. This would be, this would be amazing. I mean, this would be, I hope they make it. Yeah. I really hope they make it. Absolutely. And the only stuff that I didn't notice when I first played this back in the days and I wrote the review for you, right? Like way, way back when and where I'm like, oh, I'm surprised I didn't bring this up. And it's like, I just didn't notice it. For example, you know, Pierre, the, the scarecrow, like a lot, there, there are a lot of people finish this game never actually. I'm on a little guy. I never, never figure out what, but, but you will encounter him because sometimes you accidentally lock on to the spot that Pierre would be if you had unlocked him. Yes. And so people go like, why is it locking onto this random spot, right? Like, and I remember that playing that and didn't highlight it, highlight it back when I wrote the review, but, um, the story may crazy. And my partner finally had to explain it to me because I was in these dungeons and I was, like, it happened on a couple puzzles I was struggling on. Like, it was trying to figure them out. And Navi kept like flying up to some random empty spot. And I'm like, am I missing a puzzle? Like, what is up there that I'm not understanding? And finally, he had to be like, it's not anything. It's the scarecrow thing. Which I knew about sort of from Majora's mask a little bit, but like, yeah, that was kind of confusing. Yeah, I just wanted to bring up the dungeons again. I touched on a little earlier, but man, you know what I would give to be lost truly in a Zelda dungeon again in a new Zelda game. They just don't do it like this anymore. And I don't know if it's because they've decided it's too frustrating for the modern players or if dungeons like this are just freaking hard to design. And I just think about the dungeons in this game specifically and just how you do have to zoom out and think about them as a whole. Like they are a toy puzzle box, which is what our new mo is inspired by when making dungeons in Zelda games. And like the fire temple we're seeing right now, you have to climb to the top, get the hammer and knock the pillar down to the first floor to get to the last door. It's so good. Don't do it like this anymore. Metroid Prime 4 has a little bit of that, but obviously it does. The hint system chimes in a little bit more often than we would like to, but like there were a couple of places in Metroid Prime 4 where I was supposed to go this way and I was supposed to go that way and I did enjoy the exploration. I mean, I feel like nostalgia ensures that Nintendo will go back to this game. Like Metroid Prime 4 basically is the Wind Waker formula, right? Down to how the open world is sort of formulaic and structured, right? You got your dungeons in the corner. So it makes you go through the middle and discover things like Wind Waker is like that. Where like key dungeons are placed at the corners or key areas are placed at the corners of the map. I bet we'll go back to something like that. I just hope it's not the sort of Skyward Sword style set up of a, you know, sort of, it's almost like a mini game connecting the dungeons rather than a truly exploitable area. You know what I realized I had taken for granted for playing this game, the having a little icon that shows you which door you entered from and which direction you're facing. This game does that. This game does it. I know it does exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. But so like I've had, like that's in video games all the time and I usually neither need it nor care because most dungeons are straight line basically. So yeah, I came from the door behind me. I'm going to the door in front of me. No problem. But this one like no, you're constantly getting turned around. A lot of the walls look very similar on either side. And I so many times in dungeons, I was like crap. I really wish I had the map in Compass right now. Oh my god. I know it makes the compass. I'm like, yes, it makes the compass really useful. Yeah. Yeah, the compass is the use of some later games. But this it really was in some of the 2D games. I'd skip it just to finish the dungeon. Yeah, I'm at the point where I skip it in this game. That's just because I know I know I know it every inch of it. But I agree it is really, really cool. I'm yeah. How cool is the puzzle? How cool is the puzzle where you like the stick and then you walk through the water and the stick goes out like that like the very first stick puzzle, right? Yeah, yeah. That's cool too. Or even the first dungeon just like, okay, you have to climb to the top so you can jump down to break the spider web. It's like so few games I think make you think about a room connection to other rooms. It's like you even Metroid Prime 4. You enter the room, you solve the puzzles in this room, basically nothing in this room impacts anything in any other room. That's just how games are now. And it's like not in Ocarina of Time. And to some extent, like Majora's Mask does it a little bit Windwaker, a little bit Twilight Princess, but like less and less each game. Like this is the one where they challenge you in the water temple. People complain about it. It's probably the best dungeon in this game. It is just genius. Link to the past is hard. Okay. Well, everything down here with the water level at one and then we have to raise it. And then when you get the long shot, you got to kind of cycle back through and do it again. It's just awesome stuff that I would just love to see again in Zelda, the Divine Beast aren't it? Yeah, I like the dungeons better in tier 2 of the kingdom. They're still not at either, not even close to what they were doing here. Like I was going to bring up Link to the path does this and like Ocarina sort of carries the torch there, but like in Link to the Path, they say, even though it's today, to D, it teaches you to think in three dimensions because there's a room on the top level and you're supposed to push a block into a hole. And then that block is on the floor below that was mind boggling at the time because yes, it used to be that whatever you do in a room is reset and never anything changes. And like, yeah, Ocarina took that and continue that was so cool. I, this is my other controversy. You'll take, if you take away the, the having to open the menu to get the iron boots out every single time, I just put it on a button. Water tipples fine. Yeah. Honestly, I had a pretty good time. It wasn't my favorite. I think it's a tie between, well, Shadow and Shadow temple and bottom of the well blend together for me. And like I like them both, like kind of as continuations of the same theme that forest temple, but water temple actually had a nice time with most people get lost. Cycle through. I just went in a circle every time. Every time I change the water, I'm like, okay, so I just go to the right back in the center room all the way around. I've gone all the way around. Okay, next water level go all the way around. It was the thing. It was fine except for that one hole. Yeah, I think they are certain. Some people just struggled with. They weren't clear what actually changes when you change the water level every time and like what to pay attention to, right? Like obviously boxes floating up and you can get to a new area. And I remember this is, this was always the most popular strategy guide page and our strategy guide was the water temple and then they, they put lines on the wall for the 3DS version. So they could tell what the impact was, right? Yeah. Oh, it's so cool. Just sinking down to was such a neat thing. Boom. Yeah. I do just want to shout out Ganondorf. What a guy. What a villain. I just, I just enjoyed it. Ganondorf. I like to the story in this game. It's really goofy and again, just like guys go and hey, hey, all the time. I don't know. Like these kids, like Zelda sort of figures out what's going on. It's like very precocious young child and then concocts a plan herself without like involving any adults to save the world. It goes horribly wrong. And Ganondorf is just there the whole time like, hey, hey, if I just, if I just leave them alone, these children who are trying to stop me will bring everything right to my doorstep. And then they do. And he's there at the end. And I love, I love the finalist sent into his castle where you're like climbing up the stairs and the organ music is getting louder. And I got to the top and I, this Castlevania freaking situation and I hit the door and I set out loud to my partner. I hope he's playing the organ. Yeah. It's like a cat in the old moment there, right? It's so good. Yeah. It's goofy as heck and I loved it. And then I, I don't think I, I said anything about this to you before Logan, but I, when they, he throws the master sword out of the arena, I watched him do it. And I just sort of shrugged, opened up my inventory and I had the bigger arms. Oh, nice. Yeah. A lot of people don't have that at that point. It's sort of a funny thing that most people like maybe don't notice or do, but I'm like, I have another one. What is this? Yeah. Well, but you need a magic sword to defeat him, right? Like, yeah. I didn't die. Just clop it up with the big sword. Yeah, yeah, no fair enough. Yeah, yeah. Roll, do you roll through his legs to get to his tail? Because that's the strategy. I tried. And I was informed that that was the strategy, but I was having a little trouble doing it. So I just, you know, sort of hopped around him. Yeah. But at that point, I had kind of figured out the, I had to sort of mentally go back to Wind Waker in my brain, because Wind Waker was my first 3D Zelda. And the controls in this were a little closer to that than they are to modern ones. And so I had to kind of mentally go back to, okay, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, counter. Wind Waker, I didn't just go back to combat just the one. That's what I wanted. Yeah, yeah. I know the way that Wind Waker uses rhythm and music and its combat is, and how it talks with the music is so cool. Yeah. I try the princess better though. Anything else on Ocarina's time for you move on? I'm trying to think, I don't know. I get it, okay? Like, everybody leave me alone. I get it. I get why it's great. It is not my favorite Zelda. It's, it has a beaten Majora's Mask. I still really like Majora's Mask. But I gain a greater appreciation for it. I do think, especially to Logan's point, I think I gained like a much greater appreciation of why, like, I mean, I played all the old 2D Zelda's, the top down ones. I think I gained a much greater appreciation for why people are nostalgic for the puzzles of the older games because, like, like, I have a nostalgia for the 2D ones. But I, I mean, Majora's Mask has great dungeons, but I don't think they're quite on the level. No, they're not. They're not. Like, I think I just gained a greater appreciation for that. I don't know that I'll ever play it again. Like, this isn't going to be something I go back to every single year. But it was really cool. And I enjoyed it a lot. And now, I think I've covered all of the big Zelda's at this point. I don't think anybody can give me crap about Zelda anymore. Good. You got to replay Twilight Princess. I will not be doing that. Everybody needs to. No, I will not. That's the low list. It seems actually awesome. I mean, when you played Ocarina of Time, you're like, oh, Twilight Princess is actually the Ocarina of Time, too. I'm sure they'll add the GameCube version, unless they're doing a proper remaster or something. We'll see. I'll replay it when it hits. It's the GameCube Nintendo Switch online section, whatever it's called now, I forget. Yeah, Nintendo classics. Nintendo classics. Yeah. Nintendo classics. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, anything else should we move on? No, move on. Yeah. Okay. Cool. That's Ocarina of Time. And our first of many Zelda segments to come to celebrate Zelda's 40th anniversary. This episode is brought to you by SimplySafe. And this... SimplySafe on. Is the sound of peace of mind. SimplySafe's sensors, HD cameras and 24-7 security monitoring protect your home inside and out against break-ins, fires, water leaks and more. So you can relax. Visit SimplySafe.co.uk slash pod for an exclusive discount. Let's hit the news. This first one here, we have reports that Switch 2 comparatively struggled over its first Christmas season compared to sales of what the Switch delivered in 2017. So basically, sales in November were down 35% in the US compared to what the Switch delivered in 2017. But for context, it was also the worst November across the board in terms of video game console hardware sales since 1995, since before Ocarina of Time. It was even out. So yeah, it was a rough holiday season for games. A Switch 2 is down in Japan by 5.5% over Switch 1 and in the UK by 11%. And an unnamed senior Nintendo employee spoke to the game business and cited the complicated economic landscape and the absence of a major Western game as reasons why Switch 2 struggled over a holiday. And I want to say people are throwing shade of Metroid Prime 4 saying, oh wow, Nintendo hates Metroid. And to me, I'm like, that's never been a major franchise. And I don't think that's a reason. I know. That's a major Western game. The success of the Switch was not paved on the availability of a major Western game. That's nonsense. Well, maybe the person meant Western friendly one like a Zelda or Mario or something. No, that's what I think they meant. I think people keep writing headlines that this is about Metroid, but I think it's about Kirby Airwriters, which did huge numbers and can't and nothing over here. I think that's fair. I think that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, Rob, what do you make of all this? So I'm actually a teaser. I've seen all this reached out to a bunch of analysts myself earlier this week. I have replies slowly filling my inbox. I asked them a bunch of questions about this topic specifically trying to get some more numbers, especially globally, because we have sort of, I think sort of a skewed picture of sales. Like we have a little bit of information about a couple of countries, but there's more to this, I'm sure. And I don't have all the responses in yet. So it's possible that my feelings about this might change going into next week when I write this. But from what I understand is this is not like people are acting like this is dire or something it's not from what I can tell. Like it seems like the issue in Japan is less about the sales being down in Japan is less about people not wanting the switch and more about availability of the switch to the one of the reasons that it probably the reason the switch to sold so well right at launch everywhere is because Nintendo made sure there were a ton of them ready to go. Like the availability of this thing was incredible compared to most like console launches. And so it sold very, very quickly. And I believe as far as we know is still outpacing the original switch. It is. Yeah. Well, we'll be doing that forever, I'm sure, but is still outpacing it even after the holiday, I think could be wrong. But in Japan, like longer term, my understanding is that the availability in Japan hasn't been as good as it is in the US. And so as a result, there are a lot of people who want it there that can't necessarily get it. And that's why, you know, sales are a little weaker than they could be. There are two versions there. They remember there's the cheaper one for the Japanese market only, right? The commercial areas and these issues. Yes. And that is the other issue in the US and probably one of the big reasons US sales are down is because everything's expensive. I mean, you can, we write about the US sales every month. Like everyone's buying the NEX playground because it's like $200, right? And people just get it very easily. But yeah, it's more expensive here. The economy isn't a weird spot here. It's not, it's not dire. Like it's fine. And to overcome, to overcome sort of price anxiety and, you know, people thinking about, oh, maybe I'm going to save my money until, you know, I really, really need this thing. The, with the switch, everybody talked about Breath of the Wild, right? Like it was this sort of, just like with the Wii, where everybody is like, oh my God, you got to play this bowling game. It's like, it's crazy. Like you will not believe how this tennis or bowling game controls. There wasn't an analog story for the switch, too. The switch, too, is, you know, it's a nice device. It has a good Mario Kart game on it and all of that. But there wasn't this sort of, this experience is unlike anything we've ever had. And so given that, I think it's a pretty major success story that people are buying. This thing, it's expensive. The games are expensive. Mario Kart is not the best Mario Kart. You know, it's not as good as the last one. And there isn't this sort of surprise story that you can do something like it's not like there's a game where you go like, oh my God, the mouse changes everything, right? Like it's a cool feature, but not there's no Mario on it. But not a revolution. Yeah. I don't say, no, I don't say to denigrate to Gabe and Anne, but that was earlier this year. It was not there. No, it was not a November game. Like all the people that were very excited about that game, odd it earlier this year. Yes. So there's not a holiday game to make the sales happen over the holiday. Yeah. And that's what I want to say too, is that we sat on the, Brian and I sat in New York on this show in April and said, how do we think this thing is going to do? And we said, it's going to start hot because all the hardcore fans are going to buy it right away. And it will trail off because it's expensive. And people don't want to buy this for their kids for $450 or $500. Like that, that is kind of what we thought was going to happen. And people did get really mad at us at the time. And then it is what happened. That is, I think all that's happening is that Switch One was a slow ramp up because there was no confidence in Nintendo at the start of 2017 when they launched it. People like us bought one. We played Breath of the Wild and this word of mouth gets around. Well, you have to get this thing. Nintendo is back. There's a Zelda like there's never been before. And that's why Switch Two crushed Switch One sales in the first three months is because it was slow. Here we had a ton of stock, a ton of demand from long time Switch players. And now we're seeing it kind of trail downward instead because it's reverse this time. And I think what result in a first year for Switch Two that is on par or even ahead of Switch One's first year. So I don't think it's concerning. I think this was very, very predictable. And I think they're still in a completely fine spot. Yeah. Yeah. Even Mario Kart, right? Like the success story of Mario Kart. Every generation was that Mario Kart keeps selling every year, right? Like it will keep selling. I am hoping they expanded and like unlock some of the true potential. You know, like the biggest disappointment was to give you an open world that doesn't, you know, it just doesn't feel like it's not that fun to explore. And it's not that fun to be in because I can't hang out with my friends in chat while we're trying to do these different challenges. And I think over time they all address this. Remember Mario Kart Eight launched without battle mode. And that was our biggest complaint at the time. I was like, I can't believe they wouldn't include battle mode. They finally, when they finally added it to eight deluxe, it was like, eh, that's not the best part of the game anymore. It's like this game has just evolved to be spectacular. So I have high hopes that Mario Kart will find its voice in the future. The base is there. It controls amazingly. It looks wonderful. I think it'll add on to the sort of the library of the Switch Two being this really attractive console that people are going to want to eventually buy. I also think, you know, maybe this holiday season, next holiday season, there'll be, there'll be an OLED, probably not this year because of all the terrorist shenanigans, but they can get really some more expensive console. I think you there are some people who are saying, oh, I'm going to wait till the OLED comes out. Yeah. I love seeing what the first one. Yeah. Or a handheld light comes out. Yeah. No, I was like, she's going to bring up Mario Kart in the, what we've been playing segment, but I'll just do it now. I returns to Mario Kart a ton over the holiday. And like I talked about Animal Crossing has gotten a ton of tiny little things that makes it a better game, but it's not really for me. Mario Kart is absolutely for me. And they've made a ton of tiny changes that 99% of people won't care about, but this game is quietly a lot better than it was at launch. And like it's kind of too late. It's not too late, but people aren't really talking about it in the same way. It has custom items now. I called that out in my review as something that was totally missing. You can group up with four friends and play Knockout Tour online with Strangers now, which was my biggest complaint about this game last night. Me and my friend played six Knockout Tourers online together with a lobby full of people. And that is like the best Mario Kart can be is playing Knockout Tour with a full room of 24 people and your friends. Like they, they added, um, not a jukebox yet, but they've added that when you pause, you can see what the song is and what game it's from, which is just a nice little touch that should have been there maybe on day one. Like they've added 10 or 15 tiny checklist items that have made this game. It's inching towards what it should have been at launch. And I'm very happy with the changes. Yeah. I have high confidence like because the base is really good. What's there is really, really good. And yeah, it'll just keep getting better. I do hope they do a track pack season pass type strategy like they did because it was always an incentive to go back in and you go, oh, yeah, this game is really good. We did play it. We had family over and, you know, my sister in law has two little ones. And so my son, Kai and I played Mario Kart against them getting quite good, the little ones. And it was super fun. We played Smash Brothers and like, oh, yeah, they have this other franchise. They haven't spoken off in many years. I think the future for Switch 2 obviously looks, looks very bright. There's Mario's there. There's this, Smash's there's we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then looking ahead to the future, a little bit, President Shintaro Furukawa spoke to Kyoto Shimbun, a newspaper in Japan and talked about the volatile RAM market because of AI data centers who were buying up all this stuff. And this could lead to a price increase right now for a call was calling it hypothetical. But we've kind of been reading between the lines a little bit and Nintendo is maybe considering a price increase after this fiscal year, which ends on March 31st, I wouldn't be surprised if that happens. And Nintendo also basically talked about tariffs and said that our basic policy is to recognize tariffs as a cost and pass them onto prices as much as possible, not just in the US, but they're also talking about carefully considering that this is a crucial period for our game business as they promote the adoption of new hardware and maintain the momentum of their platform. So yeah, last year was a tough year to launch a console and we've talked about it a lot and we're still feeling those ripple effects too into this year. I still think Nintendo is better off than Xbox and PlayStation are going to be because like if last year was a bad year to launch a console, I don't know when they're planning on launching theirs, but this year's not going to be very good. Next year seems like it probably won't be very good either and who knows if 2028 will be any good. Yeah. Yeah. PlayStation seems to be finding its footing finally in Japan. So I think things are looking a little up there. But yeah, it's tough. You know, like we'll see what happens with Xbox. That one is definitely the toughest one. I'm sure they have nightmares and wake up in the morning good volatile ram market. I mean, it's real, right? Yeah. I was thinking, I'm very happy to be on this podcast right now and I don't envy my illustrious colleagues over on Unlocked Right Now because I imagine that's a pretty tough thing to talk about every week. I know. Yes. I think it's a great thing to talk about things like Mario Tennis fever, which just got a big overview trailer. I don't know. This is the next first party game now that Animal Crossing is out. It is out on February 12th and I sent to this to both of you as homework. Did you all do your homework and watch this trailer? No. I did. Oh, okay. Hey, are you watching the overview trailer? I did. That's all good. That's all good. We have a lot of new, I don't think we're policy. I mean, I'll like it. I'll share it right now. What you think? Logan, all I can say is like Camelots been doing this for like two decades now. They're just so good. Like, first of all, I think it looks genuinely pretty. It's very beautiful looking. A lot of it, obviously, like you see it zoomed out, but when it zooms into the cameras and the grass and everything, it's just like, it's just a wonderful looking Mario Tennis. And then they added this sort of, they added the, with the fever stuff, they added some of the whackiness that we've seen in Mario Wanderer, which I think adds an element to me. Like, I've played so many Mario sports games and I've racked, racketed so many hours of Mario Tennis with friends and always, always love the experience of playing with four players. I feel like I get it. And I know what it feels like. I know how to play it. I know I'm going to have fun with it. Having things that you discover, like new effects and new, new, like crazy records that give you special powers, like that is what was needed to bring me back and get me to care about this game. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like there's just a lot in it. As an adventure mode, you know, Camelot was really good with that with Mario Welf in the past as well. So it looks really, really good and it looks like they actually spent some serious time on making this good. Yeah. No, I agree. I'm going to predict right now this is going to be the best Mario sports game maybe ever but like in at least 20 years. Like I think that this is the problem with the switch air of sports games was the Nintendo kind of released them a little bit unfinished and they patched in free updates. Like tennis ace has launched with, I don't know, 15, 18 characters. It was low and it worked its way up to 35 over the course of two years of free updates. This is launching with 38 on day one. Like this is the biggest roster than ace is finished on its launch day plus 30 rackets to mix and match with your characters plus like a tower mode with different challenges that looks kind of like classic mode from smash brothers. Maybe you want to be the adventure mode. Maybe you want to be the adventure mode. I think this game looks fantastic. Ases, the bones of aces are amazing. I talked about that last week. I played that game for like 60 hours. Play's awesome. This game looks to even improve on that. I think this is going to be a hit. They nailed feel with aces already. Like when you smash the ball, it just feels so good and when you land it, it's just a wonderful tactile experience. Is this the first sports game with hit points? Because you can run out of energy. You can run out of energy. Yeah, you've got hit points now. If you take too much damage from court obstacles, you have to sit it out for a second. Which is when you're playing doubles, this creates, I think the room will come alive. If one player craps out and leaves, abandon the other player to fend for themselves, I think this is going to be some really loud party moments here. Yeah. I probably should have done my homework because I'm watching this video right now and actually I think this looks kind of rad. Does it look great? Right? Yeah. I, early in this clip, like way way back several minutes ago, oh, this is cool. They were showing someone playing tennis against a giant fish in the water that was shooting cheap cheaps at them. And I don't know why, but that just made me really happy. Like that, I don't know. I could do that. I played the original Mario tennis a lot. Like my neighbor had, it was the N64 one. It was the original one, right? Yeah. Yeah. I went over all the time and the two games we played were Donkey Kong 64 and Mario tennis, all the, and well, a little bit of Mario party as well, all the time. And I freaking loved Mario tennis back then. And I do, I have not played a Mario tennis since I should play Mario tennis. Look at this. This looks great. You should play this one. There's never been a better time. This looks great. But I just really think so. I think that the big thing this is going to hinge on is the adventure mode because people want that to be good. Yes. People want it to be like an RPG golf story is an amazing sports RPG adventure. I love that game. It's so great. Well, Mario golf games used to have like really, really good story modes too. Yeah. Like all story is like a spiritual successor to Mario golf, the handhelds totally. And the last couple Camelot, super rush for golf and ACEs for tennis. Its adventure mode has been more of a tutorial. And the wording so far kind of sounds like that's what this is going to be. This has learned the basics and adventure mode. And that's this, that seems to be the only missing piece. But who knows, it could be good. Yeah. Camelot used to make RPGs. Look, look, he's got a banana racket. Also, the Goomba holding the tennis racket in his mouth is, of course, has to happen. But it just looks amazing. Yeah, I'm so happy for you. Yeah. Finish this. It looks good and then make me an RPG, please. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if they ever will. They won't. I think they're in Mario sports cycle forever. I've given up. I've given up. They'll start golf after this one. That does look really good. I'm glad they're still around and kicking. Yeah. It looks finished. Reb, next time you visit the LA office, be sure to bring your switch so you can, I've got all my amoebo in the office now. Nice. It's a lot. And so, you know, people would swing by my office to unlock a radio in a certain game. And, you know, I've got all the cons together. So this game uses a lot of amoebo as well, right? Just to unlock tennis ball designs. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Look at them. Well, yeah, never got one in the Mario line. He's just there in the smash line. You brought in all the amoebo into the San Francisco office once. And I don't remember what game it was for, but I remember we were all sitting around the table, scanning all of them. Mario maker, because you get all the sprites from it. Yeah, like there were people just go me. Me, me, me, it's like a check out counter. Yeah, that game is back. Well, Perry, you have a lot of amoebo. You also have a lot of joy, Khan. So I thought of you first when Nintendo announced the light purple light green joy, Khan 2. At the same day as Mario tennis fever for 99, 99. And yeah, these aren't great. If you haven't seen them, the base color is still the same. It's still like the dark gray or black that the standard joy, Khan 2 are. And it's just the little ring underneath the control stick. And then the rail that locks into the switch to or that you play when you play with just the split joy, Khan that is colored. And the rest is the same. And, Perry, what did you call this to me? And we're talking about this. I said it's like getting really fancy underpants because yeah, who will, who will ever know? Right. It's so subtle and it's not really visible unless you look really, really close. But like, you know, there, there are a lot of crazy classic joy con designs. Remember the Zelda ones, the blue ones with, you know, on Nate designs on them, you've got, you know, you've got this whole like Easter color collection of all the pastel colors. And, you know, it was a struggle for me to get all the colors because of the reverse colors were only sold in Japan. And so yes, I went to, went to Japan not for joy con, but on vacation and picked up all the reverse colors so that I have them all. I don't have that motivation when it's a tiny little ring in the middle. And honestly, the difference here is so subtle that the only time this makes sense right now is if you have a family or you have friends and you play four player games, just so you can distinguish the joy con that you're using for a certain game. Other than that, it's not a fashion statement because nobody can tell. I mean, for comparison, the ones we're looking at right now are the Switch One purple and games. Yes. Yeah, look really nice. Yeah, look really nice. Pretty, but I think somebody said, somebody said to me that the Switch Two versions of those look like somebody just spilled juice under the sticks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did, you know, like I do like the design of the original joy con with the colored ring, but I did not think they would now just swap out that very subtle ring. I thought, okay, now they're going to have fun with it. Maybe they have like dual colors where the main body of the joy con is a different color from the ring. You know, maybe you can do something where now, you know, you have like gold and silver colors mixed and it's like a car, right? Like, well, you have a chrome trim. You're not that excited when every car is all chrome. It's not going to look that good. So yeah, thank you. Tim Ting, but also a hundred bucks. I think I'm going to have to skip. I say that. Like, if you, yeah, you'll end up with something. If you need a second set of joy con, like it's just such a French case because your joy con ones work on Switch One and you have the Pro Controller and it's like, I don't know, the only thing I can think of or what's a game where everyone needs to play with the joy con too. It's the mouse mini games and Jambore TV. But who's doing that? Like, you really don't need two pairs of joy con too. We're all playing on Pro controllers. It's fine. Yeah. This is really interesting because you're looking at it right now, obviously with a rail on it. And then it is a little bit more noticeable. But most of the time, you know, for me, my joy con are docked when I play out in public when somebody would notice, ooh, that man has some nice joy con. Whereas like at home, I'm playing with a Pro Controller. That's what people say. That's all the time. Yeah. They're like, you get nice joy cons. So I just really, you get that many compliments on it. Lots of compliments whenever I'm on a near plane. They don't look that visually striking, but it does fit with the visual identity of Switch Two, which is kind of an older, more like, I don't know, mid 20s type consumer kid with their Switch One, adult with their Switch Two. We see that in the pricing. It's priced older, not as much for kids. And I don't know if you're looking at a store shelf and you see these bright, colorful ones. Maybe they're worried of another Wii U thing where people don't know the difference and like, hey, this is pretty clearly what Joy-Con Two look like. You can see that difference. So maybe that's what they're doing here, but it's still not that exciting. I would have preferred a super NES edition with like a super big-one edition light gray with colorful buttons on it or something, but it's, we'll take it. It means they haven't forgotten about us. They're still driving a collector's crazy and just doing left purple and right mint and not with the reverse colors so you can think of them, but whatever. Yeah. And Nintendo's releasing more stuff. My Mario is coming to the West next month. And if you miss this, this is a product line aimed at very young children. It is like a soft plush of Mario. It is woodblock toys that are also amoebo. It is bath toys. It is these like claymation shorts are these like felt plus shorts on YouTube. We're seeing now Mario brushing his mustache and yeah, this is coming to. So kids learn how to do it. Nintendo New York. Yes. Yeah. So they can know. New York and San Francisco on February 19th and select retailers this spring and that's going to expand throughout the year. In addition, a free hello Mario app will launch on Switch and mobile on February 19th. This has been out in Japan for a while and a pair was thinking about importing the woodblock amoebo, but I know you stopped yourself short of spending a hundred bucks on kid toys. Low kid toys. Maybe 200 bucks if you imported them. Like if you because yeah, because they weren't sold here. This is the thing that made me stop collecting amoebo. When that came out, I'm like, okay, that's it. Like I didn't, I don't find them to be that amazing looking. Obviously, the play value is not important to me in this case, but like I was like, if they're just releasing like little wooden, wooden blocks and I have to import them, I think I'm done. And like it coincided with shenanigans around the monster hunter amoebo being like GameStop locked again and all of that. And so this is the thing where I'm like, I think I'm just going to get the amoebo I really want. I'll get Resident Evil. I'll get Donkey Kong and all that. But we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. 12 years. I have not seen them in person yet. So I'll check them out. Maybe next time. I mean, San Francisco and look at them in the Nintendo store. Yeah. But I think that my Mario thing is really cute. And I think it's neat to have this app that's for kids and just introducing Mario to the youngest generation. I think it's smart. And it's just another one in Nintendo's play is to just expand their audience in every direction they can and it works. They're hitting everything in it. I remember right when Brian had his kid and it was the sort of early days, he was like looking forward to playing Nintendo games, but his kid was too little. Like this opens up the world of Nintendo to a younger audience. You know, they're already going maybe to the amusement park and being exposed to it there. But no, I think it's really smart. And this is Nintendo strategies to make sure it celebrates its characters everywhere for you know, like those board games always say for like ages one to 99, right? Like this is, I think Lego does that too. Right. Yeah. I think it's cute. I was just, you know, like I realized that maybe I'm not a toddler anymore. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I mean, it's a big surprise to everyone. I'm sure. Yeah. We also did get Lego Pokemon sets announced, which you are shipping on Pokemon Day. There's an EV, which is $59.99, Pikachu and a Pokeball for $199.99. And the biggest sticker shock of the mall, Venusaur Charizard and Blastoise for $6.49.99. That's a 7,000 piece set. We're talking like Ultimate Collector Series, Millennium Falcon size. Like it is enormous. Reb, what do you think of these Pokemon sets? I don't think these Pokemon sets are for ages under than old enough to have a W2. Yeah. Very impressive. Yeah. Maybe not even then. Like I look. Look, he's going through invoices right there. No, they're, they're, their whole trailer was about like Pokemon fans with back pain building these sets. Seriously, watch it. They're like making fun of Gen One fans who are now adults. It's very weird. I like Legos. I, I'm one of those sad children who did not grow up with Legos. Like we just, I just didn't get to play with them. And so I don't like, like I want, you know, I bought Legos as an adult and I think they're fun. But I have now, now seeing like all these cool things that I'm into get Lego sets that I would conceivably be into. Legos are so expensive, dude. They're just like crazy. All Legos are super expensive. Like every time I go to the store, I think, oh man, I'd really like to build that. And then it's like, you know, 60, 70, 100 bucks more than that, whatever. Like I don't have that kind of money to put on this thing. And it's a bummer because they made choices here, right? Like they could have, because there's additional ones too. There's like the Pokeball, there's like the little Pokemon Center and stuff. But you know, like bonuses. Yeah, but you can only get them if you buy like the other stuff. And so they could conceivably have sold smaller versions for cheaper. They could have sold Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise separately cheaper. They'll do, I mean, this is a start of it, right? I think they're testing the market to see who the Pokemon Lego buyer is because I say found out with Star Wars. In the beginning, they made Star Wars Lego kids toys. And then they did UCS, which are these unlimited collectors, big sets, more expensive sets. And they found out that they can charge over a grand for Millennium Falcon, right? And like they were selling those. It sucks though. I know. And I have a lot of the Star Wars UCS sets when I moved into a new house. I just don't have room to display them anymore. And that's sort of put a damper on my Lego buying experience a bit. But they also invested, they did two things, right? First of all, they didn't compromise on the quality of the bricks, right? Any other company would have said, let's make the plastic cheaper, make more money or sell them for cheaper. And Lego, you know, being Scandinavian perfectionist, said, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to keep it. And then the second thing is they made the builds more fun. Like when you're actually building a Lego set, they really think about the building journey and like how you discover things, they do different colored insights to show you like the structural, like how the structure is built. I love this stuff, but I'm out of room. Yeah. I just can't afford it. And so straight up, I can't afford this. Yeah, I don't love it. I'm glad it's fun. Have fun everybody. I don't love Pokemon $600 worth. Now, like you'll be able to pick them up cheaper after after launch, right? Like there'll be ways to get them, but it'll still be up a hundred. Yeah, that's. Yeah, EV is the cheapest at $59.99. Also, of course, the smallest at $587 pieces. You know, Lego had a big price bump a few years ago when everything was getting more expensive and they never came back down. It is really pricey. You got to be choosy. More expensive to manufacture too, yeah. Sadly, we are at time. You both have meetings to run to, but Fire Emblem Pathoradians is on Nintendo Switch Online and they can make sure you pack on Switch 2 and Paris playing it. So maybe we can have you back sometime soon to talk about that. It's really good. You're an Nintendo. I've never played it. I'm very excited to play it. Really good. This is a $200 game cube game. So I'm really hyped to jump in on Switch 2. And then Nintendo Year in Review 2025 is live. You can go see your stats from 2025. How many hours you played each month and what games? Yeah. And nobody played Switch in May. If you played Switch in May, leave a comment. Everyone was just waiting for Switch 2. Like every chart I saw, just a huge dip before the biggest spike you've ever seen in June. I thought that was pretty fun. But yeah, let us know what yours were. But that is another episode of Nintendo Voice Chat in the books we're here every Friday, with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on the IGN Games channel on YouTube. If you like the show, please tell a friend or leave us a review, rating, or nice comment where every year listening, it helps us out so much. Next week we're celebrating 20 years of Nintendo Voice Chat by looking back at the reason this show started to begin with. And that is the lead up to the reveal of Nintendo Wii, which should be a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Reb and Pear for joining me. Thank you to Tio, working behind the scenes. And thank you for listening. But for now, that's all the time I've got. I got to get back to playing Animal Crossing, New Horizons, Nintendo Switch 2 edition on my Nintendo Switch 2. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more Nintendo Voice Chat, the only place you can. Get the thing.