Mario Tennis Fever Is Good… But Not $70 Good - NVC 799

This week on Nintendo Voice Chat, we played Mario Tennis Fever and Pokemon Pocopia. We'll talk all about it. Plus, the new quarterly financial results are in. NVC starts right now. You've switched to Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of February 12, 2026. I'm Logan Plant, joined this week just by Brian Altano. What's up, Brian? How are you? Doing good. I know you're a little sick, but I think we're going to make it. Yeah. So if you've heard me on Beyond this week and then on NBC this morning, and then I'll be on another PlayStation show later today, thank you for putting up with me, all of you. Yeah, we're always happy to. Yeah, everyone's out this week. Seth's on assignment. Reb is at Dice. Jada is still at IGN. I've seen your comments. She still works at IGN. She's just too busy right now to be on podcasts. But we hope to see her again on NBC soon. So just me and Brian this week to talk about Pokemon Pocopia, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, the quarterly financials, which we're very excited to get to. But we'll start with Mario Tennis Fever, which is out today. I reviewed it. I gave it a 7. You can go check that out up on IGN. And Brian, this game is a Mario sports game. It's a fun Mario sports game. It doesn't quite take the steps forward that I kind of was hoping and thought it was going to based on the really great trailers that they were putting out ahead of time. And that comes down to just a lot of the single-player content ranging from fine to really, really bad at times. And so it's just kind of like what you expect from Mario Sports. If you have friends to play with, if you want to play online, it's good. It's a really good time. But if you're looking for anything beyond that, you're not really going to get it here. Does it feel to you like this has sort of been the running theme with Mario Sports games for quite a while now, where I think that it was the exception, not the rule, that they had really great single-player campaigns back in the day, but there was just enough of them to kind of set the bar high where people just were like, why isn't this as good as it used to be? Because it feels like every single time this is the story, right? Like mechanically, they're awesome visually, they're fantastic, they're just fun as heck to play. And then you're like, okay, so what do I do as a single player? And it's like, well, not much. Yeah, it's interesting because tennis games specifically have only ever had like a RPG single player mode on the handheld ones on Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. and those loom very large in a lot of fans' minds. They're legendary campaigns. They're pretty basic RPGs, but they're just really unique because you play as your own character and you work your way through this tennis academy. And then the final boss is Mario. And that's just such a cool idea for a little handheld Mario tennis experience. And then with Aces, they're like, okay, we're bringing an adventure mode back. It wasn't good. It just kind of lacked all that RPG flavor that people wanted. It focused a lot on boss battles. With tennis mechanics, You're like hitting a ball back at Petey Piranha who spits it back out at you. And this is a lot of the same with that. The adventure mode is only about three and a half hours long, and the first hour and a half of it is just one of the most mind-numbing tutorials I've ever played, where you're playing as baby Mario because everyone except Daisy gets transformed into a baby because Daisy has the Mario Tennis fever. She literally is sick in bed, and you have to go get this fruit to heal her, is the setup of this Mario Tennis campaign. It's very bizarre. Did we know, I mean, you previewed this a while back, but did we know early on that there was a titular fever? No, we didn't. Because when you read that on a video game, you're like, okay, that's just a funny, it's like, you know, I got a fever. The only answer is more cowbell or whatever. You don't think that someone is actually sick in bed and can only be sick by the cowbell. Yeah, and it's like, Mario, aren't you a doctor? Like, can't you just whip out the pills? And Cure Daisy, you have to go find this magical fruit to heal her sickness instead. Very weird setup. Anyways, it's just this 90-minute tutorial where, like, you're mashing through this text about, and here's how you hit a topspin shot, and it's just telling you what it is. And then you play these minigames, which are fine. They're pretty boring. They feel like, I don't know, Baby Mario take on mobile games. Like, there's one that's a lot like Temple Run, where you're just kind of, like, running side to side, hitting the coins that appear on the track. And they're fine. and then you play just the most ridiculously easy qualification matches where you win in like five seconds and then eventually you leave the academy and it's kind of what aces was it's two hours of boss fights and a couple tennis matches and then it's over and it's just like not i i think you look at the trailer you're like oh this is gonna be really expansive and big and cool and then everything you saw in the trailer that's the entire adventure mode they showed you pretty much everything so if you're a solo player looking to come to this for that single player mario tennis experience it's It's just not really here. Which, you know, with games being $70 now, that's kind of a... And also, like, you know, historically not really getting deep price cuts ever if you're a first-party title. That's kind of a big ask. And I don't want to keep bringing that elephant into the room. But, like, people have to make these decisions now. And if you're predominantly a single-player gamer and you're looking at a game like this, like, that's something you have to weigh and calculate when you're thinking about buying your next game, right? Like, they got rid of their voucher system. They got rid of their gold coin system. So that money is real money. You know, there's no shortcuts there. So yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Now, like, there's a ton of characters in this game. Was that at least fun for you to kind of unlock them all and go through that? Yeah, this one's really a tale of two games because we just complained about the single player stuff. The tennis is really fun and it is some of the most fleshed out that it's ever been in a Mario sports game. And I think that is great. There's 38 characters and Baby Wario is actually my favorite one. He's only been in like one game ever before, Yoshi's Island DS. I don't think he's ever showed up again, but he's in this. And Baby Waluigi's been getting all the hype online, but I love Baby Wario. I think he's just a little freak. He's hilarious, and he's super powerful. He's got his topspin shot charges up in like half the time as every other character. That's his little unique trait. Every character on the character select screen, you can hit X and see something. They have that nobody else has, like Boo's super curvy serves, or Rosalina has a lob that flies from side to side of the court. She's also a tricky character, and that's Baby Wario. So the characters are awesome. And then the fever rackets are really cool, too. There's 30 of them, and it is just fun to kind of mix and match and see all the different things that these do. Like, there's this golden dash racket, which has been one of my go-tos, where no matter where you are on the court, if you hit the shot button when your opponent returns the ball, you just, like, slide over to it instantly. So you're just, like, sliding all over the court at, like, rapid speed, and it's just really fun and party mode and gimmicky. and I think that's like super fun for four people to get together. Everyone picks a different fever racket and you'll just have a blast and then somebody wins because they're not super balanced, right? Right. They just aren't. It's very much a party game and then you go, okay, let's switch it up and then you pick four different fever rackets and the other team will win and that's a great time. So if you want just that party Mario Tennis experience, this is one of the best it's been. That's just kind of all there is. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. I mean, like you said, like if you're here for, you know, if you're not here specifically for the single player, there's probably enough in here that it's worth it for you, right? And like it looks like it plays really great. I haven't dug in yet. But, yeah, I do wonder what the future of, like, the sort of Mario sports games are because I don't think that it's a good plan forever to just have sort of just, like, a very thin single-player campaign and then, you know, some really fun online and offline and local multiplayer stuff. Like, I think ultimately, like, they need to find a way to kind of meet both sides of that and make it better for consumers. Because I know that when I sit down with a game like this, like, I want something that's longer than three and a half hours, and I want something that's kind of deep. There's obviously so much you can expect, right? Like, I will say that giving one of the characters an actual fever is deeper than I expected. So I will give it credit there. But, yeah, we'll see. Because, I mean, they still alternate between, you know, occasionally there's a soccer one. Occasionally there is a golf one. They kind of gave up on Mario baseball. Yeah, heartbreaking. And basketball was kind of a one and done, right? Yeah, there was two of them. And the second one never even came out in Europe because there's just not really baseball over there. Mm-hmm. No, you helped me put together like a list of the top 40 Mario games last year. And we tried to include a bunch of games that were basically anything with Mario in it, right? puzzle games sports games uh action games platformers all that fun stuff and yeah it was there's a you know a surprising amount of sports games they will keep making them forever people people keep buying them so yeah i hope there's a future for them and i hope that like it would be really cool to see some more even like mild rpg elements return in a single-player campaign for something like this yeah i do want to shout out one mode that i would like to see be the way forward for future Mario Sports games, and that is Trial Towers in this one, which we're actually seeing on screen right now. It is basically, you remember, like, events from the old Super Smash Bros. games? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's exactly that. It's this menu of 100 different events, and it's like, okay, you're going to play as Luma, and you're going to play against a Luma who is invisible, and you need to score 500 points on Ring Shot Go. Or you're going to play as Wario and Waluigi, you're going to play against two bloopers who are both wielding the ink rackets, So you're not going to be able to see anything win a five-point match. And there's a hundred of these challenges. And then within those challenges, once you reach a certain point in the game, you unlock an achievement mode for them where it's that same setup. But then it's like, now never lose a point and don't use your fever shot and don't dive for the ball. And if you do all three of those things, you get a perfect score. That's awesome. It's great. Like it's really, really strong mode. And I think that that should be kind of the focus, I think, moving forward. is just go in all in on that because that's what you want from this is mixing up these tennis matches and points take all these ingredients of rackets characters courts and just make me do different things with them i already really love the looks of that waluigi pinball court i love that that just started as a mario kart level and just keeps returning in weird ways that's his entire personality yeah it really is he's just like i'm i'm a creep and i like pinball and i'm tall yeah that's all you really need to know about him yeah i played his baby waluigi versus waluigi a lot on they'll follow a g pinball court you just like my son or no it's just him not aged down we've talked about this before now it's a new take on baby mario in this game it's well that's been not to get off topic but that's been some of the theories with the mario galaxy movie because there's like baby versions of in there and they're like is there time travel is there like a a wormhole weren't there just flashbacks in the first one where we saw that's what i thought i mean briefly i don't know it's hard it's hard to explain i don't have the answers logan i really People love to theorize. Yeah. I did want to, there's just, there's a lot of unlockables too in Mario Tennis Fever, which is cool. Because Aces tied a lot of it to your online. And it's like you need to play every month to unlock this new headband for Boo. Literally. That's like what it was in Aces. But this game, it's all tied to single player stuff, which is really cool in theory. Like you just, it's like a GameCube game. You just play and you unlock stuff as you go. And that's great. But what's not great is some of the modes that make you do that are just terrible. like there is one where we saw it on screen a little bit ago where it's this it's this just brainless cpu standing in the middle of the court and these piranha plant cannons shoot tennis balls at you and you have to return that tennis ball and make it so that make sure it's out of reach of the cpu swing and you have to do that 40 times in a row on the hardest difficulty and you're just like standing there waiting it takes about three or four seconds for the piranha plant to shoot the ball it shoots it if if the computer's standing at the net you lob it if they're standing far back from the net you drop shot it and it takes four minutes around and it's just miserable and you have to do that a few times to unlock some of the characters and rackets and it's just that's why this game was was kind of tough to to score and think about because it's like the gameplay is awesome they just don't really know what to do with it and that's just the biggest disappointment do you think they'll add content to it i don't know they really did with aces they added a lot over time, but this game has more than Aces did at launch, so I'm not sure. This might be a complete product. They might be working on Golf Next, because Camelot does both of those series. I think that there's, I don't know, I don't really know what you would add. There's enough characters, there's enough rackets, so that's the important stuff. I don't really see them adding a bunch of different modes. I think that the modes that are here just aren't all that great. I mean, maybe they'll do something for Switch 3 for 20 bucks, like an 8k upgrade pack or whatever. yeah there's good online also there's there's monthly tournaments um which reset your rank at the at the start of each month there's rooms you can hop into with two people on the same switch and kind of pair up with two other people to just play casual doubles matches so there is online stuff too uh there's game share so you can play locally and kind of beam your game to somebody with a switch one kind of like ds download play was back in the day so there's if you like the tennis lots to do here i do think the tennis is fun we're seeing a banana racket on screen right now or when you use your fever shot it just scatters dozens of bananas on both sides of the court it's that mario party kind of party game feel so it's it's a lot of fun i just you brought it up earlier brian i do want to talk about the price i just can't recommend this at 70 when kirby air riders is 70 donkey kong bonanza is 70 mario party jamboree on switch one is 60 and there's way more worthwhile stuff to do there i just think about like the variable pricing thing they talked about last year when Mario Kart was $80. And so they came out with this term to kind of explain that price point. And they pointed to the depth and replayability of the game. And they said, well, Dragon Drive's $20 and Welcome Tour is $10. So it's okay that Mario Kart is $80. I don't see that carrying forward here. Because this game, I'd be so much higher on this if this was $49.99 or $39.99. Because that, to me, is more where it falls. Which, you know, I feel like modern Nintendo doesn't experiment with that sort of gradient on publishing different price ranges, right? Like they do it for sort of smaller direct-to-eshop games, right? Like there's like Dragon Drive and stuff like that. There's smaller like indie-shaped and indie-sized games that they'll publish for a much lower MSRP, but like it is kind of odd. And again, like I don't – you and I have been talking about Switch 2 prices and Switch 2 software prices since literally the first day we worked the Switch 2 preview event. And it's impossible to ignore. It's the, you know, elephant in the room. I don't think it has to dominate the entire conversation, but it's definitely part of it. Like, it is definitely one of those things you have to consider. And, like, when you laid it out right there, the amount of games that you can get that, you know, if you are looking predominantly for, like, a big, meaty single-player game, you can get a lot more at that money than you can, you know, something that you're kind of one and done with the campaign in three and a half hours. So, yeah, it's odd. It's odd. And I feel like if you're the biggest tennis fan in the world, then I guess I'm a little – I actually don't know what you would be playing these days because I don't live in that world at all. Top spin? Top spin? Yeah, they still make those every year. Yeah. But, yeah, so then I guess you'll find something here that you like. But, yeah, man, it's a lot of money these days. So, yeah, if that's what you're interested in spending, then I hope you get the most out of it. yeah yeah and it's it's like i've seen some some comments online just talking about the price and the adventure mode saying well i don't care about the adventure mode great then this is totally for you it's still a seven out of ten product like i love the core tennis but it just does get a little old after a while because it's just a lot of the same thing where i think about a jamboree and it's like there's seven boards there's a hundred mini games there's a bunch of different side modes like there's so much to do in that game that can get you dozens and dozens of hours it's like this i see you you invite friends over you play maybe tennis for 20 minutes and then you move on to Mario Kart or Smash or something that's just has more staying power than this does because the core tennis is great and a lot of fun that's it and I just think for 70 bucks that's really tough for me to swallow because I look at Golf Story did you play that game Brian that game yeah I did excellent and it's like 20 bucks when you were talking about like sort of the old RPG roots in some of the Mario sports games like that's the first one that came to mind because that feels directly linked to those old games, right? Like that is absolutely honoring that old sort of ideology and also just building on a straight up excellent spiritual successor. And so, yeah, I loved Golf Story. Like that's the kind of game I would love to see more of from Nintendo these days, right? Like taking a single player mode, maybe not necessarily at that scale, but, you know, meet in the middle between, split the difference between like a three and a half hour single player campaign and something as cool as Golf Story. Yeah, for sure. Last thing I want to shout out is that the computers actually put up a fight in this game, which I do appreciate. They're not total pushovers. The hardest difficulty, Ace, I can't always beat them. They're really, really good. There's like six different difficulties. And yeah, that one's really tough. So I do like that, that there's actually some difficult computer opponents if you are playing alone. Not in the single player campaign, but if you're just setting up matches, they do get pretty tough. So yeah, that's Fever. I think it's fun. I think I'm already pretty much done with it because I also like how Aces plays a little bit more. That game was like a fighting game at times, and this one's much more like a party game. I'm curious to see what other people think when they get their hands on it. Brian, I know you're going to play it, so maybe you can come back in a couple weeks and we'll talk about it. We're going to talk about Pokemon in just a second, but first, related to Pokemon, if you want to be the very best like no one ever was, you can streamline your journey to becoming a master trainer with Planet Pokemon. Choose your Pokemon filtering by type, ability, or Pokedex, then use the full team builder to assemble an unbeatable lineup plan out the optimal set of moves items and abilities play to your strengths by analyzing your team's resistances and vulnerabilities or really maximize your poke potential i just got signed out of my google talk by digging into the stats and i think this is a really cool website go to planet pokemon.com it's ign's a new website that we just launched where you can look at pokemon from across all the different generations and build your team it's super cool brian it's really cool yeah this is this is this is one of those things that uh you know, not to toot our own horns, but like IGN's been making like really cool strides on the guide side and with, you know, interactive maps and all that fun stuff. And this, this is one of those things is just next level to me. So yeah, go check it out. Okay. Let's talk about Pokemon Pocopia, which is out on March 5th. And we got some previews up on IGN. Casey DeFreitas previewed it in Japan and she posted her thoughts in both a video and an article on IGN.com. And I also got to play it the same demo that Casey saw. I played at the Nintendo preview event a couple of weeks ago in New York where I played Mario Wonder, Virtual Boy, all that stuff. And this game has been on my radar since it was announced. I think it's going to be a huge hit, and I feel that way just even more after seeing it at this event. I think this is going to be enormous when it comes out in about a month. I think it's just a very inspired take on Pokemon. Basically, the core loop of this game is that you are trying to attract Pokemon to your town. And this town starts out in ruins and shambles you see a pokemon center that is just crumbled to the ground and so you need to start little by little by building these habitats and the first habitat is like a a two by two grid of grass and you do that because the first pokemon you run into is bulbasaur and bulbasaur teaches you leafage and you're playing this ditto who can absorb the powers of other pokemon so after bulbasaur teaches you this your ditto's arms turn into vines and you can pluck grass up from the ground. So then you pluck a 2x2 grid of grass and then a Charmander pops out And then he teaches you a fire move and you burn down this branch to get to the next part of the town where you find a Squirtle who teaches you a water move So now you can water your dead grass to make different habitats that will attract different Pokemon. So this whole thing is you're finding new Pokemon, you're finding new clues for what kind of place these Pokemon want to live in, you're gathering the resources to build that place, the Pokemon show up, they teach you a new ability, rinse and repeat. That's a great loop. It's super satisfying. Instantly, they're going to build on it a ton as you go. I think it's just brilliant. So we're seeing a lot of, you know, since the jumps in this game got revealed, we heard a lot of, like, Animal Crossing comparisons, which obviously, you know, not far from the truth. For me, it's like I'm picking up a lot more fantasy life. Like it's got a little, like fantasy life, sort of same kind of predicament. You show up somewhere, you have this kind of homestead, and you're, like, building it out. It's in ruins. You clean it up. And then there's a job system that you bring in to sort of like integrate and start improving things on a granular basis. And here they effectively took that job system and they tethered it to individual Pokemon traits. And that's really smart. And I'm yeah, I'm right there with you. Like this feels like one of those things that is going to just blow up. And I find it I find it fascinating that we just got the big switch to Animal Crossing update with a ton of new content for Switch 1 owners. Right. Yeah. We've got Tamodachi Life coming in April. And in between those things, we have this. And so that's three, not necessarily competing, but concurrent kind of big, fun, cuddly life sims from Nintendo or adjacent to Nintendo coming to Switch 2 within just a couple of months. And I don't necessarily think all of them will thrive. I mean, Animal Crossing is obviously, it'll be fine. It's already done. It's already put its points up on the board. But, yeah, I do wonder how many people will bounce off something like this to get the Tomodachi Life or vice versa, right? Because it's a lot jammed in together, and I think there's a lot of overlap between those audiences there. But the other part of me thinks that there is room for all of these to succeed, but that Pokemon's going to be the clear winner. I think that there's room. Also, Tomodachi Life is also a Switch 1 game, so that has that huge install base that can't get Pocopia yet. And Pokemon has the benefit of the Pokemon fan base also. So it's that Animal Crossing fan base plus the Pokemon fan base. Yeah, it's a big Venn diagram there, but it's just going to be huge. And I like what you brought up about Animal Crossing. This is a little bit of a tease of what we have coming next in the quarterly financials report. But Nintendo president Shintaro Furukawa basically said that we released an update for Animal Crossing New Horizons, so they'll keep playing on Switch, and then they'll transition to Switch 2 when they see a new game that catches their eye. and that's kind of why we said on this show that they updated Animal Crossing is because they have Pocopia and Tomodachi Life and that user base that only has Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and a couple other casual things on their Switch is going to turn it on see that news feed on the left that's like oh what is this I can make my best friend and move them into my town in Tomodachi Life and they're going to want to buy that or they're going to see I can build a house and ask Pikachu to move into it, I need to get a Switch 2 now. So I think it's really smart, and it's just a huge year for that audience. It's a good theory, right? We'll see how it pans out, because I feel like, you know, Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch is one of the best games ever made. You and I had a conversation a while back about you said you'd prefer the 3DS one more, and I walked away from that sort of being like, you know what, I think I actually might agree with Logan on this one, although the quality of life stuff and the visuals and all that are vastly superior. There's something to the 3DS one that I love, but I've been playing all of them since the GameCube one, right? Yeah, me too. Yeah, so no matter what they put out, I'll be there day one. And I love the update they did here, and I do wonder how many of those people will ever return again. That was a very, and we've talked about this ad nauseum here, but that came out right place, right time. A lot of people were glued to social media. reading predominantly bad news. It was like, you know, March 2020. And all of a sudden, there were screenshots of this really charming life simulator that people had maybe never heard of before. The Switch was readily available in stores. There was enough access points in terms of like Switch Lite. So, you know, Switch, I believe the Switch OLED was already released at the time as well. And yeah, people just latched onto it. And I think a lot of people played that game a lot and then the you know the kind of world opened back up again and i don't know how many of those people will open this game up again do the update play the new stuff be like this is chugging a little slow if there's got to be a better way and then go and upgrade to the switch too right yeah like again you and i did it everyone who listens to this show is probably you know if you don't have a switch to yet you're thinking about it right and but i know a lot of people and i think we both do and this is obviously totally anecdotal information i know a ton of people that got really into video games for the first time in a really long time in 2020 and a big part of that was animal crossing and there's nothing wrong with that right like nintendo's done this amazing job of finding that kind of blue ocean strategy and sometimes they they go out for it as hard as possible and sometimes you know the world collides in weird ways and they get they get they kind of get lucky with it but pokemon i believe sort of transcends all of that and so i think i think pokemon has that ability of like bringing in people who are casuals because i i was explaining to my kid the other day we put on like the olympics for five minutes and the first thing that popped up was this uh like it was an olympian talking about how much she loves magic the gathering and she's talking about all these cards and i was just like what oh that's weird and my daughter's like what's that and i was like oh it's a collectible card game i played when i was in like you know i was in middle school or something like that. And then I put it away and she's like, so she still plays it. And I was like, well, it's really popular again now. And I was like, well, just like Pokemon cards. Like my kid has a binder full of Pokemon cards. If you had told me when those were popping off back in the day that, you know, 25, 30 years later, they would be more popular than ever. And people would be like hijacking trucks and, you know, taking over, buying thousands of McDonald's Happy Meals and stuff like that just to get them. Yeah. I don't know if I would have believed you. And so Pokemon is in many ways more popular than it's ever been right now, and that's deeply fascinating. And so I think this game, to kind of bring this full circle, has a chance to do maybe not necessarily Animal Crossing numbers in 2020, but I think it will be absolutely massive. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's never going to do those numbers, like you're saying, so many factors. Plus, the Switch 2 install base is just much smaller than the Switch 1 was even at that time. But if we're talking like lifetime, I could easily see this eventually clearing 10 million lifetime sales. Like it's got the legs of like a Pokemon game plus a whole new audience. It could bring in like, I know you're going to play this and I don't even know the last time you played a mainline Pokemon game. Like, I feel like it's been a very long time, but this is, I think drawing your attention. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is exactly like, I think that like for me personally, I, I got a little overwhelmed with the annual releases of Pokemon. And then to be completely blunt, a lot of the kind of just very overt negativity around it from the fan base. Like there was a, there was a lot of like, most of the talk is dominated by the, you know, how bad the graphics are on an individual tree and like the engine running poorly or like the backgrounds or yada, yada, yada. And, um, that's not to say that those swayed me in a direction away from those games, but it was also like, oh man, if they don't like it, then I don't even know if I will. And so it kind of made me hesitant to jump in, but this is the kind of game where like, I'm all about it. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's just going to be a ton to do. We also got to try out the multiplayer a little bit, which is four-player multiplayer, and you invite friends into your world. So you're not really working on a shared world. It's going to be your file you can invite friends into, but you can give your friends the power to destroy anything they want. Because again, this is also very much like a Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders is the closest comparison. That is what this game is with a Pokemon skin. Love both of those games immensely. Yeah, I love Dragon Quest Builders too. I think that game is great, and this is so much like that. I'm a troll in these games, and I like to just destroy stuff and just run around and just goof around in these. And so we only had like 30 minutes to test out the multiplayer. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to dig as far down as I can. And so I just dug a hole straight down into the ground like you do in Minecraft. And then I was like, okay, so I think I'm at the bottom of the world. And then I used some ability to climb back out. I'm like, I'm going to try and find the height limit. So then I just started stacking this one-block tower, and I got like 90 blocks in the air. Still no height limit. Like I still was going and going. So you're going to be able to build pretty much whatever you want in this, which I think is really cool. And then something I thought was cute was I jumped off my giant tower to see if there was fall damage or anything. I don't even really think there's health or combat in this game at all. So I was like, can I die if I jump off this 100-block tower I just built? And my Ditto, who's like a human shape, splatted onto the ground back into their Ditto form, like into the purple goo, and then stood back up and morphed back into the human. And that was just a really cute animation. They didn't get hurt or die, but there's an animation for pain. Yes, they were ready for it. I dig that. Yeah, I don't know. I think I would be slightly more excited for this if there was some sort of mild action RPG elements. That was a big part of fantasy life for me. But ultimately, that is a game where a bunch of very simple systems are glued together to create kind of a part of a better whole. It's a bag of Halloween candy, basically. And so it's not a deal breaker for me for this game. I'll be playing it day one. yeah it's it's gonna be really great and something i liked was the the habitats that you're building it's not just for one pokemon like if you build uh three patches of grass and a rock by a body of water like that will attract a squirtle but then when you get a squirtle it stamps squirtle on your little pokedex menu and then you see five other empty silhouettes of the other pokemon that can appear there and so it's kind of this just like pokemon when you walk around the tall grass on a out, you don't know who's going to pop out. This game does that too. So I just felt like it took everything I liked about Pokemon and fit it into this mold where you can build crazy towns. Like the town we got to see was way more complicated than something I'll ever be able to build. It was fully fleshed out, paved roads, street lamps, mailboxes, furnished houses. Super awesome. Like to show this off online to your friends, I think there's more opportunity here than in an Animal Crossing because it can really look however you want it to. I think that was a big thing for Animal Crossing 2 early on wasn't just like the sort of connectivity elements of it and the social aspects, but it was flexing, right? It was just like, hey, look at this house I made, look at this island I made. And to this day, like that's a big part of it. And I think that that'll do, that is just like, that is absolutely free viral marketing, right? Like somebody posts a thing and they're just like, look at this house, look at this town that I made in this Pokemon game. People are going to go like, oh, I don't know. You could do that. I want to do something like that. I'm to buy it. Yeah. And something I like for me is as somebody who I was a Minecraft kid, like when Minecraft was just about to pop off before it went into 1.0, like I was playing it in middle school with my friends. I love that game, but I'm just never really the type to say, I have this vision for this thing I want to build and I'm going to build it. I just am not creative in that way when playing things. So when games are about building, I get a little worried, like even Tears of the Kingdom. I was like, I don't, I don't really know. But then that game incorporates it so seamlessly into this adventure that I really enjoyed it. And this game, I think, is going to be the same. It gives you these objectives, like, you need to build this park, and it needs to have these four things. But it can look however you want within those confines. It's like, that's perfect for me because I'm guided, I can do what I want. This game's going to take between 20 and 40 hours to reach the credits. I can finish it, roll credits, put it down. Or you can play for 100 and build your dream Pokemon island. I think it offers that flexibility where I'm excited for this as someone who typically doesn't play these creative builder games yeah i think there's enough to do in there that's not and i think you nailed it with the tears of the kingdom comparison because that that was an option that was like they were very smart about weaving it naturally into the stuff that you were doing already and then started doling out shortcuts for all of it so eventually you had auto build and there was you know sort of like templates that you could use and for something like this yeah i think doing the bare minimum getting by and doing the story and stuff like that and having a functional town and village and stuff is cool but yeah people are going to go absolutely bonkers with it and i'm excited to see them do that because i'm in the same boat like i just don't have the time anymore i saw something minecraft the other day somebody like rebuild entire sections of the last of us with like bloom lighting and there's yeah there's there's just like there's vines growing down the side of a building and i'm like i cannot fathom it Like that is a level of artistry that I am just so impressed by. But I don't need to do it myself to appreciate it. So, yeah, get out there and make cool stuff for me to go wow at. So I don't have to do it myself. During COVID, one of my friends from college made a like scale replica of the Mariners baseball stadium. And just like with 40,000 seats and the concession stands on the concourse. And I was like, I could never even picture how to start that. It's really cool. I mean, that was the time to do it, Logan. Yeah, exactly. I think this is going to be a huge hit. It's also rare I walk away from a preview event with no criticisms about a game. You know me. I have a lot to critique. I loved everything about this one. I'm a non-hater. One of the most negative people I've... No, I've... Yeah. You get painted in that corner when you're honest about something. Yes, I do. But I don't think that's fair. I think it's okay to have things that you don't like about things you love. That's normal. Me too. and I want to hear from you real quick Brian about the Tomodachi Life living the dream direct because you weren't on last week when Seth and I talked about that and this game also is looking really really great yeah you and I talk uh we're talking about this a bit yesterday but like that's it was it was odd because they did that which I feel like didn't have a ton of fanfare behind it and I loved it and then they did the partner direct which everyone was really excited for and I think most people kind of walked away from kind of being like that's it but yeah the Tomodachi life thing was incredible. This is coming from someone who recently, uh, you know, my, my kid and I have gotten really back into the 3ds game. I've talked about it in the show before, but it's, she's, she's put dozens of hours into it and it is really the gift that keeps giving. And this is, this is a game that's what, 10, 15 years old at this point. And the new one has so much going for it. Like there are so much cool stuff here. All the customization stuff of building your own textures and interiors and like just the the level of interaction between all the characters the relationships and all that fun stuff like this is this is a really really fascinating take on life simulator stuff and i i hope that people understand this is not just like a weird spinoff of animal crossing you're not doing the same stuff you're doing there they're like ultimately a lot of the interactions in animal crossing are, are fun, but they're sort of simple and they all kind of funnel into the same kind of directions. And here you'll have characters who like fall in love, uh, get married, have kids, their kids will grow up, meet other people that don't, they'll, you'll get roommates. The people will break up. Someone will get a crush on someone and they'll be like, where should I, you know, tell them I love them. And you're like, Oh, go to, uh, go to the ice cream shop. And they go there and they're like, should I wear my, my favorite clothes or should I just wear something special. I'm like, wear something special. Like I give them all this advice and they show up and they're like, the other person's like, no man, I don't like you at all. And it's just devastating. It's devastating. And that is the thing that you cannot do in Animal Crossing and you, you cannot do in Pocopia and you, you know, that like, it's got just enough of the Sims, I think, but also it's so much weirder in so many clever ways. And I really, really hope people pay attention to this one. I really hope this game blows up and it gets tons of new content for years to come. I don't think it'll ever hit Animal Crossing levels, but I hope this finds an audience. Because if it's anything like the 3DS one, which it's already shaping up to be, it's going to be one of the best life simulator games ever made, and certainly one of the weirdest and funniest. So yes, don't sleep on this game, please. Yeah, and it's funny because they kicked off the direct saying, what is a Mii? I'm like, wow, they don't really use these guys anymore. They have to tell us what a Mii is now? Like, that made me feel old. Like, I know what a Mii is. They've been in 400 games, but not for a while. They're not as big of a focus on Switch or Switch 2. No, I mean, it's like Nintendo, with the Mii system, created one of the most unique, interesting, and revolutionary avatar systems of all time, used it like crazy, and then just stopped. Yeah. Yeah. Which is odd. No, part of it, I think it was because they moved away from like cameras as a peripheral and, you know, uh, stylus based touchscreen stuff. There was a lot of stuff that it made it, they removed the barrier a little bit to sort of like we, my, my kid took like, uh, she took pictures of the K-pop demon hunters on a poster in her room and turned them into characters in her town and Tamodachi life. Cause you can do that on a 3DS, but you can't do that on a switch. Right. And so, like, there was a whole thing. There are still websites full of QR codes of the most famous celebrities from 12 years ago that you can take pictures of, and you're like, and they're in there. And it's really, really funny. All of those are still active. There was official QR codes released from Nintendo back in the day. Yeah, for like Aonuma and like, yeah, all these people. Yeah, like Iwata and stuff like that. Yeah, Trinan. And so there was a really special time, and they'll never truly recapture it, but it does warm my heart to see them starting off a big presentation for a big new first-party game talking about Mii's again. And so, yeah, they've not-so-quietly revamped the entire design system for them this time around, and it seems so much more customizable. So people are going to do crazy stuff, And I hope sharing them is easy and downloading them and accessing. It's not. It's not. No, it's not going to exist, which is the big bummer of this game. There's no online sharing of Mii's, which is like, that's the point. It's a big miss. That and their kind of stonewalling sharing in general, right? Like, because there's a lot of, I don't want to call them intimate moments that happen in this game, because there's nothing, you know, rated above like PG, PG-13 sort of thematically. But there are personal things that happen that are also quirky and funny that I think make really good shareable screenshots. But it's also it's a it's a toy box and it's a you know, people are going to do bad things with that. And so it is odd for them to be like we're limiting this sort of sharing function on a lot of the moments that will happen in this game. Because like we've said many times in this episode already, that is a that was a big thing that helped sell Animal Crossing. Like all of that stuff was one of those things where people were like, like you open social media and a celebrity was playing it and they were like, this is my house. This is my favorite villager. And here kind of hiding that is frustrating. So it feels very like old school Nintendo friend code you know like walled garden type stuff which it at odds with the level of creativity that they pumping into this game as is Right So I I don know I hope I hope they pull back on the, on the reins a little bit on that because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a thing that deserves to be shared. So yeah, that, that's the only kind of like big caveat, big bummer for me right now about this game. Cause I, I want it to be as easy as like, just, just saying, Hey, I want to, I want link from Zelda me in my game right this is what we did on the 3ds one we took a bunch of iconic Mario characters there's like a weird Diddy Kong that people made out of like you know a big mouth like this I saw Diddy went to your wedding it was my wedding yeah yeah that was I sent you guys a clip where like I got married in that game I think it was either to Rosalina or Zelda and everyone was at the wedding except for my wife Diddy Kong but people made Diddy Kong out of like ears and eyebrows and stuff like that. There was all this stuff you could do. People made Charlie Brown and Pac-Man and all these characters that you're like, that doesn't look like a human person, but they just used weird shapes and they got extremely clever with it. Oh man. This was a wonderful era, and so I hope they can recapture it a little bit. Yeah, me too. Can't wait. That is out in April. Pocopia is out in March. These are both going to be great. There's a lot of trying on a dinosaur costume. Was that Bill Trinning delivering the news report? Yeah, that was their direct. Bill Trinan hosted the Tomodachi-like direct for 3DS, and it was, yeah, hilarious. One of the best directs they've ever done. Incredible era. Yeah. Yeah. Outstanding. Cool. We're going to talk about some third-party games we're playing on Switch, too, but first I want to tell you that you can gear up for zombie horror in Resident Evil Village, get wonderfully weird with Date Everything, or keep the good times rolling with Bus Simulator 21. Head on over to Humble. Right now, you can get Humble Choice for just $14.99 and score a curated bundle of PC games. Available now through March 3rd, this month's choice includes Resident Evil Village, Date Everything, Core Keeper, Starbaiters, SteamWorld Build, Squirrel with a Gun, Bus Simulator 21, and Big Helmet Heroes. Plus, this month's choice supports End Power, a charity with a mission to move people from poverty through tech skills training and quality job placement. Head to HumbleBundle.com to start playing today and support a good cause. Resident Evil Village and all those other games for under... Man, that is not to like... Village is one of the best. That's one of the best video games ever made. I love that game so much. I can't wait for people to play it on Switch 2 eventually, too. Yeah, in two weeks when 7, 8, and 9 come to Switch 2 on the same day. We're going to talk about some third-party games right now. It's the Nintendo Voice Chat Partner Showcase. Brian, we've both been playing a bit of Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, which came to Switch and Switch 2 a couple of weeks ago now. What do you think? I love it. I absolutely love it. I knew I would connect with this game instantly, This is my type of RPG, right? Like, I love where RPGs went when they became, like, big 3D open world games with, you know, just really intense battle systems and massive crazy summons and particle effects and stuff like that. But, like, this is that sort of, like, old PS1 SNES era of, like, Final Fantasy games that I loved so much. And this is such a beautiful looking game. And the writing is so charming. They do such smart things to kind of modernize the original format here a bit. It's just comfy, right? It's just like one of these, like, it just feels like a big warm blanket. It is adorable. The battle system is really fun. The characters are great. It's gorgeous. Yeah, I cannot wait. I'm going to do everything I can in this game. I'm only a couple hours in, and I already can tell, like, this is going to be my life for the next few weeks. Yeah, yeah, I love it, too. I'm a few hours in, and I just, I love what you just described, too. It's a comfy game. It's an RPG that just feels like a bedtime story. It's like, play it for 30 minutes as you wind down in the evening, and I think it's perfect for that. A lot of reviews, including ours, have pointed out that this game has sanded off a lot of the edges of Dragon Quest VII, which is a PS1 RPG, and that it's easier now, and that you don't really have to think about your builds or your characters. I like that in some RPGs. I'm fine with it in this. I'm totally fine that this is kind of just a chill, almost mind-elicit time, set it to auto-battle, watch the battles unfold. run to the next town, meet the next few characters. Like, it really works for me. It's just kind of a side game to have to chip away at. I got some long flights coming up. Play it on that. Like, I'm super into this one. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, it gives me, like, a little bit of, kind of, Link's Awakening remake vibe. Not necessarily the art-wise, but just, like you said, like, just how cozy and charming it is, how eccentric some of the characters are. Like, some of the people you talk to, you're like, that's your, oh, okay, so you have, like, a weird quirk. That's cute. Okay. Like, it's just very, there's a bunch of stuff like that. And, uh, like the enemy design is really fun. So yeah, I, I'm not like, it's been a million years since I played the original. So I'm kind of in this perfect boat for something like this because there are people that might play this and be like, you know, there's, there's a specific thing from the original, from the OG that like you took away or sanded down and it's gone now. And for me, I'm not, I'm not that I'm coming into this with like, not a, more of a nostalgia from the era than I am for like a specific, whereas like, you know, Link's Awakening, had they done anything too significant to that, I'd be on the show yelling and screaming. But no, for this one, you nailed it. Like this is get into bed, play it for half an hour and just unwind. I love poking around this world and seeing a little shiny thing and being like, what's that? You know, and finally little outfits and upgrades for your weapons and costumes and stuff like that. it is a very you know kind of like simplistic straightforward rpg and sometimes i really need that like sometimes i just i don't need this whole you know save the world and like you know go into every battle with a million strategies sometimes i just want to play a game like this where the numbers go up and you know i got a smile on my face yeah yeah and this one is carrying on what the one two and three hd2d remake did and just super flexible and how difficult you want it to You can crank everything up. Or you can say, I want to deal more damage, but I also want my enemies to deal more damage. So you can kind of just increase the pace but keep the balance the same. You can say, we're always superpowered. We always have our ults all the time. There's just a lot of little things you can tweak and get the exact experience you want, which I always think is really nice too. And the Dragon Quest remakes have been industry standard for doing that the last couple years. We've gotten a lot of them. This is the third game that they've put out in the last, I think, 15 months. So it's been a ton of Dragon Quest. But if you're not sick of it yet, this is just, it's really gorgeous. And it's different too. It's that diorama 3D art style rather than the HD 2D, which I think is a refreshing change for this game. Yeah, I agree. I love the art in this game. Some of the sort of advertising they did for it and promotional stuff with like puppets and all that. Like it's just, it's really cute. It's really charming. Yeah, that's cool. That's Dragon Quest 7 reimagined and the Switch 2 version, super recommend. Perfect on Switch 2. Like don't play this anywhere else. It's really great there. Yeah, it runs totally smooth and looks great on the screen. I haven't even put it on the TV yet. I've just been playing in handheld mode. So, yeah, two thumbs up. Do you have a chance to check out Ninja Gaiden 2? I did, yeah. So I've been a fan of the Arcade Archive series for a while now. And my take on those is that they sort of feel like the spiritual successor to the virtual console, right? The idea of back in the day, every week, getting a couple of new games that you could buy for $5 or $6 or whatever. I believe they were all kind of uniform at $5. I think they might have gotten more expensive eventually. I know they did on Wii U. They used to be Wii Points. 700 mythical points on the Wii Shop. The Wii Points, yes. they did a really good job of basically taking a bunch of games that i remembered from when i was a kid and a bunch of games that i had never played or maybe seen in the corner of an arcade somewhere and was like what's that um and archiving them right and making them modern and accessible to to brand new audiences um ninja gaiden 2 was one of my favorite nes games growing up because i think it was one of the first games i ever played that had straight up cut scenes in it like with with black bars on the top and the bottoms like and so they they've done a really good job uh of just putting new games on there all the time i first got into the series on nintendo switch when they started taking a bunch of arcade games that nintendo had never actually ported themselves to virtual consoles stuff like punch out and the original donkey kong arcade and uh the uh mario brothers like mario brothers versus i think yeah they took games like that where i'm like nintendo owns these but they were like you guys can publish this and you know we'll we'll shake your hand we'll help we'll help get this to the finish line and so yeah like what you get with these things is that you get this perfectly preserved uh just just pristine port of a classic video games with not a ton of bells and whistles like you have save states uh or save and load which you can do anywhere. You've got a couple of graphic options, and you've got a couple of border options, right? Is there a rewind or no rewind? I don't believe there is actually. And I know that if there's a rewind, I haven't messed with it yet, and this is the game to do it for because this is historically one of the hardest games ever made, and an eagle will fly out and hit you in the face and knock you into a hunchback who will knock you off a cliff. So I've been saving a lot, and I don't have any shame about that, because I'm old now. My reflexes are not where they used to be. And sometimes I want to just play through a game like this. And I've played through this game. I've emulated this game. I've owned this game. I own the original cartridge of this game. Any chance I get to play this game again, I will. And it's awesome. It is a classic, old school, tough as nails, hack and slash with really cool cut scenes, really gorgeous presentation, awesome pixel art. But yeah, it's really hard. So if you're going to play this game, don't be afraid to save a lot. And maybe you're in the comments being like, I don't need to do that. I'm really good at this game. Good for you, man. I'm proud of you. You're better than me. I will say it right now. I can't do that anymore. I couldn't even do it. When I was a kid, we used to pass the controller around and get to the second to last boss of this game, get a game over and play the whole thing over again because there was nothing else going on in my life. And it was a wonderful time. I just can't do that anymore. So yeah, these days, Arcade Archives series, really cool because they take a game like this, they preserve it with a very singular vision there's not a ton i would love like maybe some more like you you go to hit the manual button on this and you're not going to get what you get with like the disney afternoon collection or like one of those like really cool collections where there's like original scans of uh you know promotional materials and box art this is just like it's it's pretty it's pretty you know bare minimum the borders and frames and stuff like that think like slightly glorified virtual console or uh you know nintendo switch online right like you're not going to get a special picture of uh of you know the dev team hanging out on the side it's not going to be like a poster of the of the original promotional material none of that so but the game itself the core game itself awesome runs great and um yeah that's that's like go through go through this series go through the arcade archives the console archives and just look at the games there because like they have been doing this for years now and there are hundreds like they have preserved so many games and this is like instead you know you can sit around and wait for these games to get you know kind of drip fed to you on the nintendo switch online individual apps um but chances are if there's a game you really love from back in the day and it got an arcade port and now these days hopefully a console port um these guys have maintained a way for you to play it on your Switch or Switch 2. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'm playing a different collection, which does have all these bells and whistles. It's the Super Bomberman collection, which also was a shadow drop from last week's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, and this comes from Konami and just continues their trend of their collections being really, really good. Five games from the Super Nintendo, some of which were only on the Super Famicom and never came to the West, and yeah, you can play them all. I'm not a big historical Bomberman fan, so I'm diving into these and like, what are really the differences between these five games i don't personally really know but it's been fun to just check out i've i've never played a super bomber man like adventure mode before i've only ever played like the bomber man versus but i'm like oh there's like enemies and i'm blowing up obstacles to try and find like the ladder down to the next level it's it's totally fun and the sprite work is gorgeous and there's a ton of different borders like you're talking about there aren't as many in ninja guide and there's a ton of options there are original scans of all the manuals to flip through there's boss challenges in a separate mode you can see and brian i was reading the manual for super bomberman one and i just think about how so sensitive so many people are to spoilers these days and in the manual for super bomberman it's like the game ends when you beat the final boss who is named this and when you get here you do that i'm like this is in the manual people would be so mad if that was happening today i just thought that was really funny so i i'm like uh i'm like low-key a giant bomberman fan And I don't know why, because it is incredibly simplistic. And not just like, I have tremendously fond memories of playing local multiplayer on the Super Nintendo with a bunch of friends. Because I think there was like, we had like a four-player adapter. And getting a bunch of people together to play four-player Bomberman back in the day, amazing. But over time, they would start kind of funneling in these very simplistic story modes. And they're not deep in plot. they are, they're like every single Bomberman game starts off really, really slow, right? Until you get a bunch of roller skates and you get a bunch of fire things and you get more bombs and all of a sudden like your character's faster and then you die and you do it all over again. But I kind of love the way they roll out. I love the cleverness in a lot of the, the, um, layouts of the like original story mode levels. The boss fights are fun. Like this is, this is one of those collections where like over the last couple of years konami has taken a lot of the sort of negative well not all of it but a lot of the negativity that hovered around them sort of towards the departure of hideo kojima right like there was a lot there going on both internally externally where they just it became a running joke that they were just like a pachinko company that ripped off its creators right not a good place to be and at the same time capcom was going like, hey, we're going to make a bunch of new stuff based on our classic IPs, and we're going to make a bunch of, you know, collections, and we're just going to do everything we can to kind of get back into the zeitgeist using nostalgia, but also building towards a better tomorrow. And at some point, Konami was like, hey, man, that's a good idea, right? And they started putting out the Castlevania collections, which I love, the Contra collection. They put out one of just Gradius games and like shmups and seeing this for Bomberman, I was like, oh yeah, this is up there with some of your best stuff. And so I'm really excited to dig into this because I haven't had all of these games in one place pretty much ever. And, you know, there's a bunch of weird corners I don't know about. Like, I don't know what it was like seeing, you know, Japanese posters for Bomberman back in the day. Cause you know, I grew up in New Jersey and like, like Bomberman's kind of weird, it's got a weird history. Like at one point they made him like a, you know, mature, like Xbox 360. That was just one of the biggest strategic misses in history of a mascot character. But I love this dude. I hope they keep making games for it. There was a game, a Bomberman game that launched around Switch 1. Yeah, Super Bomberman R. Yeah, and they made a sequel to it. I bought both of those things the day I could. I love Bomberman. I think he's great. Yeah, super fun. This is a really cool collection. If you like Bomberman or if you're interested, it's just a really great game. I just love Super Nintendo sprite work also. It's just such an iconic era, and all the games still look really good. And just seeing Super Nintendo games I've never played before, it was just really fun. And it's great that Konami has remembered that they have this amazing back catalog that they forgot about for about 10 years or so, and it's great to see it come back. So highly recommend. I think it's getting a physical release later this year on Switch 2. Right now it's just available digitally, but that Super Bomberman collection, it's really, really great. Brian, we're going to move on, because it is everyone's favorite time of the quarter. It's the quarterly financials of Vulcan and NBC. Thank you, Parker, for that excellent quarterly financials jingle. We love it so much. We're so excited to use it every three months for the rest of time. The results are in report from Q3, which runs from October 1st to December 31st. Before we get into the numbers, big picture. Sales for Nintendo are up 99.3% year over year, so pretty much doubled. Net profit is up 51%. So that's what we've been talking about, Brian. They're operating at much higher costs with Switch 2. It's more expensive to make. They're spending way more on advertising. There's more R&D spend. So yeah, they're making a lot more money, but their profit's not quite as high. The numbers you care about, though. Nintendo Switch is officially the best-selling piece of Nintendo hardware of all time. 155.37 million units. It is past the Nintendo DS. we all thought this was going to happen but brian it's it's finally happened switch one that is so cool that is so cool um it's got one more challenge ahead it does and that challenge they keep moving the gold most on that one last challenge that feel okay i'm i'm i'm on a play station show here at ign every single week um and uh that feels that feels sneaky it feels like You know, it feels like every single time Nintendo's like, hey, Switch 1 sold this many more, someone at PlayStation's like, oh, sorry, we found an extra 5 million PS2s sold. And they always say it sold over 160 million. So if they say over 160, it's never like they lied because they always phrase it in that way. No, it's like if you saw James Cameron walk out of his house with a bag full of tickets for Avatar 1. And he's just like, no, actually, I found these guys. No shade. No shade. But I understand why people keep buying Switch 1. I don't understand how they keep finding PS2 numbers. That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't. Unless they're counting pawn shops. Resale, yeah. We just keep selling it back and forth to each other ten times, and that adds ten sales to the total. Is that it? Like Herman Hulse goes to GameStop once a month? He trades it, and he buys it, and he trades it, and he buys it. Yeah. He's just losing hundreds because they're giving him like six bucks back every time. He's got the money for it. He's got that Horizon money. No. Yeah, that's true. The Nintendo Switch eclipsing the DS felt – well, I'll put it this way. During the Wii U era and even during early Switch days, that felt impossible to me. And even eclipsing the Wii, right? These are systems where I was just like – these reached a level that is just untouchable. because like we talked about earlier in the show, those systems hit outside of the people like us, right, who have Nintendo garbage in our homes and posters on the wall. And, you know, we buy everything, play everything. We pre-ordered the virtual board. Yeah, the virtual board. I was just going to say that. Right? Like it's like that's if you're in that deep. Next week, can't wait. Right? Yeah, if you're in that deep. Those systems reached people who were like hey it Kristen and CJ I missed those two They reached people who were like I told this story before like seeing like one of my wife aunts was basically just like hey I play Brain Age every single day and I do my Sudoku puzzles And it was like, what? You know? And so, yeah, this is huge. The Switch, like, it reached casual players. We talked about Animal Crossing and stuff before, but it didn't have a Wii Sports at the same level, right? It didn't have a Brain Age. It didn't have Sudoku. It didn't have these games that people, you know, that there were doctors recommending for your brain health. Yeah, it was a Zelda. It was a Zelda. It was a Zelda. And Animal Crossing and a Mario and a Mario Kart. Like that's in the Smash Brothers, like core franchises. Core franchises. That went mainstream. And that's so cool. It's so cool. It's so cool to see. And like what that makes me happy as, you know, we we talk a lot about like what the future of console gaming looks like. And it's Naomi, all my old friends and how like the new generation, younger kids might not have the same nostalgia for consoles growing up because they're not really buying them at the same clip as we did when we were younger. Right. And so seeing this makes me happy because if you're a kid and you grew up playing Nintendo Switch, then for the rest of your life, you're going to have some nostalgia for those characters. And maybe you bought a Switch 2, maybe you skip the Switch 2 and you're going to buy a Switch 3 or whatever they do, or maybe 15 years from now, 20 years from now, you'll have kids of your own, there'll be a Nintendo system out, and you'll have some sort of connection to that. And Nintendo's always been really good about building that long-term, right? And they do it with their movies and their theme parks and everything, but having a system to connecting with that many people is awesome. So yeah, not to go on a big grant, but outside of, yeah, this is good for their financials, I think it is a giant net positive for the industry to have this many people invested in console gaming going forward. Oh, me too. I like to talk about the financials for why it matters wider than just the company's bottom line. I think that's totally true. The Switch, it deserves it. It was an inspired piece of hardware that Nintendo sat down, took a step back and said, how are we going to fix this? And how are we going to come back and they just nailed it from start to finish it was an outstanding generation boosted in the middle strangely by world events and an animal crossing and all that which i think propelled it to this point i'm not sure we get here if what happened in 2020 didn't happen because that spiked sales like crazy and just propelled it tens and tens of millions further than where it was but still like the the comeback we saw for all these franchises on switch just the nature what we all take for granted now of switching and docking and how everyone's trying to copy it there's a ps portal and a steam deck and all this stuff it started here and it's it's incredible and i nobody thought it was going to be like this when it came out people doubted the switch the industry doubted it third parties doubted it fans doubted it i doubted it yeah i doubted it i was sitting i was no reason not to after what they had just done well i was sitting on the show during the wii u era and I was excited for it. I was optimistic of the idea of it, but I was like, if third parties don't show up to this thing, it's going to be a problem like it's always been, right? And if it's underpowered, it's going to be a problem like it's always been. And those were issues here and there, but by and large, that is not, they didn't hold it back. And so next year, we're just a little over a year away from this concept being a reality for a full decade, right? The idea where you can be playing a video game on your TV pick it up and sit down on the couch and someone else can have the tv and you can bring it on an airplane and stuff like that it is my favorite thing in the world it is one of my favorite things that has ever happened to video games because i just i love i love the way that fits in to my lifestyle i know there are people who have only played handheld there are people who only play docked but for me the idea of like playing zelda or playing playing mario or donkey kong bonanza i played so much of that last year and just grabbing it sitting on the couch and just continuing it is It is a brilliant concept, and I know people wanted them to reinvent the wheel this time around. It still rules. So, yeah, they don't need to. Well, let's talk about the new generation. Nintendo Switch 2 has shipped 17.37 million units so far since June, 7.01 this quarter in the holiday quarter, and it has sold through 15 million units. So that means there's like 2.37 million units sitting out on store shelves across the globe. They've sold 15 million, and it is outpacing Switch 1. It's the fastest selling Nintendo platform of all time. And congrats, you outsold the Wii U in seven months. So all the doom and gloom, it's still doing extraordinarily well. It's so nuts to me that we did this show for so many years off of the Wii U sales. And there are so few people out there. And there are more people with Switch 2s now. No, it's great because it's like, you know, it launched with Mario Kart, one of the best selling franchises of all time. and it didn't get a mainline Zelda in its first year. It hasn't gotten a Super Mario game in its first year, right? Like it's getting upgrades to old Switch One games. It got Bonanza, which, you know, for people like us, we got the assignment there. We're like, this is scratching that Mario Odyssey itch for us. And I think for other people, they didn't connect with it in the same way. And that's a bummer. I hope they play it eventually. But to be able to do all this without those guys, without even like a Wii Sports or anything like that early on, um because mario kart became the mainstream wii sports thing last gen so they did it again yeah yeah and so uh you know i'm i'm really interested to see where it goes from here like i think that like the animal crossing update will help you know the eventual news of like a new zelda and a new mario will help new content for mario kart world will help right like it's just gonna it's just gonna keep growing and it like it really feels like it's just getting started and i will say too the first couple of months they're like getting a brand new first party game basically every month. And it seems like that pace is kind of continuing this year. Huge, huge. That's kind of unprecedented. Yeah, no, this is huge. I still think there are challenges ahead. I think that it is a struggle to ever get this to where a Switch 1 got. I don't think that it will. I think that's a nature of Nintendo sequel consoles like this. Time and time again, the sequel does sometimes very well, like a 3DS or a Super Nintendo, and sometimes not so well, like a Wii U. So I think it's still it's going to do great but i think that nintendo itself even admitted that this is going a little weaker in north america than they expected they're not changing their forecasts but breakdown by regions they have different assumptions than they did before because the it did much better in japan than they thought and it did much worse in north america than they thought and the yen is very weak right now so right now nintendo makes more money on selling a switch to outside of japan than they do selling one inside of japan because of how all that that math works and so they're like, yeah, we might make a little less money on this than we thought because we're selling a lot in Japan right now. And they kind of credited it's because of Kirby Air Riders, which we got first numbers in for that. It sold, let's see, 1.76 million. It's already passed the GameCube original. 900,000 of that is in Japan. Over half of Kirby Air Riders sales are in Japan alone. Like it's a huge game over there. Not so much in the rest of the world. Interesting. Yeah, I feel like in America, it felt a little too close for, uh, to Mario Kart world for the average player, even though they are functionally different. But I think at first glance, if you're opening up the eShop, it, you know, you're like, do I go with the one that has a bunch of characters I don't recognize? Or do I go with the most iconic kart racing game of all time? No, it was interesting, uh, looking at the Q4 sales last year, because in America, they, they underperformed compared to the PS5. And a big part of that was because the PS5 had these significant price cuts that ironically brought it back to the price I bought it at in 2020, just to point out how bad things are now this generation where we don't really get price cuts anymore. But everybody was like, oh my God, the PS5 digital is $400? I'm like, yeah, man, it was six years ago. So yeah, but I think that's where it gets a little tougher for them is being able to explain to the average consumer like this is how much our system costs it costs you know 450 or 550 uh with the game or whatever um and i think also like sort of decoupling the mario kart bundle might hurt them in the long run and i hope they i hope they come up with something there because people that to me that showed that people want to get a game and a console at the same exact time especially when those games are 80 bucks and so So, yeah, like going in. $50 when they're bundled. Yeah, exactly. So that, to me, that was a no-brainer. Like all of the conversation we had about how expensive games are now, like getting a Switch 2 and getting Mario Kart inside the box, I was like, yeah, this doesn't sting as bad as it would if I went into the store and I spent $80 on this. So they need to find a way to keep that party going, and not just with Black Friday deals with Mario Kart, because I know they will do those forever. They switched it to a Pokemon Legends EA bundle for the Nintendo Switch 2 edition in the fall, which also by all accounts did very well. And yeah, Nintendo credited strong sales in Japan for Pokemon and Kirby, which are both enormous franchises in Japan specifically. Like Kirby has restaurants like Kirby Cafe in Japan and pop-up stores and all this stuff. It's way bigger over there than it is over here. Software is at 37.93 million units on Switch 2, so that's a little more than 2 to 1. So most Switch 2 owners have like 2 to 2.5 games. And Mario Kart World is one of those for most people. 14.03 million units. Mario Kart World, you also outsold the Wii U in seven months to this game alone. Most of those were from the bundle. We knew last quarter that 80% of Mario Kart World sales were through the bundle. So people were buying that as a $50 game. That bundle no longer exists. I'm really interested to see if sales trail down at all, or if people are still going to buy a Switch 2. No, but bundle the system with the game that people want, man. They should. I don't know. That's one of those, like, you know, Nintendo works in weird ways. There's a lot of, you know, two steps forward, one step back. This, to me, is just, you know, I'm not a business guy, but, like, that seems like such an easy slam dunk. Not to harp on this, but, yeah. I agree. They should. It's such an easy sell to get it with Mario Kart, which everybody wants already. But now Mario Kart is $80 because that bundle no longer exists. So we'll see in three months if that has any ripple effect on this game's sales. I'm going to guess not anything super recognizable. I think people are still going to bite the bullet and buy Mario Kart with their Switch 2s. DK Bonanza, 4.25 million units. Brian, it's not enough. It's not the 10 million people that have a Switch 2 that haven't bought Donkey Kong. What are you doing? Like, this is, it's the game to have. You've got to get this one. Yeah, it's frustrating. What else do we, like, I don't know. Tell your friends that this game's awesome. Did they need to title it Super Mario Odyssey 2 Donkey Kong Bonanza like they did with Yoshi's Island? Like, I don't know. Super Mario's friend slash enemy Donkey Kong, the game. from the makers of Super Mario Odyssey. Exactly. It's just, it's a bummer, because we've talked to death how special this game is, and I think it'll have legs, especially if a 3D Mario doesn't come out this year to replace it. There's a demo for this game, right? There's a kiosk demo. There's no, I don't know if there's a demo demo on the eShop. If not, start there. Also, make demos easier to find on the eShop, Nintendo. Yeah. Just make a tab for that. I walked out of the partner direct being like, oh, cool, so there's a bunch of new stuff. I'm going to go check it out. And you have to basically search all of it individually. There should just be a demos tab. And I don't know why that's difficult. Or maybe I'm missing something and I'm stupid and old. It's weird. It's hard to find. This is one of those games where I feel like if people play it for five minutes, they get it. They might not understand it looking at screenshots. They might not understand it even looking at a trailer. But when you play Donkey Kong Bonanza and you feel how awesome it is to destroy everything in this game, you and I were sold instantly, right, when we played it at the preview event. Like, I just knew instantly that this is going to be a game I put 70 hours in. And I did. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure most people have played DK Bonanza if you haven't switched to. But I wonder if some of it's the pricing stuff or if it's just Donkey Kong's lack of franchise care for a decade. And this is the start of a ramp up rather than kind of the peak of it. But I hope this one has legs throughout the generation because it deserves to be on that top 10 list for the next several years for Switch 2. Pokemon Legends EA, a much worse game than Donkey Kong Bonanza. I don't really like that game at all. Sold 3.89 million on Switch 2 and 8.41 million on Switch 1. So it's already well past 10 million. This is a weird wrinkle of how Nintendo reports its data, and this is on their investor relations site. They say packaged versions of Nintendo Switch 2 edition software are included in the Switch 2 software sales units, but the downloadable versions are included in Switch 1 software sales units. So if you buy a Switch 2 edition digitally, Nintendo counts that as a Switch 1 sale plus an upgrade pack sale. It's very bizarre. So we don't actually know how many people bought this on Switch 2. We know that 3.89 million physical Switch 2 copies were sold. I don't get why that's the way they're choosing to report this, but sure. Yeah, no, there's a weird breakdown between digital and physical and Switch 1 and Switch 2, and I would prefer something that sort of just cohesively lumps them all together. But I don't know. I guess it's better than like – on the Xbox side, I don't know how much any of their things have sold in like 15 years. so yeah like they they're just there's no transparency there at all so do we even know how many game pass subscribers there are anymore do they share that i mean one one less this week thanks to you yeah no i my dude mine lapsed after like seven or eight years and it's a bummer it just got it just got really expensive and the value wasn't there for me anymore and i look at like nintendo switch online i'm like if i'm gonna play for pay for a subscription service like it's much cheaper over there and i'm i'm topped off there for like the next two years and yeah it's it's tough i mean everything's expensive now and you have to look at the end of the month at your credit card bills and you're like do we really need peacock and game pass so yeah not to lump those things together but no they're pretty similar yeah uh pokemon legends yeah well over 10 million so nicely done on that pokemon just sells no matter what although this one was better than scarlet violet i mean it was not as big of a disaster as that so i'll give it credit there. Kirby, we already talked about, that's a nice debut for an extremely niche game to do almost $2 million when it was the second kart racer on the console within six months. I think that's a big success. Galaxy 2 sold $2.42 million. Galaxy 1, $2.28 million. So that's solid for a $60, $70 port of two old Wii games. People wanted Mario Galaxy. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 2.39 million units. What is happening? It's past 70 million lifetime. And Brian, if you combine that with the 8 million or so it sold on Wii U, it's like 3 million behind Wii Sports to being the best-selling Nintendo game of all time. Which was a pack-in. Yeah. Crazy. Unbelievable. It's still selling. Like, it's now competing with its own brand, effectively, now. Yeah. Right? Like, there's a brand-new, flashy, gorgeous, incredible Mario Kart game out. And people are like, no, I still got to buy the old one. Yeah. It's nuts. We say that people are always like, who is still buying this? And then I'll always say, a new batch of kids turns seven every single quarter, and they get a Switch Lite and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It is still a much cheaper birthday gift than a Switch 2 and Mario Kart World by several hundred dollars to get an outstanding game. So it's still a very viable option, and I think it's going to still sell a few million next year. I don't see it stopping in the near future. We've got to go in a couple minutes, but I do want to shout out, not included in the report, Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment passed 1 million worldwide. Koei Tecmo announced that for a Switch 2 Warriors spinoff exclusive, that's a big success for them. It doesn't really have Link in it. Yeah, just a fake robot Link. Yeah, not Link at all. And then Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, there was panic online because Nintendo didn't include it in the report, which historically means it didn't crack a million in its first few weeks. So some people reached out to Nintendo and got a response that combined across the Switch 2 edition and the Switch 1 version, Metroid Prime 4 has passed 1 million sales in its first four weeks across both platforms. So it's the same weird wrinkle as Legends EA we talked about. They split these numbers. So neither Switch 2 physical copies or everything else combined have crossed a million, so they didn't report it in this quarter. But that's a solid start for a very long-awaited game that was very disappointing to a lot of people. I think that's absolutely a solid start. I hope it's enough to give Retro another shot at making a brand new Metroid game, wholly original, that isn't made up of parts of pre-existing concepts and whatnot. Because there's a really awesome foundation here, and I hope that they get to keep making these games. I don't see this game having legs, really. No, me neither. Yeah, I feel like most of the people who bought this game have bought it already, and I think obviously you're going to get new people coming into the Switch 2 ecosystem for years to come, and maybe they'll give it a shot. But I don't see this doing like 2, 3, 4 million long tail or anything like that. Yeah, I think the price hurts this one too. When there's Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight that are $20, and then there's this one which is much shorter and it's $70. It's tough. So yeah, I hope Metroid finds a way forward, but it did crack a million for Metroid Prime 4 after the long wait. Nintendo is not changing its forecast. They think they'll have 19 million Switch 2s by the end of March, so 2 million above where they are now. I think that's conservative. I think that's so they can say, we beat our forecast in three months when they deliver the final results. 48 million pieces of software. And Nintendo says that they're still considering a price increase, but no decision has been made yet because they're also trying to keep the install base at a solid momentum. So we'll see there. But that is the quarterly financial report this quarter for Nintendo. We'll see you again in three months. 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 Spotify or the IGN Games channel on YouTube. If you like the show, please tell a friend or leave us a review, rating, or nice comment wherever you're listening. It's the best way to support us. Next week is The Legend of Zelda's 40th anniversary and we're going to talk about where we want the series to go next. Brian, anything you want to shout out here? No, IGN's working on something called FanFest. We've got information up on our website and a trailer on YouTube. It'll be really fun. It's got a bunch of video game stuff, pop culture, movies, TV shows, celebrities. So I'll be helping out with that for the next few weeks. But yeah, a lot of big games coming out this year, and I'm very excited to talk about them with all of you and cover them. And there's a new Mario movie coming, so it's going to be a good year for Nintendo fans. Yeah, yeah, it's a fun one for sure. Thanks so much, Brian, for joining me. That was a fun episode. Thank you to Tayo for working behind the scenes, and thank you so much for listening. But for now, that is all the time I've got. I've got to get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more Nintendo Voice Chat, the only place you can get the thing.