Nintendo Switch Online Service Will Launch With 20 NES Games, Cloud Saves, More

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Nintendo's online service for the Switch will include access to a selection of classic video games from the NES era as part of the subscription service. Today, Nintendo announced some of the games that will be included as part of the Nintendo Switch Online classic games selection. The 10 NES titles confirmed for the service, which Nintendo refers to as "Nintendo Entertainment System -- Nintendo Switch Online" in a press release, are: Soccer, Tennis, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, Dr. Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo promises 20 NES games will be available when Nintendo Switch Online goes live in September, meaning 10 classic NES games are still to be announced. New games for the service will be added regularly, Nintendo says.

Those NES games will include some sort of online play as part of Nintendo Switch Online. That includes online competitive or cooperative multiplayer, or simply taking turns controlling the game. "Friends can even watch each other play single-player games online, and 'pass the controller' at any time," Nintendo said in a release. "Every classic NES game will support voice chat via the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app. It will also be possible to play these games offline." Some other details of the service, as reported by Nintendo Life, include the option for cloud save data backups and a four tiered pricing plan. In the U.S., the pricing is as follows: one month is $3.99; three months is $7.99; twelve months is $19.99; twelve month family membership is $34.99 (with up to eight Nintendo accounts on different systems that will be able to use the service).

Re:

[Narcocide]

I agree it'd be cool to see them do this with some GameCube games...

Re:

[ausekilis]

The biggest problem I see with this is the controls. The NES and SNES have a diamond-grid-based layout for their buttons, just like you see damned near every controller, including all of the Playstation and XBox controllers. Once you start veering away from that toward odd controls like the 6-button genesis, the pitchfork-N64, and the oddly laid out Gamecube controller you'll start hitting some strange button mapping problems.

I played the hell out of Metroid Prime, Zelda: Twilight Princess and a handful of

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[iampiti]

Yeah well, we all know you can play all the old consoles' games for free if you pirate the roms. Parent was obviously only discussing the legal options.

Re:

[Junta]

The challenge is that for consumer, absolutely your perspective is relevant.

For Nintendo, and in fact as an industry as a whole, business goals have moved to extracting recurring revenue, not what is best or most desirable to the customer.

When you carry forward your games that you want to replay without effort, they get nothing out of that transaction. Now in a competitive landscape, having a positive sentiment on that front matters. Additionally, as Nintendo will presumably move to more cross-device reve

Re:

[AvitarX]

I've purchased the legend of Zelda a few times for sure.

At the very least, NES, GameCube, WII.

It was $6 on the WII, a fair price to not need to out in a disk IMO. Though also, kinda annoying.

Re:

[fponias]

I had the same thought. I actually keep my Wii plugged in still. Since they stopped releasing updates for the OS it stays jailbroken and I can run my emulators on it. My wii actually gets more use now as an emulator machine than ever it did when it was a platform for shovelware.

Re:

[darkain]

You mean like the SNES Classic including previously never officially released Star Fox 2?

Re:

[iampiti]

I've not checked but I believe all of these are first party games meaning they've got the licensing matters settled. Licensing other companies' games might prove hard, expensive or even impossible

Re:

[jonwil]

There are plenty of rare 1st party games they could make available. Some of the limited carts used only for contests for example. Or that (IIRC rare and possibly undumped) English translation of the first Earthbound game on the NES. Or (with the right emulation of the satellite box and setup) that japan-only satellite download Zelda 1 port on the SNES.

They Should Just Release A 59.95 Nostalgia Pack

[dryriver]

A zero-configuartation-neded multi-platform NES software emulator with resolution upconversion plus say the Top 40 NES ROMs from that era, with a 19.95 option to get 2 original feeling plastic NES gamepads that plug together into 1 USB port, making the whole thing an 80 Dollar outing. That would have been a very cool option for many who want to relive their childhood/youth every now and then. Far better than credit card + online registration + cloud service use + keeping track of monthly payments and so forth. The only good thing about the service they are proposing that I can see is it isn't too expensive. Still, gamers from that era intensely dislike the cloud. Where you could bring in the cloud would be that this emulator has an online store where you can get additional NES ROMs at whatever price using your credit card.

Re:

[ausekilis]

"Still, gamers from that era intensely dislike my butt." Cloud to butt is the best.

Been my experience it goes from butt to cloud. Especially after refried beans.

Re:

[omnichad]

When they can get away with charging $59.95 just for the NES Classic? Also, it sounds like you just want an NES classic.

Cloud saves are flawed

[sremick]

I'm honestly surprised they're offering cloud saves as the solution, seeing how some game saves in some games can exceed 5GB per save file. That's a pretty extreme cloud storage solution for $20/yr.

But while cloud saves address some issues, they introduce others. Aside from the financial barrier making this critical feature only available to those willing to pay ever year, but how does this address corrupted save files? At the OS level, the cloud backup service isn't going to have a way to check the integrity of each savegame and know if a game crash corrupted the file making it unusable before obediently backing it up to the "cloud" and overwriting your only other intact save file for that game. Will they provide versioning, further adding to their storage burden?

So many issues that would've been solved by proper SD card backups, where you could keep an archive of known-good files and revert to older versions if necessary.

Re:

[Tha_Zanthrax]

5GB save games? They hardly go over 10MB. Are you talking about the actual game date?

Re:

[Calydor]

Can you link a source for those 5 GB save games?

Re:

[Shrubbman]

5GB per save file? WTF are these games saving? Do you have any examples?

NBA 2K18 received a LOT of flack when it showed up on Switch last fall for needing both a 16GB download to play even with the physical cartridge PLUS another 5GB per save file. I'm unaware of any other games with such ludicrously large saves, but there is *one* example

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft can be added to the list of >1GB save files. I've read it allocates 2GB for save data.

Limited Countries Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Great and all, but serious F**K Nintendo. Not one of my games can I play online, because I live in Central America. Why they are cutting everyone off into Geo fences these days I can't understand. I am not asking to buy online content, I just want to play the features already built into the game but nope, no online accounts for anyone outside of a handful of countries.

Re:

[darkain]

This has always been due to regionalized legalities with different types of content. Don't like it? Fight to change the laws in your jurisdiction regarding content in video games and online content.

NEO

[Daetrin]

How can they have missed out on the opportunity to call it "Nintendo Entertainment Online"?

NEO GEO

[tepples]

How can they have missed out on the opportunity to call it "Nintendo Entertainment Online"?

SNK might object, as "NEO" might be too similar to SNK's "Neo Geo" arcade platform and consoles. If Nintendo wants to get SNK games into the store once this expands to a true Virtual Console successor, Nintendo marketing needs to tread carefully.

Re:

[darkain]

I'm going to assume you're a non-Switch owner. Neo Geo and SNK games dominate the landscape in the Switch marketplace, and have since day-one. They're currently the ONLY Virtual Console platform available, and have more released games than I can count.

Re:

[tepples]

Thanks for clarifying. You are correct that I do not own a Nintendo Switch, or a Wii U for that matter. Pretend I said "If Nintendo wants to keep SNK on board with its store".