The Nintendo Switch Made Me A Believer

The name Nintendo has been floating around my life for the best part of three decades now. An undoubted goliath in the videogame universe, it was only natural that a pixel obsessed kid such as myself would travel from childhood to, erm, (I’m not saying middle-aged!), to...quite a bit older, with the mighty name of Nintendo (God of big mushrooms and plumbing, I believe) echoing through the air almost daily.

And so it should be for a company with such a stardust sprinkled catalogue of videogame giants under its belt. Every kid should have been lost in the Nintendoverse. The first blossoms on the buds of Nintendo’s gaming seeds were part of one of the first ‘Golden Ages’ for gaming. And it was magical and wondrous and exciting and like a whole bunch of Christmases were squashing themselves down the chimney at the same time before exploding in a mess of pixelated magic across the living room floor.

Except, I was a Sega kid. And as we all know, in the very strict rules of conflict associated with the - not at all pointless - console wars, Sega kids hate Nintendo kids (and Nintendo kids envied us Sega overlords). This was just how it had to be. And so, because of being on the frontlines of the war, where the majority of the casualties and conflicts occurred on the school playground, I missed the SNES, and the N64, never owned a Gameboy, and only ever had a Nintendo console at all as a sort of completionist weirdness that gnawed at my brain and wallet.

My Gamecube was a neglected dusty old thing, my Wii was utterly bloody brilliant, for about two hours before the dust began to settle on that too. The WiiU was even worse, a console so utterly ignored in our home it might as well have starred Adam Sandler. And then, a few months ago, the gnawing completionist returned and my wallet wept as I became the (I’m not saying proud, I’d rather say middle-aged than proud!) owner of a Nintendo Switch.

As I fired it up and awaited the cloud of dust to begin to drift down and settle on another Nintendo bit-part player, a very unexpected thing happened. I became smitten with my new console. I was immersed in a new world of Nintendo goodness that took me by complete surprise. I sat with a dopey smile plastered across my face and the tears of the Sega faires dampening my head as I slowly fell in love. In a scene reminiscent of the Grinch acquiring a heart, I suddenly felt a warmth come over me, and despite encroaching middle-age, my trousers were dry.

And the truth of it is, the foundations for this awakening are not built on the modern whistles and bells of the Switch; nice though they are, but instead stand upon the rekindled memories of one of those ‘Golden Age’ thingies.

The Switch is a beautifully modern machine. The handheld mode is just jaw-droppingly wonderful and slick. To play Zelda on the move is a weird experience simply because it feels too good to be playable whilst sat on a train, or instead of actually working in the workplace. But this isn’t what made me fall in love with the Switch. My joy went supernova based on the gathering of people around the screen engaged in the action with some magnificent multiplayer split screen gaming. This was what I used to love when we would carry Xbox consoles to each other houses to split-screen Halo over a few TV sets. And nothing the Xbox One or PS4 has delivered managed to reignite that magic feeling quite as much as when my Switch was spilling out Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. for the clamouring crowds.

Although the handheld mode is the true unique selling point of the machine, for me nothing quite captures the picture of why I love videogames so much as the family gathered around the screen in beautifully frantic competition as we fight for bragging rights, and who has to empty the dishwasher.

The Switch for myself, a Sega kid turned (predominantly) Xbox adult, is the turning point in my relationship with Nintendo. Where I once brushed them off with a disinterested wave of the hand, I now beckon them in. This is a special console. The games catalogue is wide and varied, the control system with the joycons feels way more than a gimmick, being solid and fluid, and the fact that I wish I had a two-hour commute to work just so I could play on the move speaks volumes - not least about my own sanity. This is a console basking in brilliance. It is a modern age, cutting edge system that takes me right back to a videogame age I used to adore. Back when we played for fun and when what was taking place around the screen was as important as the action on it, and where the actual game itself is transcended by the sheer joy of playing it with good people. See, told you I was old.

Now, as a former Sega kid, I think I need to take a shower...is the Switch waterproof, do you know?