Nintendo's game preservation efforts continue to crawl forward at a snail's pace.
The Game Boy family of handhelds get nine games released to Switch Online, giving you only six years to wait (and pay subscription fees) until the title you actually want arrives on NSO.
Nintendo's latest Direct delivers the news we've all been waiting for. Finally, nearly 6 years into its life the Nintendo Switch, the herculean task of emulating the Game Boy makes its debut.
Yes we finally have Nintendo’s famous handheld family included in Nintendo Online. You get a whopping nine titles form the Game Boy and Color, but if you shelled out for the Expansion Pack you get a whole 6 Game Boy Advance games. I’m sorry to report Nintendo DS and 3DS are not included, nothing short of a quantum computer could emulate such revolutionary handhelds.
Jokes aside I’m glad they finally added the Game Boy family to the service, however the issue of Nintendo drip-feeding their customers games is infuriating. The only thing in my mind stopping Nintendo from adding their massive first party catalog of NES, SNES, and N64 is just overshadowing upcoming Switch releases. What’s more frustrating is you can’t buy any of these titles outright and just own them. Instead you have to keep paying Nintendo a monthly fee for access.
It just feels like another step towards us not owning our games. And finally, of course, emulation on other devices like the Steam Deck are better and have access to more systems like the 3DS which Nintendo has made no indication they will try to preserve it's digital-only releases.
While I’m happy more classic games are getting into the hands of more gamers either with official emulation or full remasters, the Steam Deck remains my favorite console to revisit the past.
There were a number of games announced in the same Nintendo Direct that revealed Game Boy games coming to the Switch. I’ll give a shout out to a Steam Deck HQ article going over the games announced in the Direct that will also be coming to Steam down below. Do you agree? What are you emulating on your Steam Deck? See anything you liked from the Nintendo Direct?
Noah Kupetsky
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