The Nintendo Switch Is The Only Console That Cares How Gaming Feels

Summary

Switch is the best console for young gamers, mainly thanks to the cartridges
Games take way too long to download on other consoles, making gaming frustrating and boring
Digital downloads are easier, but make a lot of the experience worse

I'm slowly but surely indoctrinating my niece and nephew into becoming gamers. I think it's starting to take. This began a few years ago when they were only five years old. I upgraded my Switch to an OLED, and donated the older model to them along with a handful of games I no longer used. They dabbled a little bit in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario and Sonic Olympics, but were a little too young to understand much.

I've gotten them various games over the years, but only Lego Marvel has stuck. There was a thrill in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario Kart Home Circuit game, but they're still a little young to follow the deceptively complex instructions at eight years old, and having two 🍒karts is a nice gesture for twins, but without two Switches they cannot physically race. I've since pushed various games onto them, but playing with them last weekend, I realised something I had been missing in my own gaming experience this whole time - the magic of a cartridge.

The Switch Is By Far The Best Console For Young, New Gamers

Princess Peach Showtime Detective Ensemble Transformation

It's not that I necessarily care so much if they are gamers or not, and having just turned eight, the twins are nearing a point where their interests will diverge. It's more that I don't really know much about what children like, but I do know video games, and if I can make them gamers I can get them gifts for life. I'm already planning - and I can reveal this as they are not avid readers of the site - to get the Crash and Spyro collections for them for Christmas, the perfect games for their age and by far the best games they will have played to date. And w🤪hat's even better, they'll be able to put them straight in the console and start playing.

I had recently bought them 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Princess Peach Showtime and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Luigi's Mansion 3 for their birthday - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a little gender normative but a clear step up in quality from the family games and movement based Joy-Con wriggler🐼s they'd played previously. As they begged their parents - strict screentime monitors who also don't read this site so I can call them whatever I want - to let them play the new games, I braced myself for them learning a harsh lesson about modern video games: installation time. But instead, as soon as I snapped the cartridge into play, the Princess Peach: Showtime icon appeared, and away they went.

After a few levels, we switched to Luigi's Mansion 3, and again we were off to 🃏the races in a second. Being an older game, a prompt even appeared that additional content was being downloaded (this seemed related to the DLC), but we could play unimpeded even with that happening. It has been a long time since I played a cartridge game on the Switch, I had forgotten what it felt like.

I am less put off by the digital world by many, and even when I don't get codes through work, typically opt for the ease of digital downloads. I’ve even poked fun at co-workers who are more committed to their physical collectio💝ns. But it was an important reminder of how easy gaming used to be, and how much we have lost in all we gained.

If I had upgraded my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation or Xbox and gifted them my old version of that instead, or had bought them vouc✃hers instead of physical games, it's hard to imagine them being as enamoured by the experience.

They only really play the games I buy thཧem, so I'm not just responsible for the games themselves, but the whole experience around it. I need quick answers when they get stuck, I need to steer them in the right direction, and most importantly, I need to make the act of playing games fꦉun. If your excitement at playing a new game is immediately tapered by having to wait an hour for it to install, and then later needing to delete old games and juggle storage space just to try something new out, that's going to leave a sour taste before you even begin.

There Are Too Many Barriers To Gaming These Days

Cover art and screen from Luigi's Mansion 3.

I know I'm in a privileged position when it comes to video games. As I just said, I get several from codes, and I'm less inclined to weigh up the affordability of games when I know playing them is necessary for my job. I also live in an area with good internet connection and typically play single-player🐎 adventures that don't 🎃require continued investment, so while storage space and download times can be a hassle, it's easy for me to navigate the pitfalls of modern gaming. As for those of you who are regular readers, you care about games enough to put up with these foibles because you're already in too deep.

But what about newcomers? The popularity of Roblox and the like suggests children are not quite falling out of love with gaming, but it does feel as though what many of us would describe as the core gaming experience (Roblox being, to my mind, as much of a fringe game as Candy Crush) is harder than ever to get into. I started out with a NES from the attic and a chipped PS1 with games from the market. These days you're dropping 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:$400 on a PS5 and $70 on a game (with hundreds more in microtransactions and DLC) th𝓡at takes over an hour to install, then requires constant updates, and when you have more than three the console is full.

The preowned market? There’s no four for £20 at GameStation anymore, because the shops are closing, prices aren't dropping, and the servers are dead by the time you can afford them. Of course, there are always deals to be had for patient and savv♓y gamers,💙 but the overall magic of buying and playing a game just isn't there anymore.

I wrote about my nostalgia for these moments last Christmas as I imagined frustrated kids waiting on downloads after unwrapping tಞheir console🎃s,🌌 but last weekend,⭕ I felt the magic again first-hand. Gaming has improved a lot in many ways since I was a kid, but in this one way, it has changed for the worse and we will never get it back.