For the last few months I have been recording a series called NS OH NO! where I play all of the Nintendo Switch Online Games, and I’ve been having a blast making them. It’s given me a great excuse to play retro games more; games I love and grew up with, games I’ve never played before and games I’ve never had the chance to play as I have NEVER seen them in the wild. For that experience alone for a 35 year old man, yes NSO is worth the price, but for the younger crowd there is no nostalgia to latch on to…so is it really worth it?
God knows to honest but wat i do know is that any around the age of 20 years basically could not give two shits about it, they may have NSO but they never play the games given to us and a big part of that is Nintendo them selves and how they are drip feeding us these games and not even the good ones, they are giving us games you’ve never heard of or care very little about…Pinball…I love pinball in real life and pinball FX is a great on the switch using TATE mode but Jesus tap dancing Christ Pinball on the NES is bad its basic and why did they think this game was worth your money every month or year, graphically its basic, there’s barley any music and sounds are minimal, so imagine being 8 years old right now during a time where we have games like God of War and Red Dead Redemption, hell even the games kids are playing (fortnite and minecraft) look incredible compared to a NES, SNES and even an N64 (hahaha N64 has never been graphicly incredible) and then on top of that online play is limited so even though a lot of games on NSO are bright and colourful I do not see people latching onto it and to be brutally honest I didn’t either.
Ok Ok so don’t get me wrong I got NSO the day I got my switch, I paid for expansion plus the day it came out and yeah I was underwhelmed…a lot of the games I actually owned then skip ahead a couple of years and we finally get Goldeneye a game NO ONE really ever expected to get a rerelease but we all dreamed and even then i barely played NSO. So what changed for me…well it was realising I was just wasting money by keeping NSO if I didn’t play these games, i never use online with switch so the games are what m paying for so why wasn’t I playing them…boredom, depression, too much choice, too many hours working…you pick one and that’s probably the reason, it didn’t help that the list of games wasn’t amazing but I sorted out a capture card and i needed something to play and demonstrate and practice with and we had this ready made list of games and boom i play them every day.
On doing this I discovered games i really enjoy, i found that i am terrible at video games, and love retro gaming even more now than i ever did before and its due to NSO. Don’t get me wrong there games on this service that are not good, straight up trash but then some of these games that look god damn awful turn out to be great games and doing NS OH NO! means I’m actually gonna play them i just need Nintento to release two games on each platform every month for forever because we are still missing several classics and even a recent update on the Gameboy one we had games given to us that where not advertised in that direct where they revealed the app in the first place…like god dammit where is oracle of seasons. we have maybe a year and a half of switch left before the new console comes out judging by the most recent direct so I get why they are drip feeding to keep us coming back but its too infrequent and is more just frustrating.
Have I answered the question is it worth it tough…many would think after these complaints I will say no and you would be wrong, this service is worth your time and money hell just for the N64 alone really, on that we a have Banjo 1 and 2, Mario 64 both ocarina of time and Majora’s mask as well as sin and punishment a game tat was advertised but in the end never released in the UK and that game rules! If you have any amount of nostalgia for these consoles get this service and do your self a favour grab a friend to play them with, or you kid and show them what you loved when your where their age or just sit back and roll through Hyrule slapping the cheeks out of Ganondorf.
Anyway this has been your thinly veiled article to advertise my series NS OH NO! and I hope you give it a shot. Have a great day and don’t forget to be nice to each other.
Written by Stuart.