Applause for you and yours — you did it! You’ve made it through the barrage of great video games in 2023 all the way to the brand new year. Happy 2024 everyone!
With the Switch entering its seventh year in 2023, our expectations — with the exception of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, of course — were relatively moderate, but it turned out to be a watershed year for Nintendo’s wine-aging system, with a number of games first and third parties that have maintained quality alongside the best on all platforms.
But that’s all old news — the arrival of a new January 1st has us all looking ahead to what 2024 might bring! The big question for Nintendo fans is whether or not we will see the legendary ‘Switch 2’ announced and even launched in the next 366 days. With sales of the current system slowing year after year, it seems unlikely that the Switch has another 12 months to itself as Nintendo’s only available hardware. On the other hand, given the quality of the games launched last year, it wouldn’t be the end of the world from a player’s perspective. *he looks at our huge backlog with distaste*
There are several remakes and re-releases of the first party in the works — a sure sign that younger development teams are cutting their teeth while veterans are throwing themselves into killer apps for the next system.
The year begins with Nintendo’s release of Another Code: Recollection (January), followed by Mario vs. Donkey Kong (February), Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (“Summer”) and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (“2024”) — Princess Peach: Showtime (March) will deliver the only all-new game on the Switch’s first slate at the time of writing. Metroid Prime 4 is still labeled “TBA,” but four years after restarting development, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect news of it sometime this year.
