In the middle of October 2021, my youngest daughter, only 7 years old at the time, came to me with concern in her eyes. The Nintendo switch didn’t turn on, and its last few operating moments were concerns. Something about the download that was just completed, and a button with “Update” written on it. It was the end of that particular unit’s line, but only the beginning of my troubles with the console that went on to try my patience until this day.
The Hall family was a victim of Snuffs as old as the mobile devices themselves. A scary low power firmware update. It loses power while devices like iPhones and graphics cards, or $250 red and black plastic shit, upgrade the most important layers of software. Firmware refers to the code that tells the device to be a device rather than a 398 gram brick, and when I took the three-way console from my daughter’s little hand it was hugged like a dead bird – I knew it was a complete loss. But that wasn’t the worst part.
Inside that black mirror of despair was dozens of small furry neighbors – her digital friend Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The new Island Backup feature was recently introduced, and her stupid father hadn’t yet taken the time to carry out the inexplicable rituals he needed to store his Nintendo Switch games in the cloud.
All of her friends were dead, so I was sure. Similarly, there was a Belserler Nicknack shop that she and her sister built from scratch before she and her sister showed it on the passthecontroller Twitch channel. My house, my wife’s house, the dan retreatable ladders and bridges that took weeks to build, and of course, the peach trees that we all loved so much…none of them had returned.
Ultimately, it’s my fault. I’m a user here and it was my error. However, I was upset with Nintendo for not making anything to back up hundreds of hours of irreparable gameplay and happily shared it on the darkest day of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Everything about the switch is a quirk, some of them are more uncomfortable than others
However, Nintendo doesn’t handle the cloud like other console manufacturers. As other console manufacturers do, they don’t even handle online storefronts. Or onboard storage. Or a game cartridge. Or online multiplayer. Or a friend list. Or TV, so. Everything about the switch is a quirk, some of them are more uncomfortable than others.
I replaced the original Nintendo Switch with a remodeled one, retreating the nearly $120 PERT, but I easily bought an extra controller for at least years. Both Joy-Cons shipped to the original Switch were suffering from Joy-Con drift.
“What’s going on with Mario?” asked one day, watching a girl play in the basement.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how the controller works,” said my oldest. I was incredible. There is no scenario to accept anything other than absolute adherence from human input devices, but here my kids were trying to complete an evil jump puzzle with a joystick that could not walk straight through the virtual avatar. It’s enough to say they have lost the taste of piloting a small red plumber, especially if it took most of two months to get the controller back after being repaired under warranty.
When the next two broke, I threw them away. For me, I didn’t even have a trip to the post office.
Today we are in a better place, thank you. Both girls have healthy relationships with video game consoles like the Xbox Series X, iPhones and iPads, Windows PCs, and games catalogs that each can call home. But they are literally afraid of switching to Nintendo. This is a console that you can defeat multiple times for a variety of reasons. You can’t even cave them to bring for a road trip.
They will never forget the experience, and I will not. That’s why I’m shook off the Nintendo Switch 2. In 2025, it’s enough to worry about putting a visit from another unstable portable console at risk.
