I will never forget the unbearable excitement I felt on that early morning on my 7th birthday. It was 1998, and Pokémon was the biggest thing in the world, especially for an elementary school kid like me. Except that I didn’t have a single card or game to my name. In fact, I didn’t even have a Game Boy. That, plus Pokémon, was the only thing I asked for that birthday, and I knew I would get it.
I can still remember lying awake half the night, unable to sleep while my imagination ran wild with unrealistic machinations of what the game would be like. I woke up just as early to the sounds of my parents and sister setting up decorations downstairs and bided my time before I could go down. It was a school day, but they could sense my excitement well in advance and agreed to let me open one thing before school.
It was, of course, a fresh Game Boy and copy of Pokémon Blue.
I could tell you similar stories surrounding my N64, PS2, and even Xbox 360. I was at very different ages for each so the excitement came in different flavors, but they were all just as strong. I haven’t felt that way about a new console since the original Switch, and now that I’ve been playing — and loving — the Switch 2, I understand why.
Meet the new console, same as the old console
My first instinct as to why getting my hands on the Switch 2 lacked that special feeling as previous consoles was to blame it on my age. I’m a full adult now, and one whose career revolves around covering games, so it would only be natural that the magic of a new console would wane. After my first month, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more.
The Switch 2, for the first time since the transition from the NES to the SNES, feels like a sequel console in the most literal sense of the word for Nintendo. That might sound like an obvious statement since Nintendo called it the Switch 2, but even the Wii and Wii U had fundamental differences. It is, as most people will tell you, a more powerful Switch. Yes, there are some neat additions here and there, like the mouse controls and camera, but this is not Nintendo taking a creative leap. We have the same UI, a ton of upgraded Switch games, and the console itself is a more refined form factor of the old one.
None of that is bad, but it makes it so easy to forget that I’m playing a new console. With game graphics and performance leaps becoming so minor now, plus the number of cross-gen games, there’s very little to give me that new and exciting feeling I had with past generations. I know that my memories of my first days with the Game Boy, PS2, and Xbox 360 were cemented in my mind because of how unmistakably unique they were from top to bottom. We’re now in the era of PC-like upgrades that lack a new console feel.
I’m reminded of a now-debunked quote wrongly attributed to Henry Ford that said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While we don’t know who or where the quote actually came from, it still rings true for new consoles. We all say we just want the same thing but better — faster horses — and now that’s exactly what we’re getting. That’s cool, but a faster horse isn’t nearly as exciting as a car.
I know that nostalgia plays a factor in this feeling. Just like we might think old games were better, we all tend to look back at our memories of getting new consoles with rose-tinted glasses. I will never be 7 years old, living in my childhood home before my parents’ divorce, playing Pokémon before school with not a care in the world again. I will never get to take the day off from school after getting my PS2 to play Kingdom Hearts all day. But I do think there’s a real loss when all new consoles now, even Nintendo, play it safe by keeping the same controller, same UI, few games that can’t be played anywhere else, and only minor graphical improvements. From a business perspective, it totally makes sense. But I do lament the fact that I may never form such powerful memories around a new console again.
