The Nintendo Switch 2 was fully unveiled April 2, giving us slew of console details and new game announcements. One of the biggest surprises is that it’ll get a brand new 3D Donkey Kong game as one of its first big games. Though rumors of the game’s existence had been floating around for years, its confirmation — especially over that of a heavily predicted Mario game — has made for a strange and incredibly welcome change of pace.
If it wasn’t already clear, I think this switch up rules.
We were spoiled with the first Switch, which miraculously bookended its first year on the market with a legendary Zelda title and a grand slam of a 3D Mario platformer. I’m not sure we’re ever going to get a lineup that serendipitous again, and that’s fine. We can stop trying to recapture that lightning and instead do something different, something better. I look at the Switch 2’s cadence of releases throughout 2025 and see precisely that: a lineup that honors the Switch’s legacy as the force of a generation and continues its pedigree.
Going bananas
2025’s Switch 2 release will touch upon many of the milestones that defined its predecessor’s run. First and foremost is the launch title of choice here, Mario Kart World, the clear inheritor of the legacy left behind by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Switch’s single best-selling game of all time and one of the best games ever. I’ve argued in the past that Mario Kart is just as ubiquitous as titles like Fortnite and franchises like Call of Duty, and that doesn’t happen without the unprecedented success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. That led the charge at the Switch’s launch window more so than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild despite the latter’s tendency to take up all the air in the room.
By releasing the Switch’s successor with the next Mario Kart, Nintendo is signaling that all who bought into the last one — all nearly 70 million of them — have a new home on the upcoming console. A new game to rotate into their game nights, a new roster of characters to poke fun at, a new world to freely roam with friends, and new tracks to commit to memory in a race to the top of the leaderboard. “Say hello to the recurring game of your next several years, now give us $80 for it.”
The launch day lineup, while woefully short on first-party exclusives, is also testament to the intense brand rehabilitation Nintendo engaged in with the Switch. Regardless of your feelings on the game, it’s kind of stunning to be getting any version of Cyberpunk 2077 on the first day of a Nintendo console release — a pairing that would’ve been deemed a complete mismatch just ten years ago. Moreover, the system will be launching with the support of indie darling-turned-enigmatic weirdo Toby Fox and the release of Deltarune‘s third and fourth chapters. Street Fighter 6 will be there day one, and most importantly, Yakuza 0 (the best game ever in my book) is receiving a port with added cutscenes and a brand new multiplayer mode.
That kind of roster doesn’t spring up from out of nowhere. It stems directly from Nintendo tearing down its own walled garden. Sure, that also opened the door to a dysfunctional eshop full of slop and hentai — worry not, this too is progress — but somewhere down the line, the Switch became the company’s experimental testbed. In turn, the system transformed into the go-to destination for AAA and indie developers and publishers alike. With the Switch 2, it’s obvious that Nintendo is continuing this campaign, and endeavoring more than ever to court anyone and everyone with a passing or intense interest in games.
Continuing its experimental streak, the Switch pulled off a miracle: It proved there is more to the Nintendo brand than Mario and The Legend of Zelda. Dormant and neglected series found new life, and some well-established niches exploded into household names, like Animal Crossing. Hell, the very same year as the Switch’s launch, Nintendo even gave Toad — a perennial side character and guide — their very own brilliant little puzzle game, and released an incredibly unorthodox and primarily motion-controlled fighting game called Arms. It sold two million copies, which lands it near the bottom of the heap, but it isn’t nothing either.
Beneath the guise of an exciting new console, Nintendo reinvented itself. Or maybe it just fell back into old form. Luigi’s Mansion, a beloved but nonetheless small series that began on the beguiled GameCube, became a smash hit on the Switch. Metroid seemingly came back from the dead and now, eight years after its announcement, we’re finally getting Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. At several points during the Switch’s lifetime, Mario and friends teamed up with the Rabbids and were given guns. As recently as last year, the Famicom Detective Club games have not only seen a resurgence but a critically acclaimed continuation in the form of Emio – The Smiling Man. I’ll stop myself short of saying that Nintendo got “weird” with the Switch, but it definitely became bold again. When Digital Trends spoke to Bill Trinen, Nintendo’s Vice President of Player and Product Experience, last week, he explained why Nintendo moved to this strategy in the Switch era.
“In some cases, it’s true that when you have a system that has as broad of an audience as Nintendo Switch does, you just want to bring a wide variety of content and you have to take into account that some of these players maybe have never experience that franchise, and it’s an opportunity for that franchise to live and blossom again,” Trinen tells Digital Trends. “And at the same time, there may be a subset of older players who are enjoying Nintendo Switch who might have nostalgia for something like that. It creates a lot of opportunities. I think Kirby Air Riders is going to be one that we see both of those audiences gravitate to.”
And so we land back at Donkey Kong Bananza, the first 3D platformer in the series in about 30 years. It gives Donkey Kong, a character who has been carrying an exceptional but often overlooked series of 2D platformers, the grand stage he’s long deserved. Donkey Kong is, after all, one of the OGs. There’s no Jumpman without a princess-snatching monkey at the top of that arcade cabinet way back when. Despite taking up similar space at one point in time, everyone’s favorite ape hasn’t enjoyed the limelight in a long time, and now that he’s properly front and center again, he’s tearing up stages, punching holes in the ground, and lobbing pieces of the environment in remarkable fashion like a madman (honestly, a pretty reasonable crash out from Mr. Kong). The least of this system’s concerns is the absence of a new 3D Mario game, considering how wealthy it is in just about everything else.
The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on June 5.
