Dear Nintendo, First of all,
I want to thank you. Seriously. Thank you very much for bringing Nintendo Game Boy,
Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games to Nintendo Switch Online.
As a tremendous fan of the entire Game Boy family, I am thrilled to be able to play these games,
legitimately, on crisp modern OLED displays and televisions. That’s a
real treat. Several of the games you’ve selected for this initial
wave – Super Mario Land 2 and WarioWare in particular – are among
my favourite games of all time. You can probably sense a but coming, though.
But, and I am going to come across as incredibly ungrateful now, it’s not enough. The Nintendo
Game Boy is a fabulous platform with hundreds of fantastic games, which has tremendous potential
right now in 2023, which is mostly being squandered. Wasted.
Nintendo, you have something special here, and you’re ignoring its potential. Game
Boy on Nintendo Switch Online
is nice... But it could be so much more. Stick around, by the way, to watch me open some
rare reprinted Game Boy games a little later in this video. Get ready for some hot
seal-breaking action! First, I need to talk
about the music industry. Last year, UK vinyl record sales overtook CD sales for
the first time in 35 years. The last time vinyls sold better than CDs was 1987. That
was quite a while ago.
The vinyl record market has been growing steadily for the past ten years, and while, let’s be honest
here, this is more about the decline of CD sales than the rise in vinyl, rise vinyl has.
In an era when music is primarily experienced through online
subscriptions and streaming services, there’s something inherently appealing
about owning physical media. Vinyl may be dated technology and relatively very expensive, but
these are features, not bugs. Vinyl has won many hearts precisely because of the appeal
of owning a tangible, retro piece of music. Indeed, I see the same phenomenon with my own
Nintendo Switch game collecting. While I’ve gone almost entirely digital with PlayStation games,
and stick to Game Pass if ever I’m touching an Xbox
title, with the Switch, I much prefer to buy cartridges when the option exists.
My growing collection of Limited Run, Strictly Limited, and other short run Switch games is a
testament to how I’ll sometimes buy a game both digitally and
physically, so strong is my desire to feel like I have something permanent. Something
that won’t be erased when Nintendo inevitably turns off the Switch eShop.
The timing of Game Boy games arriving on Nintendo Switch Online is clearly not a coincidence.
March sees the death of the 3DS eShop, meaning that it
will no longer be possible to purchase a vast array of Ge Boy games digitally on any platform.
Do you want to play Pokémon Red and see how the franchise began? Well, you’ve got two options.
Either piracy, or buying the game second-hand. And second-hand Pokémon games are ridiculously,
outrageously expensive. Just as vinyl records
have enjoyed a renaissance specifically because they’re retro and cool and old-
fashioned, certain older video games have increasingly become
collector’s items. I’ve been going to
retro game markets for years, I absolutely love them, but it’s been
interesting to see just how rapidly the prices for some games have been
rising in recent years. Ever since the pandemic,
things have been escalating a little too fast for my liking. Clearly a wave of
gamers took up retro collecting during lockdown, and, if I’m honest,
things are getting a little out of hand. Too rich for my blood.
Games I bought from pawn shops and eBay for £1 or £2 back in the day now sell for £20 to £40
online. There’s a high demand for real, physical Game Boy media, and with these games unavailable
on modern devices, it’s not like there’s any other easy way for newcomers to retro gaming to get
hold of them. Well, there
is a way. Of course there is. Nintendo, come on. We know you hate retro piracy. We
know that you will sue a ROM archive site for $2 million in supposed damages, but let’s be real. If
you don’t make these games accessible, if you give us less than twenty games across the entire
Game Boy and GBA library on Nintendo Switch Online,
then you haven’t given people a lot of other options for playing these games.
Plus, and I admit I’m getting sidetracked here, but how can a ROM site cost you $2 million if you
don’t actually plan to sell these older games anyway?!
Imagine a scenario in which vinyl records grow and grow in popularity, but the major publishing
labels simply refuse to actually print more vinyls. Imagine the price gouging, the investor
speculation, the painful bubble that forms around this kind of environment.
Now, vinyl isn’t a perfect analogue to Game Boy games, because there is no one company that owns
vinyl technology. You, though, Nintendo, could be making mint from simply restarting the old
presses and producing fresh new copies of beloved retro games.
And, obviously, while my particular bugbear amid the backdrop of the new Nintendo Switch Online
additions is Game Boy, this is obviously also true of NES, SNES, and N64 cartridges. And, indeed,
GameCube, Wii, etc -discs that would cost literally pennies to reprint.
My point is, there’s no reason not to make more of these games, to simply make the titles available
digitally and physically for the benefit of collectors.
After all, while you, Nintendo, may be weirdly reticent to let people
play your older games, other companies are doing roaring
trade by printing new old game cartridges. Limited Run is a company with a business model
that I don’t love, what with its one-off timed preorder windows and penchant for selling
collectors editions that are just a bunch of different
types of game cases in a fancy package, but I have to admit: they are making Game Boy games
available that otherwise would be prohibitively expensive.
This here brand new copy of Shantae cost me, what? £50? An original cartridge from 2002 sells on
eBay for over £700. By printing more of this game, Limited Run
has ensured that more people can actually own this game physically. They also released it for Switch,
again, on a physical cartridge, because why would you not do that if you could.
They currently have another game by the Shantae developers up for pre-order, X-Treme Sports,
although this one isn’t quite as expensive on the second-hand market.
Here’s another one: Avenging Spirit, originally published in 1992. An
original cartridge sells for £120 on eBay. The modern re-relead by
Retro-bit has this beautiful box, and a glow-in-the-dark cartridge.
Now in both of these cases, the number of additional
cartridges produced has been insufficient to meet demand, leading to these jumping up in price
on the aftermarket, but it’s nothing compared to the cost of original cartridges.
Imagine, Nintendo, allowing your fans to simply stroll into GAME, the same way a music fan might
wander into HMV, browse a row of physical Game Boy titles, and buy a brand new Pokémon Yellow
for £50 rather than paying more than double that for a second-hand copy from CEX.
(Apologies for the UK-specific shop references, but you get my point.)
(Also, yes, that’s how I pronounce CEX, anything else would feel too silly.)
Imagine, similarly, if retro enthusiasts could simply purchase Game Boy consoles, complete with
modern IPS screens and rechargeable batteries, direct from Nintendo.
Game Boy modding is an increasingly profitable business, as retro collectors seek out the best
possible way to play their old games. I’m personally in two minds
about this – on the one hand, I don’t love the idea of hacking up
perfectly functional Game Boys, because each console that gets
modded is another old handheld that’s no longer being preserved
in its original condition. As these modded handhelds keep changing hands for
impressive amounts of money, unmodded Game Boys are becoming increasingly rare.
On the other hand, the screens on OG Game Boys do show their age. They could look better.
The other solution is something like the Analogue Pocket, a device intended to offer a premium,
modern Game Boy experience. This thing plays all original Game Boy cartridges, and has adapters for
Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and Neo Geo Pocket Color handhelds too.
(It can also be used as an emulation device for piracy, but I’m slipping right past that...)
Again, though, Analogue is a relatively small company, and they are struggling to keep up with
demand. Wait times for a Pocket sit at around a year...ish – current shipping estimates for a new
order made today are listed as simple 2023, which could mean anything except January.
Imagine a company that already excels at Game Boy handware manufacturing, making a modern
Game Boy available, using all of their existing infrastructure to facilitate
delivery of these goods in a timely fashion.
Remember the NES Classic? Remember how demand for retro gaming hardware took you
completely by surprise, Nintendo? Remember how well the SNES Classic sold too?
Okay, sure, the Mario and Zelda Game and Watch devices didn’t exactly fly off the shelves in the
same way, but win some, lose some. In fairness, you could have popped a few
more games onto these things.
My point in all this is, the Game Boy platform has so much potential. Homebrew developers, third
party publishers and hardware clone manufacturers are doing their best to plug a gap in the market
that’s been left by you, Nintendo, not wanting to revisit the past for some bizarre reason.
I mean, I get it. You’re very selective about how you prioritise physical manufacturing. You make
special editions sparingly, so that they inevitably sell out and you’re
not left with leftover stock. You cycle through the amiibo you’re
stocking at any given time, much to the chagrin of collectors like my
daughter who just wants a Wind Waker Link, dagnabbit!
A large part of your business strategy is refusing to commit too heavily to any one physical product,
testing the waters but never getting more than
your toes wet. A physical Game Boy revival would be
a risky venture, even if the R& D and game development is all done already.
But, come on, Nintendo. This is Ferrante Craft, an etsy seller-slash-indie Game Boy publisher who
hand solders each individual cartridge they sell. And they’re selling some amazing modern Game Boy
games – if you haven’t tried Black Castle, seriously, give this a go,
you won’t regret it, it’s amazing. Not to mention the fact that I can go
on AliExpress right this second and order ten to twenty fake
repro copies of Pokémon Red from a dodgy Chinese company for the same price as one original
authentic cartridges. Not that I would do that, because ordering gaming
stuff from a dodgy Chinese manufacturer can get you in a lot of hot water, can’t it, Nintendo,
hint hint see our video on Nintendo’s toxic merchandise.
there’s a video coming soon on this exact topic. But my point stands. If some of these smaller,
less well equipped companies can get new Game Boy games out there into the wild, Nintendo, then
perhaps you should at least try it. Because the demand is there. Maybe Game Boy games won’t sell
anywhere near as well as Switch games in 2023, but there’s a definite, proven,
financially sound precedent for retro cartridges turning a profit in the
modern era. And if all that
really sounds like too much work, then come on Nintendo, can’t you at least put a few
more Game Boy games on Nintendo Switch Online? Or, failing that, maybe just...don’t sue
people for trying to share the games that you currently have
locked in your super secret Nintendo vault? That’s all I ask.
Anyway, I’m going to go play Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins on my family’s Switch OLED
model, and I’m very much looking forward to how crisp it’s going to look!
This video was sponsored by absolutely none of the physical Game Boy publishers I’ve mentioned in
this video, but if any of them want to send me free stuff, our channel’s email address is open.