Metroid Dread Headlines Surprisingly Large Fall Switch Line

The “Too Many Games” season is officially launched. I’ve spent more time than usual looking at the video game release schedule lately and marveling at how many of them I’ll be playing on Switch. It’s rarely a bad (or normal) time to be a Nintendo fan, but fall 2021 is in shape to be much better than what I initially expected.

From the start, 2021 was to be a difficult year for video games. With the pandemic still ongoing, the accompanying long-term complications for home-based game developers suggested this year would be defined by delays, not big releases. There have certainly been a lot of delays, of Immortal Diablo To Horizon forbidden to the west. Nintendo seemed particularly affected earlier in the year. For much of the spring and summer my Switch collected dust, at least outside of the occasional jets in Pokemon unite. But the recent Nintendo Direct showcase tells me that Switch owners will no longer see their devices gathering dust.

Here are some of the exclusives coming to Nintendo’s portable hybrid over the next three months:

• Metroid Dread – October 8
• Mario Party Superstars – October 29
• Shin Megami Tensei V – November 12
• Shiny Diamond and Shiny Pearl Pokémon – November 19
• Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp – December 3

It’s decent and diverse programming, especially since most had already written off this year due to lack of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2. But with games like WarioWare: unite! and to the east to complete the summer of 2021 and with promising updates for the best Nintendo franchises out there, things are looking upbeat. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is set to get its final DLC character shortly, ending a three-year saga. A major update with new characters and courses has just arrived Mario Golf Super Rush. And in November, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is finally get Brewster, a beloved barista pigeon that fans have been clamoring for since its release. Vince McMahon’s meme escalates.

Then there are the multiplayer games that, although available on multiple platforms, I will still play on Switch. Portability means these expected games can be taken anywhere: Actraiser Renaissance (great for now!), Castlevania Advanced Collection (I haven’t tried it yet) and Disco Elysium: the final cut (I can not wait). If I’m lucky I’ll eventually get to Deltarune: Chapter 2. Maybe it will be the same time to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In light of the recently announced remake and december accidentally turning in Star wars month, I feel like the time has come to go back (while holding it in my hands and lying on the sofa).

Usually Nintendo seems to have a big game to hang its hat on and distract from the more powerful boxes that can play whatever you might want to see. This fall, the company does not have a star playmaker. Instead, he’s got a deep bench, with something new happening almost every two weeks, alongside new games to scratch all the weird itchy rashes.

Multiplayer board game? To verify. Survival shooter? To verify. JRPG dense on schoolchildren? To verify. A big Game Boy Advance nostalgia hit, maybe too expensive? To verify. And Pokemon, because there must always be Pokemon, but after withdrawing 2020, the time seems ripe to dive back into remastered versions of two of the best games in the series.

None of this is to rule out everything else that comes out. The PS5 just received an expansion for one of the best games of 2019 in the form of Death Stranding Director’s Cup, but there are things beyond big budget releases as well. There are independent console exclusives like JETT: the distant coast (Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP people) and Solar ash (Hyper-light vagabond folks), which will soon take you through moody sci-fi futures. Great third-party games not coming to Switch include Far cry 6, Battlefield 2042, and Call of Duty: The Vanguard, although I have complicated thoughts on this for many complicated reasons. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy will be on Switch, but hey, we’ll see. Beefy blockbuster switch ports have the power to be technically impressive while still being sub-optimal for playing. And of course the year wouldn’t be complete without Halo: infinite in December.

Not a bad list for the other two consoles. Overall, you might be able to say that it’s on par or just ahead of the Switch’s wild lineup. While we can’t figure out how these games will actually play out, given what we’ve seen so far from Metroid, Pokemon, and the first Shin megami tensei Game on a console from the PS2, the Switch finally seems to be off to a good start for 2021.