Nintendo is currently the only console maker that makes you pay for a monthly subscription to access its classic games instead of letting you buy them a la carte. That needs to change with the Switch 2.
Switch Online was a completely fine idea when it arrived in 2018. PlayStation and Xbox both charge for online multiplayer, so why not Nintendo? Well, no native voice chat for one, but hey, Nintendo’s gonna Nintendo. To sweeten the pot, the company threw in access to a growing library of classic NES games. For anyone who hadn’t already purchased a NES Classic two years earlier, it was a nice trip down memory lane for just $20 a year.
But since then it’s grown, and so has the price. Switch Online added SNES games in 2019, followed by Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games in 2021, which it bundled together in a separate Expansion Pack that increased the total annual price to $50. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games are the latest to join that tiered library, which now includes over 200 games total across three generations of consoles and handhelds.
It feels more than a little absurd that the only way to (legally) access these games in the year 2025 is to effectively rent them for an annual fee. What started off as a welcome novelty drafting off the broader incorruptible enthusiasm for the Switch in its early years has now become a bit of a ripoff. I’m long past the point of wanting a giant buffet of retro games to occasionally peruse at my leisure. I know what I want to play and what I’ll keep returning to. Why am I spending $50 to show The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to my kid for the first time? It was not always thus.
Nintendo has often lagged behind its competitors when it comes to online features and digital marketplaces, but it was actually first in letting players pay to download and play old games on modern consoles. The Wii launched in 2006 with the Virtual Console, offering old NES games for sale digitally including Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. I still remember, during my first semester home from college, popping in my debit card to buy Military Madness and experiencing its amazing sci-fi soundtrack and moon-based warfare for the first time in a decade.
The Virtual Console standard was mirrored in PS1 classics, first on PSP and later on PlayStation 3, as well as Xbox “originals” which came to XBLA in late 2007. It was a perfect model with one glaring flaw on Nintendo’s hardware: your purchase history didn’t carry over from console to console. The Virtual Console on Wii was different from the one on 3DS which was different from the one on Wii U. Players had to keep buying the same games over and over again which became something of a joke, a bit of shorthand for how out of touch Nintendo was.
This frustration potentially paved the way for some of the initial positivity surrounding the launch of Switch Online. Finally a single, permanent library. No more buying Excitebike for the fourth time. Instead, it turns out the Switch would have been the perfect time to keep doing the Virtual Console. Nintendo has already confirmed backwards compatibility for the Switch 2. All those downloaded copies of StarTropics, Mario Kart 64, and Wonder Boy in Monster Land would have actually carried over this time.
Instead Nintendo is playing the role of the last online Blockbuster, badgering me for $4 every time I want to revisit the original Ninja Gaiden games, but without the option to just buy it by never returning it because it got lost under my car seat. Game Pass may have shattered the value proposition of buying stuff on Xbox, but at least it still lets you. Nintendo was once at the forefront of digital game preservation on console. Now we’ve got Switch Online, which feels like a relic from a stingier, more stubborn era at the company.
If Nintendo doesn’t bring back the Virtual Console for the Switch 2, things might only get more frustrating this time around. We could be looking at an annual $100 WaveBird Pack that adds all-time great GameCube games that will otherwise never get remade or ported, like Mario Kart: Double Dash and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. And I will pay it because I am a fanboy ruled by nostalgia and a chump. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Other publishers, including Capcom and Konami, have shown it’s possible to sell great anthologies of old games on Switch. Some have even partnered with companies like Digital Eclipse to add all kinds of extra bells and whistles, like auto-play options and vast in-game archives of everything from scans of original booklets to developer notes and sketches. Others have released HD collections, like Square Enix’s Mana and Final Fantasy remasters.
“The existence of [Switch Online] doesn’t preclude Nintendo from selling these games, either, no more so than the existence of Netflix negates the idea of Blu-ray,” former Kotaku editor Chris Kohler (who now works at Digital Eclipse) wrote back in 2018. But he also included the caveat that “Nintendo often refuses to do the things that it obviously should.” Hence, when N64 staple GoldenEye 007 was re-released in 2023, it was added as a free update to the standalone Rare Replay collection for folks on Xbox, but was exclusive to the subscription service on Switch. We’ll find out if Nintendo has evolved at all when Switch 2 arrives later this year.
Update 2/14/2025 12:56 p.m. ET: At least one legendary game developer agrees. Okami creator Hideki Kamiya recently told IGN he hopes the Switch 2 brings back the Virtual Console as well.
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