A Look Back on Nintendo Switch in 2019 (Part 1)

Now that the dark days of the Wii U era are over, it seems every year being a Nintendo fan just gets better and better! 2019, however, seemed to pack a little more than usual. Many great games were released this year, and we'll be talking about the notable releases throughout the year, and post our thoughts on any games that we played. Kick back and relax, whilst we give you a nice overview of what happened with Nintendo in 2019.

January
For us, the first few months of the year were pretty slow. There were a number of decent games coming out, but none really peaked our interest. January saw the release of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, an updated port of the Wii U title. We barely played this game on the Wii U, so decided not to pick it up for the Switch as we're not a fan of 2D Mario titles, but as of June the game had sold over 4 million copies. Not bad for a port. Fitness Boxing, and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes were also two notable games that launched in this month. We also got our first of many DLC characters to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, being Piranha Plant. I only touched on the first DLC character briefly, but it was a really cool way to kick off the DLC characters, and was very enjoyable to play.

February
February was a pretty low-key month. We got the release of Tetris 99, and the Piranha Plant, King K. Rool, and Ice Climbers amiibo figures. From what we've seen, Tetris 99 has been a hit with Nintendo Switch Online players. The game could only be obtained to those who had subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online, though the game saw a physical release in Japan in August, and the west in September.

March
This was where we felt the year finally start to kick off. Yoshi's Crafted World was a very anticipated title for us, and we certainly got a lot of gameplay out of it. I completed the main story and nabbed a lot of the collectibles, but there is a decent amount of back tracking that gets tiresome if you're not a completionist. I'm sure I would have stretched a few more weeks out of it if I didn't end up travelling the following month. When I came back, I just kind of forgot about the game since I'd already completed it. We reviewed the game, and also went over the development process of the game. A lot had actually changed during its development cycle, so if that's something that interests you, why not give it a read? Yoshi's Crafted World nabbed 1.1 million sales in it's first three days, which makes us hope their follow-up title will fix some of the issues we had with Crafted World. Regardless, this is still a great game. If you want to check out our review, click the banner below!

April
April was a pretty hefty hefty month, which finally saw the release of the next Nintendo Labo kit, the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit. Again, this isn't something we've played but it certainly did interest us enough when it released that we considered buying a kit. Ultimately we decided against it (namely due to time restrictions), but a number of games such as Super Mario Odyssey, Smash and Breath of the Wild saw VR updates which are cool. If they end up adding VR to more games we'd definitely pick up a Labo VR kit!
A game that seemed to go under the radar was the eShop title BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! We actually ended up picking this game as it was cheap on the eShop, and also used our Gold Coins for a sweet discount. I've never been someone whose been good at puzzle games, but these were nothing that my ditzy brain couldn't handle. For a small eShop title, I really did get a lot of gameplay out of this, and played it a lot more than I thought I would. If you're looking for a fun, cheap eShop title to play, we recommend this one.
Finally, we also got the Ken, Young Link and Daisy amiibo releasing, and Joker (who was announced all the way back in December last year!) finally came to Smash, along with a 3.0.0. update which added the much loved stage builder feature. April certainly was a packed month.

May
There really wasn't a whole lot going on for Nintendo in May. There was a Nintendo Direct for Super Mario Maker 2 (which released in June), and a few more NES games added to NSO, but there really wasn't a whole lot going on. It's likely they were trying to give fans time to recover after a packed previous month.

June
June is the month of E3, so of course big things were bound to happen. Surprisingly, an Indie title, Crypt of the NecroDancer was a big eShop title that seemed to really hit off. The intial title released in 2015, but this time it was revamped, and the developers had worked alongside Nintendo to produce Zelda content, producing what would be called Cadence of Hyrule - Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda. Again, we haven't played this, but having a Nintendo IP tie in with an indie game was something that seemed to hit off really well with fans. Then there's the big title, Super Mario Maker 2. After barely touching the original title on the Wii U, we opted not to purchase this game, though the new added story mode did tempt us. SMM2 released on June 28th, and my the end of the month it had already sold over 2.42 million copies. It has a very lively online community, so if you're a fan of 2D Mario's, creating levels, and community interaction, this is a game you should pick up!

And that just about does it for the first half of the year. There were a tonne of good games that came out in the first quarter, but due to timing, we didn't have enough time to check them out, or properly review the ones we did. Tune in next time for an overview of 2019's second half. As always, be sure to follow BidoofCrossing on Twitter and Tumblr to stay up to date with the latest Animal Crossing and Nintendo news.