I'm gaslighting myself into thinking the Switch 2 will make my Nintendo backlog smaller

The Switch 2 is finally here... sort of. While everyone discusses whether the now-revealed handheld is too safe or exactly what Nintendo needed to do right now, many of us are looking at our piles of shame and wondering if new hardware means doing something about our procrastination and going back to play Switch must-haves that we bought and never played.

I'm actually a late adopter. My girlfriend grabbed a regular Switch in late 2021, and it was the first time I paid serious attention to Nintendo's hybrid console. I decided I only cared about its portable capabilities, so I snatched a yellow Switch Lite in early 2022 to grab and play through those universally acclaimed best Nintendo Switch games I was missing out on. Little did I know, my shelves were about to get much heavier.

We've been here before. With PS5 and Xbox Series X/S promising a better, renewed focus on the thorny matter of backwards compatibility, their launch seemed like a good opportunity to revisit (or finally play) eighth-gen staples as well as the overlooked darlings we learned about too late. I know this worked out fine for me, but will the same happen once the Switch 2 finally releases?

Collectathon

Among my first Switch purchases were The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Odyssey, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Out of those big four that I bought initially, I've only truly beaten Link's first modern open-world adventure, and it happened only because Tears of the Kingdom was around the corner. Needless to say, I haven't finished the sequel yet.

My main problem? I began looking into too many third-party ports because "I'd like to have this great game I already played on a portable device." For example, 2K's ports of the Borderlands series and the BioShock trilogy were pretty sweet and cheap. Have I fully finished those? Nay, but they were great to have. Fast-forward to late 2022 and I'm also grabbing a Steam Deck, rendering such ports kind of useless. FOMO is a bitch, and the fact I'm a big multiplatform guy constantly makes matters worse.

The list goes on and on. I continued to amass important first-party titles, mainly because I knew damn well that Nintendo refuses to make its games easily accessible at reasonable prices in the long run, and the second-hand market takes advantage of that too. At the same time, I kept adding new releases to the mound as my rising freelance writing gigs justified me doubling down on game purchases. The funny thing is that I've actually played most of what I've bought for the console. I simply keep getting sidetracked before rolling credits, and it's not entirely my job's fault. Too much of a good thing might indeed be bad.

A new hope

Somehow, we find ourselves in early 2025 and the Switch is still trucking along even with its successor right around the corner. I'm now at the point of "actually, give me some extra time to clear my Switch backlog a bit before 2 hits." I know I'm cooked. Our attention will turn to the Switch 2 and its shiny new games once it hits, but it also might be the answer to the problem at hand: I'll undoubtedly be all over the new piece of hardware, and with the early exclusive catalogue probably being on the slim side (I know this might age badly), it could be the perfect time to use the performance glow-up to hit that heap of aging titles.

Realistically, I'm not expecting Nintendo to pay much attention to 'next-gen' patches à la Xbox and PlayStation. It just doesn't sound like something the powers that be would green-light. However, the console's more powerful innards should get all of the Switch's wobbly games to a rock-solid framerate cap. Most players won't care, but as a performance sicko, I'm happy to revisit old games running on better hardware, regardless of the presence of extra improvements.

In the end, I know this is me trying to fool my brain. I've half-accepted I might just be into collecting works that I deem interesting in the age of companies mostly failing to preserve the medium's history. That's a good-enough excuse. I also know that I can't realistically play through all the relevant games I'm interested in which are released across all platforms every year. Being too curious and not picky enough (I just love video games, man) can be a problem.

So, am I doing something about this? I'll be honest: I don't know. An approach which seems to 'work' is to simply wait for that spontaneous burst of "ah, I feel like playing this specific game" and hoping it's an unplayed or unfinished one. Option B is to simply wait for the announcement of a new installment in a series and going back to the last one to be up-to-date. It might not be perfect, but it's a process that gives me a bit of mental peace. That should be enough. I'm just riding the vibes at this point.

Our Nintendo Switch 2 spotlight contains everything we've seen from the upcoming handheld so far