When Nintendo finally officially revealed the Switch 2 in January, one of our major unanswered questions concerned whether games designed for the original Switch would see some form of visual or performance enhancement when running on the backward-compatible Switch 2. Now, Nintendo-watchers are pointing to a fleeting mention of “Switch 2 Edition games” as a major hint that such enhancements are in the works for at least some original Switch games.
The completely new reference to “Switch 2 Edition games” comes from a Nintendo webpage discussing yesterday’s newly announced Virtual Game Cards digital lending feature. In the fine print at the bottom of that page, Nintendo notes that “Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive games and Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games can only be loaded on a Nintendo Switch 2 system [emphasis added].”
The specific wording differentiating these “Switch 2 Edition” games from “Switch 2 exclusives” suggests a new category of game that is compatible with the original Switch but able to run with enhancements on the Switch 2. But it’s currently unclear what Switch games will get “Switch 2 Edition” releases or how much developer work (if any) will be needed to create those new versions.
We’ve seen this before
Nintendo is no stranger to the idea of single game releases that work differently across different hardware. Back in the days of the Game Boy Color, developers could create special “Dual Mode” cartridges that ran in full color on the newer handheld or in regular grayscale on the original Game Boy. Late-era Game Boy cartridges could also be coded with special enhancements that activated when played on a TV via the Super Game Boy adapter—Taito even memorably used this feature to include a complete SNES edition of Space Invaders on a Game Boy cartridge.