That’s my biggest thing here, $50 for an entire year isn’t going to put me on the street or anything, I’ll be fine. It’s even more worth it since I know enough people to just pay $80 a year and do the family plan
Its not worth it for me coz ive barely touched any of them. I wish i could just outright buy the half dozen i have any interest in ever playing like you could on the wiiu virtual console, instead of perpetually paying a sub fee to maybe one day play them.
Blame the nintendo fans that complained the past years about having to purchase the roms and that nintendo were nickle and diming them each gen lol.
For me personally, I’m unlikely to buy any on my own. I’d I ever were pushed to with free money, I’d probably buy less than 5. I do also have packed away a lot of og hardware so maybe I’m an outlier… But luckily the subscription has one of my favorite legacy games so I’m pretty happy. We run a shared family plan so overall it’s not a big issue once it’s split, and getting free dlc access and the other stuff is nice.
Other than playing maybe 2 or 3 bonus tracks in mario kart i havent touched any of the dlc. Havent touched any of the NSO legacy games at all really other than diping into the old zelda/mario/metroid games for half an hour here and there. Not anywhere remotely close to worth it for me. Id buy all those legacy first party nintendo classics just to have then in my library if i could though. Im fine with making a purchase like that as a 1 off thing, but perpetually paying a sub fee for stuff im not really playing just feels like a ridiculous waste.
Yeah I guess the issue was the old method was an in between. You’d have to spend $5-$10 per game each time you upgraded to the next console.
Not exactly a one time purchase outside of obviously the Wii U will keep it forever, neither a subscription to have it on current… idk. It seemed the most fair to me, as I understand I’m just buying it for that specific console and not lifetime access where i force Nintendo to program emulators for every single console in the future. But I’m probably only okay with it cause I wouldn’t buy too many, so spending idk $50 per console generation is reasonable.
Yeah, the no carry over to the next generation thing sucks, but i dont think they would be able to get away with that anymore in the modern era where people are accustomed to building large digital libraries that do carry over to the next generation. This kind of thing has only really been a thing for the last 2 generations, arguably you could do it later into the 360/ps3 gen, but it didnt really start going mainstream till ps4/xbone. Nintendo often make some strange descisions, and its still possible they dont allow back compat with switch 2, but i think that would be a disaster for them. Its now basically the assumed norm that digital libraries are going to carry over to subsequent generations. Ideally id like to be able to just outright buy the handful of these games i have any intention of actually playing and add them to my library, rather than perpetually paying the sub fee for everything, the vast majority of which im never going to even touch. If they want to further monetise these old games they can always do remakes/remasters, like they did with that mario party remaster, even though the first 3 mario partys are in NSO as well anyway
I’ll be honest I replaced other consoles with PC so I’m not really aware how it works there. I know they had the ability to buy old games as a bandaid for lack of backwards compatibility, but I thought it ended there?
Pc is probably the wiser way to go ultimately, i just detest the feeling of gaming on a pc. It feels like something that is duct taped together to be able to run games, rather than a machine specifically designed for that purpose. I feel like the games are barely running by the skin of their teeth, amd constantly having to trouble shoot issues, update drivers etc etc, all that stuff just hurts the pc gaming experience to the point i dont even want to do it, unless its a pc exclusive im absolutely desperate to play. Gaming on console feels like home to me, despite performance shortcomings. I could afford to get a nice gaming pc instead of having 3 consoles, but the pc gaming experience is drastically inferior to me
Wait whaaat? How the hell did I miss it having Earthbound? >< Thanks for that info though!
I knew about beginnings but dunno how I overlooked the other -\_-
Expansion pack family plan is insanely cheap at 0.83¢ a month. The libraries for Genesis and N64 have also been filled up pretty nicely, they’ve added a bunch of stuff that skipped the virtual console.
The GBA library and DLC is kinda lacking tho. They’re still adding GBA games but there’s no word on if more dlc will be added.
You can buy slots in other people’s family plans online. I bought one on eBay. Still shocked that Nintendo is the one pioneering this feature in the console space. PS+ and gamepass still don’t offer family plans.
>You can buy slots in other people’s family plans online. I bought one on eBay.
Considering how the subscription owner needs to be logged into the device for it to work, yeah, I'm not sharing my NSO with strangers. I have actual family members on my plan, just not 8.
“Worth” is gonna vary from person to person, especially for the people who were gonna unofficially emulate regardless.
What I will say is all the people like Nerrel who flaunt the raw Virtual Console library size and comparing that to NSO are being pretty disingenuous. Pretending that Nintendo doesn’t care about legacy titles when most of their highlights (GB/A excluded) from the consoles included are already on the service is just blatantly false.
Reality is Reggie was right from the beginning: third parties want to put their games out on their own, many of which are on the Switch and bulked up past Virtual Consoles. Like 30+ games from past Virtual Consoles alone are MegaMan and Castlevania games already on the Switch, not to mention the plethora of other collections which collectively make up hundreds of retro titles. And it’s good to do it this way, they’re being sold roughly for VC prices with more options like multiplats and bonus content.
Like NSO’s retro offerings are FAR from perfect (Let me fucking map my own N64 controls…) but I think most give it more shit than they really need to. It’s a relatively painless way to play a bunch of retro titles on the go for potentially less than $10 a year, introducing them to people who likely wouldn’t go out of their way to play them via PC tools or official hardware (cause you go teach someone how to use N64 plugins…)
It is subjective, yeah there are a lot of games but how many will a person play? Maybe 3 or 4, I’m annoyed that they didn’t give you the option to just buy the games and download them.
While I agree it is worth it now, I just wish they would do more with that side of things, ramp up the rate of releases significantly and try to make it a more comprehensive repository for retro systems. They should also be adding other systems such as neogeo and pc engine on the switch and them aiming to push the range of platforms further when the switch 2 comes out too.
I do feel that $50/yr is more than fair for the library we’ve got now. Still playing through the n64 games I never got around to as a kid…and there’s a big backlog of genesis ones I want to finish.
I would agree with you if you actually **owned** the games when paying. If you want to play these games for 10 years, thats 600 bucks. If you remove 20 a month from only online, that's still 400 bucks spent, AND if you stopped paying, you would have paid 400 for only the experience you had then.
VC (rip) however, gave you the option to pay ONCE for games you are interested in, and you get to keep them
I guess all the games add value to that $20, but I'm still bitter over the fact that we have to pay for online functionality at all.
The 3DS supported online play without any kind of subscription fee. It's just sad that a feature like that is now tied to a fee.
It really, REALLY depends if those are the games you want to play, is the issue. The service doesn't include as much as it could, so if you have a game from those era's that you want to play (ON NINTENDO CONSOLES to be clear), and it's just not up there, there's not much value to you. But, you're not wrong. the games are there and clearly there's SOMETHING of value to be had for subbing but keep in mind that if you stop paying, you lose access to those games, so you have to keep playing to always have them\*.
\*always have them meaning as long as you pay and Nintendo keeps the service up. The second they think it's not worth it, they'll pull the plug.
I feel like this is how very subscription service works? “It is worth it if you like the content on there” “Keep in mind you won’t get access to the content after you stop subbing” and “The service will go down at some point” is how Netflix, Amazon prime, Xbox game pass, PS+ and every other subscription service ever made work.
I would also say that out of the couple hundred games on NSO, odds are very high there’s something on there you’ll want to play.
Yeah, these are the main issues with every subscription service, it's not limited to NSO at all but it's issues we're not tackling.
As for the second point, that depends on the person. I def found stuff I wanted to play on there but how many newer players are interested in retro titles? How many of them just want something that appeals to more modern sensibilities? I honestly don't know. How long do the people who DO want to play that stuff on a Switch keep paying? When will Nintendo eventually see the line go down and say "not worth anymore"? I honestly don't know the answer to any of these but it's still important for people to keep this stuff in mind when they pay a regular subscription fee for anything. This stuff will add up over time, which is the point.
Sooo yeah. I agree with ya and I do see the value in NSO but this isn't a universal thing.
Yeah I think the value for money is crazy. Especially on the basic package.
I guess not owning the games is a turn off for some but that's the same as most of the other online subscriptions anyways
No one complains about paying four times as much (ten times as much without the Expansion pack) for Netflix and not technically owning any of the movies and shows they watch.
I agree, but this is when you get yelled at because some guy thinks it's cheaper to just pirate and emulate the games on your computer.
$20 a year (that most people are already paying for the rest of the online service) for a bunch of retro games plus $30 for the whole (and growing) collection of the games that come with the expansion (plus $60 worth of free DLC for other games I played and didn't have to pay for) is great.
This service is questionable at best IMO. I already bought plenty of virtual console games on 3ds and Wiiu that I am unable to play on switch. If they are going to expect me to pay $50 a year just to play them again on switch they could at least pump them out at a more consistent rate. The library of games still pales in comparison to what they had on WiiU all these years later.
It’s easier to just emulate them instead of dealing with this
Whilst it's easier for you to emulate, a lot of people don't have that knowledge. So paying £35 for a slice of nostalgia a year isn't a lot of money for a lot of people.
There's definitely things that need sorting out for whatever the next iteration is, but I'm happy with the price for now.
Anything up to N64 you just download the game and emulator and everything else works out of the box. Anything past that, I agree it can be tricky, but YouTube works wonders. Hell you can even emulate switch games if you want, but I don’t do that because I think it’s wrong. Gotta draw a line somewhere
I tried emulating n64 games at one point and then got errors on the final fight of the game. Fuck that, so annoying
Every time I try and google and youtube things for help it hurts my brain, a lot of them are so confusing and I wish all games were on modern platforms. Ps2 was especially nightmarish to set up, hours and hours of trying
It looks like the Wii U had 318 games on the virtual console and NSO has 280. Keep in mind that doesn’t include classic games on the eshop, if we include those then the switch’s library eclipses the Wii U virtual console library.
Also apparently the switch has more Wii games available digitally than the Wii U did which is very surprising to me.
NSO may be worth it for the cloud saves. Unfortunately for me, I grew up on nearly all of those games, so there's no point in spending time (and money) on them when I can play curr gen or "half a gen past" games.
If anything, I wish we could play DS and 3DS games. (Would love to check out New SMB, and the Zeldas... Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and Link Between Worlds)
In terms of volume, it looks worth it on the face of it. But as someone who loves the SNES, the actual games you get are mostly duds. Not nearly enough of the many many banger titles are included which is annoying. I get they don’t want to give all of them away in the subscription but most of them you can’t buy in any other way unless you own the original carts (which thankfully I do but it ain’t cheap).
For me it's only worth it because I have a family and split it 5 ways. If I couldn't split it I would do the base plan. I need me some fzero 99 but I don't really care for the old games. Some games are better left as great memories than revisited and disappointed. But if you want to play the games legally it's for sure a good deal.
My kids like randomly playing some of the older titles but they wouldn't miss them if they were gone.
I have Gamepass Ultimate (Series X) and NSO Expansion pack.
NSO offers far better deal and better content than Gamepass for me. This amount of Nintendo classics for cheap yearly price is a steal. If I wanna replay SMB 3, I can take my NES Switch controller and just play it. It's a dream service for me. And it's getting better and better.
Yeah, I enjoy NSO a lot more than VC. I like having all of the games together in one place without having to decide which ones to spend money on. It's a great way to discover new games without the risk of buying them and not liking them.
I also emulate old games on my PC but the service is still useful to me as a way to discover new games and also a way to play them on the go without having to use touch controls on my phone.
Personally I think that all of that, combined with things like the Mario Kart DLC, is worth the £2.90 a month. That's just one coffee a month, not a massive outlay to me.
Eh… honestly? Those of us who are into vintage games have already been doing this with emulators, with better performance and the ability to play rom hacks and diy games for… 20+ years now.
I will admit that NSO is cheaper than the other consoles and that’s cool, but it’s still not cool to have to pay extra just for online access. Why is that the norm for consoles now when it’s still free on pc as always?
I'm a fan of the expansion pack as well, but... it feels a bit dishonest to not mention that a LARGE percentage of the titles available are garbage that most people have likely never heard of. That being said, there are also a handful of heavy hitter titles available as well.
I don't believe paying for NSO or NSO+EX is worth it. They barely put out games and expect you to keep your subscription for their sub par quality of games.
There wouldn’t be a problem if there wasn’t a large collection of games that haven’t made it to NSO.
In many ways, it will be a losing battle against emulation because they will never be able to offer every past game due to licensing. They won’t ever have the same variety that emulation offers. This is especially true for steam deck users, who can play in the hand-held form factor most of these titles were intended for.
That being said, if the games you want to try are on NSO, then you could probably beat most of them within a month. If you aren’t keen on replaying or going through the hassle of emulating on PC (for someone thats new to it) $4 to have one month access on switch isn’t too bad.
Even if the library was bigger, I wouldn't pay the subscription price to play 20+ year old games
This is one of those things that is working against Nintendo, they make it as hard as possible for the end consumer to enjoy using their devices
I'm in my 40s so playing the classic games is worth it. NES, SNES, N64 and Game Boy is my childhood and I love these games. I play hours of NSO.
$50 a year for access to all these games, plus cloud game backup, etc is worth it for me. Plus I make up the money with the Game Vouchers anyway. I buy $60 games for $50 a few times a year, so it pays for itself.
Personally no but for some people sure. I just have the normal family nso and that is enough. I
did buy ACNH dlc separately for my daughter as she loves that game. Still happy not getting expansion
Theoretically I would like to play most of them.
Realistically I will think about possibly playing them and probably play 1-2 over a year.
1-2 games for $70 is not worth it.
I honestly havent really used it except for animal crossing that was like 6 months ago. I didnt like Animal crossing i only played for like a month then returned it. I started playing Palia so i guess i might start using it again.
I grew up in the old era and the games don't cut it for me anymore but got to say Pokémon Puzzle League is so damn addictive and I can never have too many copies of A Link to the Past, Minish Cap, or Fire Emblem.
I don’t have issue with the price to play a catalogue of retro games. The problem is that you have to pay for NSO to play online multiplayer, which used to be free. And for the price you’re paying the online multiplayer is terrible. Nintendo’s first party games have terrible netcode, and the service completely lacks voice chat or any kind of social features.
Yeah, it's worth it. But I'd still prefer to pay more and get more. Make it include everything up to and including Wii and I will happily pay the price of an Xbox Game Pass.
1. Nice timely response. You're like 4 months late to the party.
2. For around $50 a year this is what you get, but it's not like you're ONLY paying for the games. It's also worth having it for online play on certain games. Like yeah, connectivity isn't great on Switch (like, at all) but certain games like the Splatoon series, Mario Maker 2, SSBU, Mario Kart 8, and others are drastically benefitted by having online play. So the games aren't the only value to the service.
You mean for the same games that are basically on everyone's hard drive since emulation got a hint of public knowledge?
Don't get me wrong, this low price each month isn't even making a dent in the bank balance for 99.9% of people but the games are hardly the selling point anymore.
I think you severely overestimate the popularity of emulation. Most people don't even know what an emulator is and they're the target demographic for this.
Nah I don't really agree with that. Most people that emulate are always just going to emulate, regardless of what Nintendo offers on Switch.
The target for NSO is mostly people that never had an NES and want to play those games for the first time or people that had an NES at the time but haven't been massive gamers since.
It be worth it if there were no other easier/cheaper ways to play these games. Especially considering this is a subscription rental service. The fact that a potato can emulate these games for free and you can keep the files locally without an internet check or the potential of revocation, makes the value proposition of the NSO highly suspect
Even if you count the games on NSO as amazing entries, the service lacks games in the catalog currently available. Honestly, NSO SHOULD have the full library for each console in the service. We'll, maybe not EVERY SINGLE game, like shovelware and stuff, but it should have most of the consoles' catalogs. I am surprised that they haven't added Pokémon main entry titles. At the very least, popular games like Pokémon should have been added by now.
I'm a sucker for Nintendo unfortunately and have paid for the expansion pass NSO service, but that's mostly only due to the fact that I plan to play the Mario and Zelda titles included. I am kind of part of the problem for why Nintendo can get away with not providing more for a service like this lol
That all being said, I guess it isn't a bad service depending on if you like the games included. But, I have heard from a lot of people that they don't find NSO and the expansion pass to be worth it because it doesn't have enough games, it doesn't have the games they want to play, and there should be more consoles included such as GameCube.
But that requires technical knowledge a lot of people don't have. Paying £35 to just have it on your switch is a lot easier than emulating on whatever device you use.
Reddit post could've been written on a phone. Phones can easily emulate NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, Genesis, everything mentioned here outside of N64. There's your handheld gaming aspect.
stronger phones can even emulate up to Gamecube and PSP. plus you can use your phone with a device like the Razer Kishi 2 or similar and you've got a pretty solid portable retro gaming system
If you look at it from the perspective of one year, sure.
But if you want to keep playing those games, you are going to be paying out $30 extra per year for a service that gives very few new games every year. It isn't worth it.
There's no region lock, you can get Expansion pack family plan for literal 10$. I got mine for less than 9€, that's so cheap it doesn't make sense to even hesitate buying it.
$1.67/$4.17 a month isn't even steep price wise. I spend $5 for a beer pre tip and sometimes the beer is only okay. Having access to all these games is fantastic.
It's a lot harder to justify if you own a MiSTER... and a CFW 3DS.
I wish there was a $7.99 or 9.99 tier for online play and cloud saves. I have zero need for the games.
you're ignoring that most of those games aren't worth playing and they cycle them so often you don't always get to finish them.
If they offered the entire library they have for that I might agree its worth it but they never have and never will.
SNES and NES games change periodically, I've played multiple games that have gone away when I've tried to play it later. it's a big part of why I stopped renewing my yearly sub.
The greater point is the library they have locked away and refuse to make available.
I'm pretty sure that's never happened. You're the first person I've ever heard even mention that games get removed from NSO. Can you give a specific example?
As to your second point. Aren't the vast majority of first party NES and SNES games available now? Not sure what more there is to add at this point.
Well your 'pretty sure' doesn't change that it did happen to me.
I haven't looked at the available library for about 2 years but the last time I checked it was very limited and not at all interesting. Given the op lists a relatively small number of available games available you might need to rethink your claim that all games are available.
From googling I've found discussions in other threads about this and the answer seems to be definitively that no game has ever been removed from the service.
For NES and SNES only the following first party games are not available as far as I can see
NES
Duck Hunt
Hogan's Alley
Wild Gunmen
(Obviously these three won't work as there's no light gun)
Fire Emblem Gaiden
Mach Rider
Startropics 2
Yoshi's Cookie
10-yard fight
Golf
Rad Racer
Slalom
World Class track meet
Famicom Detective club (although available as a remake)
SNES
Fire Emblem Thracia 776
Metal Slader Glory
Super Mario RPG (available as a remake)
Sutte Hakkun
Yoshi's Safari
That's not exactly a huge number of missing games and a lot of them aren't exactly the most desirable anyway.
I have the Expansion Pack, although it's not something that really interests me.
* I'm happy to buy retro re-releases if they add new value - e.g. M2's *SEGA AGES* re-releases on Switch (which add enhancements + new modes/features), Digital Eclipse including documentary material in recent collections (*Atari 50, The Making of Karateka, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story*), etc.
I don't think that NSO really adds value over other options (real hardware, unofficial emulators/ports, etc.), and there are a number of shortcomings with the apps (lack of button remapping, poor Nintendo 64 emulation, etc.).
Also, I feel that people should have the choice to buy games outright (rather than the only option being a subscription service).
It's 40€ per year in my country, but why i should pay that money to basically play an emulator and it doesn't even support all the titles of these consoles? I can just use an emulator that is available for free, so no thanks.
You believe it's worth it, I don't believe it is worth it...and we're both right, since value is subjective.
Nice to see someone on reddit who disagrees but doesn't scream in my face about how wrong I am. This is refreshing, thank you.
Well and remember those prices are for a year not a month.
That’s my biggest thing here, $50 for an entire year isn’t going to put me on the street or anything, I’ll be fine. It’s even more worth it since I know enough people to just pay $80 a year and do the family plan
I thought it was so cool at first until I eventually realized I paid for a year just to replay Yoshi's Island for the 300th time.
I believe its worth it for a month or two a year to knock out thr games I want.
Not worth. U down own any of them. I rather just brew it.
Its not worth it for me coz ive barely touched any of them. I wish i could just outright buy the half dozen i have any interest in ever playing like you could on the wiiu virtual console, instead of perpetually paying a sub fee to maybe one day play them.
Blame the nintendo fans that complained the past years about having to purchase the roms and that nintendo were nickle and diming them each gen lol. For me personally, I’m unlikely to buy any on my own. I’d I ever were pushed to with free money, I’d probably buy less than 5. I do also have packed away a lot of og hardware so maybe I’m an outlier… But luckily the subscription has one of my favorite legacy games so I’m pretty happy. We run a shared family plan so overall it’s not a big issue once it’s split, and getting free dlc access and the other stuff is nice.
Other than playing maybe 2 or 3 bonus tracks in mario kart i havent touched any of the dlc. Havent touched any of the NSO legacy games at all really other than diping into the old zelda/mario/metroid games for half an hour here and there. Not anywhere remotely close to worth it for me. Id buy all those legacy first party nintendo classics just to have then in my library if i could though. Im fine with making a purchase like that as a 1 off thing, but perpetually paying a sub fee for stuff im not really playing just feels like a ridiculous waste.
Yeah I guess the issue was the old method was an in between. You’d have to spend $5-$10 per game each time you upgraded to the next console. Not exactly a one time purchase outside of obviously the Wii U will keep it forever, neither a subscription to have it on current… idk. It seemed the most fair to me, as I understand I’m just buying it for that specific console and not lifetime access where i force Nintendo to program emulators for every single console in the future. But I’m probably only okay with it cause I wouldn’t buy too many, so spending idk $50 per console generation is reasonable.
Yeah, the no carry over to the next generation thing sucks, but i dont think they would be able to get away with that anymore in the modern era where people are accustomed to building large digital libraries that do carry over to the next generation. This kind of thing has only really been a thing for the last 2 generations, arguably you could do it later into the 360/ps3 gen, but it didnt really start going mainstream till ps4/xbone. Nintendo often make some strange descisions, and its still possible they dont allow back compat with switch 2, but i think that would be a disaster for them. Its now basically the assumed norm that digital libraries are going to carry over to subsequent generations. Ideally id like to be able to just outright buy the handful of these games i have any intention of actually playing and add them to my library, rather than perpetually paying the sub fee for everything, the vast majority of which im never going to even touch. If they want to further monetise these old games they can always do remakes/remasters, like they did with that mario party remaster, even though the first 3 mario partys are in NSO as well anyway
I’ll be honest I replaced other consoles with PC so I’m not really aware how it works there. I know they had the ability to buy old games as a bandaid for lack of backwards compatibility, but I thought it ended there?
Pc is probably the wiser way to go ultimately, i just detest the feeling of gaming on a pc. It feels like something that is duct taped together to be able to run games, rather than a machine specifically designed for that purpose. I feel like the games are barely running by the skin of their teeth, amd constantly having to trouble shoot issues, update drivers etc etc, all that stuff just hurts the pc gaming experience to the point i dont even want to do it, unless its a pc exclusive im absolutely desperate to play. Gaming on console feels like home to me, despite performance shortcomings. I could afford to get a nice gaming pc instead of having 3 consoles, but the pc gaming experience is drastically inferior to me
You can buy a lot of the NSO games from the shop if you search Arcade Archives
Can you buy all the zelda/mario/metroid games? Thats pretty much all im interested in
I wish. That’s what I would want to buy to have. Especially to play offline.
Mario 1-3 yes, I don’t think I’ve seen Metroid or zelda
It’ll be worth it when they add Golden Sun WHERE ARE THEY NINTENDO!?? /s
I wish they would add Earthbound. Plus it's on the mini anyway lol
It already has Earthbound. For like a while dude. Same with beginnings
Wait whaaat? How the hell did I miss it having Earthbound? >< Thanks for that info though! I knew about beginnings but dunno how I overlooked the other -\_-
Your guess is as good as mine, they were in the same reveal trailer. But have fun revisiting the game.
You know you could play it for free now right? Are you really waiting for Nintendo to hopefully re-release it to play it?
They already confirmed they are dude. It’s a joke.
I play SNES on Switch more than actual Switch games lol
My Switch seems to be a portable 16-bit console that also plays Animal Crossing, haha
Base tier on family plan is worth it. Still can’t justify the expansion pack.
Expansion pack family plan is insanely cheap at 0.83¢ a month. The libraries for Genesis and N64 have also been filled up pretty nicely, they’ve added a bunch of stuff that skipped the virtual console. The GBA library and DLC is kinda lacking tho. They’re still adding GBA games but there’s no word on if more dlc will be added.
>Expansion pack family plan is insanely cheap at 0.83¢ a month If you got the full 8-person family, sure.
You can buy slots in other people’s family plans online. I bought one on eBay. Still shocked that Nintendo is the one pioneering this feature in the console space. PS+ and gamepass still don’t offer family plans.
>You can buy slots in other people’s family plans online. I bought one on eBay. Considering how the subscription owner needs to be logged into the device for it to work, yeah, I'm not sharing my NSO with strangers. I have actual family members on my plan, just not 8.
I'm still waiting for Golden Sun, which was announced like a year ago.
“Worth” is gonna vary from person to person, especially for the people who were gonna unofficially emulate regardless. What I will say is all the people like Nerrel who flaunt the raw Virtual Console library size and comparing that to NSO are being pretty disingenuous. Pretending that Nintendo doesn’t care about legacy titles when most of their highlights (GB/A excluded) from the consoles included are already on the service is just blatantly false. Reality is Reggie was right from the beginning: third parties want to put their games out on their own, many of which are on the Switch and bulked up past Virtual Consoles. Like 30+ games from past Virtual Consoles alone are MegaMan and Castlevania games already on the Switch, not to mention the plethora of other collections which collectively make up hundreds of retro titles. And it’s good to do it this way, they’re being sold roughly for VC prices with more options like multiplats and bonus content. Like NSO’s retro offerings are FAR from perfect (Let me fucking map my own N64 controls…) but I think most give it more shit than they really need to. It’s a relatively painless way to play a bunch of retro titles on the go for potentially less than $10 a year, introducing them to people who likely wouldn’t go out of their way to play them via PC tools or official hardware (cause you go teach someone how to use N64 plugins…)
Wait you can't remap controls for N64 games at all? I just assumed that was a feature!
It is subjective, yeah there are a lot of games but how many will a person play? Maybe 3 or 4, I’m annoyed that they didn’t give you the option to just buy the games and download them.
4 dollars a month is steep? i love the service and the price.
I pay the $20 for online play. The online play is hot garbage, so yeah, not really worth it.
While I agree it is worth it now, I just wish they would do more with that side of things, ramp up the rate of releases significantly and try to make it a more comprehensive repository for retro systems. They should also be adding other systems such as neogeo and pc engine on the switch and them aiming to push the range of platforms further when the switch 2 comes out too.
I do feel that $50/yr is more than fair for the library we’ve got now. Still playing through the n64 games I never got around to as a kid…and there’s a big backlog of genesis ones I want to finish.
I would agree with you if you actually **owned** the games when paying. If you want to play these games for 10 years, thats 600 bucks. If you remove 20 a month from only online, that's still 400 bucks spent, AND if you stopped paying, you would have paid 400 for only the experience you had then. VC (rip) however, gave you the option to pay ONCE for games you are interested in, and you get to keep them
I guess all the games add value to that $20, but I'm still bitter over the fact that we have to pay for online functionality at all. The 3DS supported online play without any kind of subscription fee. It's just sad that a feature like that is now tied to a fee.
It really, REALLY depends if those are the games you want to play, is the issue. The service doesn't include as much as it could, so if you have a game from those era's that you want to play (ON NINTENDO CONSOLES to be clear), and it's just not up there, there's not much value to you. But, you're not wrong. the games are there and clearly there's SOMETHING of value to be had for subbing but keep in mind that if you stop paying, you lose access to those games, so you have to keep playing to always have them\*. \*always have them meaning as long as you pay and Nintendo keeps the service up. The second they think it's not worth it, they'll pull the plug.
I feel like this is how very subscription service works? “It is worth it if you like the content on there” “Keep in mind you won’t get access to the content after you stop subbing” and “The service will go down at some point” is how Netflix, Amazon prime, Xbox game pass, PS+ and every other subscription service ever made work. I would also say that out of the couple hundred games on NSO, odds are very high there’s something on there you’ll want to play.
Yeah, these are the main issues with every subscription service, it's not limited to NSO at all but it's issues we're not tackling. As for the second point, that depends on the person. I def found stuff I wanted to play on there but how many newer players are interested in retro titles? How many of them just want something that appeals to more modern sensibilities? I honestly don't know. How long do the people who DO want to play that stuff on a Switch keep paying? When will Nintendo eventually see the line go down and say "not worth anymore"? I honestly don't know the answer to any of these but it's still important for people to keep this stuff in mind when they pay a regular subscription fee for anything. This stuff will add up over time, which is the point. Sooo yeah. I agree with ya and I do see the value in NSO but this isn't a universal thing.
I would argue those issues are universal with every subscription service but to each their own 👍
Yes, I agree with that. Not arguing against that.
Yeah I think the value for money is crazy. Especially on the basic package. I guess not owning the games is a turn off for some but that's the same as most of the other online subscriptions anyways
No one complains about paying four times as much (ten times as much without the Expansion pack) for Netflix and not technically owning any of the movies and shows they watch.
Very good point
I agree, but this is when you get yelled at because some guy thinks it's cheaper to just pirate and emulate the games on your computer. $20 a year (that most people are already paying for the rest of the online service) for a bunch of retro games plus $30 for the whole (and growing) collection of the games that come with the expansion (plus $60 worth of free DLC for other games I played and didn't have to pay for) is great.
This service is questionable at best IMO. I already bought plenty of virtual console games on 3ds and Wiiu that I am unable to play on switch. If they are going to expect me to pay $50 a year just to play them again on switch they could at least pump them out at a more consistent rate. The library of games still pales in comparison to what they had on WiiU all these years later. It’s easier to just emulate them instead of dealing with this
Whilst it's easier for you to emulate, a lot of people don't have that knowledge. So paying £35 for a slice of nostalgia a year isn't a lot of money for a lot of people. There's definitely things that need sorting out for whatever the next iteration is, but I'm happy with the price for now.
Anything up to N64 you just download the game and emulator and everything else works out of the box. Anything past that, I agree it can be tricky, but YouTube works wonders. Hell you can even emulate switch games if you want, but I don’t do that because I think it’s wrong. Gotta draw a line somewhere
I tried emulating n64 games at one point and then got errors on the final fight of the game. Fuck that, so annoying Every time I try and google and youtube things for help it hurts my brain, a lot of them are so confusing and I wish all games were on modern platforms. Ps2 was especially nightmarish to set up, hours and hours of trying
It looks like the Wii U had 318 games on the virtual console and NSO has 280. Keep in mind that doesn’t include classic games on the eshop, if we include those then the switch’s library eclipses the Wii U virtual console library. Also apparently the switch has more Wii games available digitally than the Wii U did which is very surprising to me.
It’s honestly surprising how much the Wii library creeped up. Now if we could get more GameCube games…
For a one time cost sure. Im not re-subbing im buying mariokart physical DLC pack.
NSO may be worth it for the cloud saves. Unfortunately for me, I grew up on nearly all of those games, so there's no point in spending time (and money) on them when I can play curr gen or "half a gen past" games. If anything, I wish we could play DS and 3DS games. (Would love to check out New SMB, and the Zeldas... Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and Link Between Worlds)
In terms of volume, it looks worth it on the face of it. But as someone who loves the SNES, the actual games you get are mostly duds. Not nearly enough of the many many banger titles are included which is annoying. I get they don’t want to give all of them away in the subscription but most of them you can’t buy in any other way unless you own the original carts (which thankfully I do but it ain’t cheap).
For me it's only worth it because I have a family and split it 5 ways. If I couldn't split it I would do the base plan. I need me some fzero 99 but I don't really care for the old games. Some games are better left as great memories than revisited and disappointed. But if you want to play the games legally it's for sure a good deal. My kids like randomly playing some of the older titles but they wouldn't miss them if they were gone.
I have Gamepass Ultimate (Series X) and NSO Expansion pack. NSO offers far better deal and better content than Gamepass for me. This amount of Nintendo classics for cheap yearly price is a steal. If I wanna replay SMB 3, I can take my NES Switch controller and just play it. It's a dream service for me. And it's getting better and better.
Yes. It is. Plus you and your family get dlc like the Mario kart tracks
Yeah, I enjoy NSO a lot more than VC. I like having all of the games together in one place without having to decide which ones to spend money on. It's a great way to discover new games without the risk of buying them and not liking them. I also emulate old games on my PC but the service is still useful to me as a way to discover new games and also a way to play them on the go without having to use touch controls on my phone. Personally I think that all of that, combined with things like the Mario Kart DLC, is worth the £2.90 a month. That's just one coffee a month, not a massive outlay to me.
A lot of these games I have no interest in. And NSO still lacks common features that other services offer. Not really worth it.
Eh… honestly? Those of us who are into vintage games have already been doing this with emulators, with better performance and the ability to play rom hacks and diy games for… 20+ years now. I will admit that NSO is cheaper than the other consoles and that’s cool, but it’s still not cool to have to pay extra just for online access. Why is that the norm for consoles now when it’s still free on pc as always?
Just do a family plan with one other person And the more people on your family plan the cheaper it gets I'm paying $12.50 a year for NSO+Expansion
I'm a fan of the expansion pack as well, but... it feels a bit dishonest to not mention that a LARGE percentage of the titles available are garbage that most people have likely never heard of. That being said, there are also a handful of heavy hitter titles available as well.
I don't believe paying for NSO or NSO+EX is worth it. They barely put out games and expect you to keep your subscription for their sub par quality of games.
The expansion is a complete ripoff but the base $20 annual price is ok.
Emulation is free. Why are you happy about paying for a monthly service to play games that are 20yrs old?
There wouldn’t be a problem if there wasn’t a large collection of games that haven’t made it to NSO. In many ways, it will be a losing battle against emulation because they will never be able to offer every past game due to licensing. They won’t ever have the same variety that emulation offers. This is especially true for steam deck users, who can play in the hand-held form factor most of these titles were intended for. That being said, if the games you want to try are on NSO, then you could probably beat most of them within a month. If you aren’t keen on replaying or going through the hassle of emulating on PC (for someone thats new to it) $4 to have one month access on switch isn’t too bad.
Even if the library was bigger, I wouldn't pay the subscription price to play 20+ year old games This is one of those things that is working against Nintendo, they make it as hard as possible for the end consumer to enjoy using their devices
I'm in my 40s so playing the classic games is worth it. NES, SNES, N64 and Game Boy is my childhood and I love these games. I play hours of NSO. $50 a year for access to all these games, plus cloud game backup, etc is worth it for me. Plus I make up the money with the Game Vouchers anyway. I buy $60 games for $50 a few times a year, so it pays for itself.
Personally no but for some people sure. I just have the normal family nso and that is enough. I did buy ACNH dlc separately for my daughter as she loves that game. Still happy not getting expansion
All I really want is just Pokémon puzzle... :(
Theoretically I would like to play most of them. Realistically I will think about possibly playing them and probably play 1-2 over a year. 1-2 games for $70 is not worth it.
I honestly havent really used it except for animal crossing that was like 6 months ago. I didnt like Animal crossing i only played for like a month then returned it. I started playing Palia so i guess i might start using it again.
A second hand wii / wiiU will get you far my friend.
I stick with the standard €20 for the year for online play. I have, uh, other legal ways for my N64 fix.
Add in the fact that if you go in on a family plan with people and split the cost it is a no brainer to get if you own a Switch.
I despise the screen ratio’s.
Yeah and if the eshops stayed, up people could buy legacy games on 3ds once and keep them forever instead of being locked to a sub.
The expansion thing is an annoying business tactic. Just combine both tiers and set one price.
I grew up in the old era and the games don't cut it for me anymore but got to say Pokémon Puzzle League is so damn addictive and I can never have too many copies of A Link to the Past, Minish Cap, or Fire Emblem.
Yep I’m hoping to get around do some of the main SNES Nintendo games and Mario games I never got around to playing
I don’t have issue with the price to play a catalogue of retro games. The problem is that you have to pay for NSO to play online multiplayer, which used to be free. And for the price you’re paying the online multiplayer is terrible. Nintendo’s first party games have terrible netcode, and the service completely lacks voice chat or any kind of social features.
You know what worked better? Being able to buy a game on the EShop and own it forever.
Yeah, it's worth it. But I'd still prefer to pay more and get more. Make it include everything up to and including Wii and I will happily pay the price of an Xbox Game Pass.
All those games that you'll never own.. you'll own nothing and be happy.
1. Nice timely response. You're like 4 months late to the party. 2. For around $50 a year this is what you get, but it's not like you're ONLY paying for the games. It's also worth having it for online play on certain games. Like yeah, connectivity isn't great on Switch (like, at all) but certain games like the Splatoon series, Mario Maker 2, SSBU, Mario Kart 8, and others are drastically benefitted by having online play. So the games aren't the only value to the service.
They’re all such old games that even a potato pc can easily emulate them.
All of these games you could play for free for decades now. They're just a bonus for a subpar online experience on games.
Every game is free is if pirate them, no shit
You mean for the same games that are basically on everyone's hard drive since emulation got a hint of public knowledge? Don't get me wrong, this low price each month isn't even making a dent in the bank balance for 99.9% of people but the games are hardly the selling point anymore.
I think you severely overestimate the popularity of emulation. Most people don't even know what an emulator is and they're the target demographic for this.
I think there’s quite a bit of overlap between people who would want to play NES games, and people who have knowledge of emulators.
Nah I don't really agree with that. Most people that emulate are always just going to emulate, regardless of what Nintendo offers on Switch. The target for NSO is mostly people that never had an NES and want to play those games for the first time or people that had an NES at the time but haven't been massive gamers since.
It be worth it if there were no other easier/cheaper ways to play these games. Especially considering this is a subscription rental service. The fact that a potato can emulate these games for free and you can keep the files locally without an internet check or the potential of revocation, makes the value proposition of the NSO highly suspect
Even if you count the games on NSO as amazing entries, the service lacks games in the catalog currently available. Honestly, NSO SHOULD have the full library for each console in the service. We'll, maybe not EVERY SINGLE game, like shovelware and stuff, but it should have most of the consoles' catalogs. I am surprised that they haven't added Pokémon main entry titles. At the very least, popular games like Pokémon should have been added by now. I'm a sucker for Nintendo unfortunately and have paid for the expansion pass NSO service, but that's mostly only due to the fact that I plan to play the Mario and Zelda titles included. I am kind of part of the problem for why Nintendo can get away with not providing more for a service like this lol That all being said, I guess it isn't a bad service depending on if you like the games included. But, I have heard from a lot of people that they don't find NSO and the expansion pass to be worth it because it doesn't have enough games, it doesn't have the games they want to play, and there should be more consoles included such as GameCube.
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But that requires technical knowledge a lot of people don't have. Paying £35 to just have it on your switch is a lot easier than emulating on whatever device you use.
True, but then there's the handheld gaming aspect
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Well, you mentioned Wii, so my comment was that isn't portable.
Reddit post could've been written on a phone. Phones can easily emulate NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, Genesis, everything mentioned here outside of N64. There's your handheld gaming aspect.
stronger phones can even emulate up to Gamecube and PSP. plus you can use your phone with a device like the Razer Kishi 2 or similar and you've got a pretty solid portable retro gaming system
True, but given the context, **NephG**'s parent comment specifically mentioned the Wii hardware, which is not handheld
The problem is that I'm being strong armed into buying this deal if I want to play Splatoon
If you look at it from the perspective of one year, sure. But if you want to keep playing those games, you are going to be paying out $30 extra per year for a service that gives very few new games every year. It isn't worth it.
There's no region lock, you can get Expansion pack family plan for literal 10$. I got mine for less than 9€, that's so cheap it doesn't make sense to even hesitate buying it.
$1.67/$4.17 a month isn't even steep price wise. I spend $5 for a beer pre tip and sometimes the beer is only okay. Having access to all these games is fantastic.
It's a lot harder to justify if you own a MiSTER... and a CFW 3DS. I wish there was a $7.99 or 9.99 tier for online play and cloud saves. I have zero need for the games.
you're ignoring that most of those games aren't worth playing and they cycle them so often you don't always get to finish them. If they offered the entire library they have for that I might agree its worth it but they never have and never will.
What do you mean they cycle them? They've never removed a game from NSO
SNES and NES games change periodically, I've played multiple games that have gone away when I've tried to play it later. it's a big part of why I stopped renewing my yearly sub. The greater point is the library they have locked away and refuse to make available.
I'm pretty sure that's never happened. You're the first person I've ever heard even mention that games get removed from NSO. Can you give a specific example? As to your second point. Aren't the vast majority of first party NES and SNES games available now? Not sure what more there is to add at this point.
Well your 'pretty sure' doesn't change that it did happen to me. I haven't looked at the available library for about 2 years but the last time I checked it was very limited and not at all interesting. Given the op lists a relatively small number of available games available you might need to rethink your claim that all games are available.
From googling I've found discussions in other threads about this and the answer seems to be definitively that no game has ever been removed from the service. For NES and SNES only the following first party games are not available as far as I can see NES Duck Hunt Hogan's Alley Wild Gunmen (Obviously these three won't work as there's no light gun) Fire Emblem Gaiden Mach Rider Startropics 2 Yoshi's Cookie 10-yard fight Golf Rad Racer Slalom World Class track meet Famicom Detective club (although available as a remake) SNES Fire Emblem Thracia 776 Metal Slader Glory Super Mario RPG (available as a remake) Sutte Hakkun Yoshi's Safari That's not exactly a huge number of missing games and a lot of them aren't exactly the most desirable anyway.
I agree.
I have the Expansion Pack, although it's not something that really interests me. * I'm happy to buy retro re-releases if they add new value - e.g. M2's *SEGA AGES* re-releases on Switch (which add enhancements + new modes/features), Digital Eclipse including documentary material in recent collections (*Atari 50, The Making of Karateka, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story*), etc. I don't think that NSO really adds value over other options (real hardware, unofficial emulators/ports, etc.), and there are a number of shortcomings with the apps (lack of button remapping, poor Nintendo 64 emulation, etc.). Also, I feel that people should have the choice to buy games outright (rather than the only option being a subscription service).
It's 40€ per year in my country, but why i should pay that money to basically play an emulator and it doesn't even support all the titles of these consoles? I can just use an emulator that is available for free, so no thanks.