In Majora’s Mask, not only did you need to visit an area or dungeon over and over (like many games with Easter Eggs, special items, or collectibles), in fact, that was the entire point. There are probably many reasons why Majora’s Mask commanded my attention as it did it was bizarre, and dark, and in many ways embraced the completionism that would come to drive game design in the following decades. Even if you didn’t play Paper Mario or Super Mario 64 at the time, and have no nostalgia for ‘em, you’re still likely to enjoy them today. Nintendo is fastidious about play-testing their games and making them as polished as they can be before hitting stores, and that helps their best games age better than almost any other developer’s. If you can get used to the occasional emulation hiccup or the new control scheme (or were lucky enough to get a Nintendo 64 Switch controller), you’ll find that some of these games from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s hold up remarkably well today. If you’re only in it for the old Nintendo 64 games, though, you might be a little bummed about the whole thing. It also comes with a bunch of Sega Genesis games, as well as an Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC pack.
That doesn’t make the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack a total bust. As great as some of these Nintendo 64 games are, it can be hard to properly enjoy them on a Switch controller. There’s no easy or graceful way to map control schemes built for that layout onto the standard Switch controller, and although Nintendo has released a Nintendo 64 controller for the Switch, it’s a limited edition novelty that sold out quickly.
Part of that is because of the unusual layout of the Nintendo 64 controller, with a single analogue joystick, four small yellow directional buttons next to the traditional A and B face buttons, and a gun-style trigger button on the bottom. It’s true that the Nintendo 64 emulation on Nintendo Switch Online isn’t the best. What Nintendo probably assumed was a fan-friendly move to make its classics playable today instead left a lot of people feeling angry or disappointed.
It even inspired another wave of online discourse about the ethics of illegal emulation in a medium that puts little effort in accurately preserving its history. Between a slim roster of Nintendo 64 games, the extra cost (Nintendo Switch Online is $20 a year, whereas the new Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack costs $50), and the inconsistent quality of the emulation, the general reaction to this move has been less than positive.
So when Nintendo added a number of Nintendo 64 games to an upcharged version of the service in 2021, you’d think fans would have been excited. Not all of the emulation is perfect, and some of the games that have been added to the lineup over the years have been unusual selections, but overall it’s added a lot of value to a service that exists mostly to let people play each other online. Think of it as Nintendo’s old Virtual Console concept, but reborn as something sort of like Xbox Game Pass. Since the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service launched in 2018, it’s included a collection of classic games from the NES and SNES.
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