It is perhaps suitable that the first Nintendo Switch 2 review I’m writing is one for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, billed as an introduction to the system. This oddity of a game helps new players explore the features of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware.
Touring the Switch 2
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour has you run around a virtual recreation of the Nintendo Switch 2 and play mini-games, try tech demos, answer quizzes, and a few more things along the way. It works as a practical way to learn the system and explains some of the technology in an easy-to-understand way.
It’s split into several areas which are gated by a stamp rally. Getting stamps is fairly straightforward. It’s just a case of finding a hidden stamp that relates to one of the Switch 2’s parts, such as a button or the HDMI port. This aspect did get a little tedious, but I did appreciate that it takes us to the internals of the system as well. I’ve taken apart a controller or two in the past (and sometimes even managed to put them back together successfully) and finding out just what’s inside and how it all relates to the buttons we see is very interesting for the first time.
What’s more interesting are the activities that you can find. Each area has a few activities to complete.
Tech Demos and Minigames
“Tech Demos” are interactive ways to experience the features of the system and often come with a little explanation about how they work. Despite not being quite a “game” as such, they still come with objectives to complete in the process.
One tech demo involves detaching the joycons and using the motion controls to shake maracas. It shows the internal view of the beads and how the system uses the position of the motion controllers to create the sounds. I could see just how accurately the orientation and motion of the joycons were being tracked. Another tech demo had me playing Super Mario Bros World 1-1, but it was tiny. I could see the entire level on one screen because it was so small. The idea was to play it on my 4K TV and get an appreciation for the sheer difference in scale in resolution from the original NES game. It added in some fun like finding the hidden 1-Up, but in many ways, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a celebration of how far Nintendo has come since then.
Minigames were more extensive, but often along the same lines as the above in that they’re there to show off the features. Several of them focus on the use of the joycon as a mouse or how well the upgraded HD rumble works by doing things like tracing unseen lines where the rumble is strongest. Passing them rewards you with medals which can be used to unlock further minigames and tech demos.
One I found particularly amusing, if partially due to the online discourse that always surrounds it, is that there’s a ‘guess the framerate’ game. You can see short videos of balls going across the screen and have to choose between two guesses of the fps. It has comparison videos too. The Nintendo Switch 2 does have a screen that can show 120 fps, but I certainly found it tricky to distinguish at anything above 60 fps.
Many of the minigames provide some challenge for higher levels. Several of the mouse ones focus on both accuracy and speed, like navigating a maze without touching the walls and while passing is easy enough, getting the best scores had me trying repeatedly and enjoying it. Some minigames even have secret medals for perfect scores.
I should mention that some minigames require additional equipment to experience. As one example, if you don’t have a camera, you won’t be able to play a game where you need to replicate expressions shown to you on screen for one. It was pretty amusing seeing the face tracking work and displaying my expression via an emoji-like head on the screen, similar to how a VTuber avatar works.
Not all of the minigames were amazing, but I had fun with the majority of them and some kept me replaying over and over to get higher scores. Having many of them unlock more complex versions was welcome too. They also showed just how well the new equipment works, as well as perhaps unintentionally highlighting a few weaknesses.
Did You Know…?
One nice feature of Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is that it includes short quizzes. The answers themselves were often too obvious, but what I enjoyed about it was that it added explanations of how a lot of the features work.
Did you know that the Nintendo Switch 2’s HD Rumble uses electromagnets, magnets, and a weight moving side to side? Or why side-to-side is the best way to move the weight? How about that the mouse mode uses tiny black and white cameras that capture thousands of photos a second?
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is full of little factoids like these. I imagine that these will particularly appeal to any younger players who enjoy ‘How Does It Work?’ type media, but I thought that a lot of it was interesting too. Several of them even include little tidbits about Nintendo history and when certain features were first introduced, so I enjoyed seeing what I knew or didn’t.
But The Cost!
While I don’t usually weigh in on discussions online, I’ll address one that’s repeatedly been brought up, which is the idea that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour should have been free.
I recall being surprised when playing Astro’s Playroom on the PlayStation 5 at just how much was included and how good it was. I would’ve been completely happy to pay for that separately. And I did buy Wii Sports as I didn’t get my Wii new and certainly still had my money’s worth of fun.
I do think it would’ve been nice if this was included with the system like those titles were. Considering that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is aimed at teaching you about the system, it would’ve made sense. I also think this has a very specific appeal, much more so than those other two games.
In the end, I think it’ll be worth the low cost for the people who want to spend a few hours learning all about the system and trying out features. But perhaps it would’ve come across better as a paid title if it focused more on a collection of minigames that use the new features and less on the tour aspect.
Verdict
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour won’t be for everyone or even most people, but it is very good at what it sets out to do. It nicely shows off all the features of the new console, includes some entertaining gameplay, and is surprisingly informative about how the technology behind it all works. If nothing else, it gives a hint of how future games may use some of these new features.
NINTENDO SWITCH 2 WELCOME TOUR IS RECOMMENDED
If you have a Nintendo Switch 2 already and are looking for some software to add to your nascent library, check out our review of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma.
Many thanks go to Nintendo for a review code for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
