Mario's sports spin-offs during the Switch era have been mostly decent, but also, largely unsurprising. There have been few frills and largely anemic single-player modes, and the occasional experiment like Mario Golf Super Rush have been divisive. Mario Tennis Fever is the first in the sport spin-off genre on Switch 2, and a chance to set a new course for the company. After a hands-on with it at a recent Nintendo event, I can't say whether it has course-corrected on the single-player, but the multiplayer is so chockablock with options and game-changing effects that I'm intrigued.

In fact, the main hook of the new game--the titular Fever rackets--have such wild impacts on the court that at times Fever felt more like a party game than a sports title. Our couch competitive experience was frequently interrupted by raucous trash talk and surprised screams as new effects totally changed the match mid-volley.

But first, the basics. A short tutorial explained the mechanics of Mario Tennis Fever, which are largely unchanged from previous tennis titles. You serve and volley just as you'd expect, and you hit the button early or double-tap for charged and powered-up effects, respectively. Mario and the gang look especially great here, thanks to the enhanced power of the Switch 2 and relatively limited scope of what's on screen.

So far, Nintendo's Switch 2 upgrade packs have been all over the map. There are the smaller ones with just a few quality-of-life features like Animal Crossing, serious upgrades like the Legend of Zelda games, and larger-scale expansions like Kirby's Star-Crossed World expansion. Super Mario Bros. Wonder's Switch 2 upgrade, Meetup at Bellabel Park, is priced like a larger expansion, but that doesn't quite capture the nature of what it is. Instead, based on a hands-on experience with Nintendo, it transforms the game into something else entirely, borrowing liberally from the Mario Party series.

Though Mario Wonder allowed you to go through its stages in multiplayer, Bellabel Park is centered around bespoke multiplayer minigames, using the Mario Wonder platforming as its mechanical underpinnings. So unlike an actual Mario Party game, in which the randomized minigames might challenge you to do new and unfamiliar things at a regular clip, these feel more like platforming challenges with a little bit of party game spirit.

Since they're built around traditional Mario platforming, the challenges aren't entirely competitive. We first played a cooperative level that had one player using the Switch 2 mouse functionality to draw Donut Blocks, Mario Maker style, to guide the other three players through a stage that was one big pit hazard. That by itself would be not much more than a neat toy-like experiment, but the stage was also littered with occasional hazards and puzzle challenges, like a special coin nested inside a set of breakable boxes. The Donut Block player would need to draw a path for a spike ball to roll its way into the boxes so that the other players could access the coin; and naturally, we were all shouting out tips of where and how to draw the path, adding to the chaotic fun of the whole experience.

Nintendo doesn't have very many high-profile missteps, which makes it all the more notorious when one of its flagship products falters. The Wii U is the most recent example, but before that the all-timer was the Virtual Boy--a mid-'90s experiment in early 3D effects that never caught on. Nintendo fans have identified many possible causes for this--the unwieldy design, the all-red graphics, the middling library--but whatever the cause, it's been a sore spot in Nintendo history. Now the company is bringing it back with emulation and two accessory options (one or the other is required) on the Switch 2. It works well, but will likely serve more as a museum piece for fans of Nintendo history than a strong part of the gaming library.

During a Nintendo event, we were able to try the Virtual Boy emulation, with a Switch 2 console fitted into the pricey Virtual Boy accessory. (The cardboard model was on display behind glass, but we weren't able to try it.) The $100 option looks just like my memory of a Virtual Boy in a Toys R Us kiosk, complete with its tripod stand and foam face shield. The only major differences are that this one has a Switch 2 noticeably lodged into it, and there is no attached controller since you'll just use paired Joy-Cons or Pro Controller. It was notable, more as an interesting curiosity than anything else, that about half of the Switch console was actually sticking out of the bottom of the Virtual Boy accessory. The actual Virtual Boy display was only utilizing roughly the top half of the screen.

Then there's the experience of actually putting hands (and eyes) on it. The foam face shield was actually very comfortable and did a great job blocking out the ambient light of the room. Hunching over to get my eyes in the correct position was less comfortable, but I learned afterwards that I would have been allowed to adjust the table height on request, so that may just be user error on my part. Still, it does raise the specter of one key weakness of the Virtual Boy: You have to find a position to play and stay planted there, rather than naturally shift around as people tend to do when relaxing with a video game. The field-of-view was slightly odd, also, as I had to lift my head up above the face shield slightly and look down "into" the display to see the part of the UI that explained the suspend menu shortcut. And of course, the red-and-black display does still feel fairly harsh, and emerging from the darkened cocoon of the Virtual Boy display is disorienting.

The Nintendo Switch was a massive success, but it was built primarily on the strength of first-party and less-demanding third-party games. We all knew you didn't turn to the Switch for the visual splendor offered on its competitors. The Switch 2 has brought things slightly more towards parity, and we've seen a few third-party standouts like Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws that push the hardware. Those will soon be joined by two high-profile Capcom games, Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, which were both visually impressive at a recent Nintendo hands-on event.

Both demos on display were familiar ones. For Resident Evil, it was the opening moments as Grace begins exploring the hospital that we've seen demonstrated in other presentations, and for Pragmata it was the same demo that's available on Steam now. But that also allows a direct comparison, and to my surprise, it was pretty favorable in both cases.

Resident Evil Requiem looked great, maintaining the high-fidelity distressed look that lends itself to the creepy atmosphere. Things in the hospital look worn and used, sometimes decaying, which helps set a mood, and the Switch 2 pulled off that look very well. In handheld mode, the smaller screen may have looked even better than on a big screen, since the more compact pixel density could hide some of the less-detailed parts. Plus, with the ability to play on a handheld you could play it in bed, hiding under the covers.

The original Nintendo Switch has surpassed the DS in sales, officially reaching a milestone as Nintendo's best-selling video game system of all time. With 155.37 million units sold as of the last week of December 2025, the Switch only trails Sony's PlayStation 2 for the all-time record.

This achievement was long expected, with the Switch shown to be inching toward the DS's numbers in Nintendo's last quarterly earnings report. Nintendo DS, which was released in 2004 and has long since been discontinued, sold 154.02 million units in its lifetime.

For the Switch to dethrone the PS2, it'll have to overtake its astounding figure of over 160 million consoles sold--if Nintendo can somehow squeeze out more than 5 million sales.