Our Nintendo Switch Online: Expansion Pack Wish Lists

In the latest Nintendo Direct, the Big N announced that there will be an ‘Expansion Pack’ to the Nintendo Switch Online services, which will introduce a plethora of N64 and Mega Drive games to the service. While we know about the first wave of games launching at the end of October, it left us wondering what the future could hold. Joe, Ian & Drew got together to draft up their wish list of classic games they’d like to see on the Switch.

Nintendo 64

Here’s the first two waves of games we’ll see as part of the NSO Expansion Pack.

Phase One (October 2021)	Phase Two (TBC)
Super Mario 64	Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	Mario Golf
Mario Kart 64	Pokemon Snap
Lylat Wars	F-Zero X
Yoshi’s Story	Kirby 64
Sin and Punishment	Paper Mario
WinBack	Banjo-Kazooie
Mario Tennis
Dr. Mario 64

Here are our suggestions:

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

If you know the history of our site, you’ll know that Konami’s 3rd person adventure-game-slash-sitcom, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, was at the top of both Ian & Joe’s lists. No one, not even Drew, could convince them otherwise. We reckon that more people need to experience the story of Goemon trying to save Mt Fuji, which has been teleported into space, at least once in their lives. The bonkers plot, well written characters and a sequence based on the 1970s movies where two men in mech suits battle it out over a town, has everything you could want from a late 1990s video game and we only hope that this will happen and reignite Konami’s passion to making more games in the series. 

Superman 64

The NSO is full of good games, but what if Nintendo decided to put one of the worst games ever made onto the service? That honour should undoubtedly belong to Superman 64, with graphics that barely work, controls that don’t work, and a level of fogging so bad that not even the Man of Steel’s vision let’s you see more than 3 feet in front of you. Not only would it bring back some rage inducing memories, but the younger generation can see how we used to cope without game patches.

Pokémon Stadium

Pokémon Stadium was incredible when it was released in 1999 – it let players battle pokémon in 3D and play minigames such as ‘Magikarp Jump’ and ‘Clefairy Says’, but the main selling point was the ability to play Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow on the TV from your N64 and to bring your party to battle in the stadium. A lot has to happen for Pokémon Stadium to be a viable option, primarily the release of the original Game Boy games and some sort of magic to connect the two games but we think it would be a popular choice if it all came together.

Tetrisphere

Drew was oddly vocal about Tetrisphere. It was an exclusive game to the N64 and as the name suggests, you play a game of Tetris, but instead of arranging falling blocks into lines, you have to match 3 blocks on a sphere in order to get to its core. It’s a frustrating puzzler that had Drew tearing his hair out as a kid, but one he’s keen to repeat.

All Games By Rare

Ok, so this one is a bit of a cheat but we all picked at least one Rare game in our lists and rather than argue about who is better, we decided to go all in. And when you see the quality of titles it’s easy to see why we wanted to get on with it. During the N64 era, Rareware churned out some of the best games of the generation, and although they are now owned by Microsoft, the appearance of Banjo Kazooie has given us hope that we’ll see the likes of Blast Corps, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, DK64 and of course, the granddaddy of console shooters, GoldenEye some day. Just imagine playing an online deathmatch of 007, slaps only, no Oddjob and you can see why we’re excited to see if Rare will once again play a big part in Nintendo’s plans.

Mega Drive

Next up we have Sega’s machine, the one that does what Nintendon’t. The announcement of the console making its way onto Nintendo’s handheld-hybrid was a pleasant surprise to us as it brings some more brilliant 16-Bit nostalgia to the table. Arguably, we’re more excited to play Mega Drive (Genesis for you North Americans), than Nintendo’s own console as this list was a lot harder to put together as there are so many games to choose from. Honourable mentions go to the Mega Collection series (especially Alien Storm and Super Hang On), Earthworm Jim & James Pond.

The first wave of confirmed games for the Nintendo Switch Online – Expansion Pack Sega Mega Drive are:

Castlevania: Bloodlines	Contra: Hard Corps
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine	Ecco the Dolphin
Golden Axe	Gunstar Heroes
Ristar	Shining Force
Sonic the Hedgehog 2	Streets of Rage 2
MUSHA	Phantasy Star 4
Shinobi 3	Strider

And now for our picks: 

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that the Blue Blur would be at the top of this list in some form or fashion, and while we love Sonic 1 & 2, they’ve been done to death. What would be lovely is seeing Sonic 3, and the add-on Sonic & Knuckles being added to the collection. Not only for something different, but because both of the games together are some of the best 16-Bit platforming you’ll experience. Due to *rumoured* issues with the soundtrack between Sega and the estate of Michael Jackson, Sega doesn’t seem to tout Sonic’s third outing as much as the previous games and it’s often missing from various collections. We know an enhanced version is coming out next year as part of the Sonic Origins collection, but that also includes Sonic 2, so why can’t we play the original now?

Castle of Illusion / World of Illusion

The Illusion games from Sega and Disney jumped out at us for a number of reasons, chiefly they were some of the best designed 2D scrollers on the system. Unlike the brutally difficult movie tie-ins like Aladdin and Lion King, both of the Illusion games gave a tough but manageable approach. World of Illusion was slightly on the easy side but with two players playing as Mickey and Donald, there is a lot of replayability nearly 30 years later.

ToeJam & Earl

ToeJam & Earl is a favourite of ours at VGamingNews, the mad-cap collectathon has you and a friend running around a map looking to rebuild your ship so that ToeJam and Biiig Earl can return home to the planet Funkotron. Its bright coloured aliens and utterly stupid mechanics perfectly sum up the 90s. If it came to NSO with online play, we’d be very happy indeed.

Kid Chameleon

The mask swapping mechanic in Kid Chameleon was out of this world back in the 1990s and was frankly way ahead of its time. Each mask would change Casey into a different creature or character and give specific  power ups to help progress through the levels. As kids, both Drew and Joe struggled to get to the end of the massive 100+ levels; now they’re older, they are itching to finish what they started.

Strike Collection

Desert Strike, Jungle Strike and Urban Strike were the top tier shoot ‘em ups on the Mega Drive, so we couldn’t pick just one. You play as a lone helicopter pilot where the sole mission is to kill the bad guy at any cost. Each one of the Strike games were well received and even though EA tried to continue the series into the PlayStation and N64 era, they didn’t capture the audience in the same way. With other Shmups getting a new lease of life on the Switch, we think it’s about time a new audience is introduced to some classic shooters.

These are our picks and obviously not confirmed in any capacity, but what games would you like to see? Let us know below!