Nintendo Switch 2 needs this one major feature

Now that the Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and we’ve had our grubby little hands on it for a while, there’s one thing that I want more than ever. We’ve got the upgraded visuals, the better framerates, and the mouse control is awesome. I’d love to tell you that the one thing I want more than anything is a better battery life, but honestly, I just want an achievement or trophy system implemented.

I get the feeling that many players don’t care quite as much about these unlockable trophies as they once did; I still remember the heady days of leaderboards appearing in Xbox magazines, and trophy hunters giving interviews about the way they rack up points. I’ve seen some people say that achievements and trophies don’t belong in games, and I can see an argument for it, despite highly disagreeing.

At one point, there was a discussion on Twitter about the systems and a few folks thought they took away from the natural exploration that players would go through before they were implemented, but that’s not how I see it.

For me, the implementation of these systems pushed me to see more of each game I played, and stick around for much longer than I would have otherwise. There are still fond memories floating through my brain of hunting down all the orbs in Crackdown 2 simply because there was an achievement to do so. Combine that and a brilliant open-world, for the time, and I pushed further than I would normally. Usually, I would finish the game, put my controller down and walk away.

When I played Ghost of Tsushima over on PlayStation, I knew I wanted to see everything the developers created, every corner of this slice of Japan, and the trophies guided me, urged me on. With the Nintendo Switch and its successor not bringing in any kind of reward system for players, I feel like I’ll only push for 100% if there’s some in-game encouragement, and that might make me sound a little shallow, but really, it also comes down to time.

Nintendo

There’s only so much time, and there are so many games, so if I’m going to go the extra mile, I want to feel some sort of reward for sticking around longer. Yes, I was the kid that liked getting stickers at the dentist, and I like the little dopamine hit when the tinkle or pinging sound effect plays as I unlock an achievement or trophy. It’s also quite nice to go back over games you’ve enjoyed and look at the trophies or scores and remind yourself of nice little moments.

I suppose this kicked in and appeared in my head while playing Mario Kart World free roam, and hunting down the ‘?’ switches, P-Switch challenges, and trying to unlock the character skins. Aside from the latter, you get some stickers, many of which have lovely designs, but they represent such a small part of the customisation that, for me at least, there’s less of a draw to hunt them all down.

Beyond games like Super Mario Odyssey, or the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza, which urge you to collect every Moon or Banana when completing levels, I can imagine players chasing after trophies for winning a set number of races with Wario in MKW, or beating Metroid Prime 4 without a certain suit for Samus. Sure, you can do these things anyway, but I’m imagining a bright Mario star popping up and spinning in the corner of your screen as you achieve these things. I know that Nintendo doesn’t often follow the crowd, but this is one thing I’d love them to adopt.