Nintendo adds Donkey Kong Land to its Switch Online library




Nintendo has a surprise drop for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. A classic Game Boy title has landed on the service tonight, in the form of Donkey Kong Land. Only the first game in the series is available, which originally launched in 1995 for the original Game Boy. Developed by Rareware, it plays somewhat similarly to the Donkey Kong Country series, just with the limitations of the time for being a Game Boy title.
 

Robert Newbie

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From the DLC stuff, the only that might interest me is the Mario Kart one, and even then I'd rather just buy the thing than pay a subscription for it.

I don't care for the extra emulators, since I have a jailbroken Switch and I don't like to support live service models. It would be extra frustrating to pay for them when I own the original cartridge for most of the n64 games I play.
I see $20 for online play and cloud save (one that don't even work with all games) as a bad thing, because these things shouldn't be paid at all. The music app I don't really see as relevant since it adds no value to the experience you have on Nintendo Switch, don't even know why the fuck that thing needs a subscription to begin with.

Now the problem with both tiers when it comes to the game selection is that it isn't as large and diverse as some people may think, as mentioned before they don't even bother to license some popular third party games to add to the service, and worse than that is that they've been drip feeding their own games for over 5 years. There's no reason why Nintendo couldn't have had most (if not all) of the first party games available on the service from day one. Unless you are someone that only wants to play things the official way I don't see any value in it, not even in terms of convenience.

Also, the DLC thing could have worked much better if they made it something like a free DLC pass for all of their first party games, but instead they decided to offer DLCs only for Splatoon 2 (this one was a weird choice by the way), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing, games that if you are already interested you most likely already own their DLCs. I already own the DLC for these games so, yet again, I see no value.
Thanks for the replies. It sounds like both tiers don't have great value. I didn't know that cloud saves didn't work for every game. Depending on the games not supported, that could be a major issue. I'm not familiar with how many games are actually offered through the retro libraries, but it sounds like it's not as huge as I thought.

I remember when Sony offered free online play with the PS3 through the PSN, and they gained a lot of goodwill. Times have changed. I just did a plan comparison with Sony's tiers:

PlayStation Plus Essential: $80 USD per year
PlayStation Plus Extra: $135 USD per year
PlayStation Plus Premium: $160 USD per year

The monthly subscription game must be a really profitable.
 

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Thanks for the replies. It sounds like both tiers don't have great value. I didn't know that cloud saves didn't work for every game. Depending on the games not supported, that could be a major issue. I'm not familiar with how many games are actually offered through the retro libraries, but it sounds like it's not as huge as I thought.

I remember when Sony offered free online play with the PS3 through the PSN, and they gained a lot of goodwill. Times have changed. I just did a plan comparison with Sony's tiers:

PlayStation Plus Essential: $80 USD per year
PlayStation Plus Extra: $135 USD per year
PlayStation Plus Premium: $160 USD per year

The monthly subscription game must be a really profitable.
It is profitable because they are able to exploit the fact that console players are limited to whatever that ecosystem has to offer on their hardware, that's why you don't see this type of stuff happening on PC, at least nowhere near this extent.

The worst part about things like paid online play is that some people have the belief that this is in some way helping game developers, but in reality the vast majority of developers don't get a single penny of that money.
 

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I don't think it's necessarily unfair having to pay a company to be able to use their servers for online play. But I do think it's unfair being unable to host your own server.

The worst part about things like paid online play is that some people have the belief that this is in some way helping game developers, but in reality the vast majority of developers don't get a single penny of that money.
That's a good point. If I'm paying for an online service that supposedly covers an entire console, then third party devs using online functionality should either receive their cut or be able to use Nintendo's servers.
 
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NinStar

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I don't think it's necessarily unfair having to pay a company to be able to use their servers for online play.
That's the thing, most of the time they are not really using their servers, they are just using their frameworks (things like friend list integrations, invitation systems, rich presence, achievements support and such), most game devs still have to host the game servers by themselves with their own resources.
 

ciro64

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That's the thing, most of the time they are not really using their servers, they are just using their frameworks (things like friend list integrations, invitation systems, rich presence, achievements support and such), most game devs still have to host the game servers by themselves with their own resources.
I addressed that in my second paragraph, and yeah, that's indeed not fair. Third party devs deserve a piece of the pie too.
 
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ChronosNotashi

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Thanks for the replies. It sounds like both tiers don't have great value. I didn't know that cloud saves didn't work for every game. Depending on the games not supported, that could be a major issue. I'm not familiar with how many games are actually offered through the retro libraries, but it sounds like it's not as huge as I thought.
For the year I tried the Expansion Pass for, it was alright. Not much was available initially, but for someone who wants to play the older games provided legally, it's the best choice available from a cost perspective (good luck, for instance, getting an N64 and the notable titles for less than $100-200. Oh, and a CRT television so that you aren't having to potentially deal with input lag - good luck finding one of those in good condition). And there's plenty more games compared to when I first subscribed for it.

As for games with no cloud save support, it's mainly the Pokemon games (so as to not have a legal means of duplicating Pokemon), demos/trial versions of games (excluding most games that are given a trial period through NSO, as they are technically full games can can be played for free temporarily), games that are online only and thus have all player data on an online server, or is Splatoon 2. Splatoon 2 itself is a unique case: it has online ranks for the Ranked modes, but the ranks themselves are saved to the system and not an external server. The game not supporting cloud saves is to prevent abuse of the rank system (i.e. loading an older backup if you do poorly enough to lose rank - or even intentionally throw matches - so as to regain your rank while messing up the ranks of others). This isn't a problem for Splatoon 3 since ranks are saved to the online login/matchmaking servers for that game (and you can't derank unless you actually choose to do so), so the only things saved locally are anything involved in stuff that can either be accessed offline or through local play.

As for games provided through NSO and NSO + Ex, here's a Eurogamer article that shows all of the retro games provided, as of Donkey Kong Land (at the time of this comment, it doesn't include Donkey Kong Land 2, which should appear either tonight or tomorrow).
 
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