I love my Nintendo Switch. It’s not my “main” console; that honor still falls onto my PlayStation 4. But I love my Nintendo Switch system just the same. I have played a good number of exclusive games on the system. I can’t count how many hours I spend playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, just exploring every inch of the map obsessively. I have also played a lot of Super Mario Odyssey in my vain attempt to collect each and every Power Moon and Coin. Oh, I can try as much as I want but I just don’t have the skill to get all of them… but I still have fun and scream in frustration while trying!

Recently, however, I have noticed something about my gaming habits on the Nintendo Switch. For one reason or another, I just haven’t been playing any of the system’s recent releases. What I did notice is that, whenever I do boot up my Switch and I’m brought to the list of games, I’m actually struck by a lot of older games. Phoenix Wright Trilogy. Final Fantasy VIII. Sega Genesis Classics. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary. I realized that these are pretty much retro games! That got me to ask myself as to why this crept up on me. Why did the Nintendo Switch become a retro gaming system for me?

I guess the best way to answer this and why this happened after some time is to go back and talk about the first “retro” game I got for the Switch. Well, it’s not exactly a game. Rather, it’s a collection of games that I really wanted to get. That would be Street Fighter 30th Anniversary. This was a game that I thought I would love but, as my review for Street Fighter 30th Anniversary said, it’s almost unplayable for me. The regular Joy-Cons are just not meant for the pinpoint accuracy needed to block or perform precise rolling motions.

Even so, I still like the game due the bountiful number of extras it had. In fact, I remember not really playing the game all that much but, instead, laying in bed before going to sleep just going through the museum and looking through Street Fighter’s illustrious history. Some of these images brought back a lot of nostalgic memories of when I was in high school and this was the biggest arcade game ever.

The next game that I got after that was the Phoenix Wright Trilogy. I have never played any of the Phoenix Wright games before since they came out on the Nintendo 3DS system, a console I never bought. I was still enamored with the game as I do love myself a good crime/detective mystery and I was pretty sure the Phoenix Wright games were going to scratch that itch. However, I just couldn’t really bring myself to buy the 3DS just for that! I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be able to play them.

Fast forward to this year and Capcom announced they were re-releasing a compilation of the first three Phoenix Wright games on modern systems. There was going to be no excuse to not get it because it was coming out to both the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch! But because the first three games did come out on the previous Nintendo portables, it only made sense, at least to me, to get the collection on the Switch. It also kind of fit since the Switch had a touch screen and, well, the 3DS also had one, so the controls would feel much more intuitive. That’s what I thought anyway. I breezed through the first two games of the collection as I played it obsessively for the past month I got it.

Why didn’t I finish the third game of the Phoenix Wright Trilogy? I’m not really sure. I’m guessing this was around the time I kind of switched (no pun intended) back to playing the hot new games on my PlayStation 4. This was the time when I played Sony’s Spider-Man and God of War almost non-stop and, unfortunately, the third entry of the Phoenix Wright games fell by the wayside.

After some time did pass, I did get two more games for my Switch and, once again, they just so happen to be retro games. The first was Final Fantasy VIII Remaster, a game that I was eagerly anticipating its release when it was announced. Call me a heathen, but I think Final Fantasy VIII is on par with Final Fantasy VII. Maybe it’s just my rose colored nostalgia glasses putting a nice sheen on things but I really like Final Fantasy VIII, even if it is weird with the hard-to-follow junction and Guardian Forces system. Even though I purchased and downloaded it the instant it was released, I haven’t played a whole lot of it and it’s pretty much in my backlog catalog. This is something I really have to remedy in the near future as soon as possible.

Oddly enough, the game that’s is occupying the cartridge slot of my Nintendo Switch at the moment and for the past couple of months is the Sega Genesis Classics Collection. I myself have never owned a Sega Genesis myself but I still have a ton of fond memories playing games on that classic console. When I was in grade school, I would go to my nearby shopping center after classes were done. I didn’t go there to shop but play Sega Genesis games!

There were a lot of locations where you can rent a game setup for around an hour and just play a whole mess of games within that hour! In fact, I actually finished a lot of them. I still remember beating the first Golden Axe with another kid that I never met before just because I knew the game was going to be difficult to beat by myself! Good times!

Right now, the Sega Genesis Classics is the last game that I have bought for my Nintendo Switch. I guess the question is why that is. One of the reasons comes down to Nintendo’s pricing. Games are just more expensive on the Nintendo Switch than on the PlayStation 4. I’m not sure if that’s true anywhere else but it’s certainly true here in the Philippines. The exception to the rule would be with retro games. That’s certainly true for most retro games, of course. The same thing can be said for retro games on the PlayStation 4 as well. So why do I make this unconscious effort to get retro games on the Switch?

Oddly enough, it’s more for convenience. I mostly use my Nintendo Switch just before going to sleep. And I mean just before going to sleep. This means that I close all the lights in my room, snuggle in my bed and then boot up the Switch. I generally play for a good number of minutes before I get drowsy. Then I know it’s time to just lay the Switch to the side and fall asleep. I just can’t do that with my PlayStation since I’ll have to turn off the TV, the console and then unplug everything! That’s a lot of hassle!

I do have plans to get more modern games on my Nintendo Switch in the future. I still have to buy Super Smash Bros., Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Octopath Traveler and many more. But maybe I shouldn’t right now. After all, Final Fantasy VIII isn’t going to finish itself…

What are the most recent retro games you’ve played? Let me know in the comments section below!