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How do!

Bought meself a Switch as I’m craving some Nintendo Goodness, mostly Zelda based. And I’ve now sort of discovered Nintendo Online. Seems to be a decent alternative to picking up the increasingly expensive NES and SNES Minis. And some N64 goodness chucked in if I go for the expansion.

Anyone got practical experience of this service?

It's great. Not as fully featured as the MS or Sony offerings but overall quite cheap at the base level. A thing of note is that the NES/SNES/N64/Genesis collections can all be played online and have some great games. Sadly, this doesn't extend to some 3rd party franchises, but buying the Contra/Castlevania/Megaman/Sonic collections along with some Square stuff filled the gaps nicely.

As for the expansion; I don't think its worth it just for the N64/Genesis content unless you REALLY care about those. The N64 emulation and control has some issues and the library is a little sparse. The Genesis one is far more interesting but has some significant gaps.

The main draw to the expansion is that it gives you access to a bunch of DLC. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is already incredible ,but the steady stream of new courses is a great perk for the expansion pack and we got quite a lot out of the home designer mode added to Animal Crossing. I suspect this will continue to be fairly worthwhile and while the Expansion Pack is a little pricey IMO for what you get; particularly compared to the base service, its not really expensive in the grand scheme of things either.

In short, I currently have PS+ and Nintendo Online + Expansion Pack and of them I'd probably drop PS+ first. A big reason for that is just because the Switch has dominated my game time in recent years.

Giving it the 7 day free trial. Will likely sign up for a year. Whether they get another year out of me will of course depend on how many games they add!

The membership was fairly cheap when it came out, not sure if that's changed. I enjoyed it when I tried it since it had a few NES games I loved playing when I was younger, and a few I've never heard of that were pretty neat. Looking at the catalogue they've added a whole lot of games since launch, looks like they also have pre-patched versions where you can start off with items or powerups, kinda like the old game genie.

Given its an annual sub, it’s really pretty reasonable. Mind you, the NES and SNES are my era, so I’m perfectly happy to immerse myself in those games. Someone without that affinity? Possibly not worth it?

Remember that Nintendo Online is also mandatory for online play in full price games such as Smash Bros, Mario Kart etc. You can't just use your WiFi to play against other people online in those games.

 BertBert wrote:
Remember that Nintendo Online is also mandatory for online play in full price games such as Smash Bros, Mario Kart etc. You can't just use your WiFi to play against other people online in those games.

Wait?? what???
I did not know that!! Mind you, I'm mostly a member of the "PC master race" but even Blizzard doesn't charge us for online play via their launcher (and thats BLIZZARD ffs!)

WoW.. thats.......capitalism at its finest.

Nintendo can be a little behind the curve on some areas - it wasn't that long ago that they tried to treat youtube like their own personal marketing department.

Just minus paying creators and all.


Suffice to say at times they make odd choices. Paid online play is one. Another is putting all those older games on the online account and not also offering you the option to just outright buy them and thus play both offline and without a monthly account system.




Heck I'm kinda worried that the Switch 2 - or whatever replaces it - could be just a straight upgrade; or could be an entirely new machine with some new quirk feature and its own storefront system and all.

Paid online is kind of the norm for consoles sadly. Same is true for Xbox on Playstation. Those just charge about half per month of what Nintendo is charging per year.

The price itself is actually pretty good.

I’m not the only one with a Switch, so I asked friends with kids if they already had it. If not, I was going to do the £60 family pack thing, which allows up to 8 accounts.

If you shared that amongst adults? It’s a pretty negligible £7.50 each per year, or 62p…per month.

But as it’s Just Me, it’s gonna be £34.99 with the expansion pack. That’s pretty decent value to my mind,

princeyg wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
Remember that Nintendo Online is also mandatory for online play in full price games such as Smash Bros, Mario Kart etc. You can't just use your WiFi to play against other people online in those games.

Wait?? what???
I did not know that!! Mind you, I'm mostly a member of the "PC master race" but even Blizzard doesn't charge us for online play via their launcher (and thats BLIZZARD ffs!)

WoW.. thats.......capitalism at its finest.

Started two console generations ago. If i was to pull a number out of thin air i would say 80% of the titles that has multiplayer options are mandatory psn+/xbox live to play multiplayer these days.
Prolly is payment for maintenence of the psn and xbox live infrastructure + webshop.

Then again, what is free in todays world? nothing.


As for Nintendo, they have allways beeing going their own ways about everything. Basic nintendo online is worth it, but the expansion for the N64 games, well if you liked the nintendo games then you will like it. If you are like me and liked Rares games more then nintendos, then you will get very little from the expansion as nintendo dont own the rights over Rare games anymore and thus they wont be included. (and that is why you will find the N64 Rare games on the microsoft web shop to be played on pc and xbox)

If you dont allready own it, i realy recommend you get the switch pro controller, thouse joy-con buttons are not ment for adult hands.

You also get a load of games, so not that different to EA’s online thing.

Going for the Expansion Pack, as it gives me loads and loads of games to play, which will hopefully keep my pickle tickled all winter long. Because SAD sucks.

Since I bought a Nintendo Switch, I have never played something online. Offline RPGs only

I've never bothered with the online thing, myself. I think that my days of doing that are behind me.

Fortunately, you can (and I did) pony up for the Mario Kart DLC separately - I liked the idea of having it purchased and not up until the day that I jibbed off the subscription.