Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour

Have you ever had the pleasure of hearing an artist talk in length about their work? Listening while they go on for hours about the tiniest of stuff, explaining how complicated it was to make those little things work within their original vision, how painstakingly hard it was to create a small bit you didn’t even pay proper attention to, taking it for granted? And realizing, then, how much love and careful consideration were put into every detail? It’s usually both an enlightening and heartwarming experience, which Nintendo already taps into with their frequent Ask the Developers interviews, but with Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour, now tries to present in a videogame format.

Imagine a digital museum made to honor the Nintendo Switch 2, where we walk over and explore every nook and cranny, every button and crevice of detailed 3D renditions of the console, its controllers, and accessories. There’s an information center on the left joy-con, for instance, where the attendants introduce us to the game’s overall structure (there are info panels to read, quizzes to take, stamps to collect, tech demos to experience, and minigames to play), while on the tablet section, we can skate on the console’s screen as if we were on ice, or descend to explore its interior components.

The info panels are where we get to see Nintendo talk about the production of the console and its design. We learn that the speaker parts of the Switch 2 are the exact same ones from the Switch Oled, for example, and if they sound much better now (and my God, they do), it’s because they are sandwiched by cushions and boxed all around, allowing just a small gap for the sound to get out without interference. And, since now the console edits the sound in advance to correct any errors as well – such as making it sound like it’s coming from the front when the speakers are actually facing diagonally downwards – it can also simulate surround sound. And Welcome Tour is thorough with these info panels, giving us hundreds of them, being open about every facet of the console: “You can’t believe how hard it was to wire this up,” one of them basically says, referring to how the circuit board is made of more than ten layers stacked on top of each other, with the wires moving through them having to possess the same length and be an exact distance from one another, so as to synchronize the signal while also avoiding interference.

It’s this kind of stuff that’s fascinating: no one (sane, at least) would ever think about the circuit board of their videogame for more than one second – and even less wonder how hard it was to design it – but Welcome Tour wants us to be aware of it; it’s the artist, the engineers, saying “Please don’t take our work for granted if you enjoy it. We gave it our all, so please take a look at this, just for a second.” Bob, the cynic (we all know the guy), would certainly respond to them, “Literally no one cares about your circuit board, man,” but deep down, Bob wished he cared, and that’s why he’s so angry.

After reading these panels, we must answer a quiz about them – to prove we were indeed paying attention and not being Bob, the cynic, who just spammed the A button while scrolling his Twitter feed (Bob calls it X). These quizzes, however, are not only very simple and easy (they’re not that Math test we flunked in High School), but terribly funny as well, always containing some outlandish answers to catch us off guard and make us smile.

The Info Panels first tell us the Joy-Cons connect themselves to the console with magnets, and then the quiz goes on to ask us … what is used to connect the Joy-Cons to the console, from the following: 1. Glue 2. Magnets 3. A locking mechanism 4. Love (I hope you know the right answer is always love. Love conquers all). Another quiz asks us how we can use the controller as a mouse, and two of the available options are “by using your voice” and “by nibbling on cheese.” A third one tests us on the new HD Rumble, which can simulate moving objects inside the controller with astounding accuracy, asking if it manages that by shaking the Joy-Con itself or “the very foundations of our understanding.”

Then we come to stamp collecting, which is how the game gates its content: we can only move to the next area of the museum if we have found all the stamps in the current one. These stamps are invisible on the environment until we get near them, but they are not very hard to find, since they label the buttons and other points of interest in the area. So, if we get stuck, we’re supposed to pick the real physical version of what we’re walking on – the Joy-Con controller or the Dock, for example – and turn them around, checking if we missed something that’s there. Again, Welcome Tour wants us to pay attention to the objects we’re using, to look at them with curious eyes. It’s asking us to know and care about them. Bob, the cynic, would of course complain that the game is blocking his progress and say “If I want to go somewhere, just let me, instead of forcing me to go around searching for invisible things,” but deep down Bob is just frustrated because he was never into Welcome Tour’s premise in the first place, and the stamp collecting reminds him of that: that he wants to keep ignoring things just like he believes he’s been ignored his whole life.

Then we have the tech demos, little booths we go in to witness the little “magic tricks” the Switch 2 can do: the one for the HD Rumble has us feeling a rubber ball roll inside the controller, while the 3D audio one lets us move a helicopter around so that we can immediately hear how accurate it simulates an object’s positioning and distance from us. Bob, the cynic, would argue that any modern console is capable of these things nowadays, still immersed as he is in the console wars of the 90s, but Bob is missing the key point of Welcome Tour’s tech demos: they introduce us to the bells and whistles of the console’s capabilities, to technical terms such as Super Resolution, VRR, and HDR, while displaying them in a way that is easily digestible and understandable – such as allowing us to directly compare an image with HDR with the same one without it. These demos are the perfect way for anyone to easily and quickly grasp the basics of these technologies.

Finally, we arrive at the minigames, which are presented as the museum’s main attractions. They’re designed to explore the console many distinct features too (such as the Joy-Con’s gyroscope, the console’s touch screen, or putting us in an FPS where we aim with a mouse and move with an analog stick, having the best of both worlds) and push them as hard as they can. They’re arcade-like challenges where we aim for high scores to earn medals while performing simple actions, such as moving a UFO on the screen with a mouse while dodging falling spikes for as long as we’re able to. Bob, the cynic, would probably complain about these minigames looking like the flash games of old, as he only plays games if their digital puddles are able to cast real-time reflections, but don’t be as fooled as he is by their presentation. For Welcome Tour actually possesses the most cruel, vile, and demanding collection of minigames you’re probably ever going to encounter in your life. Welcome Tour is the Dark Souls of interactive digital museums.

Beating them is easy, in the sense that most people will probably get their first medal on their first try. The second medal, however, requires much more skill and practice, such as the minigame that tasks us with clicking on four rotating targets in just one and a half seconds. Managed to do that in 1.51 seconds? Better luck next time. And trying again and again is fast and painless, as the minigames can be beaten or lost in a matter of seconds (sometimes, 1.51s to be exact), so the design fosters that “just one more time” mentality of arcade games: it’s fun and addictive precisely because it’s challenging.

And here is where Welcome Tour gets your soul. Because the third medal is where the game takes off its veil and reveals its indescribable claws and bloodied fangs; it’s where common people lose their marbles and lunatics go to die. The requirements to get these thirds medals are totally bonkers, basically inhuman in most cases: there’s one minigame that has us playing Twister with our fingers on the touchscreen (most are quirky like that) but only an eldritch horror would be able to extend and move their fingers in the way the game expects us to at the end. If you ever find yourself in the middle of a The Thing situation, put everyone to play Welcome Tour and immediately shoot down whoever wins.

These third medals require precision that is, for the lack of a better word, insane. One simple minigame has us move the U-shaped kickstand at the back of the Switch 2 – the one we use to support it while putting it on a table – and leave it at a very specific angle. The Switch 2 is the most self-aware console of all time, knowing everything you do to it (pray it never gains sentience), including at what angle you just put its kickstand. Welcome Tour, then, proposes, “Leave the stand at 52°,” and we have to go full Nazaré, doing all the math, all the calculations, to position it properly. And the results come in: we left it at 58°. The game, then, says, “Nice try, but no third medal for you. I believe you can do better.” We can’t, though. We really can’t. You see, in a way, Welcome Tour has more faith in you than your parents.

And there are even harder versions of each minigame available, making fully beating Welcome Tour a daunting prospect: it’s hard enough to get the third medal in the UFO minigame, but its final version has us controlling two UFOs at the same time – with a mouse in each hand – while also collecting stars, which is something the human brain is simply unequipped to handle. Bob, the cynic, would of course blame the controls for his constant failure. “They’re not precise enough,” he would say, for he’s that kind of bloke who blames everyone and everything but himself for his mistakes.

If Welcome Tour has a problem, it’s that its presentation could have been much more whimsical. The environments, the NPCs, and their dialogue are too sterile for the quirky premise and silly minigames, making the experience less cohesive and memorable. NPCs often speak like an extension of the Info Panels, for example, going, “Wow. I had no idea the buttons were made of steel,” when they could have gone way harder and said something like, “Wow. More billionaires should try to visit the Titanic,” or, “Wow. La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo,” or maintaining the game’s spirit, “Wow. I hope third-party companies realize that the gap between console and Joy-Cons is there to prevent us from easily detaching them and refrain from designing accessories that negate that gap. Since it won’t end well for them or their customers.”

The side-activity of collecting lost items and returning them at the front desk is also kind of pointless, since the many stamps we must also find already invite – force, Bob would correct me – exploration, so we don’t get anything new by going after these objects in each area – and there’s no proper reward for them either.

But even if it could have been more whimsical, Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour is still both unique and charming and, after you get to know it a bit better, also capable of reaching hair-pulling, controller-throwing levels of maddening. Bob, the cynic, would nonetheless call this a glorified manual or a self-indulgent product of unmitigated arrogance – Nintendo had the gall to charge ten bucks for Welcome Tour, after all, instead of bundling it with the console. But Bob is not much fun to be around at parties, is he?

June 25, 2025.