LINKED TO THE PAST

Can Switch 2 recapture the original's magic?

- BY ALEX SPENCER

When is it going to click? It’s a question we can’t help asking when making first contact with any new gaming hardware, especially one bearing that precious Kyoto branding. Technical specs and promised framerates are all well and good, but what we really crave is a glimpse of the bigger picture, of what all those brains have been toiling away at behind closed doors for so many years. It might take the form of an unexpected hardware flourish, a system-selling game, or a feature that's solid enough on paper but really comes alive in the hands. Whatever it might be, that’s the first moment when everything clicks into place.

With the original Switch hardware, of course, this was very literal indeed. It came the first time you took the console from its dock and suddenly had a proper, full-fat Zelda or Mario game right there in your hands, ready for you to take on the bus, or to a friend’s house, or (rarely discussed in the marketing, but essential nonetheless) into the bathroom. Yet Nintendo didn't stop there.

THERE'S NOW ROOM FOR A PAIR OF CHUNKY SL/SR BUTTONS THAT SHOW UP SWITCH'S EQUIVALENT FOR THE FIDDLY, SUNKEN THINGS THAT THEY ARE