Nintendo confirmed again in November 2024, two months earlier than the corporate even unveiled the Nintendo Change 2, that the brand new console could be backward-compatible with video games for the unique Nintendo Change. Now, after detailing the system’s {hardware} and software program in an hourlong Nintendo Direct presentation, the corporate has offered the primary actual specifics on the character of Change 2’s backward compatibility.
We now know that the Change 2 will work with many Change equipment — together with, most significantly, the unique console’s Pleasure-Cons and Professional Controller — in addition to video games. However as Nintendo has beforehand hinted, not each Change sport might be playable (or, a minimum of, totally playable) on the Change 2. Right here’s what we’ve discovered to this point.
Will the Change 2 be backward-compatible with bodily and digital Change video games?
Sure, Nintendo confirmed in its April 2 Nintendo Direct that the Change 2 will assist each bodily and digital copies of Change video games. The dimensions of the cartridge isn’t altering; it’s simply that Sport Playing cards for the Change 2 might be crimson, versus the grey ones for the unique Change. (They’ll even have “a lot sooner knowledge studying speeds” than the previous ones, stated Tetsuya Sasaki, {hardware} design lead for the Change 2, within the Nintendo Direct.)
How will Change 2 backward compatibility work?
The Change 2 doesn’t include any {hardware} from the unique Change, and Nintendo isn’t counting on software program emulation for backward compatibility, both. As an alternative, the corporate’s resolution falls “someplace in between a software program emulator and {hardware} compatibility,” stated Change 2 director Takuhiro Dohta in an Ask the Developer interview revealed by Nintendo. Sasaki defined, “The method of changing sport knowledge for Change to run on Change 2 is carried out on a real-time foundation as the info is learn in,” which makes it sound much like the way in which Proton will get Home windows PC video games to run on the Linux-based Steam Deck.
This technique permits for including Change 2 options, akin to GameChat assist, to Change video games performed by way of backward compatibility. Dohta added, “We consider there are numerous issues we will do, akin to making Change video games appropriate with GameShare by way of free updates, in addition to leveraging Change 2’s processing energy to allow video games to run in increased decision and with a smoother body price.”
So the Change 2 will run Change video games higher?
Nintendo has not indicated that the Change 2 will present across-the-board enhancements to graphics or efficiency when working Change video games, though that may occur with some video games. It seems that it will likely be as much as builders and publishers to subject patches to ship these upgrades.
Up to now, Nintendo has detailed two totally different methods for upgrading first-party Change video games. Choose titles — the record on the Nintendo web site at present contains a dozen — will get “free updates to enhance playability on the Nintendo Change 2 system.” The video games in query run the gamut from launch-year titles like Tremendous Mario Odyssey to latest releases akin to The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Knowledge. Along with efficiency enhancements, these patches can add components like assist for Change 2 options akin to GameShare.
The opposite improve route feels like it’s going to supply extra important additions and enhancements to sure Change video games — however this one will value you cash. Nintendo will promote what it calls an “improve pack” for these titles; the corporate hasn’t but stated how a lot it’s going to cost. A bundle of a sport and its improve pack might be often known as a “Nintendo Change 2 Version.”
At this level, the corporate has introduced improve packs for six video games: Kirby and the Forgotten Land, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Tremendous Mario Occasion Jamboree, and the upcoming titles Metroid Prime 4: Past and Pokémon Legends: Z-A (each of that are scheduled to launch in 2025).
The main points differ drastically relying on the sport. For the brand new Pokémon sport, all you get is “improved efficiency with increased body price and determination.” Each of the Zelda upgrades will ship that, together with sooner load instances, HDR, and assist for the brand new Zelda Notes service. Metroid Prime 4: Past might be playable on Change 2 with mouse controls, due to the Pleasure-Con 2. And the improve packs for each Tremendous Mario Occasion Jamboree and Kirby and the Forgotten Land will supply new content material.
Will the Change 2 be backward-compatible with all Change video games?
That will be a tall order, and the reply isn’t any — however the degree of assist, as seen on a web page on the Nintendo web site that particulars the Change 2’s backward-compatibility performance, does appear spectacular to this point.
Nintendo is at present working its means by way of your entire library of Change video games one after the other, conducting “restricted testing” with every sport to see if it really works on the Change 2. “It may not be that each one Change video games run completely in time for the launch of Change 2, however we are going to proceed our efforts in order that we will assist as many Change video games as potential,” stated Change 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto within the Ask the Developer interview.
Change 2 backward compatibility assist for first-party video games
Nintendo says that as of April 1, it has examined 122 first-party Change titles and located just one that doesn’t work with the Change 2 — Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Equipment. That package deal got here with a cardboard contraption that turned the Change right into a pair of digital actuality goggles, and the Change 2 is a much bigger system, so it merely can’t match into it.
Nonetheless, Nintendo Labo received’t be fully useless on the Change 2: Toy-Con 01, Toy-Con 02, and Toy-Con 03 will every work to a point. These three titles and 6 others can solely be performed on the Change 2 utilizing Pleasure-Cons from the unique Change, as a result of they depend on one thing distinctive about these controllers. Some video games, like WarioWare: Transfer It!, want the infrared digicam in the appropriate Pleasure-Con, which doesn’t exist within the Pleasure-Con 2; others, like Ring Match Journey, use an adjunct that the Pleasure-Con 2 can’t match into.
Change 2 backward compatibility assist for third-party video games
By Nintendo’s rely, greater than 15,000 third-party video games have been launched for the Change. Within the firm’s testing to this point, it has discovered 141 titles that don’t boot up in any respect on the Change 2, together with well-liked video games akin to Lifeless by Daylight, Doom Everlasting, and Fortnite. (Fortunately, Fortnite appeared within the April 2 Nintendo Direct as a Change 2 launch title, which takes care of that concern.) An extra 47 video games are listed as “playable” with “some in-game compatibility points”; these embody Alan Wake Remastered, Fall Guys, and Road Fighter thirtieth Anniversary Assortment.
It’s potential that these numbers will go up as Nintendo exams extra video games, however it’s additionally doubtless that some titles will come off these lists as the corporate works with third events to deal with the compatibility points.
Will the Change 2 work with Change equipment like controllers?
Yup! With a couple of exceptions, peripherals such because the Change’s Pleasure-Cons and Professional Controller might be appropriate with the Change 2. You’ll be able to examine Nintendo’s assist website for a full record of Change equipment to see whether or not the Change 2 helps them.
So far as the Pleasure-Cons go, observe that as a result of the Change 2 makes use of a magnetic hookup for its Pleasure-Con 2 controllers — moderately than the sliding mechanism for the unique Change and its Pleasure-Cons — it isn’t potential to attach Change Pleasure-Cons to the Change 2; they’ll solely be paired and used wirelessly. (That additionally signifies that you received’t be capable of cost the Pleasure-Cons until you slide them again onto your Change, or you’ve a Charging Grip or Charging Stand for that system mendacity round.)
The Change Professional Controller could be charged by plugging it into the Change 2 dock or one of many system’s two USB-C ports, however it should nonetheless be paired wirelessly to be able to be used. In different phrases, a wired connection isn’t supported with the Change 2 as it’s with the Change.
Can the Change 2 be used with the unique Change’s dock?
No, sadly. Whereas Nintendo made a degree of claiming in its April 2 Nintendo Direct presentation that the Change and Change 2 have the very same depth — they’re each 13.9 mm (0.55 in) thick — the unique Change’s dock just isn’t appropriate with the Change 2. The problem might come right down to bodily variations within the backside fringe of the console that forestall it from sitting within the previous dock.
Can microSD playing cards be used to develop the Change 2’s storage?
The Change 2 options 256 GB of onboard storage, and it may be expanded solely with microSD Categorical playing cards. It is a flash reminiscence normal with considerably sooner learn and write speeds than the usual microSD playing cards that the unique Change helps.
You’ll be able to slot a microSD card out of your authentic Change into the Change 2, however the one factor you’ll be capable of do with it’s view screenshots or movies captured in Change video games to the cardboard.
