The debate about whether it should be paid content or a free pack-in rages on, but Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is right up my street. Whether it is the sorely missed Iwata Asks, Ask the Developer or Creator’s Voice articles, I love it when Nintendo pulls back the curtain and we can learn about the experimentation and creative process that led to our favourite games and hardware coming into existence.
It will come as no surprise that the interactive exhibit that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour places you in is like an unmissable theme park to my increasingly wayward brain. Either as a normal-sized human on an enormous Nintendo Switch 2 replica or a magically shrunk human wandering around a life-size console, depending on how you choose to look at it, this is a wonderful and unexpected educational tool to teach us about the technologies that will power the games that we’ll be playing on the portable home console successor for years to come.
With signs, kiosks and booths everywhere, it was hard to know where to start. In its simpler aspects, the experience points out what a Left Stick or a ZL Button is, but it isn’t long before interesting facts are thrown in your direction like magnets and electromagnets shifting a weight to create the HD Rumble 2 sensation. The rumble effect had been created by a motor spinning a weight on older Nintendo controllers, but now the weight vibrates side-to-side at a very high speed which is similar to technology used in trains. Tidbits like this are fascinating to me.
These insights aren’t the most exciting content that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour offers. That comes from quizzes, tech demos and minigames. The first tech demo I came across tasked me with shaking the Joy-Con 2 controllers as if they were a pair of maracas, demonstrating how physics-based calculations are used to make the controllers feel like they had real beads inside them. This showcases HD Rumble 2, and it was also the point where I spotted how Nintendo had worked to gamify the experience.
Content like this has a checklist, which, if accomplished, will reward you with a gold medal. For this tech demo, challenges included shaking the beads 20 times, changing the maracas from their wireframe appearance to a realistic model, or gently rolling the beads back and forth. Achieve the main challenges, and you will reveal how to also tick off a hidden challenge. With no time limit, there isn’t any stress and you’re free to revisit the content if you want to move on to something else.
Gathering gold medals is how you unlock access to more content. With another attendee following you around and constantly gloating about how many medals they have in comparison to you, those with a competitive side won’t need much encouragement to want to surpass them.
The Find The Biggest Rumble minigame was up next for me. Here, I needed to use the mouse controls of the right Joy-Con 2 to determine where the HD Rumble 2 vibration was strongest. You can score gold medals based on your distance to the correct answer, and I somewhat blindsided the event staff by getting a pinpoint accurate answer on my first try. Much to my own disbelief, too.
My luck was short-lived, though. The survival-based Dodge The Spiked Balls was next. I was terrible. Another mouse input-oriented minigame, your pointer is a UFO which you must move around the screen to dodge spiked balls for as long as possible. I think I managed to beat the challenge to survive for 20 seconds, but as giant spiked balls and slower-paced green spiked balls started to appear, I was completely thrown off from achieving the next milestone. That was entirely on me. The mouse controls with the Joy-Con 2 are brilliant; I just need more practice.
Still, I’d gathered enough gold medals to unlock the Nintendo Switch 2 Console Area. My time with Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour closed with the Guess The Frame Rate minigame, in which you had to guess the rate at which the picture changes as a football, basketball, tennis ball or baseball bounces across the screen, and a High Dynamic Range (HDR) tech demo where, much to my own delight, I could fill the screen with kaleidoscopic fireworks. The timed demo ended just as a Nintendo Switch 2-themed firework was literally about to explode. The unending disappointment I felt in that moment…
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is promised to be “chock-full of secrets,” and I can’t wait to discover more. The discourse around the game’s pricing strategy shouldn’t detract from its playful and informative nature, with the experience created with the same heart and character that we saw in Nintendo Labo and Game Builder Garage. Its content won’t be for everyone nor will everyone want to pay for it, but I can still consider myself excited for what other secrets it holds.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour will be available to purchase digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide on 5 June 2025.
