 Well, here we are at the end the Nintendo Switch's final year. I mean, I don't really know what people expected from a direct at this point. I mean, it's a partner direct in February. Usually February are the biggest directs we get. The big mainline first party stuff from Nintendo. This year it was a delayed running kind of late partner direct, which I enjoyed, but I mean, it's pretty clear that we're running out of juice here. We're coming to the end. It's the final year or we're lucky to get a few ports and remasters and any surprises that want to pop up. This year is great. I actually think the partner showcase for what it was had a lot of fantastic games. Every game looked fun for somebody and a lot of them I actually really enjoyed. But yeah, I mean it wasn't it wasn't super exciting. The wind of the Xbox news was already taken out of the sales by all of the leaks, but also Xbox in their event a few days ago. So seeing Grounded and Pentamint weren't a surprise, although I would have liked Pentamint to not be in a sizzle reel and to have its own moment because that game is supposed to be very good. I thought we'd see Hi-Fi Rush. That didn't happen. I want to look through the direct with you guys though, but I mostly, even though it wasn't super exciting, I don't know. I wanted to just get some expectations and check here. I really don't know what some people were expecting. Nintendo all of last week were tweeting out their first party announcements, things that usually go into a direct. So it was pretty clear that they didn't have much themselves to talk about. Even Nintendo is juiced at this point. Even Nintendo were like, yeah, we're in the final year at this bad boy. We got to start shifting focus over to the new thing. So whatever we get, we're in bonus hour now. I don't know how many of you have lived through console generations before, but the final years are usually dead. Like you don't get anything in the last year or so of a console's life. The fact that we even have as much coming this year from Nintendo and other third party devs as we do is a miracle. We're in such a good place with gaming now. It started with Grounded. This game's on Xbox. It's a four player co-op survival type game. I appreciate that they used Nintendo Switch gameplay footage for this. They could have used Xbox footage or PC footage or trail cinematics. They don't, they just they're showing Switch gameplay and you can tell because it looks pretty rough. This game is quite pretty on the Xbox and it's it's not looking great here. And I think that is the one constant at this point for me that is a little like I'm just a little burnt out on it and a little done with it. Even though we're getting these cool games coming to Switch visually, the Switch just isn't able to keep up at this point. And even when we get a game like this coming to the console, it's it's kind of like, yeah, I'd probably rather play it on Xbox or PC just because I don't really need to play this game set in mud while the game looks like mud and running at about 10 frames a second probably. Ender Lilies was a great hidden gem on the Switch and everywhere. I think it's everywhere. But this Ender Magnolia, a sequel also looks very good. Got some cute Indies coming. I love the art style of this Arranger game. Unicorn Overlord. Not a not a great name. Munchdown Astoria is getting a remaster with full voice acting. The sequel is on Switch. So that makes sense. Epic Mickey getting a remaster. There's a lot of remasters going on in here. But in general, this one's called ReBrushed. So they're getting real creative now with these remastered titles. These games were hidden gems though for real and it is good to see it getting more love. I don't really know what the deal is with this Shimagami. I'm assuming it's like someone can let me know down below. I'm assuming it's like Golden and Royal for Persona where it's the same game but with more content. If this game's been in your backlog, this might be the version of the game to finally play. Star Wars, Battlefront, remaster, Jedi, man. Even as a remaster, like a HD remaster I guess. This is looking very dated but sure, let's put more Star Wars on the Switch. There's already so much. I thought the South Park games were good. No, I thought they were like cartoon. They look like the show. Who made this? Why is it so ugly? What is this? This doesn't look, I don't know. I don't know. That doesn't look very good to me. Sword Art Online, some Gundam, a new Monkey Ball game. One Crab's Trash? One Crab's Tra- One Tra- A Crab Treasure? I've actually been looking forward to this one. We've known about it for a while but it's a Souls-like game where you play as a crab and you make different things. Your house. And apparently it has a ton of voice acting. I didn't know that. Yeah, I actually am looking forward to this one. It's coming to Steam too. So yeah, I assume it's going to release everywhere. Visually it looks like the kind of game that you're not losing too much by playing it on Switch. So that's cool. Penny's big breakaway from the creators of Sonic Mania I believe. This one does look pretty good and it released today. Sweaker game gets some DLC. Man, I got obsessed with this for a while and now there's co-op. There's battle co-op modes. It is paid DLC though. So Pepper Grinder visually looks like a classic gem indie game art style but the gameplay does look pretty fun. I've been looking forward to this one too. And then we're pretty much at the end. I mean yeah definitely not a lot of memorable moments. Just updates on games and some nice surprises. At the end here we've got some rare games coming to Switch like Killer Instinct and Battletoads. I don't know. Could have used a Game Boy Advance game personally. Not really interested in playing any of these. So I think even objectively this is a little weak. I mean it all dropped today. I don't know. Never played Blastcore either. I don't know. But then the final thing I would say is a pretty big surprise and is going to go kind of underrated I think. But I do have some stuff to say about it. Endless Ocean Luminous. Endless Ocean was, I've used the word hidden gem a few times right now but this kind of feels like a little hidden gem direct. Hidden gem on the Wii where you explored an endless ocean. A lot of people raved about it. It was supposed to be a really cool experience. It's a very passive experience. You don't like battle or anything. You just explore the ocean but people really liked it. It's coming back. It's got a sequel and the cool thing this time is you can play without the 30 players. You can all explore Endless Ocean together. I love that actually. Every time you dive into the ocean it's different. It's randomized and it's just yeah it's just about exploring the depths of the ocean and finding what you find. Cool creatures, cool areas. It's therapeutic in a way. It's cozy. It's relaxing considering it's underwater. Which can be terrifying to most people. The only issue I have and it's not with the game or the concept or anything like that. All of that. I love all of that. It's just to put a game like this out now on Switch in the last year of its life where this console is so dated and so restricted in what it can do performance wise and visually. This game looks very ugly. I mean it's a sequel to a Wii game but it looks like a Wii game still. I don't know. The concept of exploring an Endless Ocean. It's cool to me if that ocean looks gorgeous. Like if the one thing I have to do in this game is to look at stuff and there's no other gameplay really. It's just looking at things with my eyeballs. I kind of want it to be visually one of the most impressive things I've seen. Like if that's your one thing it kind of needs to stand out visually over every other game. It needs to look really nice is what I'm saying. I'm trying not to be mean and call it ugly. Yeah. It's just kind of tough that it's a Switch game. I kind of wish this was releasing anywhere else right now or even releasing on whatever the Switch 2 is. If this is like a launch game for Switch 2 to really show off the visual power of the new console. Like look how much better this console looks now with Endless Ocean. A game where you just look at stuff. That'd be really cool for the game for marketing the new Switch for everything. Putting it at the tail end of the original Switch. I don't know. It doesn't quite hit as much as I would hope it would but it is cool to see that game get a sequel. I mean it came out of nowhere. You know I made a goofy bingo sheet for this stream which man if you guys ever go on Twitter or X and I don't know. See people on there and wonder how they exist. So many people thought this was serious. But anyway the one thing I put on the list that I actually thought was serious was Hi-Fi Rush and we didn't get that which is fine. There have been times in the past when we were in like the middle of the Switch's lifespan where we got a direct and I was like what are you doing? What are you doing? How do you have nothing right now? Like how is this what you're putting out there while the Switch is hot? You know. The people whenever I make a reaction like this where I'm like let's not freak out. People like to point to times I freaked out like three years ago. There are just time periods where I think it's okay to have a slow direct. And again we're like making this whole direct thing up as we go here. The concept of Nintendo Direct has been fleshed out and developed throughout the Switch and now we're just seeing what they're like in the last year of the console. And I think it's perfectly fine to have a slow direct at this point because everything is going to be slow. But hey maybe there are people that loved this direct and thought it was the best one ever. There's always one of them. There's always one of those people that think every direct is the best one ever. If you're one of those let me know down below. This time next year the next February Direct is going to be nuts because we're going to start this whole thing all over again with the Switch 2 or whatever it's called. Things are going to get crazy. Enjoy this time now when it's quiet and calm before it gets nuts. Oh and I have a podcast coming out tomorrow with I'll go over this whole thing in more detail and I'll have a special guest. And yeah it's you go check out the podcast. Okay thank you. Bye