A new leak showing off a potential Gameboy/Gameboy Advance emulator for the Nintendo Switch, possibly hinting at new additions to Nintendo Switch online service.
The Leak
Rarely does Nintendo as a company experience leaks of any kind. A meme itself is the old saying "my uncle works at Nintendo" which is usually followed by an asinine concept or game that will never happen. Even more so the "Nintendo Ninjas" usually keep Nintendo's secrets under wrap, which Nintendo reveals when THEY want the world to know. Well unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case recently, as a Gameboy/Gameboy Advance emulator was seemingly leaked for the Nintendo Switch.
Gaining huge traction from twitter user, Trash_Bandatcoot, this tweet has stormed the gaming internet on April 18th:
As always, take leaks with a huge grain of salt, especially when talking about Nintendo leaks, and unfortunately this leak seems to stem from a 4chan post. The files regarding the emulator has been dumped and the files/emulator seemingly works on modded Nintendo Switches. The emulator itself is called Sloop, and seems to still be early in development, as there are apparently still bugs in the emulation itself and the specific files launch as individual games rather than games all tied to the Nintendo Switch Online launcher like other games for the service:
Along with these file dumps, it appears that the following games has been already tested on the emulator itself:
So now that we have that out of the way, let's talk games!
Gameboy Advances, the overlooked handheld from Nintendo.
I have a lot of personal nostalgia for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. It was the first handheld I had and I sucked tons of hours of gameplay into the original Gameboy Advance as well as the sleek Gameboy Advance SP. Games like Sonic Advance 2, Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, Pokémon Ruby dominated my time as a child. The Gameboy Advanced was full of insanely high-quality titles, however as a platform, Nintendo themselves seems to heavily overlook.
The original Gameboy launched in 1989, and through a half upgrade with the Gameboy Color, managed to stay relevant all the way into the early 2000's, still being supported with major titles in it's end life like Pokémon Gold & Silver. However the Gameboy Advance seemingly had a much shorter life-span. Launching in 2001, the Gameboy Advance was made irrelevant almost immediately after the launch of the Nintendo DS in 2004. The Nintendo DS was a surprise hit for Nintendo, selling over 150 million units, thus killing the Gameboy Advance library as major releases stopped short around 2006.
Even from a modern accessibility standpoint, Nintendo has dropped the ball on Gameboy Advance availability. With the Nintendo 3DS line of systems, Nintendo added original Gameboy and Gameboy Color games to the virtual console service. This opened up a huge library of classic games now available for purchase since the late 80's and early 90's. The Gameboy Advance however, wasn't possible from an emulation standpoint for the 3DS, despite the ambassador program providing Gameboy Advance games for early 3DS users and the hardware upgrade with the New Nintendo 3DS line. This awkwardly left the Nintendo Wii U as the only official way to purchase Gameboy Advance games, in which 74 titles were available for purchase, but that's ONLY on the Wii U, need I say more?
Is this the tipping point for Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack?
Just being completely honest, I find the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack to be of poor value. Nintendo Switch online initial price of $19.99 a year is an easy price to swallow as it is no where near the price of it's competitors pricing (Sony & Microsoft) when it comes to providing online services and features. Many would even consider $19.99 a year too much, as it only grants the user the ability to play online and access to a library of NES and SNES games. The Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack was introduced in Fall 2021, in which users would pay $49.99 a year, which would grant them access to Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games, and DLC for Animal Crossing and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
This rubbed me the wrong way as I personally feel that Sega Genesis, being a contemporary of the Super Nintendo, should just be included for the base Nintendo Online experience. Not only that, the vast majority of the Sega Genesis games being offered through the Expansion Pack, have been re-released themselves in multiple instances by Sega themselves, loosing the novelty of the released for the service. Then when it comes to the Nintendo 64 offerings, the emulation was of poor quality at launch, and titles are being added to the service at an extremely slow pace.
However, with the potential of the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance games added to the Expansion Pack, the value GREATLY increases. The massive libraries of the Gameboy and Gameboy Color alone could add hundreds of exceptional titles to the platform, and the stellar Gameboy Advance library is just the icing on the cake. Nintendo can also bring a large amount of synergy to the service as well, as this will make titles like Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion, push fans to the service after the excellent Metroid Dread from last year. And of course, who can forget the many years of fan outcry for "Mother 3" to be released for English speaking countries, as the title remained exclusively in Japan for years. Similar to how Nintendo released a unreleased game, Star Fox 2, via the Super Nintendo Mini and later through Nintendo Switch online, this could be the perfect platform to release a localized version of Mother 3.
The Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Advance additions to Nintendo Switch will probably still be far away from announcement and release, but that won't stop fans from clamoring and guessing what games will launch with the service and the potential to come.