NintendObs Thinks: Imagining Nintendo's undefined Nintendo Switch releases of 2022.
What else could Nintendo be working on this year?
Previously on NintendObs Thinks, I talked about the games we know from Nintendo and their close partners that are launching exclusively on Nintendo Switch this year 2022. Eight of them, each very high-profile. Now I want to look at the other games that could be announced this year, those we could expect from the actual behemoth that is the Nintendo group, across all of their studios and affiliates. As I like to say, Nintendo is a lot more than just Marios and Zeldas, and given the secrecy of the company, there truly is a lot to speculate, and a lot to be preemptively excited for.
This comes from observing Nintendo studios that haven’t launched a brand-new game recently, thinking about what they could be brewing and if such a project doesn’t release in 2022, at least it may be announced this year especially on Nintendo Directs. Obviously we haven’t heard from Intelligent Systems and Monolith Soft in a while, and also from Nintendo’s newly acquired studio, Next Level Games for example. I’m looking at what these teams may have been working on for a long time, and 2022 may be the year when they finally reveal the fruits of their labor. That being said, it is Nintendo we’re talking about here so, just like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, there are sure to be announcements this year coming out of nowhere.
But first, here’s an idea not from a franchise that remained relatively silent in recent times, but from one Nintendo game that instead ended up on everybody’s radar in 2021: Metroid Dread. I’m positive this isn’t exactly the end of the 2D Metroid saga, and that MercurySteam greenlit by Nintendo is working on a final story DLC. It may take a year or so to happen like it did for Happy Home Paradise in Animal Crossing New Horizons, but now that Metroid Dread became Best Action/Adventure Game at The Game Awards 2021, it’s easy to tell we’ll hear again from this blockbuster. Furthermore, stretching the life of Samus’s last quest in this fashion late into 2022 will allow the Metroid franchise to remain fresh for Metroid Prime 4, which we can objectively say now is still a long way to go.