Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour: Review in progress

Many people probably raised their eyebrows when Nintendo announced Welcome Tour as an introductory title of sorts for Switch 2. In many ways, it is reminiscent of Wii Sports in that the game is meant to serve as a sort of demo of the new hardware and present the possibilities it offers.

My spontaneous thought at the time was that it should have come with the system in the same way as Wii Sports, which contributed greatly to the success of the Wii Nintendo’s then biggest system. Welcome Tour is far from having the same stylish, stripped-down, intuitive appeal of Wii Sports, and is more likely to be found at the other end of the scale. It’s all about super-small characters, lots of text and a surprisingly complex layout.

During a recent visit to Nintendo Germany in Frankfurt, I finally got a chance to try out Welcome Tour to see if it has what it takes to stand on its own, even if it is being sold as a heavily discounted title. And I have to say I was a little surprised in a good way.

Welcome Tour certainly lives up to its name, and the entire game (or at least the part I got to try out) takes place on a giant Switch 2 console and its accessories. I play as an incredibly small character, and on top of the console are a number of tents that act as demo stations or quiz tables with staff serving them, while people walk around like tourists. Everything on the console, such as buttons, ports, speakers, magnets and more, is clickable, and when you press them, you get a little explanation of what they do.

By viewing everything, successfully playing demos and participating in quizzes, you unlock new parts of the console to visit. I took my little character (which can be personalized) and started exploring, from the huge left Joy-Con 2, then the screen and then the right Joy-Con 2. Making progress is not always easy and requires a certain number of medals and other items, which turn out to be pretty well hidden.

For my part, I was a little surprised at how detailed Nintendo is in their descriptions of everything. Welcome Tour really goes into more detail than you would think, and when I clicked on the sensor that acts as a mouse pad, I learned how Nintendo worked with different sensor choices because there is a little more distance between the sensor and a mouse pad than on a normal PC mouse. Similarly, I learned how the vibrations in the Joy-Cons 2 can also be used to create sound, and how the technology achieves this, which is exemplified by the unmistakable sound of picking up a penny in Super Mario Bros. There is also often a bit of history thrown in, such as Nintendo reminding us that they released an official mouse with Mario Paint in 1992 and also the Nintendo 64 Mouse in had Japan in 1999. Therefore, the fact that the Joy-Con 2 works like a mouse is familiar rather than something completely new for Nintendo.

After reading up on a particular topic, you can go to a Quiz -disc to take a quick quiz on a particular topic. The questions aren’t particularly difficult if you’ve read the signs at the desk, but if you haven’t, some are often almost blind guesses. It’s an unusual approach that means studying what are essentially Nintendo ads, which both reinforces my opinion that it probably should have been included with the console anyway, while also making me realize that it’s definitely not for everyone, which is probably why Nintendo didn’t want to bundle it.

The various demo tents found here and there are all dedicated to different features of your Switch 2, and they’re pretty fascinatingly designed. Take, for example, the way Nintendo chooses to illustrate 4K graphics. They do this with the beloved level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. and show how small and stamp-like it is on a real 4K screen. The entire level fits into a small section, in which you not only have to play through it, but walk past it among other things that is equipped with a Fire Flower, going down a green pipe and holding a 1UP mushroom. For me, being of age, this was sacred and familiar territory (although I managed to die on the very first Goomba, surprised by how incredibly small everything was), but a younger person next to me struggled for over 15 minutes to find the invisible block that gives a 1UP mushroom.

Other exercises I tried included guiding a ball through a maze using the Joy-Con 2 as a mouse, identifying the frame rate at which objects flew across the screen (to illustrate the superiority of 120 frames per second) and a maracas minigame that showed how good the new shake feature is. The latter made a big impression, with the Joy-Con 2 clearly feeling different when a maraca was filled with larger or smaller objects.

My favorite of the demos was a Twister -like story where you had to place your fingers on colored squares (some demos had to be played on TV, others on the device’s screen, and this was one of the last) to try to activate all 10 of them. My fingers quickly intertwined and I still thought it was a fun piece of trivia that offered something new. All in all, these demos are really nothing special, but they are entertaining nonetheless and fulfill the purpose of really demonstrating the hardware and encouraging you to try again to set records so you can get more medals and unlock new things.

Aside from the fact that Nintendo clearly wants to make extra money with Welcome Tour instead of bundling it, my time with the game still made me understand why they are selling it separately. It’s heavy on plot, has a lot of text and feels designed for older gamers, preferably people with some knowledge of Nintendo history. I think it is a game that many children and beginners would not enjoy, and it is certainly not a title for everyone. However, it is a title to my liking, even though I have only had time to discover something of what it has to offer. I’ll tell you more about whether it’s worth picking up in the finished review coming up in a few days.