Feature: Nintendo Life’s Alternative Game Awards 2024
The end of 2024 is nigh, but before we get there it’s time to look back on what has been a surprisingly chonky year for Switch, software-wise, in the eighth year since we first got our hands on the thing.
We’ve listed our personal Switch GOTYs, you’ve ranked yours – now it’s time to round up the stragglers with a light-hearted celebration of the year’s highs (and a handful of lows). Yes, it’s time for this year’s round of NL’s Alternative Game Awards.
We’ve got 12 awards across two pages, starting with the game title which raised the most eyebrows at Nintendo Life Towers…
Most Long-Winded Switch Game Title 2024
Winner: The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case: The Okhotsk Disappearance ~Memories in Ice, Tearful Figurine~
Putting all the keyword-filled crap to one side, here we’re honouring the Switch game with the most needlessly convoluted name. We were delighted to see Yuji Horii’s curio come to the West for the first time, we applaud everyone who made it happen, and we were surprised to see a cheeky original easter egg still in there. But couldn’t they have come up with a better title?
We get it, it’s a niche game and it was never going to sell loads, but 13 words is too many words. As if the $45 price tag wasn’t enough to put you off. And if for some reason you’re dead set on an enormous title, let’s not just play Thesaurus roulette and stick whatever comes up between some tildes! We can all throw some thematically evocative words in a blender (Crystal Oenology: Transom of Bloodlust ~Legs down Glass, Fruit Finish~) but it doesn’t make them good.
Runners-up: Yeah! You Want “those Games,” Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let’s See You Clear Them! 2, Hashihime of the Old Book Town append fullscreen
Best ‘Game We Wish We Liked More’ 2024
Winner: The Plucky Squire
It looked so promising — so fittingly plucky — and admirable work has been done since launch to improve the game. It’s a classic case of expectations being impossibly high and the end result not being quite there. Even discounting the various performance hiccups on Switch, we wanted to like this a lot more than we did.
Runners-up: Europa, Endless Ocean: Luminous
Best ‘End-Of-Year Arrival That Dropped Too Late To Make Our GOTY List’ 2024
Winner: Antonblast
This one seemed to have a rocky launch, with pre-launch Switch codes unavailable and performance not being where it could/should have been when the game dropped on 13th December. Hey, ‘performance not being where it should have been’ describes 85% of all cross-platform releases on Switch these days.
When we were able to catch up, we were pleased to find that it held up well despite the dips. A patch went live just before Christmas, too. We just wish more of the team had had time to play it.
Best Retro Remake / Remaster / Re-Release 2024
Winner: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Wheel reinvention really wasn’t needed, and the long-awaited TTYD remake delivered an extremely faithful reworking of the GameCube classic. Looking and sounding better than ever, there’s no need to hunt down a pricey copy of the original any longer.
Runners-up: El Shaddai, Wizardry
Most ‘Oh Crap, That Came Out This Year?’ Game 2024
Winner: Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD
An award for a game we’re interested in but which got lost for whatever reason. Luigi was trending like crazy this year, just not for the wholesome, game-related reasons Nintendo might have hoped.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD was good but also the most known quantity of any HD remaster this year. It came and it went. This year, apparently.
Runners-up: Monster Hunter Stories, Endless Ocean: Luminous
Best Switch DLC 2024
Winner: Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania
As if the base game wasn’t addictive enough, Poncle injected the thing with liquid homage that glamoured its way into our hearts and minds before sinking its teeth in once more.
If you only pick up one DLC this year… well, you should probably play Shadow of the Erdtree. But why limit yourself to just one DLC? Why would you do that? What kind of sicko would even suggest such a thing solely to amuse themselves while writing entries in end-of-year articles? Some people!
Anyway, you should play this. Alternatively…
Runners-up: Splatoon 3: Side Order, Atari 50: The First Console War / The Wider World of Atari
Six down! Turn the page for six more alt awards that didn’t fit nicely into their own ranked 2024 lists…