With the sounds of construction coming from every which way and the early June summer heat and warm afternoon sun rays shining down, it could have been a normal New York City day.
But for today, anybody asking people on the line going along 48th Street had a new answer for the classic question of, “What are you all lining up for?” All they had to do was make a turn at Rockefeller Plaza and see what Nintendo New York had set up.
In anticipation of Nintendo Switch 2’s midnight launch, the Nintendo New York store set up a ‘Pre-Launch Event’ both inside the store and out on Rockefeller Plaza. Whether you were a diehard Nintendo fan who managed to lock in a preorder for the new system or just a curious passerby, you could drop by and line up for a bit to play the latest Mario Kart World game or test-drive the other titles in their launch lineup.
I arrived shortly after noon and landed a decent spot ahead of the 3pm start time. It wasn’t hard to spot the truly dyed-in-the-wool Nintendo fans in the line, wearing Mario or Luigi hats or even doing full cosplay as other Nintendo game characters like Ness from the beloved EarthBound.
Passing the time came easy for this crowd who all had their Switches at the ready, and it even got as hardcore as certain fans breaking out their Nintendo 3DS to try and StreetPass with anybody else they could find. It was genuinely great to see there were fans keeping that particular social gaming tradition alive.
When the clock struck three, people in the line were guided around the corner to the big gaming area where two giant sessions of Mario Kart World would routinely chew through 12 players at a time each doing their best to survive the new Knockout Tour mode. Those who got knocked out of the early rounds were still allowed to stick around and join in the crowd cheering on the players still in the game, and event staff were great at keeping the players and onlookers energised.
Every player got a free mini-poster for their time. With the two-hit combo of both not being familiar with this latest entry and it being a long while since I’d played a Mario Kart game, I’m pleased to report that while I didn’t land first place, I did go the distance and make it to the final lap with the Cow.
Nintendo New York also customised their second-floor game test area to offer a decent chunk of the Switch 2 launch lineup. Mario Kart World being the big new title, it commanded top presence on the kiosk which used the big screen of the game test area for those queued up to experience its traditional mode.
The other games on offer were there to show off the system’s new features as well as how games from Switch had enhanced performance on the new hardware. Having had my fill of Mario Kart World already, I took the time to test out the Joy-Con 2 and their mouse mode with Welcome Tour, and appreciated what time I had running around Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at a higher frame rate before getting lasered to death by a Guardian. My beam-reflecting shield parry skills had gotten rusty.
For the midnight launch, Nintendo New York required that visitors had the Warp Pipe access to attend, so yours-truly was locked out of the occasion, but I made sure to get face time with the one and only ChickenDog, the guy who was first in line for the Switch 2 at Nintendo New York:
NL: What’s your name and where are you from?
I’m ChickenDog, I’m the guy that’s waiting for the Nintendo Switch 2, and I’m from Connecticut.
And how long have you been waiting for the Switch 2 here at the Nintendo store?
I’ve been waiting around April 4th or 5th, I don’t remember the exact day because it was so long ago, but I started around that time, a day or two after the Switch 2 Direct, all the games.
How did the logistics go about for you all waiting for the Switch 2 for these two months?
Normally for games and consoles, people line up across the street early when they’re camping out [for long periods of time], because that’s a public street. We can’t line up here [that early at Nintendo New York] because it’s Rockefeller. So we talked to the managers, to staff, and we coordinated a list so we just took a small group across the street until now to finally form the line over here. So no one cuts, everyone’s still in line, and everyone has a cool time.
So what are you most looking forward to for Switch 2?
Oh, obviously Mario Kart World.
What went through your mind for you to be like, ‘I gotta be here at Nintendo New York for the Switch 2, and I gotta be here Number One’?
There was a guy that originally did this in the last generation, named Alex, he did [the Nintendo Switch midnight launch] in a month, and I saw the Switch 2 trailer – I thought it was gonna be a whole different console name. So I thought in my mind, you know…. Switch 2. Two months. Why not?
Aside from Mario Kart World, what else are you going to nab here, or are you going to go all-digital?
I’m not gonna go digital, I’m more of a physical guy, that’s why I’m camping out. I’m a collector, I like collecting games, I like saving my games over time, so when I’m older, I can just go back and look at all the games I collected as a kid. I’m gonna see if they have a GameCube controller, I might get that, and I might also get Yakuza 0, the collector’s edition. I tried to get into Yakuza, now that the Switch 2’s coming out, I can play on the go? Definitely wanna get into that franchise.
What new stuff are you hype for with this new hardware?
I think the one thing I’m really excited about is the new mouse features, I can’t wait to try it out when I’m playing Metroid or some other games. Maybe even for a future Splatoon title, maybe they’ll have the mouse controls.
I couldn’t help but think about the time between the original Switch’s big launch day event and now, with how much the world changed and those shifting circumstances necessitating that Nintendo’s game hardware contemporaries held off from the ceremony of the new system launch for their own consoles.
As silly as it sounds, and as much as the ‘Nature is healing’ joke gets play over fairly insignificant things, the Switch 2 event did feel like coming home for this guy who misses these big launch events.
