It’s as difficult to believe as any other milestone in the life of the Nintendo Switch, but the little hybrid that could just turned eight earlier this month. You may have missed the anniversary, of course, because the Big N has been as quiet as a joy-con mouse about the system’s upcoming games; in fact for the first time in half a decade, there was no Nintendo Direct presentation in February this year. As Mar10 Day has come and gone and I highly doubt there will be one right before the big Switch 2 blowout on April 2nd (EDIT March 28th: I was somehow wrong, but the below countdown still stands), I think we can declare the time of the Switch 1 Direct pretty much over, and that means it’s finally time to post the nerdiest countdown idea I’ve had simmering for the past several years: let’s rank some Directs.
In the cold light of 2025 it’s perhaps tricky to analyse the strength of shows filled with hype for games that have long since released, but I am a big fan of packaged videogame presentations, and to me each one of these Directs represents a clear point in the Switch’s life – I can still remember exactly where I was when I watched most of them. Revisiting these showcases today brings back enough memories that I can just about compare them on a reasonably level playing field. It’s also hardly controversial to say that Nintendo’s Direct format matured and even peaked during the Switch’s life cycle, and there are some real bangers to revisit as a result.
To determine this ranking, I take into account the significance of what could be considered major announcements within each Direct. However there’s little doubt my own personal tastes, the pace and structure of the presentation, and a dash of contextual nostalgia are probably weighed more heavily in the process. I also do not consider the eventual release quality of any announced games here; these shows are all about hype and so is my assessment of them.
By my count, the era of the Nintendo Switch encompassed at least 23 Direct shows that weren’t explicitly devoted to a single game or franchise, weren’t of the “Indie World” persuasion, and were longer than 20 minutes in runtime (that might seem like a ton of qualifiers but there really were a heap of these things). Out of these, the following are my ten personal favourites.
10. March 2018 Direct
HEADLINES: Mario Tennis Aces deep dive, that Smash Bros finale teaser
PERSONAL GEMS: Okami HD, Octopath Traveller, Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion
Remember when Nintendo Directs had 3DS sections at the start? They often felt like underwhelming warm-up acts at the time they were airing, but looking back now I kinda miss their whimsical ideas and the odd side effect of building anticipation for the Switch stuff even further. This is a Switch Direct ranking, though, so we focus on the meat of the show – and it is meaty indeed. The only March Direct of the entire Switch era followed a uniquely brisk “Nintendo Direct Mini” just two months earlier, during the most delirious period of online anticipation Nintendo had seen in at least a decade. That tiny show was pretty exciting itself – heralding the return of The World Ends With You, announcing Mario Tennis Aces and then confirming portable Dark Souls – but the main course to follow easily overshadowed it.
The age of the pantomime “oh wait, there’s still one more announcement” was still in vogue at Nintendo – in contrast to the comparative lack of pretense at the end of Directs nowadays – and you could argue March 2018 was their best use of that trend ever. One of the seasonal Splatoon update trailers that were already a reliable part of Direct showcases by 2018 escalated to an extremely cool 1980s-dirty-neon trailer for what would become one of Nintendo’s most revered DLC expansions ever: Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, but then that in turn escalated to an initially-confusing homage to the first Splatoon‘s iconic trailer – which of course dimmed the lights and became a teaser for the then-untitled Super Smash Bros Ultimate. I still get goosebumps watching this thing, complete with its distant echo of that new theme song.
Smash was the kind of announcement strong enough to lift the entire show onto this list all by itself, but its easy to forget the importance of that thorough Mario Tennis Aces deep-dive to its legacy as more than just a lame follow-up to the awful Wii U Ultra Smash. Aces would go on to become my most-played Switch game of 2018, and the clarity of those fighting-game-esque mechanics set the stage for the multiple in-person tournaments I enjoyed that year. The Okami HD port was very well received during that early Switch phase devoid of classic Zelda, and the double-whammy of a release date and a demo (poorly communicated as a progress-carrier) for Octopath Traveller set up an underrated second year for the Switch.
9. September 2018 Direct
Speaking of series destined to jump to the next level of popularity, the kick-off reveal of Luigi’s starring debut in HD via Luigi’s Mansion 3 confused a bunch of Americans who technically never got a 2, and set up a hype cycle that would end with the game smashing sales records. Notably, said reveal came before the customary 3DS announcement block, signalling a shift in Nintendo’s presentation craft that would come to prioritise the impact of both the front and back of almost every showcase afterward.
Nintendo Switch Online is hardly a fun topic of conversation in 2025, but it’s easy to forget that before this Direct the service looked even worse in prospect. When first announced, the plan was to offer just one or two temporary NES/SNES games per month as part of the deal, but thankfully the midsection of the September 2018 presentation definitively contradicted that with a 20-strong NES launch lineup. The slick character-leaning explainer video duly provided meme and headline content for years afterwards, which was a nice bonus.
A strong Ubisoft E3 showing (oh, the days) from Starlink: Battle for Atlas that essentially turned the Switch into the game’s lead platform was backed up by a rad Wolf O’Donnell appearance that upped my interest considerably, but it was Square Enix’s deluge of Final Fantasy announcements near the end of the showcase that knocked my socks off hardest. The return of Crystal Chronicles (long before the release let everyone down) got me to pop off, but the rapid-fire follow-ups FF XV Pocket Edition, World of FF Maxima, Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon, and finally FF XII The Zodiac Age, FF VII, FF IX, and FF X / X-2 absolutely dazed me, and I remember the headlines right afterwards blurring into the background. A re-release salvo bearing that much weight will probably never happen again; well, unless Nintendo themselves goes third-party one day.
8. June 2022 Direct Mini: Partner Showcase
HEADLINES: Sonic Frontiers, Pac-Man World Re-Pac, Persona series ports
PERSONAL GEMS: Harvestella, Portal: Companion Collection shadow drop
The significance of this one to the strength of the Switch’s post-pandemic fortunes is probably easy to underestimate, but what a fun surprise it was in the moment. In 2022, fans and industry followers were sucker-punched by the announcement of a June Direct showcase in the post-E3 era that was not only much later than anyone expected, but bore both the dreaded “Mini” tag of the January 2018 presentation and the even more dreaded “Partner Showcase” moniker Nintendo had used for the multiple short third-party news drops they deployed throughout 2020.
And yet the promise of zero first-party news and a shorter-than-average run time did little to dilute what was still a tremendously-paced barrage of exciting game announcements spanning both re-releases and new stuff; in fact if anything, the lowered expectations only enriched the whole package. By 2022, Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco and even Konami had each enjoyed enough of a relative resurgence that their powers combined were able to put on a rock-solid show, with some smartly-picked indies along for the ride to provide spice.
Sega took the lead with their megaton, highly-anticipated Persona 3 / 4 / 5 news and a slick Sonic Frontiers showcase that trumped a month of haphazard prior media coverage. Square tucked in with a customary progress-carrying Live A Live demo drop, the debut of a fantastic Nier Automata port, a new Dragon Quest spinoff in the form of Treasures, and a gorgeous new farming RPG in Harvestella – this was right before that genre-mashup became oversaturated, mind you. Other highlights included a sequel to Switch launch surprise hit Super Bomberman R, a full remake of Pac-Man World, a shocking collection of Capcom gems (one of many) by way of Megaman Battle Network Legacy Collection, the first appearance of 2024’s Lorelai and the Laser Eyes, and a barely-believable 60FPS double-pack of the Portal games that released on the Switch immediately. This sucker took the entire reaction industry by surprise.
7. E3 2018 Direct
HEADLINES: Super Smash Bros Ultimate and lots of it, Super Mario Party, Fortnite shadow drop
PERSONAL GEMS: Daemon Ex Machina, Fire Emblem: Three Houses
2018 is the only year to provide three Directs to this list, and Masahiro Sakurai’s phenomenal hype work on Super Smash Bros Ultimate is a massive part of why that is. The game’s lavish and overindulgent official coming-out party at E3 2018 had plenty of vocal critics at the time, as it took up a ridiculous chunk of the Direct’s run time at the presumed expense of other potential announcements. Hindsight has proven that 2018 still offered plenty more hype in the ensuing months, however, and so we can now look back at the Smash dominance of the E3 show as a pointedly deliberate choice.
Not that I needed much of anything else at the time this show aired, of course: the gradual reveal of Ultimate‘s mind-boggling nature as the “Everyone is Here!” Smash entry was impossibly exciting to myself, plenty of my friends, and countless YouTubers I followed that year. Everyone has a different story of when the penny dropped for them during that triumphantly-scored character trailer, and every time I watch it back I get chills. The subsequent character change breakdown segment may have struck non-Smash-fans as an astonishing waste of broadcast time, but I ate up every second, then watched analysis videos for days. Sakurai’s barely-contained polite glee was infectious, and that perfectly fan-tuned Ridley finale? Mr Game & Watch’s Chef’s kiss.
All that said, Ultimate isn’t the sole reason why the E3 show trumps the other two strong 2018 Directs for this list’s purposes – yes, I’m as surprised as you are. In fact rewatching the rest of the E3 Direct for this article actually shocked me with the amount of additional reveals bearing levels of significance I couldn’t fully recognise at the time. For example, I remember how good Fire Emblem: Three Houses looked, but I had no idea it would become my favourite game in the series and my 2019 GOTY. I had bounced off Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and so what many regard as one of Monolith Soft’s best-ever releases, Torna The Golden Country, missed me completely. Fortnite had certainly become popular by mid-2018, but it still had so much farther to rise, and so many more corners of the gaming world to influence forever. It shadow dropped on Switch right after this Direct, and while we’re on that topic, so did the console debut for freaking Hollow Knight!
The Mario Party series also made its Switch bow during E3 2018 – with a concrete release date and everything – and that Daemon X Machina trailer may be the most metal intro Nintendo ever allowed for a Direct. Most importantly of all, this was the last E3 show to feature the ever-popular Reggie Fils-Aime in his role as Nintendo of America boss – a sad fact to look back on, but yet another important factor in the style shift Directs made away from long, corporate-flavoured speeches going forward. The cut to Shinya Takahashi right before the Smash segment reads like accidental foreshadowing when you watch it back now.
6. E3 2017 Direct
HEADLINES: Metroid Prime 4, Super Mario Odyssey, Yoshi’s Crafted World concept teaser
PERSONAL GEMS: Rocket League, Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
I don’t know why its so difficult to find this one on an official Nintendo YouTube channel, hut here we are.
The E3 2017 Direct (sorry, “Spotlight”, technically) is almost universally regarded as one of Nintendo’s greatest ever, but aside from an impressively short length and heavily nostalgic Reggie Fils-Aime presence, nowadays it plays more like a quaint reminder of Nintendo’s last something-to-prove era. The flow of this one resembles more of a traditional E3 stage show than a modern game-game-game barrage, with a snappy opening montage on the energy level of the Switch reveal trailer the first signifier.
The internet-breaking legacy of that bare-minimum Metroid Prime 4 tease is definitely the big moment for which this showcase is best remembered, and it was handily supported in the Nintendo first-party stable by new Kirby and Yoshi game reveals. But surprises weren’t actually the focus of the E3 2017 Direct; the surreal thing worth remembering about this show, in contrast to every other one on this page, is that the Switch had barely been on the market three months at the time of airing. Players with little interest in Zelda or Mario Kart (and people burned by the Wii U’s abysmal market performance) had few reasons to pick up the new Nintendo console – but E3 2017 gave them a compelling slate of new ones.
Most of the show’s games may have already been announced at the big January event earlier that year, but every reappearance brought with it either a release date, exciting new gameplay information, a graphical improvement, or in the case of bombastic finale Super Mario Odyssey, all three. Each month of the year’s remaining release cadence filled out with carefully-considered spacing, enlivened by the heartwarming announcement of crazy crossover Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle at the Ubisoft show earlier that week and an appearance from the Pokemon Company to drop Pokken Tournament Deluxe.
The short-term had never looked better for a fresh Nintendo console, the aforementioned Kirby/Yoshi provided medium-range intrigue, and the far future came packed with both Prime 4 and the promise of a “core Pokemon RPG”. Rocket League brought the third-party credibility that Skyrim had done at the console’s reveal, and just like that you had the perfect advertisement for the future of a brand-new system. That is why I believe people love this one so much, even if it’s a bit light on strictly new announcements.
5. June 2024 Direct
HEADLINES: Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Super Mario Party Jamboree, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Metroid Prime 4’s grand return
PERSONAL GEMS: Fantasian: Neo Dimension, Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection
As the Switch’s hardware specs grew more outdated over the years, Nintendo’s ability to deliver faster and tighter Nintendo Directs only improved, and as they had fewer games to show off, the company also got better at lowering the overall number of annual Directs to ensure they each popped with a set of genuinely surprising and exciting headlines. That clever hype management style means the last “general” Nintendo Direct to date at the time of writing was also one of the best ever.
This heavy-hitting finale delivered an almost entirely leak-free slate of new games that included a brand-new Mario Party, the long-awaited return of a presumed-dead franchise in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the even less likely freeing of RPG Site’s 2021 Game of the Year Fantasian from the ironclad cells of Apple Arcade (bringing Hironubu Sakaguchi back into the arms of Square Enix in the process), the return of Perfect Dark to a Nintendo machine, the completion of the entire Ace Attorney franchise on Switch – imports and all – and the surely-impossible revival of Marvel vs Capcom 2‘s beloved corpse via the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection. And all this without any fluff, buoyed by all the lessons learned over almost a decade of Switch Directs on how to pace and spread out announcements.
And of course, the headline-grabbing pair of cherries on top: a triple-threat new Zelda game returning to the top-down perspective, with a fascinating new gameplay gimmick slung across its shoulder, and starring Princess Zelda herself for the first time in series history; then the fanboy fanfare of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, at long last visible and unmistakably real following seven years of post-reveal footage absence. Yeah, this Direct was absolutely worthy of an all-time top five.
4. E3 2019 Direct
HEADLINES: Banjo-Kazooie in Smash, The Witcher 3‘s miracle port, “The Sequel to Breath of the Wild“
PERSONAL GEMS: Dragon Quest XI S: Definitive Edition and its “Hero” in Smash, No More Heroes III, Cadence of Hyrule shadow drop
I will forever remember this one as “the show that stole Square’s E3”, because the one year the JRPG titans and comically regular stage-fumblers finally got a showcase just about right, Nintendo rolled around the next day and simply had bigger announcements.
It’s easy to forget in the stretchiness of time that between luck, Nintendo’s own innovations in video marketing, and the pandemic, the Switch only got four proper E3 Directs during its extended lifespan. All four of them happen to make this list, but 2019 was the one I remember garnering the most praise relative to the other major presenters the year it aired. And it’s easy to see why: not one but two amazing Smash Bros DLC fighter trailers – each requiring the significant support of a major publisher and each aimed at a respectively western and eastern wave of nostalgia – on either end of a Direct was always going to be an effective strategy to make an impact on the big stage during the extended afterglow of Ultimate‘s success.
The first of those DLC characters was paired with a matching game deep-dive: one of Square Enix’s most ambitious (and wordy) enhanced port-down jobs in their history, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition. An objectively superior version of their 2018 Japanese mega-hit in every way except visuals, this consolidation of a prior announcement was the clearest indicator yet that Square’s relationship with Nintendo had fully healed. And speaking of lengthy RPGs, the most jaw-dropping major third party port in the Switch’s history served as a killer middle pillar of the show as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt delivered a blow to every rushed Switch port of the preceding couple of years.
Suda51’s No More Heroes III, vaguely promised all the way back at the Switch reveal event, had its long-awaited full reveal in this Direct too, and so-called “triple-I” Zelda collab Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer, having shocked everyone at the end of a Switch indie presentation months earlier, dropped right after the show. But the final announcement was weighty and unexpected enough to get any Direct onto this list singlehandedly: the tease of an as-yet-unnamed sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Announced way before even the most hopeful Zelda fan could have expected (and knowing what we know now, way before it should’ve been), the mysterious underground tease provided years of delicious lore speculation all on its own.
3. February 2023 Direct
HEADLINES: Pikmin 4, Metroid Prime Remastered shadow drop, Game Boy + Game Boy Advance NSO shadow drops
PERSONAL GEMS: Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, Octopath Traveller II demo shadow drop
These top three entries are where my personal bias really comes through, I fear.
Never before – and not since – have we seen a greater Nintendo Direct for unexpected “Out Now” announcements. Mere weeks after Xbox had dropped the wondrous Hi-Fi Rush onto unprepared Game Pass accounts in early 2023, Nintendo revived one of its greatest legacy titles via a beyond-impressive Retro Studios remaster that sailed out of the blue onto Switches the world over.
But Metroid Prime Remastered wasn’t alone: Fire Emblem Engage dropped an instant wave of DLC after the show, and the long-rumoured opening of both Game Boy and Game Boy Advance catalogues on the Nintendo Switch Online service brought plenty of immediate quality (with improved emulation to boot) to an entirely new audience of players – and I ignored all of them until I had clocked the first chapter of Octopath Traveller II via its own surprise-release prologue demo.
Yes, there was other cool stuff in this direct – including impressive spotlights and fresh mid-year release dates for Pikmin 4 and MDA: Rain Code that effortlessly cemented that classic one-game-a-month Switch exclusive release cadence for yet another year, as well as a new lease on life for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, an incredible DLC tease for longtime Xenoblade fans, and the unlikely returns of the Etrian Odyssey, Fantasy Life, Baten Kaitos, and Samba de Amigo series – but everything beyond that rarefied stream of instant generosity just felt like a bonus to me. I was on an annual coastal family holiday at the time, and I was beyond thrilled I had brought my Switch up with me.
2. February 2019 Direct
HEADLINES: Super Mario Maker 2, Tetris 99, Link’s Awakening remake
PERSONAL GEMS: Astral Chain, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Final Fantasy IX shadow drop
At the time this Direct wrapped up, I simply could not see it getting beaten within the Switch’s lifetime – at least as far as my tastes were concerned. Here in Australia this was quickly nicknamed the “Valentine’s Day Direct” and it was the first Direct I ever watched on that annual holiday; the weather was brilliant that morning I remember jogging running from my breakfast plans to my room just in time for the start of the show. Everything was set up for a banger, and a banger we got.
A sequel to Super Mario Maker came as a wild surprise to many – myself included – and it kicked off the Direct with a playful tone that kept on kicking when the glorious ten-year revival of the trusty couch co-op series Marvel Ultimate Alliance followed it right up. The Black Order would go on to become one of my favourite games of that year, as would the hopelessly addictive Dragon Quest Builders 2 which also appeared in this jam-packed show. Speaking of DQ, this is where that aforementioned Switch port was teased as well.
But as with most great Directs, the announcement hype only grew from there: a brand new Platinum Games title with years of development time already behind it – and not so much as a peep out of leakers – was a rare moment indeed, and Astral Chain was to join essentially every announcement from the show later in 2019! Nintendo clearly wanted to put down a marker that Directs in the Switch era would not mess around with lengthy waits from announcement to release – with some Metroid and Zelda-flavoured exceptions over the years, of course.
The wait was shortest of all for the insane conceptual assault Tetris 99, an ingenious twist on a classic so good that it would spawn multiple spin-off ideas and keep support for years afterward. You could play it that very February morning, alongside the tweaked port of Final Fantasy IX, which I would complete at last on Switch after decades of hearing how good it was. And what a finale! The anime-style reimagining of the iconic Link’s Awakening opening cutscene sent my hype levels into overdrive. I watched the entire Direct again an hour later. What a time.
1. E3 2021 Direct
HEADLINES: Metroid Dread, Mario Party Superstars
PERSONAL GEMS: Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, WarioWare: Get It Together, Danganronpa Decadence
This one was just it for me. The final E3 Nintendo Direct before E3 as we knew it ceased to exist – and the first after a year completely free of general Direct shows – was an all-fronts assault that ended the uniquely frantic Los Angeles hype era with a bang.
I woke up half my neighbourhood and made my brother think twice about ever watching a Direct live with me ever again as soon as I heard the bloopy Advance Wars capture sound on that fateful title card in the middle of this wonderfully laser-targeted presentation. At the time, the classic tactics series had not once been openly acknowledged in the entire ten-year history of Nintendo Directs, and I had long given up hope of ever seeing it again.
For sheer personal impact, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp takes the number one spot for me in terms of individual Nintendo Direct announcements, but it was ably supported by other long-awaited returns. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania represented an abandonment of years of odd experiments within that franchise in favour of a focus on the core appeal that made the first few games so incredible, while WarioWare: Get It Together finally brought one of Nintendo’s most consistent series to the Switch after a weirdly lengthy absence. In keeping with the throwback theme, Mario Party Superstars seemed like a direct reaction to fan complaints about newfangled series distractions, promising to deliver only fan-favourite boards / minigames and much better online support.
Danganronpa Decadence was one of the final ex-Playstation Vita gems to arrive on Nintendo’s newer portable, and the full-trilogy collection included substantial new content to boot. Kazuya from Tekken also brought some surprising extra PS energy to the Switch, and we did get our first look at Tears of the Kingdom gameplay in this showcase. But the final word simply must go to Metroid Dread. 2021 would mark the beginning of the second half of the Switch’s life, and with all the mainstream franchises ticked off the list, that phase seemed much more focused on pleasing long-suffering niche series fans than the first half. Putting “METROID 5” on the screen during that eerie teaser and then using the infamous codename Dread from the old DS Metroid rumours was the perfect message to send to Samus fans: Nintendo was listening.
Vagrant Rant 