Last week, Nintendo announced a handful of Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of original Switch games, including Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. What became immediately clear was that game titles like Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition are entirely too long, and this naming practice needs to stop!
These overly wordy titles are not new, of course. Nintendo has published re-releases like Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, and Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition for Switch — these lengthy names help to differentiate these titles from their original versions. Nintendo is navigating a rocky console transition, and is trying to make it explicit which of its older titles have been upgraded to showcase Switch 2’s features. But something has to change.
Granted, I’m arguing this mainly from the position of someone who might need to put Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition in the headline of a story on viraltrendingcontent, and in most cases, am asked to write short, punchy headlines. Naturally, I find these names — which span upward of 77 characters — to be unwieldy.
Can Nintendo not simply add a DX or Deluxe or some other single-word descriptor to these game titles to shorten them? What about return to the DS era, when game companies communicated the platform on which software was released by sticking Dawn of Sorrow, Dual Strike, or Destiny’s Soldier at the end of a title? Can we not just look at a game’s box art, see the words “New Funky Mode” in the upper right corner and acknowledge that we’re getting something extra?
Maybe these aren’t great solutions. (I would greatly appreciate alternative suggestions!) And maybe I’m approaching this from an inside-baseball perspective, where I’m loath to ask the people who define our style guide “Hey, do we italicize ‘Nintendo Switch 2 Edition’ in Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV?” But I also think that the solution that Nintendo has landed on is awkward and ungainly, even if we’re only going to get a handful of games named this way as Nintendo transitions from the Switch to Switch 2.
But I stand by the claim that, as game titles go, Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition are entirely too long. Even if Nintendo can’t do something about it now, let it never happen again.
