The physical releases of several popular Switch games appear to be out of print at the moment, and it has fans wondering if a Nintendo Selects-style repackage of these titles might be imminent before their release. Rumored successor switch.
Nintendeal, a Twitter account dedicated to highlighting sales and deals on Nintendo games and products, began noticing that some of Nintendo’s first-party games were out of stock at many retailers. After Nintendodeals highlighted games like Paper Mario: King of Origami to Metroid DreadDiscord user AShadowLink (shout out to Neoxon on Reset the era) has been able to compile a list of affected games that appear to be no longer available at stores like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and GameStop, though the availability of each game varies. You can check the status of each game across many retailers on Deco Offers.
- Paper Mario: King of Origami
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019)
- Pikmin 3 Deluxe
- Metroid Dread
- Kirby Star Allies
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2
- New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Fire Emblem: Engage
- Yoshi’s Crafted World
- WarioWare: Get it together!
- Nintendo Switch Sports
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Splatoon 2
- Super Mario Maker 2
- Mario Strikers: Battle League
As you can see, there are some big hitters affected here, e.g Super Mario Odyssey. One of the most surprising is Fire Emblem: Engagewhich was launched only last year.
Should you panic when buying these games? Are they about to become collector’s items due to some artificial scarcity scheme? As users on ResetEra and Nintendodeals have pointed out, it may not be so terrible, as Nintendo might be Prepare to re-release with new SKUsperhaps with a branding stating that it will be playable on both the Switch and its rumored successor.
If you’ve ever seen a “Greatest Hits” or “Nintendo Selects” sign on a game in a store, it will be flagged differently in the retailer’s system, and may even have completely different barcodes to scan at the register. When stores phase out older copies, they are often pulled from shelves, and this is the case for online stores as well. While you probably don’t need to panic about these games disappearing anytime soon, they may have some really ugly branding soon, so if you want better cover art, look for clean copies at your local game store of choice.
We’ve reached out to Nintendo for comment and will update this story if we hear back.