In case you missed it, the Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and Best Buy’s Black Friday in July sales are offering some fantastic discounts on Switch 1 titles to fill out your collection.
While Amazon is offering a whole host of freebies across games, books, and music ahead of Prime Day, Best Buy is offering $20 off a whole host of classic Switch 1 games that you can play on your shiny new console through backwards compatibility, including some that are getting that all-important Switch 2 upgrade for free. Here’s the full lineup.
Kicking off with a Switch 1 game everyone should play, Super Mario Odyssey earned a 10/10 from us back in 2017, and it’s lost none of its charm. In fact, this superlative 3D platformer has only improved on Nintendo’s latest hardware with a higher resolution and better frame rate.
From one phenomenon to another, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the best-selling Nintendo games of all time, and it’s also reduced by $20. It earned 9/10 from us at launch, and its addictive loop of managing your island and making new friends no doubt contributed to the Switch’s hardware sales.
Pikmin 4 marked a welcome return for the RTS franchise, and it’s one of the more impressive-looking Nintendo titles for Switch 1 with its detailed environments. We awarded it a 9/10 in our review, saying “Pikmin 4 adds variety to the series’ traditional gameplay by offering options other than the grab-and-throw formula of the past, and brings an extra helping of top-tier levels after the credits roll.”
Also getting $20 discounts are Super Mario RPG, a remake of a classic (which also scored 8/10), multiplayer hit Splatoon 3 (9/10 from us!), Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe, and souped-up Wii U port New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.
If you’re playing on Switch 2, great news: Splatoon 3, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey will get those sweet upgrades.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
