Nintendo Online Will Add Nintendo 64 And Sega Genesis Games With Online Multiplayer

Nintendo Online is one of the more frustrating online offerings out there. Despite costing $20 for a full-year package, the benefits of it feel very underutilized. For example, one of the coolest features is the ability to play from a selection of NES and SNES games at any point. They’re all emulated straight from the console and it’s a very neat feature. The problem is these libraries aren’t updated all that often and while they do feature some of the heavy hitters, like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda, when it does update it will frequently feature really obscure titles.

It’s possible that Nintendo Online will soon be receiving a huge shot in the arm, however. During Thursday’s Nintendo Direct, it was announced that Nintendo Online would be adding not only Nintendo 64 titles to their online service, but SEGA Genesis games as well. This means games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Fox 64, Mario 64, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will soon be playable all from your Nintendo Switch. To sweeten the deal, Nintendo even announced that all these games would feature online multiplayer. GoldenEye 007 multiplayer anyone?

Now for the inevitable downside to all of this. Remember when we said that everyone is kind of disappointed with the current Nintendo Online offerings? Well, these new features will only be available in an entirely new online plan that’s going to be a tier higher than the current one. So anyone that is already shelling out the $20 a year for the current online package will now have to pay even more. The price gets even steeper for players that want to play on the authentic controllers that Nintendo will be offering.

The good in all of this is that this means that some of our favorite games ever are going to be available on the Switch. The addition of multiplayer is amazing and it feels like yet another reason to buy one. The problem is that Nintendo’s history of how it handles Nintendo Online, and really the internet in general, doesn’t create confidence in spending more money on their online service. The SNES and NES Online features, while cool, have new games added to them at a drip pace. If the Nintendo 64 Online and SEGA Genesis Online features come out, and both of them have extremely limited libraries, it’s going to feel like yet another example of Nintendo making big promises for online without backing it up. Hopefully, that isn’t the case this time, because it would be awesome to launch it on day one and see a full library of great games to play.