Image: Towfiqu barbhuiya / Pexels / Nintendo Life
In the magazine business, the Back Page is where you’d find all the weird goofs that we couldn’t fit in anywhere else. Some may call it “filler”; we prefer “a whole page to make terrible jokes that are tangentially related to the content of the mag”. We don’t have pages on the internet, but we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to our semi-regular feature, Back Page.
Today, Jim sneaks into Nintendo HQ and spills the contents of a file marked ‘PLAN B’…
I don’t have much time so I will keep this quick.
Thanks to the diligent work of my uncle, I was able to sneak my way into the Nintendo’s secret vault located in an undisclosed London location.
As I moved through the shadows past rooms stocked with pre-boxed copies of Zelda remasters and a door that simply read “MOTHER 3 (WEST) — DO NOT OPEN”, I stumbled upon a table, littered with files and various Nintendo paraphernalia that immediately caught my eye.
Poking through a stack of Geno amiibo, I noticed a black folder with “PLAN B” written on the top. My curiosity got the better of me, and, sweeping aside the plastic figurines, I lifted the Wii U GamePad paperweight which was keeping everything in order and took a glance at the contents.
What I read shocked me to my very core. These were the plans for the coming year, a year without the ‘Switch 2’. Thumbing the pages, I saw swathes of re-releases and remasters, all fine-tuned in their scheduling to keep the Nintendo fanboys onside as the Switch marches through its eighth year on the market.
Image: Nintendo Life
Suddenly, footsteps. I grabbed my phone and snapped up some pictures of the most shocking pages while committing the rest to memory. I shut the folder and quickly leapt into a nearby cabinet full of unreleased LABO packs and Wiimote accessories. The guard — a large American man with the build of Reggie Fils-Aimé (though I did not see his face) — passed through the room and I was able to escape.
I am sure that I have mere minutes before deadly ninjas track me down. But this information has to be seen. Please take what I have to show you as absolute fact.
This is what I can remember (and what I was fast enough to photograph) from Nintendo’s console-less 2024 plans.
“PLAN B” – Nintendo Secret Plans 2024
The opening page was dull and unassuming. It laid out exactly what the document was going to be about. A clear message of “DO NOT MENTION SWITCH 2 UNTIL 2025” immediately caught my eye and I couldn’t help but notice that somebody had doodled in the bottom corner. Is that a PS5 on fire? Did Miyamoto draw that? The questions would only continue from here…
Image: Nintendo Life
There was no faffing about from here on in. You might think that an important document such as this would have a little more filler to hide the juicy bits, but I can tell you that is wrong. This is a real file and clearly whoever made it did not have the time or creative power to pad it out with unnecessary corporatespeak.
And so we hit the plans for the February 2024 Direct:
Image: Nintendo Life
Crazy, right? Yes, the release dates are pretty unsurprising and, of course, another Kirby remaster is on the way, but who would have thought that the hotly-anticipated Zelda double-pack would be Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks??
Speaking of real gob-smackers, I thought that it would be worth grabbing a snap of the page titled “Da Movies” (I can only assume in a reference to that one Vin Diesel video). We knew that Nintendo was looking to branch out and become a multi-armed entertainment company, but this is next level:
Image: Nintendo Life
A discarded post-it note carelessly tossed aside seemed to suggest that Nintendo is looking for more Doug Bowser-style name-to-brand synergy in its executives over the coming months. Vanessa Kirby, Ridley Scott, Zelda Williams, and Gino D’Acampo (pending spelling change) were all given as potential options.
The June Direct page left me with even more questions: When will the remasters end? Who would leave such an important document on the table? Is that the Aerial font? But Reggie the guard’s footsteps were getting louder and I knew that the contents had to be seen to be believed.
Image: Nintendo Life
I had an inkling that some of the remasters this year were going to lean a little obscure, but bringing back the Super Scope Battle Clash sequel, Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge? That feels a little like scraping the bottom of the barrel. Hey, if Nintendo can really nail the Switch motion controls, then we might just be onto something there.
Being tight for time, I skipped past taking photos of the next few pages. One was all about a mobile app named ‘Pikmin Bloomier’ and had a lot of red-penned notes next to its contents. Another detailed a long email chain in which Masahiro Sakurai repeatedly asked for a Kid Icarus: Uprising Switch port but wouldn’t explain how he had “revolutionised the control scheme” when asked.
And so we hit the last page that I was able to photograph until I had to flee: plans for the final Direct of the year. Honestly, it looks like we’re going to be going out with a bit of a whimper, though the emphasised “DO NOT MENTION SWITCH 2” hammers home the fact that 2025 might be different.
Image: Nintendo Life
I hope that the above information has been useful. It was a dangerous mission, but this deserves to be seen.
Luckily, I seem to have escaped unharmed. Yes, the yellow van with ‘Super Mario Bros. Plumbing’ written on the side has been parked out the front of my house for a few days now, but I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about.
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