Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2 lead limited initial Switch game lineup

We're still grappling with the load of information dumped on Nintendo fans after Thursday's major Switch console event, but we're starting to get a clearer picture of what games will land on the system—and how few of those will launch alongside the console on March 3.

It appears Nintendo will only have two first-party games ready for the system's March 3 worldwide launch—Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and 1-2 Switch. The former will launch simultaneously on the Nintendo Wii U, while the latter appears to be the usual Nintendo launch title meant to showcase an intriguing new controller via mini-games. In this case, the $49.99 1-2 Switch will be all about the Joy-Con controllers, and its players (apparently always duos) will square off against each other in motion-specific games that ask players to look directly at each other, as opposed to the screen. Gun slinging, yoga posing, dancing, and other mini-game activities were shown in the game's trailer.

Nintendo does have one more March game in its Switch lineup: the weirdly titled Snipperclips. Yes, Snipperclips, a game where you use your Joy-Cons to cut and draw little paper characters in order to solve puzzles. This could be a cute one, but it probably won't be huge, considering Nintendo didn't even mention it during the major event and has yet to upload any associated video. Instead, the company stuck it into its website with a price tag of $20.

Nintendo will follow those games on April 28 with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a DLC-loaded, full-priced port of the Wii U racing game. Most importantly for Ars Technica's game critics, this version of the game will finally receive a quality Battle Mode—as in, one with square and circular arenas that players can rotate around and attack each other in, like in older Mario Kart games. One of those Battle Mode arenas will have a Splatoon theme, and Splatoon's Inkling characters will join the race, alongside all of the other tracks in both the retail Mario Kart 8 and its DLC packs. And, yes, this version will once again let kart racers carry two items at the same time, including a new item-stealing Boo pick-up.

We'll have to wait longer than that for the rest of Nintendo's first-party Switch lineup. The apparent first offering after Mario Kart will be ARMS, a motion-loaded, Joy-Con motion-boxing game full of '70s anime-inspired boxers coming this "spring." Unlike in Wii Boxing, ARMS appears to offer more fine-tuned controls for both aiming punches and dodging opponents' attacks. And Splatoon 2 will land "this summer" looking, well, almost identical to its solid Wii U version (and won't include any overblown Joy Con-related control tweaks, other than the same gyro-based control options that the Wii U version already has).

The Switch event showed brief sizzle reel footage of upcoming games in the Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem series; the latter, curiously, will be developed by Tecmo Koei's Team Ninja, which is much better known for hack-and-slash fare (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive) than Fire Emblem's turn-based strategy. And Nintendo will apparently close the year with Super Mario Odyssey in "holiday 2017," which Ars' Kyle Orland has written up here.

Third parties? Well...

It wouldn't be a new Nintendo system without a dubious amount of third-party fare on offer, though a brief reel of upcoming games included some promising fan favorites, including a new top-down, old-school Bomberman, another entry in the solid Wii U future-racing series Fast Neo, and another Shin Megami Tensei RPG, this one built in Unreal Engine 4 (and looking mighty spooky). Oh, and if you like Farm Simulator, you can expect that series on Switch as well, apparently.

Bethesda's Todd Howard and a rep for EA Sports appeared at the event to lengthily confirm that Skyrim and FIFA would, respectively, come from each developer to the Switch. However, neither presentation stated much more than that we should expect those games to essentially contain the same content as on other consoles (though with EA Sports, that's never a safe bet, thanks to a history of dumping watered-down ports of its sports games to Nintendo systems). Beloved weird-games developer Suda 51 announced another entry in the No More Heroes franchise (though without any footage), while Square Enix presented a new, weirdly titled RPG franchise, Octopath Traveler.

Really, it just looks like ports and slightly updated versions of games from other systems, including a "definitive" Rayman Legends, a "definitive" Disgaea 5, and, gosh, even a "definitive" version of the 2008 game Street Fighter II HD Remix. That one comes complete with two new characters, and I'm not making these up: Evil Ryu and Angry Ken. What, Ken wasn't already angry?

What we didn't see was any third-party developers embracing anything unique about the Nintendo Switch (unless you count another Just Dance game with motion control support). Promises from company reps at the event were thin, including a Sega rep who simply told the crowd, "We intend to be present on the platform. We will consider new games for Nintendo Switch, and we will present them soon." After that, a many-games sizzle reel included a brief peek at a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game, tentatively titled Project Sonic.

Nintendo's official list of upcoming Nintendo Switch software includes no other third-party games with "March 3" release dates. Just Dance, Super Bomberman R, Square Enix RPG I Am Setsuma, and the indie RPG Has Been Heroes (from Trine developer Frozenbyte) have "March" listed as release windows, while a few other games have estimated "spring" launches.