Thoughts on the Nintendo Treehouse Live Streams

Nintendo followed up the Switch 2 Direct on Wednesday with two days of live streams from Nintendo Treehouse.

Yesterday’s stream lasted a little over four hours, while today’s stream was around three.

I’ll never forget that amazing E3 when the Treehouse segments after the main show actually included a few new surprise announcements. I loved it. Maybe that wasn’t a successful format, though, because they’ve never done it again.

So these streams didn’t contain any new announcements, just a better look at the games already announced.

Mario Kart World was a big highlight of the live streams, and it does look fun. It just doesn’t look like $80 worth of fun. They also revealed that holding an item behind you is now something that happens automatically, which is an unexpected change. I’m not sure how I feel about it. The game looks beautiful, though.

The other big highlight for me was Donkey Kong Bananza, of course, the Switch 2 game I’m most interested in right now. The collect-a-thon nature appeals to me, and it’s fun to see how you can use environment destruction to get around obstacles. I was concerned it might get repetitive with how much smashing/digging I saw at first, but the later parts of the streams showed more platformer elements.

Metroid Prime 4 looks great, too, but I still want to play the others first.

Meanwhile, I didn’t care too much for watching segments on already-released games that are just getting upgrades on the Switch 2, but I did find it interesting that Bravely Default is getting two mini-games added for the HD Remaster.

Nintendo Treehouse didn’t sell me on immediately getting a Switch 2, but it did help make sure Donkey Kong Bananza and Metroid Prime 4 remain on the list of games I want to keep in mind. Outside of the Treehouse streams, Nintendo also published an interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki about The Duskbloods, which confirms beyond a doubt that it’s a multiplayer-focused game, so I can cross that off my list.

Did you watch the Nintendo Treehouse streams? Have any of the gameplay demonstrations swayed you one way or another?