I got to spend an entire day with the Nintendo Switch 2 last week, and whilst I was pretty impressed with all of the games on offer, and the increased graphical fidelity as well as the comfort of the new handheld, in typical Nintendo fashion, it was the Joy-Con mouse functionality that left me most surprised.
In case you didn’t catch it, both the left and right Joy-Con controllers have a sensor so when your pair them with the wrist strap (which comes with gliding surfaces), you can then glide them on any surface on the side so that they can act like a literal mouse, with the shoulder buttons as your clickers
My first taste of it was jumping straight into Metroid Prime 4, which was probably the most practical and obvious use case for this. Using the left Joy-Con as you normally would, I started the demo by aiming with the right Joy-Con in mouse mode.
The thing that shocked me most is that you can literally put it down to use it as in mouse mode, and lift it back up to use it like a regular Joy-Con and go straight back to using it in mouse mode without changing any settings or having to jump through any hoops, so if you want to chop and change that’s totally an option and it’s absolutely seamless.
Whilst in mouse mode, aiming with the Joy-Con felt extremely accurate and smooth, and as much as I tried to go back to using the Joy-Con analogue stick, I just couldn’t stop using mouse mode as it felt right and worked exactly as you’d expect a mouse to work.
There were several other examples of how the J0y-Con mouse works. I was able to spend about 20 minutes with Welcome Tour which uses the Joy-Con Mouse functionality like a literal mouse. Think Mario Paint, with a cursor being on screen at all times, and the ability to use the Joy-Con Mouse in a number of different mini games and tech demos.
Then it was time to jump over to Mario Party Jamboree Nintendo Switch 2 edition, where I got to play a handful of the new 20 minigames, whihc included everything from Air Hockey to this great mini game where you need to stack objects and another one where you have to pull your Joy-Con back to set a car into motion.
Whilst I was only really thinking of the Joy-Con Mouse mode as a mouse or pointer, it was these few mini games in Mario Party Jamboree as well as launch title Drag x Drive that really showed me about the possibilities.
When used with HD Rumble 2, you really get a sense of tension and feedback when you use the Joy-Con mouse mode. In Drag x Drive, you use two Joy-Con controllers in mouse mode, with each controlling one wheel on your wheelchair.
Not only does this feel super intuitive, but it actually works really well and is super responsive, so I can only imagine how this feature could be used going forward. It’s an obvious one for cursors, and aiming in FPS games, but I have no doubts that there’s a lot more possibility that we haven’t even thought of.
Whilst I was using the Joy-Con on a flat surface, I did give them a go on my pants, and it worked just as well, so it’s very clear that Nintendo has really put a lot of thought into this.
The Nintendo launches on June 5th. The Author was flown to New York as a guest of Nintendo.
