I was on the $20 base membership since it launched back in September 2018 because I wanted to play Smash, Splatoon and Mario Kart online. I had virtually no interest in the dripfeed of NES and SNES games since I’ve already owned the ones I’m interested in on prior consoles. At least Star Fox 2 is more readily available than ever, which means an entire generation of Switch players may actually get to grow up with and fondly remember a game that was considered lost media for the longest time.
I didn’t bother with the [Expansion Pack](https://youtu.be/SkQJAKJxfQ4) when it first launched back in October 2021 because the emulation quality of the N64 games was abysmal, the launch selection was uninteresting to me for the same reason as the NES/SNES games beforehand, and I had negative interest in the Genesis games since I can actually own them on Switch in other ways without having to subscribe to a higher tier. The DLC offerings weren’t enticing to me either, since again I can own them by purchasing them outright without upgrading. And I don’t care for Animal Crossing either, so I wouldn’t get any mileage out of Happy Home Paradise.
But then GoldenEye 007 came out. I had friends that were on the Expansion Pack and wanted to play it, so I finally caved and upgraded in February of this year. Yeah the netcode turns the audiovisual experience into an interactive banshee-demon summoning ritual, but when it worked it was still pretty fun. And what cosmic timing too as shortly after I upgraded, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games were added to the service. The selection of N64 and Genesis games by this time had also grown to a much more palatable number for me, so I felt confident and vindicated waiting to upgrade.
by Asad_Farooqui
31 Comments
Basic tier. On a family plan so it’s like $6 a year. Which is more than cheap enough to have around for when I play online or the occasional urge to play something retro
none, Nintendo online is a rip off
Basic tier because game emulation is way to easy to be paying Nintendo to gate keep old games.
NSO+EP. $10 a year is a trivial amount. Even if I don’t use the EP specific benefits that often, its $10. That’s less than the cost of a delivery pizza.
Now is it my favorite gaming subscription? No, but for $10, I’m not exactly expecting a lot out of it. I can boot into some retro games, and play my Switch games online. Those are my expectations and I’m fine with that.
Basic tier. All the N64 and GBA games that I plan on playing are downloaded onto my Wii U. I also have the Genesis collection for the Switch, which has most of the Genesis games I want to play.
I’m on the base NSO. Nowhere near enough value in the expansion. I’ll pay for expansion in the future if it has GameCube games or 5x the size of GBA library it does now. I find the current expansion pack games very underwhelming for the most part, both in quantity and the games chosen
Basic
Basic tier.
I would absolutely love to be playing Smash 64 or GoldenEye online with people, but I just can’t justify the price tag. I still have my 64 with all the games I want to play. I also hate that I’d be spending money monthly on something I won’t own when I would eventually stop my subscription. If they made the individual games purchasable to permanently own instead? I’d be all over that.
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Expansion. It’s still relatively affordable and I’ve gotten plenty of use out of the Booster Course Pass, GBA, and 64.
I’m sharing the expansion pass with 8 online friends, costs only $9/year.
Expansion via a family plan. Most of the people on the plan with me wanted it for the dlc access, but I don’t mind having the gba, n64, and genesis games on my switch.
None
NSO + Expansion Family plan. Between the kids and I we get tons of value out of the expansion pack content
I haven’t had NSO in a while. Only thing I would play online is MK8 Deluxe, which I just don’t play as much these days. Also I don’t really need a bunch of old NES and SNES games I’ve already played.
Expansion Pack. I think it’s worth it, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot
NSO+ on a family plan.
Less than 9$ a year to have access to MK8 DLC, GBA, N64 etc totally worth it
I was on basic subscription, paying every three months. It’s $13.15 every three months in New Zealand. That’s $4.38 a month.
Then I saw that the annual subscription for the expansion pass was $70NZ. That’s $5.83 a month and I’d only pay for it once a year.
Was worth it in my case, lets me play more Zelda
My wife and I are on the family plan for the ESP. I have 2 of my brothers and one of my sisters along with 2 of our closest friends that pay us like $5 each a year to cover it. We all love the OG games, but still disappointed that they haven’t added much more.
I stopped paying at all about the time the expansion pass became a thing. Not as a grand statement or anything, I just really fell off the Switch in general and what I did play wasn’t really online. I got loads of use out of the SNES app though, played through DKC 1, 2, Mario World, Link to the Past, Super Metroid, dabbled in a bunch of other stuff. Great value service.
Expansion pass has never really held much appeal to me tbh. I have a pretty substantial Mega Drive collection, and I’ve accumulated most of the N64 notables on every other platform over the years (don’t hate me, but I also think there aren’t that many of them).
Expansion pack, and have been since it launched. $64 CAD a year is not a lot of money, and the value has only increased since launch with the games they’ve added. I’m an old school gamer who grew up with the SNES, N64, Gameboy, etc and having instant access to so many good games really is wonderful.
I’ve been on base since it launched. I play online MK occasionally but it’s mainly for cloud saves.
Expansion but I dunno if I’m gonna renew it. Got it for the N64 games mainly but I didn’t realize the controls for some games really don’t adapt well to the Switch joycons and it seems like the N64 controllers are pretty much constantly sold out. Lame.
the expansion pass i normally ask family for a nintendo gift card around the holidays and use that for the subscription
I stopped mine. Complete waste of money.
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Expansion. A year subscription really still isn’t all that much and I like having all the retro games right there. I don’t have a home computer to emulate them on and I’m not mod’ing any of my systems.
Is it perfect? No. But for the price it’s still not bad.
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not playing anything online that’d need one and not interested in the current emulator catalog
None.
The day Nintendo will let me purchase the games in a legitimate way I will do so. Untill then? Emulation all the way.
I only have the basic tier, I got another handheld device to play old Nintendo games via emulator.
None because I don’t really play anything online on the switch so even though it’s the cheapest of the 3 main consoles, it’s the only one I don’t have online play on