Three great NSO Game Trials started today, and that got me wondering about the history of the Game Trials and how good its featured games have been. I have fond memories of finishing the entirety of Captain Toad Treasure Tracker and Star Wars Republic Commando in a week, as well as not-so-memorable moments of trying games like Obakeidoro for a few minutes and then deleting them. And of course, the Suika game craze late last year.
I tracked down all the North American Game Trials I could find from Nintendo's North American website and put them in a list with their dates on Backloggd.
I know there are a few in Europe, Japan, etc. that didn't make their way to North America, but settled for just the ones from Nintendo of America for now.
Some stray takeaways –
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Yep, Minecraft Dungeons has had two NSO Game Trials, surprisingly.
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I couldn't find any before Overcooked 2 in February of 2021, so if you have a link to whether the Game Trials existed before, give a reply!
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After the first few, the Game Trials started to come out basically every month, with some exceptions around the holidays and the random time in July '22 when Mario + Rabbids and MLB The Show got Trials in back to back weeks.
by retrospace4