Last year’s biggest surprise indie hit has finally landed on the Nintendo Switch andSwitch 2, and it’s better than ever. Still in the first season of its launch, theSwitch 2 has already hit landmark sales targets. Its game library is slowly but surely growing, and it’s starting to become a major competitor on the handheld market.
And the Switch 2’s standing has only improved with the launch of this 2024 indie gem. With an incredibly high Metacritic rating that places itamong last year’s best. But even quality aside, it’s such a perfect fit for the Switch 2 that it’s worth picking up on the console, even if you already bought it during its PC-exclusive release.
UFO 50 Feels At Home On Switch
WarioWare Reborn
The previously PC-exclusiveUFO 50shadow dropped on the Switch 2yesterday, August 7, just under a year after its initial release. Developed and published by Mossmouth, LLC, best known for the cave-diving rougelikeSpelunkyand its sequel,UFO 50is an excellent retro-styled mini-game collection that’s perfect for the Switch 2.
For one thing,mini-game collections always work best on handheld consoles. They’re designed to be picked up and played anywhere -UFO 50is as fun on a 15-minute bus ride as it is in a multi-hour deep dive. The games included here range from quick, arcade-style platformers to 60-hour RPGs.
But more so than that,UFO 50shares a lot of DNA with two Nintendo classics. Of course, there’sWarioWare, Nintendo’s long-running series of wacky “microgame"collections. It’s great to have something in a similar vein on the Switch 2, whereit joinsWarioWare: Move It. ButUFO 50actually has a lot more in common with a more unusual SNES release: the infamousAction 52.
Developed by Active Enterprises,Action 52was an unlicensed multicart (a game cartridge containing multiple titles) released for the NES in 1992. As its name implies, it contained 52 different games,a few of them broken, most of them bugged, and all of them well and truly odd.
UFO 50is a deliberate, loving homage to the notoriously jankyAction 52; its narrative follows the fictional UFO Soft studio, documenting its evolution and varied output over almost a decade of game development. It’s deliciously ironic that, all these years later, a nostalgic take on the unlicensedAction 52is now officially available for purchase on the Nintendo Store.
UFO 50 Is Easy To Recommend
Among Metacritic’s Best Of 2024
The varied nature ofUFO 50makes it easy to recommend to almost anyone: no matter what kind of game you like, you’ll almost certainly find it here. ButUFO 50also earned near-universal critical acclaim. It ranks at a 91 aggregated critic score onMetacritic, making it a certified Must-Play.
That high rating placed ithigh in Metacritic’s ranking of the best games of 2024, coming in fifth place behind onlyFF7 Rebirth,Metaphor: ReFantazio,Shadow of the Erdtree, andAstro Bot. That also makes it the (previously) highest-rated PC exclusive of 2024 - it’s also the highest-rated game of last year to come to the Switch 2 so far.
Really, everyone I know who’s playedUFO 50loved it - most of its games are pretty simple, but its retro aesthetic and varied nature make it easy to get sucked in. Even if you already own it on Steam, it’s worth picking up on theSwitch 2for the handheld aspect alone, if not its ties to Nintendo history.
