We have been following development on the cosy Chibi-Robo-style adventure Misc. A Tiny Tale since way back in 2021. The game is set to arrive on Switch on 22nd July and, through the magic of backwards compatibility, you’ll also be able to play it on Switch 2 with better resolution, frame rates and more responsive gameplay. That all comes despite it being in development for years. Why? Because developer Tinyware Games had a hunch about what Switch 2 would be capable of.
The new gameplay comparison (above) showcases the performance improvements in action, but they were only made possible after the team took a punt on Switch 2’s upscaling features long before anything was confirmed.
That is according to Tinyware founder and Misc. lead developer Michael Pearce, who recently told us that the team “had a theory before the Nintendo Switch 2 was even revealed, that it may play backwards compatible Nintendo Switch games at a better and more stable resolution and frame rate, especially the games which had no cap put on their rendering”. With this in mind, the team “purposely made our resolution on the Nintendo Switch version dynamic, letting it scale up for this theoretical new system,” and it did the same thing to the frame rate, “uncapping it to give it room for a max of 60 FPS, which is more than the S1 could theoretically handle”.
Like so many studios, Tinyware was not given access to a Switch 2 dev-kit before launch, so it had to wait until it could borrow a system to see if the gamble had paid off. And pay off it did. “The resolution had jumped from (in some cases) 480p at 30fps in handheld mode on Nintendo Switch, to 1080p at 60fps on the Nintendo Switch 2,” Pearce told us. There were a bunch of other improvements too: “load times are much faster on the Nintendo Switch 2 system,” he continued, “Texture pop in is practically absent, button presses are more responsive, and the overall experience is simply smoother and better”.
According to Pearce, Switch 2 “runs the game like a dream”. Of course, this isn’t to the detriment of the Switch 1 version — “We’re really proud of the performance we’ve achieved over the last few years making the game for the Nintendo Switch,” he clarified — but the Switch 2 improvements are apparently “really special”.
Gosh, it sounds like quite a risk, but at least it paid off, eh! Misc. A Tiny Tale will arrive on Switch and Switch 2 (via backwards compatibility) on 22nd July.
