As spotted by the fine folks over at Nintendo Life, it appears Walmart may have rather given away a couple of big Nintendo secrets. On the retail giant’s Nintendo section of its website there’s a section called “Unlock more” which sells you a $35 gift card unlocking the Nintendo Online Family Membership subscription deal. The image promoting this looks like the usual array of box covers used by Nintendo, except in among them appears two games we didn’t know were on the way, and they’re doozies.
Between the likes of all-time classics like F-Zero, Donkey Kong: Country and Mario Kart 64 are GameCube games Pikmin 2 and Metroid Prime: Echoes. Neither are listed among Nintendo’s GameCube collection for the subscription service, which currently includes just eight games, most recently adding Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance.
GameCube games are exclusive to the Switch 2 version of the ludicrously named Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, so the small number of games added over what’s rapidly becoming the first year of the new console has been pretty disappointing. It certainly offers some stone-cold classics, like SoulCailbur II, Zelda: Windwaker and Luigi’s Mansion, but it’s perhaps harder to get overly excited about Super Mario Srtikers and Chibi-Robo: Plug Into Adventure! Given Nintendo could already have included Zelda: Twilight Princess and Mario Kart: Double Dash, they do seem very odd choices.
Of course, a lot of the best Nintendo-published GameCube games become tricky prospects for the company to add, as Nintendo’s endless recycling of its properties becomes a little starkly revealed if it does. Kirby Air Ride, Mario Party 4, 5, 6 and 7, Animal Crossing, Mario Power Tennis, Metroid Prime, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Super Mario Sunshine…any of them might eat into attempts to sell either recent remasters or current sequels.
Even the two Walmart has seemingly revealed are on the edge of this phenomenon, although a Pikmin 5 appears to still only exist in Miyamoto’s animation-obsessed mind, and perhaps the addition of Metroid Prime II suggests we’re not likely to see a remaster of the sequel any time soon. Given just how brilliantly 2023’s Metroid Prime Remastered worked out, that’s a proper shame if the case.
Let’s hope these two titles are for real, and not just an over-excited Walmart employee getting slap-happy with Photoshop. Given the image is still up on Walmart’s site many hours after Nintendo Life broke the story it seems Nintendo hasn’t scrambled, although it could be because everyone involved is in bed.
