Getting Back Into the Swing of Things!

    Hey friends, if you're anything like me, it's a little hard to switch gears between vacation and work mode, so a lot of the past few days, I've felt like I just didn't accomplish all that much. Today I would just like to take a little time and give a few thoughts on this phenomenon, and also just talk about my own mindset for a little bit. I hope that's alright with you all, and let's jump into it!

What To Think About?

    I understand that everyone works on their own schedule, and that there is no objective "right way" to do things, but especially when that schedule changes, it can feel weird to get back to what you were doing. I've said many times that the hardest part of keeping up this blog every week is just coming up with some new topic to write about. Sometimes it goes really well, and I have a streak of posts or news stories that I have enough to write on, such as if there's a Nintendo Direct or something like that, but many times, I just have to stick to something that I haven't thought about for a while. Of course, over the past year or so, I've been working on myself a little bit, hoping to make some changes in my outlook on life, I've continued to enjoy the things that I'm doing with the church that I work at, and using some of those experiences to care for people better, and to be able to show up for myself and others in a more meaningful and effective way. I'm still not in the place that I would like to be when it comes to this type of life adjustment, but it's a work in progress for sure. If nothing else, people seem to like me a lot in the place where I work, as well as outside of a work setting. I have a lot of really great friends (some of which I haven't seen in a little while, but I hope they still consider me a close friend as I think of them), and a whole lot to be thankful for. All of that is just to say that I've begun posting some deeper and more personal things here recently, and I hope you haven't minded that too terribly much. 

Uh oh, I'm on my Soapbox Again

    I have to talk a little something about the nature of speculation and rumors here for a minute, because I'm getting really sick of a certain trend that has been going for at least months, and to some extent for years now. The Nintendo Switch has now been out for almost Eight years, and the newest Nintendo console has been said to be announced before the end of the fiscal year in March. Since that was announced a few months ago by the President of Nintendo, the rumors have been going crazy. Right away, there were rumors floating around about the impending reveal of the console, and that it would be out by the holiday season 2024, based on nothing. Again, back in September, all kinds of analysts and Youtubers were coming out of the woodwork to predict that Nintendo was going to do a Direct where they would reveal the new console and announce the release date for the holiday season. All of this, I assume, was also based on nothing, despite the fact that many seemed to have some "insider scoop" from a secret agent at the company. Turns out that little Timmy's dad actually didn't work at Nintendo after all. These rumors continued into the next few months, talking all about hardware that Nintendo would be announcing just around the corner, and it turned out to be correct, in the form of the Nintendo Alarmo (which I wrote about previously) as a fancy alarm clock. Definitely not what the ravenous masses were wanting, and so they became even crazier with rumors based on very little information, we must be getting the name and release date before the end of the year, right? The answer was a resounding no, despite what all of the content creators were saying, and in the past few weeks, it has continued to be crazy. The current rumor being that there's going to be a big industry event on this Thursday, January 16, where they'll announce it. I'm not getting my hopes up for anything, because truly I don't know if any of this is credible information, and I don't want to give these people any "street cred" just in case it happens to be true. I feel like if I said, "the switch successor is going to be announced this week" every week, then I shouldn't be praised for getting anything right, and the same goes for all of these different content creators trying to play Nostrodomus out here. I know it's a hard job to do this kind of work, I completely understand, and if you get views, then it's a good thing because that's how the money is made, but I'm just personally a bit sick of it. The same thing happened with the alleged "Switch Pro" which ended up never happening, instead, just bringing about the Switch OLED, which had the same processing power for the most part, but with a better screen on the system itself.

    While I'm on the topic, it has been so long that Nintendo hasn't said anything about their new system that the companies working on accessories for the new console have started showing them off, despite the fact that we've gotten no official word from Nintendo on what it will be called or what it will look like. It seems like a really crazy situation, and I can't imagine that Nintendo will want to work with any of the developers who have let this information leak through their different channels. I can understand not wanting to get behind your competition, but I think it's crazy that so many have leaked information about this new system, especially given Nintendo's track record of going after people who have revealed secret information. It just seems like a bad idea for the companies, since they're making peripherals for those systems, and that's probably the main lifeblood of the whole company. The day that I'm writing this is actually the day that Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is coming out, so as to be expected, they put out a launch trailer for the game, and the comments are full of the standard people being upset that there's still not any information for the Switch Successor and comments talking about water buffalos (which is a pretty new development for the world of specifically Nintendo protests, they're just upset, so they keep talking about water buffalo).

    It should be stated that the Switch 2 was announced on Thursday, so that rumor did amount to something after all, but we have to wait until April 2 until we get more information about it! I'm really excited about it, and at least now we have a definite date to look forward to instead of just speculating about when it was going to happen. Along with the very little information that was given, there appeared to be a shadow announcement of a new Mario Kart game coming at some point during the launch window for this new title, which is exciting, considering the most recent original entry came from the Wii U's Mario Kart 8 (later re-released on Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe). I'll talk some more about it later, and I may just wait until we have more solid information, but it's exciting to know some aspect of the plan at least.

    Gosh, this post has really gotten away from me, but I hope you're all doing alright getting back into the swing of things as we transition back into work mode from holidays and inclement weather (if you live near me, at the very least). I'm ready for a good year, and I hope you'll stick along with me as I travel through yet another one, keeping some track of my progress here on this blog. Thanks so much for reading, everyone! I really appreciate it, obviously I got a little off track here, but I think it's worth talking about at least a little bit, since it's really the biggest news happening to Nintendo fans right now, which is to say, a lack of news. I hope you've had a great transition back into things, or you're at least making progress towards getting back to it! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Games Enthusiast, and I'll talk to you again soon!