Nintendo confirms Switch Online retro game removal in US and Europe
Super Soccer’s delisting marks the first time a NSO game has been removed
Nintendo has confirmed it’s removing a game from Switch Online’s retro library in the US and Europe for the first time.
Since Switch Online’s launch in 2018, a steady stream of classic 8-bit and 16-bit games has been added to the subscription service.
To date, more than 300 games have been added to Switch Online, spread across the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and Sega Mega Drive / Genesis libraries.
However, this week marked the first indication that games could be removed from the service in future, as well as added.
The Japanese eShop confirmed this week that Super Formation Soccer (known in the West as Super Soccer) will be removed from the Super Famicom (SNES) library on March 28.
Now, Nintendo has added a similar message to the US and European Nintendo eShops, pictured below, confirming that the title will also be removed in these regions on March 28.
The removal marks the first real indication that the Switch Online library is not a permanent repository, and that while it’s likely that every listed first-party Nintendo game will remain there until the entire service shuts down, there’s always a chance that certain third-party games could be removed at some point.
Responding to the news on X, former PlatinumGames co-founder and current Clovers Studio founder Hideki Kamiya – who regularly posts about his love of classic games – criticised the move, asking for the return of the Virtual Console service, which was available on Wii, Wii U and 3DS and allowed individual games to be bought.
“Hey hey hey, I guess subscriptions are no good after all,” Kamiya wrote. “Seriously, bring back the Virtual Console… don’t be so mean.”
It should also be noted that numerous retro games were delisted from Virtual Console over the years too, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yoshi’s Cookie, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Aleste, SimCity, Street Fighter II, Final Fight 1-3, Super Turrican 2 and Super R-Type.
