Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I would be reasonably confident in offline games running in 20 years if you bought the cartridges, if you bought the estore versions I would be significantly less confident.

What i find to be cool about the switch is that you can still buy hardware game cardridges. I don‘t see a reason why these cardridges wouldn‘t work in 20 years anymore. I also never had issues playing the games offline.

Yes, your wife and your kids will be able to have seperate game progressions. I think you are able to create up to 8 of these „profiles“.

There are fitgirl repacks for most switch games. Emulators and all bundled.

I would be shocked if the newer versions don't have a software hack way before that.

The fact that the first version was easy to hack made later versions lower priority, but at some point for the sake of preservation or to have the OLED, the new ones will catch up.

Get a Switch, get it right now, also get this tool. The answer currently is yes, as long as the hardware still works & the battery doesn't explode, and a switch combined with the MIG tool will give you a robust local library of games. Get your rig + MIG & never connect that switch to the internet ever again.

Nintendo is notoriously litigious & overly protective of all things Nintendo. The MIG Switch cartridge looks AMAZING but obviously Nintendo fucking hates it & they will probably try to issue a patch that nerfs it and/or kills your Switch in the future.

would you remove the battery during those 20 years?

I've owned my switch since 2017 and Ive never used Nintendo's online services, I think they're actually DNS blocked or if I forgot to DNS block them then my console might be banned but it makes no difference to me, I get an error it can't connect to Nintendo when I start some games but other than having to click past that it's smooth sailing.

You can still have multiple users/profiles/saves without needing to link Nintendo accounts at all.

I think most of what I do with it now I could still do in 20 years although if I'm being totally honest one thing I use a lot is moonlight to remote stream games off my desktop and Im sure you could use it with current Gen PCs to stream but I'm guessing the between wifi and video codec standerds changing over time i dont think moonligbt will still work in 2044...but thats probably a bit outside the scope of your question.

An easier way to put it, the switch is currently probably the best modern console for piracy and that should tell you a lot about how little it depends on any kind of (not already cracked) authentication

I am trying to choose between buying a Nintendo Switch or a Nintendo DS.

Last time I checked a Nintendo DS is nowhere near as expensive as a Nintendo Switch, you could probably get both unless you only have $300 in your bank account.

If you don't count multiplayer and buy only physical copies of your game, you will be able to play for as long the hardware will function. You can also hack your switch and keep a copy of every game you may need somewhere in an hard-drive too.

The switch is very weak hardware wise but also very reliable I feel. For being a handheld device they're surprisingly tough and cartridges do have a much better chance at longevity than disks so I'd say of all consoles I'd put Switch on the top for longevity and best odds of working well 20 years from now. Do note this is ONLY true of cartridge games. If you have Nintendo eShop games I don't expect them to work 20 years from now because that eShop might not be around and I'm confident it uses some form of phone home checkin to verify DRM. That is likely fixable but out of scope for this discussion.

As for Steam Deck / other handheld PCs the games are less likely survive 20 years, games have already started to disappear from Steam (unpopular ones) and I very much doubt every game I have today will be available/playable. Because Steam will be dropping support and not every game is DRM free in ways that mean you can run them once they're dropped from Steam. The PC handhelds also tend to work very poorly without Internet since Steam wants to phone home from time to time. As for the hardware I think the Steam Deck might last 20 years given it's Linux based. Stuff like the ROG Ally will be hard to make work due to the outdated Windows on it and the likelihood that you can't upgrade it and games/steam won't work without an upgrade.

I would lean towards either a DS, or switch emulation (using a device such as the Steam Deck, so games that require gyro input such as Super Mario 3D World - can still be played fine)

The DS is really affordable second-hand, and the usual third party SD card carts work just as well. People seem to really like the XL models, so may be worth considering one of those

As for the Switch, you'll likely be able to play your existing physical carts in 20 years time. It's still Nintendo's latest console though, so there's no telling what they may decide to do in future. I think if you have a jailbroken switch you could be in for a difficult time if newer carts use different hardware encryption keys that require a newer firmware...

With emulation though you get to actually own the games and play them on whatever device you want, at any time. The Mii maker and gyro setup does require following some guides to get going, but this stuff is well supported for the Deck (probably similar story for the alternative Windows handhelds but haven't checked). Yuzu's early access Android app already has gyro configured, using the sensors built into your phone. Lastly you can do multiplayer with other Yuzu players over the internet, completely independent of Nintendo's online functionality

i still use my super nintendo to play original secret of mana and link to the past, so i don't see why not.

I'd get both, I have both 🙂

Strangely enough, I only play online with the DS, since long before having the Switch and even today lol.