Wednesday, January 14, 2026

My Nintendo Switch Year 2025

Tourian's 2025: You played 21 games and 414 hours this year!

Yesterday Nintendo has made your play statistics for 2025 available, which is about a month later than in the last years. But that's actually a very good thing because now these statistics include the month of December, which they hadn't before, potentially creating a significant gap. In this case Metroid Prime 4: Beyond wouldn't have appeared at all...

Anyway, out of those 21 games that I've played, nine come from the Nintendo Switch Online offerings, which I often just play for the Platinum Points, so that really leaves twelve. And two games I had only launched because I wanted to quickly check something out. These were Echoes of Wisdom for the updates with the favorites back in June and Age of Calamity, where I wanted to get a sense for how it feels to return to it after Age of Imprisonment. So, that leaves ten games that saw some proper dedication. And these are the top three:

Your most-played games: Hyrule Warriors (72 hours), Age of Imprisonment (110 hours), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (53 hours). You spent the mos time with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

Unsurprisingly, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is my most-played Nintendo game of the year. It could have been Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Editions, which I was playing in preparation, but then came Hollow Knight: Silksong (which I didn't play on Switch). I've only done about a third of the Adventure Mode, so there is still a lot of time that I can and eventually will sink into this game again.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons also saw some more commitment later in the year, because I was preparing for the 3.0 update. (By the way, Nintendo has already released it today, one day early again.) I was adding all the villagers I wanted to have in the end, before Tulin and Mineru arrive, and trying to get their photos. So, I was back to playing it on a daily basis, as opposed to only once per week. And this will continue in early 2025.

The overview now offers your play time data for your most-played game each month, which makes it a bit easier to compile a list for the rest, though the hours aren't fully accurate:

  1. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment (110 hours)
  2. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (72 hours)
  3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (53 hours)
  4. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (53 hours)
  5. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (31 hours) 
  6. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (30 hours)
  7. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (20 hours) 

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker were my main games in the first half of the year. Due to some other hobby project, I wasn't playing much on my Nintendo Switch at the time – for less than an hour per day on average.

Hours per month: Jan 27, Feb 22, Mar 17, Apr 23, May 26, Jun 24, Jul 47, Aug 17, Sep 2, Oct 6, Nov 132, Dec 76

In the above graph you can also clearly tell when I was playing the three most important games for me in the year: SilksongAge of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4Silksong left a gap in September and October, where I was only doing my weekly Animal Crossing rounds. And at the end of October I got my Nintendo Switch 2, where I was also playing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom in early November to check out their Nintendo Switch 2 Editions and collect all the voice memories.

And I already have too many plans for this year... Currently I'm still playing Mario Kart World and afterwards I finally want to experience Super Mario Odyssey for the first time. But I'd also love to replay a number of recent Nintendo games in their harder/hardest difficulties: Echoes of WisdomAge of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4. And I also want to play through Silksong again and prepare for its upcoming DLC, while Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition wants to be continued as well. It's a lot of time with games that I have already beaten, but they are all worth the extra round.

Fortunately, I have a feeling that 2026 won't bring as many must-play titles for me as 2025 did. Maybe there will be a Zelda remake, where I'm hoping for the Oracle games, and maybe some DLC for Mario Kart World, but I don't expect to be busy with new games for hundreds of hours. And that would be completely fine...

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