Nintendo Switch Online Removes a Game for the First Time Ever

Nintendo is doing something the company has never done before: Next month, it will remove a retro game from its the Nintendo Switch Online’s classic catalog.

Since launching the Nintendo Switch Online classic service in 2018, the company behind Mario has never removed a game. Instead, it’s slowly built up a decently-sized library of first- and third-party retro games from across multiple console libraries. However, subscribers in Japan will be losing a retro game in March, even if they already downloaded it.

On February 27, Nintendo Japan quietly announced that Super Famicon game Super Formation Soccer will be removed from the Japan’s Nintendo Switch Online service on March 28.

Nintendo confirmed that even players who have already downloaded and installed the game on their Switch consoles will no longer be able to play Super Formation Soccer after March 28.

At the moment it appears that this title is only being removed from Nintendo Switch Online in Japan. In America the game was released as Super Soccer for the SNES. So far Nintendo hasn’t announced plans to remove this version from NSO’s classic catalog over here. That might be because while Super Formation Soccer was published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan, worldwide the game was published by Nintendo. So it would appear that whatever deal was in place to license the game is expiring soon in Japan, but that deal likely doesn’t apply in regions where Super Soccer was published by Nintendo itself.

While I doubt there was a giant audience for Super Soccer on Nintendo Switch, it’s still bad news to see a game removed from the classic catalog.

Although games are removed from Game Pass and PS Plus all the time, people can still buy those games digitally. With Nintendo, these games are locked behind the NSO subscription service and once removed, you can no longer play them on Switch. Just another good reason why Nintendo needs to bring back the Virtual Console for Switch 2.

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