10 Near-Perfect Nintendo Switch Games You Probably Missed

Polygon has compiled a list of ten near-perfect Nintendo Switch games that largely went unplayed despite their quality, highlighting how the console's massive library has buried genuine gems beneath thousands of digital and physical releases. The selection spans puzzle games, action titles, rhythm crossovers, and offbeat indie experiments — each offering something distinct that the platform's biggest blockbusters don't. For players who have exhausted the usual Mario and Zelda suspects, this list reads like a curated backlog of games that respect your time and creativity.

The significance here isn't just that these games are good — it's that they're accessible right now on hardware millions already own, yet most Switch owners have never touched them. Several launched as digital-only titles in a cluttered eShop, one released exclusively as a physical cartridge with no digital option, and others arrived as mobile ports that improved substantially on Switch. Understanding why they slipped through the cracks helps you decide which ones are worth retrieving from obscurity.

Part Time UFO — HAL Laboratory's Charming Physics Puzzler

Released in October 2020, Part Time UFO comes from HAL Laboratory, the studio behind the Kirby series, and originally debuted on mobile before arriving on Switch with additional features and modes. The premise is disarmingly simple: you control a cute UFO equipped with a claw machine, taking on odd jobs like moving cows into a farmer's truck or assembling dinosaur skeletons in a museum. The claw machine physics provide enough depth to keep each task engaging without becoming frustrating, and the Switch version adds co-op multiplayer so a friend can join the chaos.

What makes this stand out for players is how the physics system transforms routine pickup-and-place tasks into miniature puzzles — weight distribution, momentum, and the claw's swing all matter, so you're constantly adjusting your approach mid-job. The co-op mode means a second player can grab their own Joy-Con and either help or hinder, turning precise stacking jobs into collaborative comedy. Since the mobile versions are no longer available for purchase on iOS or Android, the Switch port is now the definitive way to play — and the only way to buy it new.

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PlatinumGames released Astral Chain in August 2019, bringing their signature combat flair to a futuristic police task force setting where players battle interdimensional monsters using a living weapon called a Legion. The studio's pedigree includes Bayonetta and NieR: Automata, yet this original IP found only a modest audience of over a million players — healthy by Platinum's standards, but tiny compared to Nintendo's first-party giants. Nintendo itself published the title, which likely helped visibility, but not enough to break through to the broader Switch install base.

For action‑game fans, the Legion system is the hook: you steer both the main character and a tethered companion at the same time, making fights that rely on knowing where things are and when to act instead of just reacting. The game mixes mystery‑solving moments with fast, adrenaline‑driven battles, and its cyberpunk look stands out on the Switch. If you’ve chased tougher Platinum titles for challenge, Astral Chain gives you several difficulty levels that bring the core mechanics closer to everyone without loosening the design.

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Doinksoft's Demon Throttle launched in July 2022 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive with a catch: it was only available as a physical cartridge, never on the eShop. Even The Doinksoft Collection, which bundled it with the studio's debut Gato Roboto, remained physical-only. This distribution choice turned the game into a genuine collector's item that many players still don't know exists. The game itself is a scrolling shooter in the vein of Pocky & Rocky, leaning into old-school arcade visuals and audio that evoke a specific era of mall arcades and weird Nintendo cartridges.

The physical-only strategy means acquisition now requires hunting secondary markets, which prices out casual curiosity — but for shooter enthusiasts, the design delivers tight, pattern-based gameplay that rewards memorization and precision. The lack of a digital option is a deliberate artistic and commercial statement from the publisher, positioning Demon Throttle as an artifact rather than a service. If you see a copy at a reasonable price and enjoy classic run-and-gun design, it's a piece of Switch history worth preserving in your library.

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Released in June 2019, Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer merges Brace Yourself Games' rhythm roguelike with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's world and aesthetics. The crossover feels surprising at first — moving and attacking strictly on the beat contradicts decades of action-adventure muscle memory — but the friction resolves quickly into a surprisingly delightful flow. The game remains faithful to Hyrule's layout while demanding a fundamentally different way of engaging with it.

What this means for players is a Zelda experience that rewires your instincts: exploration becomes musical improvisation, combat becomes pattern recognition, and dungeon navigation becomes rhythm maintenance. The soundtrack reimagines classic Zelda themes through NecroDancer's electronic lens, and the result feels like neither a cash-in nor a gimmick — it's a genuine synthesis. Polygon's assessment calls it possibly the best Zelda spinoff ever made, and for players who missed it during the initial release window, it remains fully playable and fresh on Switch today.

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Capcom originally released Shinsekai: Into the Depths on Apple Arcade in March 2020 before porting it to Switch, where it found an appreciative but small audience. The game tasks players with navigating labyrinthine underwater ruins of past civilizations while managing oxygen reserves and contending with a not-entirely-helpful robot companion. Its Metroidvania structure rewards backtracking with new traversal abilities, and the environments deliver a sense of oppressive beauty that the mobile roots occasionally undermine with simplified UI or control concessions.

For players willing to overlook the occasional mobile-legacy roughness, the core loop of oxygen management, pressure-depth mechanics, and gradual capability expansion creates genuine tension — you're always calculating whether you have enough air to reach the next checkpoint or salvage cache. The Switch port benefits from traditional controls and a larger screen, making the environmental detail and creature design more legible. It's a Capcom title that feels unlike anything else in their modern catalog, and the Switch version is the definitive way to experience it.

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Nintendo published Good Job! in March 2020 as a surprise release from Dutch developer Paladin Studios, which has since closed. The game reframes mundane office tasks — plugging in projectors, moving furniture, routing cables — as physics-based puzzles with multiple solutions, many of them gleefully destructive. A multiplayer mode lets a second player add to the chaos, and the satire targeting workplace dynamics and nepotism lands with unexpected sharpness beneath the cute visuals.

The player experience hinges on creative problem-solving: every objective can be completed the "right" way or the "fun" way, and the game grades you on speed and collateral damage rather than correctness. This encourages replay and experimentation, especially in co-op where coordination (or lack thereof) becomes the real puzzle. As one of Nintendo's more unusual publishing partnerships, Good Job! exemplifies the kind of small-scale, high-concept title that gets lost in the eShop flood — but its design density makes it worth seeking out.

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WayForward's Vitamin Connection arrived in January 2020, putting players in control of Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl on a mission to destroy pathogens across six colorful worlds. The asymmetric multiplayer is the standout feature: one player holds a Joy-Con vertically to move and shoot, while the other holds theirs sideways to rotate and aim. This control scheme isn't a gimmick — it creates a genuine division of labor that makes cooperation feel natural rather than forced, and the endearing visuals and music reinforce the lighthearted tone.

For Switch owners, this is one of the few games that genuinely justifies the hardware's unique controller design. The vertical/horizontal split isn't arbitrary — it maps to distinct gameplay roles that require communication and timing, turning a twin-stick shooter into a social coordination exercise. WayForward's pedigree with the Shantae series shows in the polish, and the game's relative obscurity means most Switch players have never experienced one of the platform's most clever co-op implementations.

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Tarsier Studios, known for the grim Little Nightmares series, released The Stretchers in November 2019 as a sharp tonal pivot: a lighthearted, physics-based ambulance game for two players. You and a partner load patients onto stretchers, navigate obstacle-filled environments, and deliver them to the hospital — all while the game's physics engine turns every doorway, staircase, and uneven surface into a potential disaster. The campaign is brief but densely packed with unconventional challenges that consistently elicit laughter.

The co-op focus is mandatory — single-player is technically possible but misses the point entirely, as the comedy emerges from two people struggling to maneuver a floppy physics body through a narrow hallway. Tarsier's expertise in environmental storytelling and atmosphere translates surprisingly well to slapstick; the pleasant visuals contrast with the chaotic physics to create a consistent tone of cheerful incompetence. The main criticism is length — the campaign ends just as the mechanics hit their stride — but what's there is polished, distinctive, and best experienced with a friend.

Fast RMX — The F-Zero Successor That Launched With Switch

Shin'en Multimedia's Fast RMX was one of three indie titles available at the Switch's March 2017 launch, continuing a series that began on WiiWare and Wii U. It aggregates all courses and DLC from Fast Racing Neo while adding new Switch-exclusive tracks, delivering a high-speed anti-gravity racer that explicitly channels F-Zero and Wipeout. The computer opponents are aggressive, though rubber-banding difficulty can undercut the satisfaction of a clean run. The series performed well enough to warrant a Switch 2 sequel, Fast Fusion, but the original deserved a larger audience.

For racing fans starved of Nintendo's own futuristic racer, Fast RMX fills the void with technical competence — 60fps performance, a solid track roster, and a boost mechanic that rewards risk-taking on the racing line. The rubber-banding is the o