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A number of games published on Nintendo Switch limit which control schemes are available in different play configurations, and it often makes games objectively less accessible.
I spent Sunday of this past weekend playing through Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake on Switch 2. A reimagining of a more than 20 year old horror title, the game sees the player and their in-game sister attempt to escape a lost Japanese town haunted by a history of ritual sacrifice, armed only with a camera that can weaken ghosts caught on film.
As someone who has fond memories of playing the original game, but remembered very few specifics, I really enjoyed spending a day with the curtains drawn, backing away from ghosts as I desperately tried to wind the film in my camera so I could scramble to take another photo that might, if in focus and aimed correctly, save me from being dragged to the ground by the ghost of a priest or a drowning maiden.
While I played most of the game in docked mode so I could see all the nice shiny graphics on my living room TV, and share the experience with my wife who was watching along, I played a little of the game in handheld mode while my wife had a work appointment.
The brief amount of time I spent playing in Handheld mode was way easier for me to enjoy, and I’m honestly kind of frustrated by a limitation put in place by the game’s developers.
I have a coordination disability called dyspraxia. It’s a condition which impacts my fine motor control and coordination, and is the reason I struggle with dexterity based tasks such as tying my shoelaces, handling small objects in building projects, and being precise when interacting with video game controllers.
In particular, I have always struggled with first person perspective games that require fast and precise aiming such as online first person shooters, and horror games about quickly pointing a camera at a ghost that’s scuttling toward you on the floor.
On Switch 2, Fatal Fame 2 Remake supports motion controls for aiming your camera. This is great – while I struggle to coordinate my thumbs accurately or move a mouse with precision, I tend to find that motion controls come a lot more naturally to me. The amount I need to move my controller more naturally correlates to the movement on screen, and I can more easily coordinate wide sweeping movements with my hands in 3D space than I can movements of my thumbs.
The issue – Motion Controls are only supported in Fatal Frame 2 on Switch 2 in handheld mode, not when docked.
In a vacuum, I think I can probably guess why this game design decision was perhaps made. When in handheld mode moving the entire handheld 1:1 maps to moving the camera. You’re holding a rectangle with two hands, moving your viewpoint as you aim. In handheld mode motion controls feel like you’re pointing a real camera in your hands, something that’s not fully replicated when playing on the TV.
The issue is, this kind of limitation of modes to specific console configurations limits the accessibility potential of alternative control schemes, and it’s an issue we’ve been seeing since the early years of the original Switch’s lifespan.
Back in 2018 Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were released for the Nintendo Switch. The pair of Generation 1 Pokémon Remakes were heavily marketed toward players of the then recently released Pokémon Go, and as such were designed primarily around motion controls for catching Pokémon.
The mandatory motion controls when playing in docked mode, while perhaps intuitive or inviting for some players, were an undeniable accessibility barrier for others. Many players with chronic pain disabilities, limited ranges of movement, or other physical disabilities found the motion based control scheme prohibitive to play.
The thing about it that was perhaps most frustrating, the game did feature a mode that allowed players to use buttons and analogue sticks to throw their Pokéballs instead, but it was limited to use in handheld mode only. The game’s developers made accommodations to allow the game to be played in settings where motion controls may not be convenient, but did not allow disabled players to make use of that more accessible control scheme when playing docked on their TV.
Now, in both the examples of Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eeevee and Fatal Frame 2 Remake, I know some players are going to ask “Is it that big of a deal? Surely you can just play handheld if you need the handheld exclusive control scheme?”. To that I would say it’s not always that simple. A player who needs button controls in Let’s Go Pikachu may struggle with the weight of the Nintendo Switch when in handheld mode, and may need to play in docked mode to reduce prolonged weight pressure on their wrists while playing. A Fatal Frame 2 Remake player may have weak eyesight and struggle to see the handheld screen on the Switch 2 rather than playing on a TV or a monitor where they’ve got a larger screen and find things easier to see. A disabled player may simply, as I did, want to play on the TV to share their gaming experience with a loved one, and may not want to trade off control input accessibility to make that happen.
I’ve deliberately picked two games to highlight here that are bookends of sorts for the Nintendo Switch, a first party game from the beginning of the Switch 1’s lifespan and a third party game recently released on Switch 2, but there are a number of similar examples spread across the past decade. Mario Galaxy (in the Super Mario 3D All Stars collection for example) featured support for motion controls for pointer functionality when docked, but in handheld the game mandated touchscreen controls, which for many players was much more challenging to take advantage of during mid level gameplay. You could detach the Joy-Cons and use motion controls in Tabletop mode with disconnected Joy-Cons, but you couldn’t use motion controls when playing with the system as a handheld. The developers could have let you use motion controls in handheld mode on a technical level, I know this because that’s how Fatal Frame 2 Remake works, and that demonstrates the effect very well.
The point of this video isn’t so much about these specific examples, but the general ongoing trend being seen with games developed for Nintendo’s Hybrid console. Developers are often designing input methods that may be more accessible for certain players, then arbitrarily limiting which console configurations get access to them. I recognise that sometimes a control scheme literally cannot work on a particular system configuration, I’m not complaining for example about a lack of touch screen availability in games when docked. I’m simply arguing that, if a control scheme has been developed and it COULD function across hardware form factors, there’s a lot of potential benefit in making it accessible in all system setups, even if you don’t think that it’s an ideal or developer intended control method for players in that hardware configuration.
Sure, using motion controls in Fatal Frame 2 Remake is a little less of a 1:1 recreation of wielding a camera if you were to be playing on a TV compared to holding a screen in your hands, but if you’ve already gone to the effort to make motion controls an option for your game, the amount of work needed to add support when docked is going to be fairly minimal, particularly when compared to the potential accessibility improvements that it could bring to your game.
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