Something I’ve been meaning to do these last 10 years is review exercise games on the original Switch. Funny thing is, the Switch arrived to the world around the same time as someone else —my little daughter.
I actually bought a whole bunch of Switch games to review, including Ring Fit Adventure, Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star, Samba Di Amigo, multiple Just Dances (of course), Jump Rope Challenge, Switch Sports, and Real Boxing 2. I played a bunch of them, but never got around to writing reviews—fatherhood just got a bit too busy.
She’s not so little anymore (and neither am I) so if and when new exercise games for the Switch 2 come out, I’ll start reviewing them again just like the days of the Wii and Wii U. Maybe one of these days I’ll release a “Switch Exercise Games” post for old times’ sake.
That said, I am a “video game blogger” at heart, and so I wanted to share something cool about the Switch 2.
Your original Joy Cons from the Switch 1 will work on the Switch 2
Like most people, the only game we’re playing right now is Mario Kart World. My daughter and I have been having a lot of fun, but we feel bad that mom is left out because we only have the Joy Con 2s that came with the system.
Nintendo does sell Joy-Con 2s, but there are a few reasons why I held off on buying them.
- They cost a whopping $100 (they’re $5 cheaper on Amazon, but that’s small consolation for someone like me who was recently laid off).
- Joy-Con 2s only come in red and blue. I think all the confusion with tariffs and supply chains made them hold off from making controllers in other colors. One of the things I loved about the Switch was the variety of colors Joy-Cons came in, and how the system recognized the colors. I wasn’t about to fork over $100 for two colors I already had.
- Finally, there simply aren’t enough games out, and none that require the advanced features of the Joy-Con 2s (which are impressive: if you go through the Switch 2 Welcome Tour, you’ll learn about amazing new features such as how you can use the Joy-Con 2s as a mouse, the vastly improved rumble features). As new games are released which use those features it’ll make more sense to invest in new Joy-Con 2s.
Nintendo announced a while ago that Switch 1 Joy Con controllers would be compatible with the Switch 2, but they kind of silent on the details—for understandable reasons, they want people to fork over the $100 to buy Joy-Con 2s.
How to pair Joy-Con 1 controllers to the Switch 2
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to pair your Joy-Con 1 controllers to your Switch 2
1. Disconnect your Joy-Con 1s from your Switch (both physically and from the system menu).
First, make sure the Joy-Cons you want to pair to the Switch 2 are physically disconnected from the Switch.
Next, go to System Settings (the gear icon) and then select Controllers and Sensors. Scroll down all the way to the bottom until you see Disconnect Controllers.
You’ll need to press and hold the X button on your main controller.
At this point, all your controllers will be unpaired from your Switch. If you have extra Joy-Cons you want to pair back to the Switch, just connect them physically.
2. Pair the Joy-Cons to your Switch 2
Go to the Controllers menu (the icon of the controller) and select How to Pair Controllers
Click Other Pairing Methods to get to this screen.
From here, take your original Joy-Con controller and press and hold the “Sync” button (the tiny round black button that’s just below the LEDs).
You’ll see your Joy-Con pair to your Switch 2, and even better, it still knows what color they are.
Here, you can see that it successfully paired the purple and orange Joy-Cons, which we’re giving to mom attached to her very own Joy-Con grip (Nintendo seems to have stopped selling these on Amazon, but they’re still available from PowerA, an official licensee of Nintendo).
Do you need Joy-Con 2 adapters?
I noticed that sellers on Amazon are starting to sell Joy-Con adapters. I actually bought one myself before realizing that I didn’t really need one.
Most of these adapters simply do one thing: let you attach your Joy-Con 1 controllers to the Switch 2 magnetically. You can see in this photo that they don’t even bother to build contacts to let the Switch 2 charge the Joy-Cons.
These are useful if you want to use your Joy-Con 1s on your Switch 2 in handheld mode, assuming you’ve already charged your Joy-Con 1s. But otherwise they’re really not necessary.
Conclusion
Like I said, just posting this in case it’ll help anyone out there.
In case there are any old readers from the Wii days out there, I did write an article for my professional Web site documenting how I lost 20 pounds using ChatGPT. My day job is as a Web marketing / SEO professional, so I shared this mainly as a message to online marketers of how the nature of “online search” is changing. But on a personal level, it did really help me do what Nutrisystem failed to do so many years ago—change my habits.