In a rather surprising bit of news today, Nintendo of Japan has announced that one of the retro titles available through its Switch Online subscription service will actually be getting delisted soon. On March 28th, 2025, Super Formation Soccer will leave the Super Famicom App and subscribers will no longer be able to play it. This is the first time a game has left NSO rather than being added to it, which sets a bad precedent for the future.
Over on Twitter, the always outspoken Hideki Kamiya voiced his displeasure at the announcement with his typical snarky style. “Hey hey hey, I guess subscriptions are no good after all,” he wrote. “Seriously, bring back the Virtual Console… don’t be so mean.” It’s hard not to agree with him in this instance. Nintendo has no reason to delist the title and while there are some licensing agreements the company needs to make for NSO, until now nothing has left NSO during its seven-year history.
Strangely enough, Super Formation Soccer (which is titled Super Soccer in the US) will seemingly remain on the Western NSO apps after the above date, but the idea planted here is a bad one. None of Nintendo’s first-party titles should be at risk of delisting, but any of the third-party games now have a potentially nebulous future. This would include titles such as Perfect Dark, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, and pretty much the entire Genesis library.
Nintendo has already confirmed that Switch Online will continue on the Switch 2, so if games can now be delisted from the service over time, we might be seeing a lot more of it throughout the Switch 2’s lifecycle. While some people might be fine with not directly owning their games, having options is never a bad thing. At least if you could buy Super Formation Soccer, it being delisted wouldn’t mean you can never play it again.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
