From a new Metroid to Virtual Game Cards: Everything we saw at the March 2025’s edition of Nintendo Direct

Note: This feature was first published on 28 March 2025.

While we await the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct that is set to happen on 2nd April, the company is preceding it with another Nintendo Direct that just happened, containing a myriad of announcements and trailers for games both new and long-teased, along with a major change in how digital games are handled on the Switch.

This may be the last Nintendo Direct to solely feature the OG Switch, but that didn’t stop Nintendo from making some pretty salient announcements. These headlines are just some of the biggest news to come out of the March 2025 Nintendo Direct.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

Starting off with possibly the most surprising announcement, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the follow-up to 2013’s Tomodachi Life for the Nintendo 3DS, a life sim game featuring the iconic user-created Miis.

The Mii holds a rather awkward spot in the background of Nintendo’s Switch era, with the discontinuation of the Miiverse and Miitomo in the early Switch years, and the Mii creator no longer being its own app. But it still has some staying power with Nintendo fans, especially those in the Tomodachi Life fanbase. Much like its predecessor, Living the Dream will see user-created Miis living together and forming a community on an island, somewhat like Animal Crossing. Beyond that, we don’t have much details about gameplay, but it seems that Nintendo retained that janky text-to-speech voice that Tomodachi Life had.

We also don’t have an exact release date, but we do know that it will release in 2026.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has had a long history of teasers and reveals ever since we saw a glimpse of it back in 2017. The first gameplay trailer was released in June 2024’s Nintendo Direct, and while it gave us an idea of what general gameplay would look like, the newest trailer expands upon that, with some story details to boot.

The game takes place on the planet Viewros, which Samus has mysteriously been transported too. Along with footage of some first-person shooting, we also know that Samus will get a new set of psychic abilities, which, according to the trailer, allows for new interactions with the environment (possibly for some puzzle elements), as well as changing the trajectory of her beams after they’ve been shot.

The end of the trailer also teased a new red and black suit for Samus, after being decreed a ‘chosen one’. We don’t have an exact release date for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, but the general timeframe of 2025 remains the same. With any luck, we might be hearing about it again with the Switch 2 Direct, which may confirm or debunk suspicions of it being a Switch 2 launch title.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A

Nintendo is stepping up their reveals for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The game just received a detailed trailer earlier this month, and with this Nintendo Direct, we have some new information about what to expect in the game’s setting, Lumiose City, and how battles with other trainers will work.

One of the game’s main features is the day/night cycle. At night, Battle Zones will appear, where Pokémon trainers compete against each other in the Z-A Royale, vying to become Rank A trainers. You begin at Rank Z, and it’s said that those who reach the top rank get a wish of theirs granted. The game allows you sneak up on other trainers to initiate a battle, which gives you a surprise attack advantage.

The city appears more peaceful in the day, though that doesn’t mean no Pokémon battles. There are numerous Wild Zones across the city that you can enter, where wild Pokémon that you can capture roam free. These areas are perhaps the most similar to Legends Arceus, Z-A’s predecessor that took place in the wilderness. Pokémon can also be found outside of the Wild Zones, including on rooftops.

No exact release date for this yet, but it’s still set to come out in Late 2025.

Rhythm Heaven Groove

Rhythm Heaven Groove is the successor to 2015’s Rhythm Heaven Megamix, and the first Rhythm Heaven game to appear on the Nintendo Switch. The rhythm game series’s defining feature is perhaps how quirky the individual stages are, with each stage and song featuring a different theme that could, quite literally, be about anything. 

From the trailer, it seems like the core of the game is unchanged, with various themes teased including hopping Maneki-neko cats, a catch-and-chop cooking game and jump rope skipping. But whatever the theme is, you’ll still be tapping to the beat, the soundtrack for which is done by musician Tsunku, who composed the songs for past Rhythm Heaven games. Rhythm Heaven Groove will be available in 2026.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion

Moving on to non-exclusive Nintendo titles, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a new beat ’em up developed by Tribute Games and published by Dotemu, featuring arcade-style graphics that bring to mind similar games from the 90s. 

Taking the storyline from 2006’s Annihilation series of comics, the villian, Annihilus, has launched the Annihilation Wave, an attack that stretches across the galaxy, and you’ll get to play as 15 different Marvel heroes attempting to stop him. While the full character list isn’t out, some of the supes featured in the trailer include Nova, Wolverine, Venom, Captain America, Storm, Phyla-Veil and Spider Man. The designs for the sprites seem to take inspiration from various eras in Marvel’s history as well. The game is set to release in 2025 for the Switch, PS5 and PS4, Xbox, and PC via Steam.

Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake

With the release of Dragon Quest III’s HD-2D remake earlier in November (read our review of that here), Square Enix is completing the Erdrick trilogy remasters with the Dragon Quest I-II HD-2D Remake. The reveal, which kicked off the Direct, is only a teaser that’s a minute-long, but we got to see some settings rendered in Square Enix’s HD-2D art style. The two remasters will presumably be bundled into one game, and will be released sometime in 2025.

Virtual Game Cards

Sprinkled in the middle of all these trailers was a rather interesting take on digital games by Nintendo. One advantage to having physical game cards is that they can be lent to others who want to try the game, or otherwise loaded up on a second system, without purchasing it again. Nintendo seems to be extending that flexibility to digital purchases via these new ‘Virtual Game Cards‘.

Digital games will soon be downloaded as these Virtual Game Cards. On your primary console, they functions exactly the same as existing digital games, except that they can now be ‘loaded’ and ‘ejected’ from the console, for which an internet connection will be required. When you eject a Virtual Game Card, it can then be loaded onto a second system that’s linked to your Nintendo account.

While digital games can currently be played across consoles, one crucial setback the current system has is that other accounts on the secondary console cannot access the digital game that your account purchased. With the Virtual Game Card, that restriction is gone; other accounts can play that digital game too. You can also play the game on the secondary console without an internet connection, which is something that currently isn’t possible either. You will, however, need to link the primary and secondary console before you start sharing games (via local wireless and an internet connection), but this only needs to be done the first time.

Additionally, you’ll soon be able to lend your Virtual Game Cards to Nintendo Account Family Group members. You can pair yours and your group member’s console via local wireless and an internet connection, and once you lend out the game, your family group member will now be able to play on their system. There are a couple restrictions to this: You can only lend one Virtual Game Card to one group member at a time, and games will automatically be returned to the owner after 14 days. Games attained through Nintendo Switch Online memberships also cannot be lent out.

Notably, Virtual Game Cards can be used across Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles, but Nintendo Switch 2 exclusives, along with Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games, can only be loaded up on another Switfch 2. Virtual Game Cards are set to be implemented for digital games in a system update later in April for the Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED. The Nintendo Switch 2 will presumably support this feature at launch.

Other announcements

Those were the biggest announcements from this month’s Nintendo Direct. Other games featured include No Sleep for Kaname Date, a new entry in the AI: The Somnium Files series, the dark, Pac-Man inspired metroidvania Shadow Labyrinth, remasters for the rhythm games PATAPON 1 and 2, Switch ports for the Monument Valley series, as well as Tamagotchi Plaza, among others.