Nintendo Switch - What do I need and where to buy it

[FuckYouChrisAndThatHorse]

Help a Luddite out. Children want a switch, they want to be able to play with friends 4-player.

What games will suit dcs who are 5, 9 and 15? That I might want to play? We will get mariokart.

Any advice on where to get a good deal or extras that are essential and extras that I won’t need at all?

We’ve got an old WiiU, do the controllers work on both?

TIA

I'll be watching this thread. I have 2 boys a year apart and I thought they would need one each therefore have said no. But could I get one between them? Would that work?

We got one for ds last year.
I didn’t realise that data seems to be stored on the switch and so after a while we needed to buy a memory card for it.
We just got it from Argos, not a bargain with a discount but it came with a preloaded game. We have steadily added to the games and have around 20 now.
Sadly no, your old Wii U controllers won’t work with it.
We ended up spending quite a lot on extra controllers and pro controllers but the good news is they don’t take batteries, you just charge them up.
It’s very handy for just bundling up and taking away if you need to, particularly with the travel case (again, from Argos I think).
We have got a few games that are one player only which is a bit rubbish.
He’s 7 and is most keen on splatoon, street fighter (we downloaded that one), Zelda and super Mario smash Bros. Those ones are the current most popular ones.

Don't get the blue and red controllers, for some reason the red ones keep breaking but the grey ones are fine. Some controllers are plug in ones, the usb is very glitchy so they often don't work

Any chance you could buy more than 1? You say 4 of you want to play it. Leaving you aside for now, I don't think sharing a Switch between 3 kids will work

Do you need to buy extra controllers to play it out the box or does it come with one?

You can play it as it is, it will work as it comes out of the box. But it only comes with 2 detachable controllers so you will need to buy additional ones for 3+ players to play at once in eg Mario Kart.

I would wait for Black Friday and then shop around- Amazon did a decent deal last year which included a game. I also got a carry case which holds all the games too which is useful.

We bought one for our DD’s last Christmas. Most shops were around the same price and I found no huge saving on Black Friday, although that may be different this year with the new Switch being released. I bought the best bundle I saw at the time.

We have MarioKart and Just Dance, it was quite fun on Christmas Day having a dance off. Me and DH may or may not have secret MarioKart competitions when the DD’s are not around

Ugh I should have said ours was from Smyths.

This is all really helpful, thank you.

We got one for my son for Xmas last year. Be aware you will need a couple of games for a bit of choice and these can be expensive too.

We had nectar points and doubled up on points £100 to £200 and only had to pay £80 cash.

Wait until Black Friday at the end of the month we got ours then, we didn’t get loads of discount but got some free games. Mario Party is a good game for family to play together.

I've bought a SwitchLite for my boys - it's cheaper but is handheld only, so one player only and doesn't plug into the TV.

The new Pokémon game, Sword and Shield, is coming out this month. I hope my boys will like it!