We have an interesting new rumor, from a source that we may not be familiar with, but who brings solid evidence to back his claims up.
YouTuber Mike Odyssey made a new video explaining that he looks at the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website for work. Because of this, he gets to check the site for new applications made by Nintendo.
He recently found four new trademark applications on the website, and we can vouch that these trademark applications are real. For your convenience, we came up with a link that shows all four applications, and you can also click each application to get more information. You can see the USPTO trademark applications made by Nintendo here.
The big one would be a trademark filing for Nintendo DS. Aside from that, there are applications for a version of the Hylian Crest, Toon Link, and Twilight Princess Link. All these applications indicate that they could be used for video games, but also other uses on merchandise, such as shirts, phone cases, etc.
Mike claims that this filing is evidence that Nintendo could be bringing Nintendo DS games on Nintendo Switch Online. For what it’s worth, we didn’t find that information on this trademark application, so Mike may be referring to this publicly available information, and insider information that he has from sources in Nintendo, or from companies and organizations that work with Nintendo.
The obvious reason to be skeptical about this claim is that the Nintendo Switch only has one screen, and when the Switch is docked, the screen output goes to the connected monitor and TV. So far, there are no Nintendo DS games ported to the Switch, so if Nintendo did make this happen, we don’t know how they would get around the DS using two screens, with one being a touch screen.
With all that said, there are some games where the second screen is inessential, and games could be played without it. Nintendo could also use the popular solution used by entities outside of Nintendo, which is to split the screen up for a smaller screen to appear below a bigger one. They could also add options to toggle between screens.
There is fan speculation that this isn’t for the Nintendo Switch, but its upcoming successor console. That next console could bring back the dual screen set up Nintendo launched in 2004, making emulation of DS games convenient. That could tie in to Mike’s claims if Nintendo Switch Online also carries over to the next console. Nintendo has already hinted at some sort of account based backwards compatibility between the two consoles.
You can take the speculation connected to these claims with a grain of salt. You can also point out some of this information may be getting misinterpreted. But, you can’t say these claims are false. We did our own double checking and linked to the evidence ourselves.
You can watch Mike’s video on the topic below.
