In recent years, particularly on Xbox and PlayStation, the way modern game systems keep track of your hundreds or thousands of hours of playtime has been prominently highlighted. The Switch and Switch 2 do this, too, letting you see a record of the games you’ve played and just how much time you’ve devoted to each one. But it turns out Nintendo has been tracking these play times since long before the Switch era. The company has released a new app that, if you sync your Nintendo account, will show you your play times dating back to the 3DS and Wii U.
The Nintendo Store app is now live on app stores, and as the name suggests, it’s primarily a digital storefront letting you buy and download games from the eShop. But also, if you go digging through its various menus, you’ll find your Play Activity buried at the bottom of the User Page. If you’ve had the same Nintendo account for a few console generations, the data it has can be a nostalgic or embarrassing blast from the past. If you spent thousands of hours on Super Smash Bros. for 3DS while waiting for the Wii U version to come out, the Nintendo Store app knows. Have you actually spent more time using streaming services than playing video games on your Nintendo devices? The Nintendo Store app will put that shit on blast. So if you want to look into the abyss, head on over to your phone’s app store.
Mine doesn’t have anything too damning, I don’t think. Most of my longest playtimes–like my colossal Overwatch hour count–are on my PlayStation 5, and the longest I’ve got in any game the Nintendo Store app has tracked is the 193 hours I’ve put into Pokémon Unite over the past four years. What’s more mortifying is that the app also tracks every single play session you have with a game, and that’s actually where I might have some embarrassing stories. Let’s see…oh, 14 hours and 30 minutes of Pokémon Legends Z-A on Saturday, October 18. It was the weekend! The game had just come out, and I had to finish it for review, and I also might have a problem. Oh, god. I’m going through all my Switch-era Pokémon playthroughs, and there are massive stretches of play time in the days after these games launched. Spending longer than I did at my full-time job catching ‘em all sometimes. I’m actually not sure how comfortable I am sharing these results. Worry about yourself.
