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Console launches are exciting! There are fresh new game ideas to show off the hardware, as well as more traditional franchise cornerstones to build out the install base. Perhaps understandably, all three of our Switch 2 Game of the Year finalists are Nintendo-published. We look forward to future years including other teams as third parties have more time with dev kits!
These awards represent the consensus of the Siliconera staff. Multiplatform games are considered on the platform for which they received the most staff support. For more of the year’s award selections, check out our Game of the Year 2025 archive.
Kirby Air Riders
As unlikely as it was, we got a sequel to Kirby Air Ride two decades later. And it was worth the wait! Air Riders delivers a faithful recreation of the original. Now, though, there’s a lot more stuff to find and do. Mario Kart World may have been the Switch 2’s launch day flagship, but it won’t be the racer we’ll keep playing throughout the system’s life.
Donkey Kong Bananza
There hasn’t been a Donkey Kong game of this scale and polish… ever? No shade to Rare or Retro, for sure. But the Super Mario Odyssey-style approach brought to Bananza makes for a game you’ll keep returning to over and over. The terrain tech is a great example of what new hardware can do that isn’t just resolution bumps, and just moving around in the world feels great enough that you’ll seek out more things to do to justify it.
Winner: Pokemon Legends: Z-A
With recent entries in the Pokemon series hitting up against some technical barriers on the original Switch, Legends Z-A launching with a dedicated Switch 2 build was a big deal. It’s a bonus that it’s a follow-up to the most mechanically innovative entry in the franchise’s history, too! Z-A tries its own ideas, including a real-time combat system that for once justifies a moveset with multiple moves of the same type. We’re left wondering what the next Legends entry will try.
