The Nintendo Switch is finally the portable PC of my dreams (sort of)
Mouse and keyboard support is here
If you tuned into Nintendo's Indie World stream yesterday, you'll no doubt have seen that the excellent Hypnospace Outlaw is finally beaming its way onto consoles in all its faux late 90s glory on August 27th. Its arrival on other platforms also brings with it a whole host of neat updates for those of us who have already enjoyed it on PC, too, including over 60 new pages to scroll through, two hours of additional original music, new HypnOS apps and games to play, and new custom HypnOS cursor themes.
But the best and probably most unintentional new addition to Tendershoot's Bestest Best internet sim adventure is that it's finally turned my Switch into the ultimate console. With its new mouse and keyboard support, the Switch is finally the portable PC of my dreams.
Look, I even made some GIFs with the Switch demo to prove it.
I am so excited I might actually explode.
Brilliantly, lead developer Jay Tholen didn't even realise the Switch version (and indeed all of its console ports) had mouse and keyboard support until yesterday, and it was actually Nintendo who suggested to publisher No More Robots that they should include it.
And it works like a charm! I can navigate its many Geocities-esque web pages with my mouse just like I did on PC, and I can also use my keyboard to type in search terms and write notes with, too. In short, it feels just like the PC version did when it came out last year.
I should point out, of course, that only Hypnospace Outlaw supports mouse and keyboard on Switch at the moment (to my knowledge, at least), as trying to navigate the Switch's home menu with either a mouse or the arrow keys on my keyboard proved fruitless. Still, the seeds have clearly been planted here, and I am willing to bet my entire collection of virtual hamsters and Chowder Man MP3s that it's only a matter of time before other games follow suit.
If you, too, want to try Hypnospace Outlaw on your Switch with your mouse and keyboard, all you need to do is plug them into the dock and away you go. While the game itself doesn't officially come out until August 27th, there is a free demo you can download right now if you want to give it a go.
As Tholen puts it in his rather snazzy new console trailer below, we have most definitely entered into "the dawn of a new era of computing".
Disclosure: Xalavier Nelson Jr. sometimes writes for us, and is one of the devs of Hypnospace Outlaw.