When the Nintendo Switch released on March 3, 2017, a broke graduate student (me) managed to scrape together just enough money to buy the console and a copy of Breath of the Wild. I hadn’t played a console Zelda game since Twilight Princess, and the prospect of seeing this gorgeous new world on a screen bigger than approximately six inches was tantalizing. Yet a Pro Controller was far outside my budget, which meant the prospect would remain tantalizingly unrealized.
I told myself it was fine, though — I’d get more use out of the Switch in handheld mode anyway! But I still wanted to play it on a bigger screen without the weirdness of holding two tiny, untethered controllers that barely fit my hands. Getting the best of both worlds without sacrificing either was, after all, the appeal of the Switch. And lo, when I opened the Switch box for the first time, an oddly shaped savior looked back up at me: the Joy-Con grip.
This flimsy-looking pack-in item worked much better than I expected it to. The thin grips sat comfortably cupped in my palms without forcing my fingers to bend around the tree trunk-like handles of the Xbox controller or the DualShock, for one thing. And the angle was surprisingly perfect for dealing with Breath of the Wild‘s (and, later, Tears of the Kingdom‘s) awkward “press B to run and X to jump” button mapping.
Image: Nintendo
Literally everyone else I knew who owned a Switch hated the grip, called it a cheap piece of plastic crap, refused to recognize its hidden brilliance and extolled the virtues of the Pro Controller. OK, well, I mean, the grip is a cheap piece of plastic crap, to be fair. But when you’re already spending several hundred dollars on a new console and a single game, it’s nice to have an option that lets you make use of said console’s main gimmick without having to spend nearly $100 more.
Now I use the Switch 2’s grip and don’t see myself splashing out for a Pro Controller anytime soon, despite docking the console more often than I did the original Switch. Something in me balks at the idea of spending so much after already getting the Mario Kart World bundle, but I’ve got another reason for remaining loyal to my cheap little grip now. I type a lot every day, a fact my fingers make sure I’m aware of by singing in pain at the end of the week (under-30 readers, enjoy your youth).
Standard controllers like the DualSense end up causing me even more pain after about 15 minutes or so, an issue I assume I’d run into with the similarly shaped Pro Controller as well. My fingers end up at an uncomfortable, crooked angle, and if the game requires a lot of shoulder button inputs, it’s pretty much a guarantee I’ll be spending time later with my hands soaking in Epsom salt. Not a pleasant outcome from something that’s meant to be fun.
So thank you, cheap little Joy-Con grip, for giving me The Switch Experience and helping me stave off arthritis for just a little longer.
