How to Relive Your Nintendo Gaming History Across Consoles and Decades

Nintendo’s new mobile application for its showcase for iOS And Android does a good job making it easy to browse and purchase games for the Nintendo Switch And Switch 2but perhaps its most interesting feature is the one that shows your Nintendo gaming history by year.

Buried at the very bottom of your profile page on the Nintendo Store app (you can access it by tapping the icon with your Mii in the bottom right) is an option called Gaming Activity. At the top, your Recent Activity will show which games you’ve played recently and for how long. But scroll down to All Activities and you’ll find console games and apps going back years and years.

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For me, it was a shock to revisit Wii U and Nintendo 3DS titles that I had completely forgotten about, like a game that my daughters enjoyed — Art Academy: Home Studio — and Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash, which I played in 2015 for 10 days. I have no memory of playing Steel Diver on Nintendo 3DS, but there is evidence proving that it happened on March 28, 2011.

Why play activity is important

If the feature was just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, that would be one thing, but for anyone with a long history across multiple generations of Nintendo consoles, it’s good information to have. In the age of remakes and re-releases, it helps to know which games you’ve actually played before, what console you played them on, and whether you spent a lot of time on them. My gaming activity history is littered with games I only played for less than an hour, like Ridge Racer 3D, and abandoned for others.

This reminds me that I played Nintendogs, the cute dog simulator, for four full years, from 2011 to 2015. Why didn’t Nintendo reboot this franchise?

It’s helpful that you can sort game history by last played, date first played, total time played, and by game system. I was surprised by the number of titles I played on the Wii U, but that probably pales in comparison to the number of games I played on the GameCube or the original Wii. Playful activity does not seem to go back that far; for me, it stops in 2011 with the Wii U and the 3DS. Games on Switch seem to display more detail, showing you how much you’ve played for each gaming session.

But most importantly, it’s nice to have a document that tracks your relationship with Nintendo’s systems and software, whether it’s to see how much time you’ve spent watching Netflix on your Switch or to see how many hours you’ve logged into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

What else is in the Nintendo Store app?

If Play Activity were the only feature of the Nintendo Store app, it would still be worth downloading for long-time gamers. However, this is just a nice feature, not the main attraction.

The best reason to download the Nintendo Store app is the store itself, which becomes much easier to navigate and search than the version on Switch, which can be slow and cumbersome. You can make purchases for your Switch or Switch 2 directly in the app, use Nintendo Points, make GPS recordings and view the company’s events, promotions and game news.

Merchandise is also available, including game soundtracks, clothing and toys. Being able to quickly navigate through games that have demo versions and being able to send a digital download to your Switch from your phone is convenient.

An Ask Developer tab is a nice area to browse in the app’s News section; recent stories talk about the achievement of Mario Kart World And Donkey Kong Bananza.

Using the Nintendo Store app requires linking your Nintendo Account.