Apologies for the lack of Pokémon Champions coverage this past fortnight: I knocked my Switch 2 into the bath. I was staying in a hotel after seeing friends in Brighton from my Eurogamer days, and was awake painfully early for a Sunday. So I did something I never usually do and ran myself a bath to gently wake myself up, and play the 'Warm-Up Challenge' competition in Pokémon Champions until I was ready to start my day.
Because I'm sensible, I plonked the Switch 2 in tabletop mode on a surface some distance away so it wouldn't get wet. But because I'm clumsy, I somehow brushed it while walking around the unfamiliar bathroom, knocking the console flying into the tub.
In a panicked few moments, I threw it in a towel, ejected the game, and hairdried as much as I could in an attempt to remove any moisture. But it felt all in vain. It’s not until you accidentally drop one of these in water that you realise the Switch 2 is All Vents: great for keeping a powerful handheld device cool, less so for stopping it imbibing water given the chance.
After doing my best, I set the console on a towel to dry further, and turned over the implications in my head. Beyond the obvious loss of a fairly recent, expensive handheld, it was just days after Pokémon Champions had launched, and would put a halt to coverage for the foreseeable. Then I remembered I have my old Switch, which could run the game so I could pick things up where I left off, and I relaxed a little in an otherwise catastrophic 10 or so minutes.
To cut a long story short, I'm fairly sure my Switch 2 is done for. Days later it won't turn on, even with most of that having sat on a heated airer, so back to the Switch 1 we go. However, a snag! It wouldn’t download Pokémon Champions. With Nintendo’s recent Virtual Game Card update, it isn’t possible to download a game if it’s already been assigned to another console - in this case, my now sodden Switch 2 - even if it’s a free-to-start title. In normal circumstances I could ‘eject’ it from that console provided it was connected to the internet, but the only thing it was currently connected to was the afterlife.
Quite a frustrating turn of events, but since I had other work on and a blog to write, I had no choice but to set it aside. But a week later, I had a brainwave - what’s to stop me downloading it from the eShop with another user account, then attempting to log in again? Thankfully, this worked. My progress, pulled from the cloud, was intact, and things could once again resume.
So a resolution of sorts, even if I had wasted a week or so getting there and was all caused by an incident entirely of my own making. It was also a reminder of the double-edged sword of modern gaming: your progress is backed up for when something like this happens, but you probably have to dance around profiles and menus to access it first. And as frustrating as it was to return to an older, less proficient console, it turns out Pokémon Champions on the original Switch runs more than good enough, and I’ve enjoyed getting reacquainted with a device that has served me for close to a decade. Just as well, as it's going to be my handheld of choice on trips for a while: I think more recent ones are safer left at home.
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