My Switch Games Are Still Physical

The Nintendo Switch is a great console and defies the trend of purely digital game sales. That’s a good thing, especially when I look at the so-called special offers in the digital stores of Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox. Compared to the discounts on physical games or on Steam, they’re not very appealing. You can often find Nintendo Switch games on sale at Müller, and on top of that, there’s at least a 20% discount on all toys around Christmas.

So, over the years, I’ve accumulated quite a few games—well over 30 by now. The game cases themselves offer little added value these days, but they take up space. I keep the cases for resale purposes, but I don’t store the games in them. Who wants to carry all those cases with them when they’re on the go? The carrying case for the Switch has room for four games, which is enough for short trips, but it’s not sufficient for storage at home, for longer trips, or for two different players.

The 3D Printer Solves Another Problem

But hey, I have a 3D printer. I quickly found a case that looked pretty good and started the print. It was a small book with two pages, each capable of holding 12 game cards. The printing process was also interesting because the case, apart from the retaining clips, is printed in one piece—a so-called print-in-place model. It was actually a great case, but it had two drawbacks: it was still quite large for the number of game cards it held, and it didn’t have a proper clasp, so it tended to pop open.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon another case rather by chance. It’s basically just a sleeve and a stick that you insert up to 24 game cards into from the side. The stick with the games is then slid into the sleeve, and that’s it. Small tabs allow the stick to click into place and hold it quite securely in the sleeve. I’ll see how well that works in the long run. I’m hoping for a bit of wear on the slots for the game cards, at least—they’re a pretty tight fit. But it hardly gets more compact than this; the case has almost no wasted space. This way, I can carry 24 games in the smallest possible space, they are protected and clearly visible. If you have a 3D printer and Nintendo Switch games, I can highly recommend this case.