The Nintendo 64 controller remapping update video last year did have a selection of games blurred in the background that have been arriving over time so DK 64 and Smash 64 are likely to be added this year too.

Hope everyone has a great year for 2026!

That’s most of the predictions I can make from what is known. There doesn’t appear to be much of a pattern for what system releases when, but SNES/GB have been more prominent over NES last year.

For personal hopes, I’ve been waiting on Fire Emblem Gaiden and Thracia 776 on the Famicom/SFC apps.

For Virtual Boy, the announcement trailer names 3 games specifically so it is likely that it will only launch with those 3 with more arriving over the coming months. (Maybe every other month from the GC?)
The likely 3 launch games are: Mario Tennis, Galactic Pinball, and Teleroboxer.

Although I would assume that would be a separate app that doesn’t have save states/rewinding or cloud saves to prevent cheating/cloning Pokémon given how the other games are.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive still needs to be updated for button mapping, but I feel that could be around March or later.

I could see a GameCube game being the first update perhaps, and to be separate from Virtual Boy’s launch. Although I do feel that the Pokemon GC games could arrive for Pokémon day in late February.

With Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, it’s also possible they could finally re-release the GB/GBA games.

It’s possible, but same system updates don’t often happen in the same month and I think there’s usually at least a break from Christmas week to the first week of the New Year.

Can be hard to predict though as sometimes updates are different from possible patterns/predictions that I’ve made.

About average for the total, but being split among a new system means it was a bit lower per system overall.

This February brings Virtual Boy so it remains to be seen how updates with another system added to the mix will go.

Standard NSO subscription game updates: 21 games with 2 NES, 11 SNES, and 8 GameBoy.

+ Expansion Pack game updates:
19 (18 JPN) games with 4 N64 (1 JPN), 1 Mature (2 JPN), 4 GBA (5 JPN), 3 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and 7 GameCube.

Of those 7, we have gotten 3 so far plus Wario World this month as a surprise release outside of the announced games.

Games that should be arriving in 2026 (and hopefully by the first half) are Mario Sunshine, Fire Emblem: PoR, and Pokemon Colosseum & XD Gale of Darkness.

This is likely to be the final update of the year. In case there is an update for Japan tomorrow, I’ll wait for that and then post a bit of an NSO year in review going over the game releases this year and how it compares to previous years.
(Total games are about average overall btw)

Rayman 2 and Tonic Trouble were announced for N64 next week, although they weren’t released in Japan and may not arrive on the service unless at a later date. (Seen with Goldeneye, Ridge Racer, and a few other games)
These could be the final updates of the year, but will have to wait and see.

As for the GameCube release schedule, it looks to be roughly bi-monthly with perhaps around 6 releases per year at the current rate.
My personal assumption initially was that it’d follow N64/GBA which had roughly a game each month in the first year, but seems it won’t be the case here.

One neat thing is that they added new startup animations when opening the GameBoy app depending on the Game Screen that is set in the app. (If you hold a control stick in a direction as it opens)

bsky.app/profile/nsoc...

Standard startup with the Super Mario Land coin sound effect.

GameBoy Color startup

GameBoy Pocket startup