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With 28 minigames — most involving two players — 1-2-Switch is the Nintendo Switch's tasting platter. It's not a long term distraction, nothing to keep your attention for hours on end — that's what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is for. Instead, it's what you can bust out when your friends come around and you want to show off your shiny new console.

Designed to demonstrate the really innovative parts of the Switch, the games contained within require players to perform a range of kooky acts. It's reminiscent of the WarioWare series, where Mario's nemesis would have players picking giant noses, flying paper planes and popping pimples as they got a handle on Nintendo's wildly successful Wiimote.

Heck, the 'Shaver' mini-game actually appears in both Smooth Moves and 1-2-Switch — although if I had to pick a mini-game most 'in the spirit' of WarioWare, it would be the 'Milk' game, where players milk a cow by manipulating the Joy-Con. It's actually quite a clever game — you press the buttons on the detached Joy-Con in sequence to mimic expressing the udder, and it uses the in-built gyros of the controller to dictate where you aim.

The cover game for 1-2-Switch is Quick Draw, where players stand, hands low by their sides facing one another and wait for a "Draw" command. On the signal both players must pull their hands up and press the trigger as fast as possible — and aim is important, increasing the challenge. My best technique saw me shooting from the hip, using my wrist to do all the work while my opponent wasted precious microseconds extending their arm to fire. There's a Fake version of this included, where the announcer will try to psych you out by yelling different words — a surefire way to slow down the lightning quick players.

It's a common thread for the mini-games, as the Joy-Cons are capable of impressive measurements regarding your reactions. Samurai Training, where one player holds a sword high to strike, and the other needs to clap their hands together to catch the blade before it crashes into their head, uses similar technology — as does Telephone.

The game I found the most interesting was Ball Counting, where you hold the Joy-Con flat and then tilt it slightly. The HD Rumble feature activates the many motors inside the controller and it's up to you to successfully count how many marbles are contained within. It's weird to play a game where the best technique involves closing your eyes to better visualise the box. Joy-Con Rotation is another game with a similar style of gimmick, where you need to use the HD Rumble for cues about the orientation of the controller.

The game itself is able to cycle through games at random, and there's also a Mario Party-esque board game system implemented to incentivise competition. It lifts 1-2-Switch out of being just a mini-game compilation to some extent, transforming it into a complete experience. It's always helpful to have a showcase type game — I'm loathe to return to the VR comparison, but a quick and goofy experience like Job Simulator can often do a better job of convincing others than something deep and fleshed out like Resident Evil VII in VR — as amazing as that game is when you can't escape it. The same is true for 1-2-Switch vs Zelda here.