Nintendo recently renewed nearly 40 game trademarks.

The renewals include Eternal Darkness, Mario Sunshine and Wave Race.

If Nintendo plans on actually doing anything with these trademarks, it could be an exciting year for fans.

The Nintendo Switch is a lot of fun, but so far this year it’s had a release schedule problem. We don’t get any of the really interesting stuff until 2021. That is unless this recent batch of trademark renewals means anything.

Recently Nintendo renewed the trademarks on nearly 40 titles. This included certain games that were less exciting such as Animal Crossing: City Folk. But, it also includes some really exciting renewals. If some of these titles come to the Switch, it could be a very good year for Nintendo fans.

A Nintendo Switch Classics Collection

The list of trademarks includes some of the best games Nintendo has ever released. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is a particular standout. As one of the best survival horror games ever made, that really needs a new release.

There’s also stuff like WarioWare, a great mini-game series that is currently missing on the Switch. Wave Race was also renewed, although whether that means the GameBoy, N64 or GameCube versions isn’t immediately clear.

Some of these are titles that we haven’t seen in decades. The fact that Nintendo is renewing them now might mean we actually have a chance to see some of them released on the Switch.

Hopefully, Nintendo Will Actually Do Something With These Trademarks

As much as I’d like to be optimistic, there is a real chance that Nintendo is just renewing these trademarks as part of their housekeeping. It’s possible that these are just defensive renewals to prevent these trademarks from lapsing.

Some of these games would be perfect for the Switch, but others just seem insane. For instance, it seems unlikely that Nintendo would ever bother releasing Radar Misson again. Then again, they did bring it to Virtual Console in 2011, so who knows?

Of course, if they do decide to release these games, most of them would probably be digital-only releases. It’d be nice to think that Nintendo might do something like a ‘GameCube Classics Collection’ though. They’ve certainly got enough decent GameCube games on the list to fill it out.

No matter what happens, at least Nintendo hasn’t forgotten that Mario Sunshine exists.