34 years later, MCU star Paul Rudd reprises the SNES role that got him into acting with an adorable Nintendo Switch 2 trailer
We all now know and love Paul Rudd, the MCU's good intentioned Ant-Man and a goofy heartthrob in plenty of other movies, but one of his first acting jobs that predates anything he did in TV or film was actually an ad for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System 34 years ago. And now, the beloved actor has reunited with the Mario publisher in a new commercial for the Nintendo Switch 2.
Paul Rudd's original SNES ad is very '90s: high-pitched horror music introduces a boy in a black, overlong coat who enters a shadowy, foggy area to play the console on seemingly the biggest screen you can find outdoors. Silhouettes of other figures creep up from behind to watch him play F-Zero and Zelda, which isn't at all creepy. 'Now you're playing with power,' indeed.
The newly-released Switch 2 ad, more than three decades later, opens in much the same way. Paul Rudd dons the same fit, but barely looks like he's aged a day, and that same eery music play as he slots the console into its dock with fog spewing into, this time, his house. The rest of it is far more wholesome and adorably corny, though, as Rudd just plays Mario kart World with some of his on-screen family.
I also love how unafraid Nintendo is of showing off its extremely laggy screen-sharing Game Chat feature.
Earlier this week, we learned that the Nintendo Switch 2's US pricing will be unaffected by the government's tariffs and pre-orders are set to go live on April 24, even though some accessories have seen a price increase to what was originally planned. Elsewhere, PEGI may have leaked a Switch 2 port of Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Here's some more upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games to keep an eye on.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Battlefield 6's open beta is already the most popular Battlefield of all time on Steam, and the platform's 44th most-played game ever
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Since time immemorial, mankind has struggled with its nemesis and ultimate predator: the helicopter. No wonder, then, that in the wake of that trailer which exploded around 1.46 helicopters per minute, half the human race has apparently poured into the Battlefield 6 open beta, catapulting it into Steam's top-100 most-played games of all time (per SteamDB). In other words, it's instantly become Steam's most popular Battlefield launch ever. Though there is a caveat there: EA only recently started launching Battlefield games simultaneously on Steam. At time of writing, Battlefield 6 has just pipped the 300k player mark, sitting pretty at 308,310 concurrents (which is, naturally, also its all-time peak; the beta only opened up a couple of hours ago). That makes it the 44th most-played game on Steam of all time by concurrent players, right below Elden Ring Nightreign at 43 and—of all things—Skyrim at 45. That makes it, by some margin, Steam's most-played Battlefield ever. But like I said, take that with a grain of salt. We're only recently out of the dark days when EA hoarded its games into the EA App (née Origin) and didn't put them on Steam at all—it only crawled back to Valve's platform in 2020. That means every recent Battlefield except 2042 didn't benefit from the kind of launch-day rush that can goose a game's numbers. Even so, Battlefield 6 is leaving them in the dust. Battlefield 2042's open beta is Steam's second most-played entry in the series, but at a paltry all-time peak of 156,665 players, Battlefield 6 has already near-enough doubled that in just a couple of hours of availability. Battlefield 2042 full-launch count of 107,376, meanwhile, is barely visible in 6's rearview mirror. It's not going to stop there, of course, and I'd be astounded if Battlefield 6 didn't end up handily outstripping Nightreign and the games above it—Destiny 2, the Mecha Break demo, and OG Counter-Strike—in the near future. After all, I'm given to understand that this seems like a good Battlefield so far. PCG's FPS czar Morgan Park dared to hope that Battlefield is really back this time after his preview, and EA has been playing against character by making some actually popular decisions. For instance, letting players have classic class weapons and not forcing the lamentable EA App on you if you play on Steam. With Call of Duty festooned with garish skins and filled with unhappy players, it's all out there for Battlefield's taking.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Former Blizzard president predicts Battlefield 6 is going to 'boot stomp' Black Ops 7 because Call of Duty has become 'lazy'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra spends his time these days heading up a technically-not-gambling daily fantasy sports company, but that doesn't mean he's bereft of thoughts on videogames. Late last year he opined that Marvel Rivals is just an Overwatch ripoff (which did not sit well with PC Gamer's Elie Gould) and now he's back to say that this year, Battlefield 6 is going to stomp Call of Duty's guts out. He actually used the term "boot stomp" but given the subject matter—military shooters—I think my choice of wording is more on-point. Anyway. "Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year," Ybarra wrote on X. "But the real win here is CoD won't be lazy anymore, and we'll all get better FPS games for it." He defended his pick in a subsequent reply post, saying Call of Duty "has gone downhill for years" since Infinite Warfare in 2016. " It's a mess. Cheating, heavy UI/install, rainbow colors. People are sick of it. Luckily BF will force them to change it." I generally take exception to any characterization of game developers as "lazy" and that holds here too, but at the same time it's hard to argue that Call of Duty hasn't become rote and routine. Black Ops 7 almost feels like a parody title—seven of them, really?—and 2023's entry (because 2024 was Black Ops 6) was the second sequel of a reboot of a Call of Duty "sub-series" from 2007. I still wouldn't call it lazy, but stagnant? I may be biased—I'm not a Call of Duty fan by any measure—but I'd say yeah, absolutely. The other part of Ybarra's big bet is the real question. Can Battlefield 6 finally score the win over Call of Duty it's been chasing pretty much forever? Early signs are positive: The open beta has already made it the most popular Battlefield of all time on Steam, and more importantly PC Gamer's resident Call of Duty expert Morgan Park has declared that "Battlefield 6 is making an excellent case to skip Call of Duty this year." Which doesn't guarantee anything, because the real challenge Battlefield is facing is simple inertia. Call of Duty is a habit for an awful lot of people, and the great(?) thing about habits is that we do them without thinking. If Battlefield really knocks it out of the park this year, and Call of Duty continues to coast, that could absolutely set the table for a real power shift in future years. But a full-on stomping this year? Seems like a long shot to me.


New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
These Science Fiction Novels Will Take You on an Epic Journey
Science fiction is a genre of vectors. Its stories are arrows tipped with science, fletched with 'what-if' and shot out of the present into the future. Some are warning shots, exposing the weak spots in our politics or social architecture. Many provide the kind of escapist fun I'd inhale as a kid — under the covers, by flashlight. And then there are the rare few that pierce the future square in the chest, a note dangling from the shaft that reads, 'I told you so.' For me, it is the science fiction cloaked in myth that carries the most power. Lest your mind careen toward elves on spaceships, let me clarify: I'm not talking about a subgenre here, or about cross-pollination with fantasy. For me, myth is a tone, imbued with the gravity of fate and eternal truth. Whether a lullaby of mankind's ancient cradle or a requiem for the collapse of stellar empires, these tales sing out from the mist to remind us of our nature. For the most part, the heroes of these novels inhabit dark, decaying worlds. Their epic journeys through that darkness have often helped me find the light. Here are a few of my favorites. The Book of the New Sun Wolfe's four-part saga feels like a relic of another epoch — scribbled in the midnight hollows of an abbey by a mad theologian, or summoned into being by the high priest of some fallen empire and beamed back to us across the millenniums. Set on a distant, dying Earth, the book (which was actually written by a Korean War vet living in Illinois in the 1980s) follows Severian, a torturer's apprentice exiled for the crime of mercy, as he wanders a world so far in the future that it has relapsed into medievalism. Science has become sorcery. Spaceports crumble to ruins. I have read this book at least five times and still struggle to succinctly sum it up. It is dense, archaic, feverish and beautiful — a meditation on the tragedy of mortals on an immortal stage that will haunt you long after its final page. Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book: Science Fiction Our Favorite Sci-Fi Reads Want all of The Times? Subscribe.