I'm not sure when exactly it was decided that putting a screen on its side was a smart way to go about playing games, but I know that for some games it's the only way to play. It's why, over the years, I've risked various monitors by placing them on their side, so I could play the likes of Gunbird 2 or Ikaruga the right way. It's how I killed the hulking 32-inch CRT TV in my old shared flat in Deptford, its innards expiring with an almighty pop as I tried to demonstrate to a friend the magic of this thing they called tate mode.
Tate mode just being the fancy way to say 'vertical mode' - and 'tate' being the term that slightly annoying people like myself who insist that if you're not playing a vertical shooter while putting your expensive monitor at risk of serious harm then you're just not playing it at all, of course. Thankfully, the Nintendo Switch's detachable screen has allowed a way to play tate mode games with little pain or fuss, and since the launch of the console developers have taken note - there's a sizeable list of games that support the feature, and in a short amount of time it's become, if you're of a certain inclination, one of the Switch's best features. Pick up one of the Hori stands, plug in a stick and you've got your own portable arcade machine.
And now it's a touch more portable still, thanks to the Flip Grip, one of the simpler Switch accessories but also one of the most transformative. It's a modest piece of black plastic that's host to some smart engineering - courtesy of Mike 'Mechachoi' Choi and Jeremy Parish, who it should be pointed out for reasons of full disclosure is formerly of this parish and remains a good friend of Eurogamer - and a handful of surprising features. What it does, quite simply, is gives you a place to lock your Switch in vertical mode, with two rails either side to position the Joy-Cons for a complete handheld unit. And that it does well - it feels as sturdy as playing unadorned in horizontal mode the way Nintendo intended, and thanks to the use of soft plastics in the right places there's no risk of scratching your console.
from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2qYNqVD
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