Right, so Peer from IGN brought up a really good point in this week's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast. Basically, he suggests that Nintendo may be trying to do something similar to what they did on the Super Famicom with the Satellaview. That was basically another subscription service Japanese players payed for in order to have these kind of special event games. It's really difficult to explain, so watch the link. It's a pretty novel idea.

The thing to focus on though is the part on the Switch's online page that says that the monthly NES/SNES games have added online multiplayer. Peer suggests that this is actually the point. For a modern example of this, look at the Splatoon Splatfests. It's a scheduled online multiplayer event meant to get players to play one specific game at the same time, and people love those. If you look at the online games from that POV, it's a completely different beast entirely to a traditional subscription model, because the point isn't that you're getting free games. The point is that you're participating in a timed community event.

So let's say that Super Mario Kart is the game of the month. The point isn't that Nintendo is giving you Super Mario Kart for a month and then taking it way - the point is that, for that month, everyone will be playing Super Mario Kart together, which is a really novel experience. And as soon as the novelty for an online Super Mario Kart wears off, Contra III will replace it, and then Mortal Kombat, and then TNMT, etc. That's a really cool idea if you ask me, especially if the subscription really is only $20-$30. It's unique, but in a way that's actually pretty neat.

It also reopens the pipe dream of a virtual yearly subscription service, which becomes more enticing the more I think about it.

I'd agree with you, if it wasn't for one little flaw.
For Satellaview, you actually could save some of those games on cartridges and replay them over and over that way. This is how quite a few Satellaview games have been archived even after the end of the service.
That, and the games actually were made for Satellaview and Satellaview alone. That is quite unlike just throwing Super Mario Kart up for one month, but with online multiplayer.

I can relate to that. But I think what OP says makes perfect sense to an online subscription. If you just wanna play at any given time, it has nothing to do with online, all servers stop working one day  and"events" are what online is all about, even if it goes on for years.

That does sound really fun. In all honesty, all I care about right now is how VC is going to be handled.

I mean, the point is that you actually have people online to play with. Like I get what you're saying, but it doesn't really have anything to do with what's being suggested. If you don't play the game the month the event is going on, you probably won't have anyone online to actually play with because all of those people will be playing the current game. Making these into events give these games a playerbase.

Maybe it's just because I'm imagining these to be closer to what Nintendo did with the games in NES Remix, but I'm not even imagining these games being regular NES games at all. It's more like what Nintendo did with BS Zelda on the Satellaview. At least that's what I'm assuming. I don't think this will be part of VC at all, but a separate thing.