Whether it was a franchise revival you never thought would happen, a game you enjoyed way more than you thought you would, or just something else awesome you never saw coming, what was the best positive surprise of the Switch's life for you, and why?

Metroid Dread. A game that was practically Half-Life 3 levels of being thought of impossible! Surprise announcement, released just a few months later, and became the best selling game in the Metroid franchise.

It's tough to pick just one. I'll start with some honorable mentions.
1. Every Xenoblade Chronicles game on Switch. We have two new games with DLC, a remake of the first game with new content, and a remaster of X coming out in 2025.
2. Every mainline Pikmin game on Switch.
3. A Smash game with such a huge roster.
The biggest surprise for me is
Three Mario RPGs on Switch all released within a year. Two remakes of beloved games and a new one as well. Before Switch launched, the interviews about Color Splash and the recent Mario & Luigi games made things seem very dire indeed.

Xenoblade exploded on it.

Astral Chain

The amount of great 90s games ported to it. From shmups to RPGs. Fighting games. Beat em ups and more.

The fact we are watching it to see if it passes PS2. Who would have guessed that before it launched?

The best 3rd party support a Nintendo console has had in 30 years.

(i) Pikmin 4 reveal.

(ii) "Pikmin is now a flagship Nintendo franchise" (according to Nintendo).

(iii) Paper Mario TTYD, Super Mario RPG, and Metroid Prime all recieved remakes. (Not to mention Pikmin 1+2 got shadowdropped on NSW back in June last year.)

The first party output being the best since the Super Nintendo.

Watching the reveal live with the easy allies and see how people opinions changed drastically first few years were fun...

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - I didn't play the original on the Wii and was surprised by the announcement of the sequel. Bought it day one and loved it! X3 isn't quite in the same level I think. I really enjoyed the humor and the over-the-top character designs. Of course, the world design is amazing. It was a really cool "boy meets girl" story at its heart.

Pikmin 4 - almost had given up hope on a sequel. My wife and I love playing Pikmin together, and Pikmin 4 delivered on all fronts.

Breath of the Wild - I had my doubts when the game was revealed, due to the series straying further and further from its roots in the years prior. But BotW blew me away. I played it for months straight and enjoyed every minute of it.

Astral Chain. I expected nothing, it didnt even look like something id like, far from it, and I ended up enjoyed it quite a lot.

For me the biggest surprise of the Nintendo Switch was the amount of 3rd party support it got and some of the 3rx party games it got that had zero business running on a portable Tegra X1 device.

During the Wii U era and even before, the idea of some of these 3rd party games coming to a Nintendo system seemed impossible for me to believe. For example, even the simple idea of getting GTA on Switch was mind-blowing for me since we've never seen a 3D GTA game ever release on a Nintendo system for up until that point. Other games that shocked me heavily were Witcher 3, the Doom games, Apex Legends, Red Dead Redemption, Mortal Kombat even more simple stuff like Fortnite and NBA 2k. The idea of playing these games, many who've always neglected to ever release on Nintendo platforms like GTA releasing on the Switch surprised me.