BODY: If you've been waiting for an excuse to turn your living room into a karaoke box, Nintendo just handed you one — and the clock is already running.
Nintendo kicked off the "Anime Song Collection 10-Day Free Campaign" for Karaoke JOYSOUND for Nintendo Switch at 10:00 a.m. JST on October 2, and it runs until 9:59 a.m. on October 12. Thirty anime theme songs have been unlocked as free tracks, and players can sing them up to 99 times a day without buying a ticket.
The lineup leans hard on the last two years of anime music. Headlining is "IRIS OUT", Kenshi Yonezu's theme for Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, alongside "Kaijū", Sakanaction's opening for Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and the band's first new single in roughly three years. Also in the mix is "Ai♡Scream!" by AiScReam, the Love Live!-spanning idol unit whose debut single became an inescapable earworm after its release.
The software itself is a free download from the Japanese Nintendo eShop, so there's no purchase required to join in — the business model is time-based tickets, typically around ¥330 for three hours, ¥550 for a day, and ¥1,540 for 30 days, which unlock the full JOYSOUND catalog of hundreds of thousands of songs. Free campaigns like this one bypass that entirely, but only for the curated 30-song list. A microphone is sold separately; USB and compatible wireless mics work, and the app also plays on Switch 2 via backward compatibility.
The insider take
Ten-day anime-song giveaways have become a quiet seasonal fixture here, and they aren't really about generosity — they're acquisition funnels timed to Japan's school and work calendars. An hour at a Tokyo karaoke box runs ¥500–1,500 per person at night, so a family that already owns a Switch and a ¥3,000 mic reaches break-even fast, which is exactly the math JOYSOUND wants you doing when the free window shuts. One catch for overseas readers: this is a Japanese eShop title, and nothing about the free list is announced in English, so the campaigns tend to come and go before international fans hear about them.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).