Nintendo is synonymous with high-quality games that exceed expectations on every level. The list of hit titles from Nintendo goes on and on—and dates back almost 40 years—while the list of flops made by Nintendo is short. But, never-the-less, there is such a list.

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The reason this list is short is due to Nintendo’s vigilance in terms of quality control, as well as the desire to be forever viewed as the preeminent video game company on the planet. A game need only be published by Nintendo to make this list, it doesn’t necessarily need to have been developed and published by Nintendo.

10 Kid Icarus

Kid Icarus for NES

Kid Icarus is a fun game. It’s devilishly hard, but it’s fun. The game has responsive controls, colorful graphics, a catchy soundtrack, and the same development team that made Metroid.

This was a game that one would rent, stop playing in frustration after a few hours, and then never even contemplate buying. Players that spent enough time with Kid Icarus to “git gud” discovered how deep this game got after progressing through the first part of the game. This game didn’t flop badly, but it flopped enough that it to this day there are only three games in the franchise.

9 Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival for WiiU

The main Animal Crossing games are open-ended life simulators featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is a party game along the lines of Mario Party. This was the problem. It’s a little too close to Mario Party, while not being nearly as fun.

“Boring” and “repetitive” were words commonly found in reviews of Amiibo Festival. The game also utilized the Amiibo figures as part of the game. Parents saw this as something else they needed to buy to play this game. Additionally, most players complained that the use of these figures was less than reliable. This game sold very poorly worldwide and has yet to appear on the Nintendo’s eShop.

8 Metroid Other M

Metroid Other M for Wii

Metroid Other M was Nintendo’s attempt to go in a different direction with the Metroid franchise, but they should have stayed the course. The game is a 3D action/adventure game, one that has an awful floating camera, repetitive game elements, and very long cutscenes—some 15 minutes in length—that can’t be skipped.

It also didn’t help that switching to a first-person view rendered Samus immobile. Lastly, players hated the fact this game could only be played with the Wii remote, as the Pro Controller wasn’t an option. Since it was a Metroid game, it did moderately well in sales, but not nearly as well as previous Metroid Prime games.

7 Star Fox Adventures

Starfox Adventures for GameCube

This game was doomed from the start. It was originally meant to be for the N64 console and was not supposed to be a part of the Star Fox franchise. However, during development, it was decided to start over and make the game for the GameCube.

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Another change came when Shigeru Miyamoto visited Rare’s studios and decided the protagonist should be replaced with Star Fox. Players were understandably upset when the GameCube iteration of Star Fox wasn’t a space shooter, but a painfully average third-person adventure game. How badly did this game flop? Well… don’t expect Star Fox Adventures II anytime soon.

6 Disney’s Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse

Disney's Magical Mirror for GameCube

Hopes were so high this game would be good. It was being developed by Capcom, who had a record of making high-quality games with their Disney license, and was being published by Nintendo. Surely, this game would push the GameCube’s hardware to the limits and replace Aladdin for the Sega Genesis as the best Disney game. Surely, this game would be full of impressive animation and amusing cutscenes.

Sadly, it failed on both accounts. The game immediately got criticized for being boring, as well as for not being very intuitive in terms of how to progress the main story. Lastly, the cutscenes were extremely short and few and far between.

5 Pokémon Battle Revolution

Pokemon Battle Revolution for Wiifor Wii

Pokémon Battle Revolution is something uncommon among games that flopped, as players generally liked it. This game had its problems; however, being a Pokémon title, it was given enough love during development that the end result was endearing to players.

The huge problem with Battle Revolution is that, without a Nintendo DS and a copy of either Pokémon: Diamond or Pearl, there wasn’t much to do. Because of this requirement, the game did poorly in sales; it sold over 800,000 in North America. This seems like a lot, at least before considering the sales of Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl totaled over seventeen million copies.

4 Devil’s Third

Devil's Third for WiiU

This game was the result of several bad decisions, culminating with Nintendo’s bad decision to publish a game that had already been dropped by the previous publisher. Devil’s Third is a third-person shooter that fails on all levels. The graphics are on par with most of the better PS2 games—bear in mind that the WiiU was meant to compete against the PS4 and Xbox One.

The camera in Devil’s Third has a bad habit of jumping around at times, especially when engaging the enemy. This game is proof that Nintendo’s quality control department wasn’t as proactive as it had been in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.

3 Geist

Geist for GameCube

Geist had an interesting premise. The player is a spirit that can only affect the world via possessing beings and/or inanimate objects. The problem was that this idea may have been a bit too ambitious for the console hardware of the day. The graphics were alright for the time, but the game has frequent drops in frame-rate.

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A first-person shooter needs, above all other things, a steady frame-rate, preferably 30fps or higher. Geist sold very poorly, and this is a shame because its poor sales likely prevented any thought of a sequel, which, on current generation consoles, would probably be a very fun game with numerous multiplayer possibilities.

2 Super Mario Run

Super Mario Run for Android and iOS

Super Mario Run was Nintendo’s attempt to introduce their Mario character into the realm of mobile gaming. The game is an auto-running platformer with a premise similar to most of the other Mario games, saving Princess Peach from Bowser.

Super Mario Run has actually been downloaded by hundreds of millions of people. Nintendo’s problem is that people were playing the free version. Very few people paid for the full version of the game. There are simply too many free games in the app stores for people to pay $10 for the full version of Super Mario Run.

1 Earthbound

Earthbound for SNES

North American gamers complained when Mother, Earthbound’s predecessor, wasn’t released in North America. So, in response, Nintendo released Earthbound for the SNES in North America... and nobody seemed to notice.

Adds for the game appeared in the gaming magazines of the day proclaiming “This Game Stinks!” This was in reference to the scratch-and-sniff sticker placed in the advert, though. It also didn’t help that the N64 was soon to be released, and the PlayStation and Sega Saturn were already available. Nowadays, Earthbound has such a large cult following that it’s hard to imagine it flopped when it first released, but it did.

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