Nintendo has the most impressive first-party line-up of any video game developer out there. Sony and Microsoft cannot compete with the might of franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros, and Metroid. The pages of video game history are filled with the achievements of Nintendo characters, who have left their own impressive marks in the world of fiction.

Not every Nintendo game is a winner. Even the big N will occasionally turn in a half-assed piece of work from time to time. Their desire to come up with new ideas can sometimes lead to games that looked good on paper but played badly in reality. The Nintendo name holds a tremendous amount of weight in the video game industry, which means that some of their worst games can still break the bank.

We are here today to look at the worst Nintendo games that still managed to print money. From the drinks coaster that came with the Wii MotionPlus, to the Sinnoh old age home that trapped many Nintendo DS players for life.

Here are Twenty Garbage Nintendo Games That Still Made A Ton Of Money!

20 Capitalizing On Success

via: amazon.com

The Nintendo Wii was promoted as having true motion controls: this was a lie. The original Wiimotes are more like a wireless mouse, as they couldn't detect twisting motions. This was rectified by the Wii MotionPlus, which gave the player true motion controls... for about five minutes before it needed to be resynced.

Nintendo released Wii Sports Resort, which came bundled with a MotionPlus. The game was basically a lazy rehash of Wii Sports, with most of the games being MotionPlus-enhanced ports of old games. Wii Sports Resort also contained several games ripped straight from Wii Sports, like Bowling and Golf. It was the first Wii title to use the MotionPlus and it set the standard of garbage games going forward.

Wii Sports Resort - 33.4 million copies sold.

19 Sometimes Change Is Bad

Via: Pokémon Blog

The Pokémon franchise briefly went through a huge resurgence of popularity in 2016 thanks to the mainstream success of Pokémon GoPokémon Sun & Moon was Nintendo's chance to keep the nostalgic audience around for more.

Game Freak totally dropped the ball with Pokémon Sun & Moon. The game was linear to the point of being on-rails, the so-called "Island Trials" were little more than incredibly basic Zelda puzzles, with one of them involving you pushing two blocks, and the post-game was just as empty of content as the other Pokémon titles on the Nintendo 3DS.

Pokémon Sun & Moon might not be the only games to disgrace the Pokémon name, as the upcoming Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon are looking like cheap cash grabs.

Pokémon Sun & Moon - 15.67 million copies sold.

18 There's Just Nothing To Do

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The Kirby and Yoshi games have come under fire for being way too short and easy for full-price games. Those games tend to be charming enough that they still present a fun experience for fans and newcomers alike.

The Mario games tend to offer more content and challenge for gamers. One of the games that dropped the ball with this was Super Mario Land 2 for the Game Boy. It's entirely possible to 100% complete the game in under two hours.

The amount of content wouldn't be such a bad thing if the game wasn't so easy. The original Super Mario Land was also short, but it provided a lot of challenge. Super Mario Land 2 was boring because of how straight-forward it was.

Super Mario Land 2 - 11.18 million copies sold.

17 Feels Like Homework

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The Brain Age series is a perfect example of how marketing can make anything seem interesting.

The premise of the Brain Age series is to help your brain stay active, which it does through various exercises that involve the touch screen and microphone that are built into the Nintendo DS console.

The reason Brain Age is such a scam is that the game is just English and math homework that has been repackaged in a pleasing way. It's basically the "Virtual Yardwork" gag from The Simpsons, except it's real. If Nintendo was selling English and math homework with Mario on the cover, no one would buy it.

Brain Age: Train Your Brain - 19.01 million copies sold.

16 Fumbling For Control

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Super Mario 64 was one of the most important video games of all time. It showed that 3D graphics were the way forward and that Nintendo had what it takes to lead the way into this new dimension of video gaming.

The follow-up to Super Mario 64 was Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. It managed to totally screw up the Mario formula by ruining one of the most important aspects of the series: the controls. Super Mario Sunshine has abysmal jumping controls, which the player will really start to notice during the sections where you need to pursue Shadow Mario through a stage. This basic problem is likely why Nintendo barely mentions the game in regards to the history of the Mario franchise.

Super Mario Sunshine - 6.31 million copies sold.

15 A Whole Lot Of Nothing To Do

Tomodachi Life - Many Miis Hang Out An Mingle With Each Other
via.ScreenRant.com

The fans were surprised when Tomodachi Life was announced for an English localization. Tomodachi Life was billed as a bizarre relationship-creating game that starred the Miis inside your 3DS.

Tomodachi Life suffered from the problem of being a full price game with barely any content. It was tough to keep your interest up when there was so little actual gameplay in the game. Most players run out of things to do in Tomodachi Life in a matter of days after only a casual amount of play.

Tomodachi Life was also at the center of a controversy surrounding the exclusion of gay relationships in the game, which wasn't helped by a few ill-chosen words used in statements made by Nintendo. To their credit: Nintendo did follow up on their promise to include gay relationships in the follow-up game Miitopia. 

Tomodachi Life - 5.62 million copies sold.

14 Too Ambitious?

via space.ca

Rare produced some of the best games on the Super Nintendo. They continued this trend with the Nintendo 64, with amazing games like Goldeneye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie. 

The biggest disappointment of the Nintendo-era of Rare games was Donkey Kong 64. This was a game that was far too ambitious for the system that it was on. Donkey Kong 64 had a major issue with there being too many mandatory collectibles and the game forcing you to repeat areas as different characters in order to unlock everything. This was partly due to Rare trying to build on the formula of Banjo-Kazooie by adding more of everything while ignoring the things that made that game so great in the first place. This is a mistake that would be made again by the developers of Yooka-Laylee.

Donkey Kong 64 - 5.27 million copies sold.

13 Just Dance Instead

via: amazon.com

Wii Fit might not have been an effective game, but at least a lot of effort went into the technology of the Balance Board. One of the main issues with Wii Fit was the financial investment involved with buying the game, as the Balance Board wasn't cheap at the time (but they were a few months later when they were clogging up second-hand stores.)

Zumba Fitness managed to be way lazier. It came with a free belt! This was a cheap sash that had a pocket for the Wiimote that was supposed to be reading your hip movements. Not only was this gimmick incredibly cheap and lazy, but it barely worked at the best of times. You were far better off buying one of the Just Dance games instead.

Zumba Fitness - 6.08 million copies sold.

via: gamespot.com

The Wiimotes were very similar to the light guns that were a big deal in the old days of home consoles. This means that it is very easy to play a shooting game like House of the Dead on the Wii, as you only need to point and click on the enemies.

Nintendo decided to release a gun attachment that you placed the Wiimote into, called the Wii Zapper. This allowed you to use the Wiimote like an actual firearm. The Wii Zapper was released alongside Link's Crossbow Training, which was Nintendo's attempt at pimping out Link in order to sell a product.

Link's Crossbow Training wouldn't be so bad if it had more content. As it stands, you can see everything the game has to offer in a few hours, or more if you suck at shooting games.

Link's Crossbow Training - 4.98 million copies sold.

11 Trapped At The Carnival

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The runaway success of Wii Sports led to Nintendo creating several derivative games that closely matched the original. They weren't the only ones to do this, as other companies were eager to cash in on the audience attracted by Wii Sports by making their own collections of minigames that revolved around motion controls.

Carnival Games was successful in this regard, as it managed to be one of the highest-selling third-party titles on the Nintendo Wii by offering a collection of lame mini-games that required the Wiimote. These are the kinds of games that people on game design courses make during their first semester, yet the success of the Nintendo Wii allowed Carnival Games to reach a massive audience and actually make a lot of money.

Carnival Games - 4.06 million copies sold.

10 A Disservice To Duck Hunt

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Wii Sports was one of the most surprising system sellers in history. On the surface, Wii Sports looks like nothing but a collection of minigames. The motion control gimmick is what made the game so fun and prompted such massive sales of the Wii. Many people bought the system for Wii Sports alone.

Nintendo was eager to repeat the success of Wii Sports, which is why they created a game that was almost identical to it. Wii Play was like Wii Sports except with the fun removed. The games were as low-effort as possible.

The biggest offender of Wii Play was including a shooting game based on Duck Hunt and not including the dog.

Wii Play - 28.2 million copies sold.

9 Not Worth Buying It Again

Via: Dorly

The Nintendo DS was host to the remakes of Pokémon Gold & Silver, which may be the best Pokémon games ever made. All of the improvements from the later games were added into the extensive settings of Johto and Kanto, with the latter region having way more content than it had in the original.

The remakes of Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire on the Nintendo 3DS were a huge letdown by comparison. The games were laughably easy, due to the fact that most trainers in the world only used a handful of Pokémon from the same pool of Hoenn creatures. The fact that the game has almost no post-game content (outside of the brief Delta Episode) means that a lot of people were left with buyer's remorse after finishing the story.

Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire - 13.79 million copies sold.

8 Taking Everything Good Away From The Series

via.SimsNetwork.com

The Sims franchise has quietly been making a ton of money in the video game industry for over fifteen years now. The series may not have the name value of a Call of Duty title, but they still sell millions with each new installment.

It seemed only natural for a Sims game to appear on the Nintendo Wii and DS, considering the huge casual market they had attracted. These games were made to be as simple as possible and they only bore a superficial resemblance to the original series. The relationship aspects were toned down and replaced with horrible minigames.

MySims DS is generally considered to be the worse of the two, seeing as it had to have even more content stripped out in order for the game to fit on a cartridge.

MySims DS - 3.87 million copies sold.

7 A Boring Romp In The Countryside

nintendoeverything.com

The Legend of Zelda has had some amazing games on Nintendo's handheld systems. Games like Link's Awakening, Minish Cap, and the Oracle games can compete with the likes of Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past, and Twilight Princess in terms of quality.

The Nintendo DS had two Zelda games released on the system; Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Phantom Hourglass was a good game, though it made you repeat the same dungeon over and over again.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was worse in every way compared to Phantom Hourglass. The inclusion of trains is what killed the game, as you were stuck staring at the boring Hyrule countryside. The touchscreen gimmick from Phantom Hourglass was also played out by this point, to where you wished you could just use the buttons again.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - 3.31 million copies sold.

6 Not A Good Replacement For The Gym

via: amazon.co.uk

The success of the Nintendo Wii was due to how widespread its appeal was. Everybody from young children to their parents to old people in nursing homes was asking for Nintendo's latest console.

Nintendo did their best to milk this new casual audience during this period. One way in which they did this was with Wii Fit and its expensive add-on, the Balance Board. This is a game that encouraged you to perform exercises while offering structure and encouragement.

The reason Wii Fit earns a place on this list is that it doesn't work. Studies have disproven the idea that the exercises in the game are strenuous enough to actually keep you fit.

Wii Fit - 22.67 million copies sold.

5 Not As Thrilling As The Actual Movie

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When people talk about the good parts of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, they usually talk about the lightsaber scenes and nothing else. Even the large-scale battle scenes between the Gungans and the droids look primitive compared to current movies. This means that you have even less reason to watch the movie, as the one positive part about it has faded over time.

The pod racing scene in The Phantom Menace was also considered to be a highlight when the movie was first released. This was likely why a video game was developed around it. What we actually got was an inferior F-Zero clone on the one system where it would be overshadowed by actual F-Zero games.  

Star Wars Episode I: Racer - 3.12 million copies sold.

4 Good Idea, Bad Execution

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The success of the Nintendo Wii and its motion control gimmick meant that Nintendo went through a phase of highly experimental designs for their game. They once announced a pulse rate/heart monitor add-on for the Wii that connected to your finger, which would be used in some unknown capacity.

Wii Music is another example of Nintendo taking a gimmick too far. This was a title that promised to teach gamers about playing music while also still trying to be fun. What we actually got was a Wiimote waver, where you just made silly noises with little rhyme or reason. There were some good ideas in Wii Music, but it was the poor implementation that ruined the game we got.

Wii Music - 3.27 million copies sold.

3 Better Off With Mario

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Yoshi's Island was created by Shigeru Miyamoto because he wanted to prove that 2D sprites could be more impressive than 3D visuals. This was likely because he was salty over the huge success of the Donkey Kong Country franchise on the Super Nintendo.

Yoshi's Story was the follow-up to Yoshi's Island on the Nintendo 64. This game set the stage for the low-quality Yoshi games to come. We say this because the Yoshi games are better at looking good than they are of providing a worthwhile experience. Yoshi's Story had less than half the amount of levels that were in Yoshi's Island and they also tended to be a lot shorter and easier. The game just didn't pack enough challenge or content to make it worth the asking price.

Yoshi's Story - 2.85 million copies sold.

2 Ruining A Good Series With Motion Controls

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The Wii MotionPlus seemed like it was going to be just another gimmick item that was abandoned after a few games. Nintendo surprised everyone when it was revealed that the next game in The Legend of Zelda series was going to be based around the MotionPlus and would require it in order to play.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was a legitimate attempt at using the MotionPlus controls in fun and engaging ways, but they mostly didn't work, mainly because the controls constantly fell out of sync. These elements weren't helped by the addition of the stamina meter, which only existed to slow the game down, and Fi, who was somehow able to steal Navi's title as "the most annoying Zelda character of all time."

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - 3.97 million copies sold.

via inquistr.com

The Nintendo DS is the second best-selling video game console of all time, with 154 million units shipped over the system's lifespan. This should have been a great thing for the Pokémon franchise, but this was at the time when the franchise was at its lowest point in popularity. This was a shame, as the Nintendo DS finally allowed the series to go online for the first time.

In their haste to add impressive new features to the Pokémon video games, Game Freak forgot to work on the fundamentals. Pokémon Diamond & Pearl are incredibly slow games in terms of battle speed. You will feel the seconds of your life ticking away while you fight through hordes of Bidoofs.

The pace wouldn't be such an issue if the story wasn't so boring, the rival so bland, and the game so unbalanced. The Elite Four are the hardest in the series, due to the massive jump in power between them and the final Gym Leader. You will be stuck level grinding on the Victory Road while preparing to fight those jerks.

Pokémon Diamond & Pearl - 17.67 million copies sold.