alNintendo is one of the most decorated developers in the history of the video game industry. They have been behind some of the greatest and most innovative games ever made. If you look through Metacritic rankings you’ll see multiple games from Nintendo among the highest ever rated. They also have become quite the iconic figure in entertainment media to the point where some of their characters are among the most recognizable in the world. Mario, Pikachu, Donkey Kong, and Link are just a few examples of characters that are so recognizable you see them just about anywhere in any form of promotion. It would be difficult to ask someone what are the most popular names in gaming and an answer wouldn’t include Nintendo.

That being said, Nintendo has also published many games over the years that are worthy of high-quality praise, but many may not even know about. Sure you’ve played Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong Country, Metroid Prime, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, but there is a much larger quantity of high-quality games under Nintendo’s umbrella. On the flipside, Characters like Mario and Pikachu are so recognizable that Nintendo knows they can make a quick buck if they produce a lower quality spinoff game that still sells millions. As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I sometimes get annoyed when I hear about how poor games sell so well and truly deserving titles get ignored, mostly due to Nintendo’s lack of marketing efforts towards them. Here we will go through 15 of the best Nintendo games (with some third-party games that started with Nintendo) that you may not have played, as well as 15 games that are very popular but are either bad or did not live to the normal standard of quality.

30 Best: The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure

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While it may be a bit odd to see a Legend of Zelda game in this category, Four Swords Adventure was oddly overlooked by many Nintendo GameCube owners. Four Swords Adventures takes the Four Swords concept and expand it into a console-sized adventure that utilizes one of the best uses of the GBA Link Cable.

Think of it as an early prototype of the Wii U, in the overworld you play cooperatively with up to 4 friends on the TV, but whenever you enter a building or cave you then transfer to your own Game Boy Advance. The difficult thing is that many may not have played it to its full potential with the number of accessories required, but nonetheless, it is a very good top-down classic Zelda game that never saw any kind of rerelease.

29 Overrated: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

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Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the highest selling game in the series at the time of writing, likely until Ultimate releases later this year. Brawl is a rather infamous game in the series due to the extremely slower paced gameplay compared to its predecessor Super Smash Bros. Melee.

The worst thing about Brawl is tripping. Nothing good came from tripping.

However, the one great thing about Brawl was its single player mode Subspace Emissary, an action 2D platformer similar to Kirby games that featured a story with no dialogue, but pretty cool cutscenes involving nearly every character in the game.

28 Best: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn

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Before Fire Emblem survived the near demise of the series with the commercially successful Fire Emblem Awakening on 3DS, many of the best games in the series came before Awakening’s release. Most notably is the Radiant saga that includes Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on GameCube and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on Wii.

These are the two games that feature Ike, a mercenary swordsman (and Smash Bros fighter) who is a breath of fresh air for main characters in the series for simply not being a noble. The story of these two games and how everything is connected is one of the best-written stories ever in the series and among any Nintendo-published game. The gameplay of these games are a step above the Game Boy Advance entries and also features a stellar soundtrack.

27 Overrated: Mario Kart Wii

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Mario Kart Wii went on to become one of the highest selling Mario Kart games ever. However, this game was the weakest entry in the series largely due to its main focus on the control style. While it makes sense for the game to take advantage of the Wii Remote’s motion controls, it wasn’t as great as having a traditional control scheme. While you could play the game with the other forms of traditional controllers, it seemed to be a chore to have multiple controllers available whenever you wanted to have a large local multiplayer session.

26 Best: F-Zero GX

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F-Zero GX is one of the reasons why I personally disliked Mario Kart: Double Dash. They both released in the same year, obviously Mario Kart is going to get more attention, which is really sad in this case.

F-Zero GX is a far better racing game than Mario Kart: Double Dash and to this day is still one of the best racing games ever made.

F-Zero GX is one of the most skill-based games Nintendo has ever released, it is one of the fastest, most intense games ever. It is a racing game that pits you against 29 other opponents with many well-designed racetracks and an awesome soundtrack as well. There is a reason why fans have been asking for a new F-Zero game for over a decade; if it is anything like GX it would be absolutely incredible.

25 Overrated: Fire Emblem Fates

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After Fire Emblem Awakening saved the franchise, Nintendo went with a bold decision with the next Fire Emblem, making the next game a dual version. Fire Emblem Fates featured three completely different campaigns, Birthright, Conquest, and the third game, Revelation. Fire Emblem Fates didn’t lose any steam as it posted similar successful results as Awakening.

Fates became a joke among veterans, calling this “Waifu Emblem” due to the game’s emphasis on support conversations and horrible dialogue. It was so bad that it took the focus away from the main story; as such it was one of the weakest stories in the entire series.

24 Best: The Entire Advance Wars Series

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There isn’t one game to pick from this series because none of the games in this series ever really sold that well. Advance Wars is a tactics-based strategy game that is similar to Fire Emblem but with a much stronger emphasis on strategy and use of resources.

Every single game in this series has so much content packed in them that most fans probably still haven’t experienced everything the series offers.

The lighthearted nature of 3 of the 4 games is also a welcome look on war games, but the 4th, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, provides a very dark storyline and setting not commonly found in Nintendo games. Bring this series back Nintendo!

23 Overrated: Hey You, Pikachu!

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One of Nintendo’s weird gaming experiments came in the form of Hey You, Pikachu! on Nintendo 64. Hey You, Pikachu! came with a microphone accessory that you place on the controller. With it, you can communicate with a wild Pikachu as you go about different areas to interact with it and the environment.

It is easy to say that the experiment was a failure. Either that or you didn’t have enough gym badges for Pikachu to obey you, probably both.

Most of your verbal commands toward Pikachu does not go through properly and often times it does something completely different than what you said. If you ask for it to bring you an apple, it will end up using Thunderbolt on it instead, completely frying it. Bad Pikachu!

22 Best: Xenoblade Chronicles

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Xenoblade Chronicles almost never made it outside of Japan due to the concern that it would never become popular. But eventually, it would make its way to the rest of the world, becoming one of the best games on the system and one of the best JRPGs ever made. Xenoblade is a spiritual continuation of Monolithsoft’s legendary cult-classics Xenogears and Xenosaga.

This game featured a very large game world before large open world games started to become cool.

It also presents a unique battle system, an incredible world built upon the bodies of two giant titans, a masterpiece soundtrack, and one of the greatest stories ever told in video games. Xenoblade is an amazing series that has since grown in popularity and has become Nintendo’s main JRPG franchise.

21 Overrated: Wii Sports

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The game that every single Nintendo Wii owner owned, Wii sports was packaged into every Nintendo Wii system sold, so it is no wonder why it became one of the highest selling “games” of all time.

Wii Sports is great for boxing, but that’s about it.

While Wii sports does a nice job of showing off what the basic Wii remote is capable of, it is only good for a few sports, namely baseball and boxing. It will only take a couple of hours, if that, for gamers to want to move on to something else.

20 Best: Metroid Samus Returns

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Samus Returns is a brilliant remake, one that gives much-needed life to the Metroid series. Planet SR388 turned out to be a beautiful, yet treacherous world with amazing backgrounds and perfectly ambient music that the Metroid series is famous for.

The gameplay has seen a few changes with the inclusion of the Aeion abilities and aiming in 360 degrees, but overall remains as stellar as Samus’ best 2D games. Unfortunately, with so much attention put towards the Switch, this game did not get a lot of focus and has been passed up by many, which is a shame as this is truly one of the best games in the 3DS’ entire library.

19 Overrated: Mario Party Series

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The Super Mario series is such a popular and iconic series that there are loads of spinoff games featuring Mario and the cast of characters. One of the most common games is the Mario Party series. Mario Party was a yearly release until the Wii era, making a series that once was pretty fun, become very stale quickly. They serve as good party options whenever you can get a group together, but this is a series that hasn’t done a lot since the first few games on the N64.

18 Best: Sin & Punishment: Star Successor

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While the Nintendo Wii was largely passed off as a casual console, there were plenty of core games that were very good but did not get much attention if they didn’t have Mario, Pokemon, or Zelda in the title. Treasure’s Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is one of those examples.

While the story campaign is very short, the gameplay is among the best of its genre, featuring two characters, Isa and Kachi, with slightly different play styles. This game has a lot of intense action, mixing close range attacks that can deflect projectiles to perfect shooting controls thanks to the Wii Remote. This is also one of the most challenging Nintendo published games ever made as not many can go through beating this game on its hardest difficulty.

17 Overrated: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series

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This is another spinoff series featuring a very popular Nintendo I.P. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is a randomly generated dungeon RPG series. In every game, you play as the Pokémon themselves in surprisingly good storylines in which the Pokémon actually talk.

This game will make you hate the move agility.

However, the battle system can become completely broken with buffs and can end a very long expedition in just a couple of supercharged attacks. There are also so many unexpected happenings that can ruin the game as well such as random monster houses which features a large horde of enemy Pokémon surrounding your party.

16 Best: Viewtiful Joe*

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Viewtiful Joe originally started as a GameCube exclusive, but the lack of sales forced Capcom to port it to the PlayStation 2 as well (in which it still didn’t sell that well.) Viewtiful Joe was developed by Clover Studios, who are now known as Platinum Games, best known for Bayonetta. This was an amazing side-scrolling action game where you play as an ordinary guy named Joe, who gets sucked into a movie screen with his girlfriend Silvia, becomes a movie hero, and will have to traverse many difficult levels to rescue her.

Viewtiful Joe has a unique mechanic where he can either slow down or speed up time or zoom the camera in for stylish maneuvers. This game has a very quirky, yet memorable cast of characters that many fans wished could see again just to experience Joe’s amazing transforming phrase “Henshin-A-Go-Go-Baby!”

15 Overrated: 1-2-Switch

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It makes no sense as to why Nintendo did not pack this game in Nintendo Switch units to serve as a proper demonstration to what the Switch and the Joy-Cons can provide. This game is nothing more than a mini-game compilation lacking any depth whatsoever. What is silly is that the game still sold millions despite being almost fully priced. This game should have served as the Switch’s equivalent of Wii Sports, but as demonstrated before, the casual appeal always seem to work.

14 Best: Super Castlevania IV

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Konami’s Castlevania series has had many entries throughout the different eras of gaming. They have been partially responsible for the birth of the Metroidvania style games. Many of the series most recognizable games have been on the Playstation and Game Boy Advance, but Super Castlevania IV is one of the best games in the series. It is essentially a remake of the original NES Castlevania, but heavily improved on in the 16-bit graphics era with better gameplay and a very memorable list of music tracks. Super Castlevania IV is regarded by many who played it as one of the best games on the SNES.

13 Overrated: The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes

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This 3DS spinoff sort of tried to re-create the quality of the Four Swords games, but failed miserably. Tri Force Heroes is a 3 player co-op game where the team can all stack up on each other to create a totem pole to reach new elevations. This game is best known for all the different outfits Link can wear, including cross-dressing. What makes this game frustrating is that while online play is supported, there are no good communication features. The only way you can communicate is with Link emoji’s and that simply isn’t good enough.

12 Best: Resident Evil: Revelations

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One of the first true exclusives to the 3DS was Capcom’s Resident Evil Revelations. This game eventually got ported to other consoles to gain more popularity. Resident Evil Revelations followed a different format compared to the canon games, where the story is progressed through episodes, kind of like a TV series. This game featured Jill Valentine, her work partner Parker Luciani, and Chris Redfield as they uncover the mystery of Terragrigia and the organization Veltro.

The Ooze monsters (not zombies) are one of the creepiest enemies in the series and with 3D effects added on, provided a new sense of immersion that has not been done before. The game also has an addictive post-game mode called Raid mode where you can play co-op with someone online and fight your way through the game’s levels.

11 Overrated: Metroid Other M

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Other M is a unique hybrid of 2D Metroid and 3D Ninja Gaiden style gameplay with the ability to switch to a stationary first-person view by pointing the Wii Remote to the screen, providing a similar view to Metroid Prime. The gameplay was actually well done, although shifting to first-person can be a bit awkward most times.

The biggest problem with this game is the story, particularly the characterization of Samus during key moments.

Samus has typically been a stoic, willfully strong bounty hunter, but some scenes have her becoming a bit too emotional in situations that she has faced calmly beforehand. These scenes were so bad for Metroid fans, that many have pretended this game doesn’t exist in the Metroid timeline. If this game occurred in the earlier parts of the timeline then it could have been more acceptable.