Best Nintendo Franchises

How many copies did Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 sell? There doesn't seem to be a figure.

I am a bit surprised that more people bought Smash on 3DS than on Wii U. I love handhelds but fighters are the one genre that I do not enjoy playing on them. I get that the 3DS sold more overall, but for more folks to buy Smash on a handheld than on a home console is the surprising bit.

This list is fascinating. It really puts in perspective just how badly the WiiU flopped.

Worst Zelda - Freshly-Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
Worst Metroid - Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Worst Animal Crossing - Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival

Thank you, O fandom, for restoring my faith in the people of this planet. And then folk say that we as fans and customers have no power over corporations?

(I suppose a game about Beedle would have been worse than one about Tingle. Still, I would think the rather inappropriate connotations that come with including the words "tingle", "rosy", "picked" and "land" in a single title doomed that thing from the start...)

I notice a lot of the best selling ones are on the Switch which is impressive.

Also to add:

Best Xenoblade Chronicles - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (switch) 2.05 million
Worst Xenoblade Chronicles - Xenoblade Chronicles (n3ds) .56 million

@Dualmask I am one of these people. I own a 3DS, but I never bought a WiiU. The 3DS version of Smash was surprisingly robust and fleshed out. A friend of mine and I would play against each other on our 3DSs and we never noticed any input lag or dropped frames... I can't even say that about Smash Ultimate multiplayer.

@Dualmask I mean the 3ds has a bigger base then the WiiU. So it makes sense it'll have bigger sales on 3ds

King of Swing was, in fact, an excellent game. Lots of fun, and well worth playing.

Fun article, but I'm not sure comparing AAA franchise hits with budget spin-off flops is really revealing very much at all!!

I would have bought Tingle's Rosy Ruppeeland if they bothered to bring it to the US 😒...though like Kirby Squeak Squad, I would never want to utter the game's name aloud in public 😆

It took a thousand monkeys to come up with that sub- headline…

@Broosh It was an awful game. I can vouch for that.

Another thing to add, I feel like this list would be a lot more interesting if you compared the best and worst selling mainline games only instead of bringing in spinoff tittles. Because those are obviously going to sell significantly less than the mainline counterparts.

If it was actually a comparison of these series and half the worst selling games weren’t niche spin-offs this would be solid.

@hypercoyote Good to know! I'll gladly avoid the greedy scalper value this game has nowadays.

Great SIMPSONS reference in the tag!

Ah, the Tingle game. I remember reading about it in Nintendo Power in America, yet, it never came over to the states. I would’ve bought that right away

@liljmoore from a purely numbers perspective, it makes sense. I just found it fascinating that so many people bought the 3DS Smash, less about the number of people who owned the console.

The article mentions that Donkey Kong Country is an "anomaly" on this list because the best-selling game in the franchise is also one of the oldest.

Then the article continues on to say that the original Kirby's Dreamland, Super Mario Bros, Pokemon, and Wario Land are also the best selling games in their franchise? Not to mention one of the oldest Starfox games (64)???

I do not think that word means what you think it means...

What about Star Fox Guard? It was available as a standalone purchase and has to have sold fewer copies than Zero. It’s kinda fun though.

@Dualmask but no one bought the Wii U

Edit: oh I see someone else already said this lol. Point still stands. The 3DS had a huge player base to buy it.

Best games for me:
Animal Crossing New Horizons
Dance Dance Revolution X2 Arcade

Unsurprisingly, a lot of best sellers are on Switch and a lot of the worst sellers are on Wii U plus late 3DS games. I'm still always happy to see my physical copy of New Super Luigi U sitting on my shelf. I love the green cover. Biggest surprises for me are DKC1 being the best selling DK game and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn being the worst selling Fire Emblem. For the latter, it shows just how dire things were for FE before Awakening. As for DK, I'm surprised that DKC Returns or Tropical Freeze isn't on top with the large install bases of the Wii and Switch, respectively, but I guess Returns was a late Wii game and Tropical Freeze is a Wii U port on Switch.

Some of Vgsales Fandom's numbers (particularly for the worst-sellers) are from Vgchartz, which means they are rubbish.

I'll also echo what @nocdaes and @iLikeUrAttitude have said - many of the worst-sellers are insignificant budget titles or spin-offs whose low sales should surprise absolutely no one.

@Dualmask It's sad because the Wii U version is much better, but people actually owned 3DSs so it sold more by default.

@Peterchu
5.19 million

@CANOEberry I'm guessing from your comment that you haven't played Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland and aren't aware that it's actually a very good game

@CANOEberry What are you talking about? Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is one of the funnest and weirdest games on the DS. Just because it has a weird protagonist doesn't mean it isnt good.

It was so good in fact that it spawned a sequel, which, its not as great as the first... but its also really good.

@Broosh Not scalpers, collectors. The game is quite old at this point, it's only valuable because it's rare, not because it's good 😅

@Broosh I've owned Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland since it launched here in the UK and it was a great game. It had some nice references to Zelda (the "get item" theme sometimes plays, there's an area called Lon Lon Meadow, the Deku Tree makes an appearance etc.), an interesting premise which serves as an origin story for Tingle, lots of varied locations to explore, great dungeons/bosses and fun and quirky characters to meet.

The final boss is so fantastic that sometimes I revisit the game just to fight it again. It's a very challenging game though which might put some people off and it has a...questionable reward cutscene for reaching 100% completion. It has to be seen to be believed lol I liked the game so much back in the day that I bought 'Color Changing Tingle's Love Balloon Trip' and 'Tingle's Balloon Fight' in recent years (before their prices went through the roof)

@iLikeUrAttitude The list overall makes no sense. Sometimes they count spin-offs & stand alone DLCs, or sometimes they don't. They really need 2 separate lists.

This is an idea they probably shouldn't have done until whenever the Switch's life ends, because a lot of these Switch games like Metroid Dread are already close to eclipsing Prime's sales, and it's safe to say Kirby & the Forgotten Land has a good chance of doing the same. Would've also given series like Splatoon & Xenoblade to release more games and get their sales, and I'd think 3 & 4 games respectively for both would be enough for a list like this. That's not even considering Pokémon titles that are still climbing in sales.

I've bought and played most of these. Even the worst ones were somewhat enjoyable.

@LXP8 @YoshiF2 It's true that I haven't played the game you refer to (I'm not typing that title out)... but at no point did I claim that it was bad, either.

By way of clarifying/repeating what I wrote above: I strongly advise you never to recite the game's full title to a person you don't know very well. "Rosy rupeeland" already sounds rather suggestive, but the title's verb and use of the term "tingle" in particular could cause serious misunderstanding... 🤣

I think putting Legends Arceus onto this list is a bit irritating since that sales number (6,5 mio) is based on one week after the game launched. I'm sure now 2 months later it isn't the least sold Pokemon game anymore

"It's apparently very hard, and perhaps that was the reason not many people bought it — or maybe it just came too soon after its Western debut for there to really be much hype around it. Who knows!"

I knows!

Radiant Dawn wasn't really that hard, but the previous game in the series was given an easy mode in localization, and removed the hardest mode. So in the west it was Easy/Normal/Hard, but Japan had Normal/Hard/Maniac.

Now Radiant Dawn also had Maniac mode, and no easy mode. But they localized it in America as Easy/Normal/Hard. So while the actual corresponding modes were roughly equal difficulty, Radiant Dawn accidentally tricked a lot of western players into playing one mode harder than they thought they were playing.

Then there's the fact it's a direct sequel to an already-niche gamecube game, and a hardcore game on the Wii with no motion gimmicks or sales hooks. And did I mention it came out the same week as Mario Galaxy in the west?

Nintndo has a weird habit of sabotaging the release dates of Intelligent Systems strategy games...

Super Mario Bros. shouldn't count, since presumably a large number of the copies sold were pack-ins.
Though Super Mario Bros. 3 I think had the record for the highest selling console game prior to the Wii. (when Wii Play reportedly beat it, though it was argued people were mainly interested in getting an extra controller at that early stage in the Wii's life, and just considered the game a cheap extra)

Nice list here, but I feel like saying Legend Arceus is the worst selling Pokemon is a bit disingenuous when its only been on the market for three months as of now.

But as to Fire Emblem games, I can't imagine Thracia 776 to have sold that well, given that it was released to Nintendo Power carts (equivalent to a "digital release") in 1999, the middle of the N64's lifespan. (and the packaged version was seemingly the final retail PCB game produced, in 2000. Yes, Metal Slader Glory (a remake of a Famicom visual novel) was released half a year after it, but it sounds like copies of that game were a preloaded NP cart. Can't recall if Metal Slader Glory was given a proper box either, or just the standard NP box with a sticker slapped on it.)

Little confused as to the addition of Tingle's Ruppee Disaster in this list, since your own rules state "no Japan only" and yet sales figures are only available for Japan. Similarly, new Kirby not being included but Arceus going up there is a bit misleading. You don't really have sales numbers for Arceus yet either if we're being honest.

That being said I'm blown away that the best selling Kirby game is a Gameboy title. I was sure it would be an SNES game, but apparently I was wrong. Great list!

"largely because it had almost nothing to do with previous Metroid games"

This isn't true. Nearly Federation Force's whole plot revolves around the Space Pirates' desire to find and utilize the next great power following the eradication of Phazon at Prime 3's conclusion, and the basis for Operation Golem was for the Federation to be prepared in the case that the Space Pirates ever became that lethal again. It essentially further validated the influence and power of Phazon through the Prime Trilogy, arguably more so than any Prime Trilogy game individually other than Prime 3. Aside from Prime 3, there are connections that can be drawn to Hunters, Metroid II/Samus Returns and Metroid Fusion. They are not as obvious as the connection with Prime 3, but they are there.

@mariomaster96 Even more irritating because it's already sold more than Crystal...

I wonder if Forgotten Land will finally sell more then the lovely classic Kirby’s Dresmland? The Gameboy was so HUGE then.

Fun fact: King of Swing got a sequel on the DS called Jungle Climber. Those games always felt like a weird departure from the platforming of DKC, but I really enjoyed them.

@Jadamson929 Kirby Super Star is a beloved game but sold late in the console’s lifetime meanwhile gameboy was huge and Dreamland was definitely one of the better games on the device. It managed to do really well on handheld.

Perhaps it's DK's roots in the arcade that are to blame for his popularity peaking in 1994.

Nope, it's because Donkey Kong Country is an awesome game like DKC2 and DKC3.

I guess we don't know enough about F-Zero sales to include it.

I know there are Pokemon spinoffs that sold less than Arceus, so this list isn't accurate. Also Metroid Dread has crossed 3 million sales and should definitely be on the list

This list isn't accurate. Also, why aren't the sales numbers stated on each entry.

Okay, I’m sure it’s been observed, but before reading the article - “...the blurst of games”? Kate is now my favorite games writer ever.

@Dualmask Funny. I've found I most enjoy Smash on handheld systems. I've racked up hundreds of hours of playtime on 3DS and Switch Lite. Whereas I played the Wii U one and Ultimate on the TV maybe... a grand total of five times?

I just realised that most readers know much more about video games than some video games writer and that some video games writer don't know much about what they're writing.

The worst Metroids in my opinion are the DS ones: Hunters and pinball. If the DS couldn't make a convincing prime game, they should have made a 2D game. As for Federation Force, the game was not terrible but I couldn't get into it because it was an online game, that needed other online players and it was so very unpopular that they are hard to find. I wish they would patch it so that a single player who isn't good at fps games could play it solo.

@Moistnado No way, my dude. MP Pinball is an amazing game. On the rare occasions when I still turn my 3DS on, I ALWAYS play a few rounds of Pinball. Not to mention it had the Rumble Pak.

I honestly wish they would port it to the Switch or make a new version. I have a flip grip ready and waiting.

Amiibo Festival is amazing, convince me otherwise.

Very interesting article! Some surprises for me.

I wish more people would play tropical freeze… so good.

I’m glad it’s sold reasonably well though, but I would like to see it sell more!

@Jadamson929 Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland was released in Europe and Japan

I imagine legends Arceus won’t stay at the bottom forever, it’s only a couple of months old…

And it’s far to good to stay in last place

@Moistnado Federation Force is already the easiest Prime game even in single player.

All of these make sense but this says a lot about Pokémon. The fact that its worst selling game is critically acclaimed and the only reason it’s on this list is because of the fact that it hasn’t had the time? That’s impressive for the franchise.

@SwitchVogel Jungle Climber is a great game. I picked it up a couple of years ago for my collection, and I'm really glad I did!

@BLD How is Federation Force's single player the easiest of the Prime Series? If I'm reading @Moistnado correctly, saying they're not good at FPS games, Federation Force and Hunters would be the hardest (Prime 2 would be the hardest to navigate).

@BLD it really isn't easy, as I said, for someone who isn't good at fps games. I've completed all of the other Prime games, which are more about puzzles than soaking up and spraying bullets.

@I-U I agree, thank you!

In summary, if a game was released on the Wii-U, it was almost certainly the worst selling of the series.

Smash Wii U is amongst the greatest games in the series and was THE best iteration at the time. Such a shame.

No Yoshi games... aww

I'm here because tagline is a quote from the Simpsons and made me laugh

@KateGray
Why no sales numbers for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn?
Growing up it was one of my favorite games and I never really noticed the difficulty as a ten year old, oddly enough.

Rather than just looking at total sales, it might be more interesting to examine the attachment rates (IE game sales divided by console sales) to see what the most and least popular games were among the people who could potentially buy them.

@Moistnado Gasp! Metroid Prime Pinball was a treasure! I loved that game. But I think this is a case of, just because it has the name doesn't mean it's really part of the franchise.

How bizarre then that they've completely abandoned the Wario Land series.

@TheFox yes, I'm sure it was a fantastic pinball game but not a good Metroid game.

@Kestrel Everyone that was alive at the time could potentially buy them, because they had the option of buying the console. If a console has many great games for people of all tastes, it will have more appeal and sell better. People buy consoles for the games at the end of the day.

@KingMike There’s nothing wrong with including pack-in games. A game is chosen to be part of a bundle because it is an E-ticket game expected to sell very well (and usually it’s not included in all console bundles or throughout the console’s whole lifespan). If the bundled game underperformed, they would replace it with a different one.

I’m so sad about Metroids figures. What’s wrong with people?
I wish you put up some numbers for Yoshi, F-Zero and pikmin too.

”Star Fox Zero managed only 0.44m copies sold. Oh, and the fact that it used motion controls on the Wii U GamePad, a choice that basically no one enjoyed.”

That’s not true. I know of plenty of people who loved it, myself included.

Also, the fact that Tropical Freeze has sold so few copies is baffling. It’s easily one of the best platformers ever made, let alone one of the best DKC games. Anyone with a Switch that hasn’t bought that game is only hurting themself.

But Islands and Fruit in Game & Wario are fantastic

Did Legends of Arceus really sell worse than Pokemon Conquest?

I think what this article teaches us is that we are lucky to still get new entries in Fire Emblem and Metroid, given how little they sell compared with other franchises. Kudos to Nintendo for not simply chasing the biggest possible sales.

What about F-Zero, Wave racer, Excite, Pikmin…….come on there’s more 1st party titles than this!

Best Pikmin game?
Best WaveRace game?
Best ExciteSeries game?
Best best worst worst?

@Lord great minds …

@kategray according to Wikipedia, ACNH has even outsold SKYRIM, which is pretty amazing

@I-U

How is it easiest? That's difficult to quantify, it really just is. Yes other Primes have more focus on puzzles and exploration, but they're still harder in combat. Best example I can think of is to watch the final boss of FF. It has very simple attacks and gives the player ample time to dodge all of them. Like, 20 seconds between attacks, that sort of thing.

@Cheez Someone said that the Pokemon Arceus sales number listed is from when it was only out for 2 weeks, so it's definitely way higher. Pokemon Conquest sold 1 million from what I can find, so yes it outsold that. And I'm sure it outsold Pokemon Coliseum, XD, Pokemon Channel, Hey You Pikachu!... etc. And in their annotation, they said not counting Crystal, Emerald, or Platinum. I'm calling BS on the whole thing. It's the worst selling if you ignore these 15 games, basically.

‘plus helping the (US) industry itself recover from the (US) 1983 video game crash’

Also, Pokémon Legends is a spin off game.

@ArcticEcho And yet Freshly-Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland was counted for Zelda because only looking at mainline games is "boring and predictable".

Pretty funny that alot of the worst selling entries in the series for a lot of these were Wii U titles lol

I'll definitely Buy Star Fox Zero for my Nintendo Switch OLED!

@BAN I haven't purchased it yet, because I did beat it on the wii u, and my backlog is so full right now! I have over 50 games to beat right now on my Nintendo Switch, Literally!
But, I'll eventually buy it again. DK Tropical Freeze is a Masterpiece!

Pokémon gale of darkness on GameCube sold less copies than Pokémon Legends….

@Peterchu 5.19 million or so, based on various different sources that apparently all originally exist in print.

@NintendoEternity I guess I should clarify that I mean anyone with a Switch who didn't play it on Wii U, which at this point is probably like 100 million people.

@beazlen1 Keeping in mind that this is "Best-Selling" rather than simply the best...

Pikmin 3 Deluxe is that series's #1, selling 2.04 million units as of about a year ago.

Wave Race 64 sold about 2.94 million, and nothing else even came close.

Excitebike sold 4.16 million on NES/Famicom.

F-Zero sold 2.85 million sales on the SNES, more than the 2 and #3 entries in the series combined (which is likely why we haven't seen much of it lately).

Rhythm Heaven DS sold 3.04 million, whereas across the other entries in the series, only the Wii version is a confirmed million-seller.

@Acampbell128 And so did Colosseum and probably 10+ other spin-offs. How about: Pokemon Channel, Pokemon Ranger series, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, Pokemon Battle Revolution... etc...? Clearly this list was not researched in the least.

Kate seems really inconsistent on whether to count spinoffs or not. It doesn't make sense to use spinoffs for Kirby and Animal Crossing yet not do the same for Mario and Pokémon.

@BLD Generally, Federation Force has more enemies active in the player's vicinity than any other Prime game. Since it has lock-on, Federation Force's combat will be easier to grasp than Hunters, but I definitely rate the overall difficulty higher than Hunters and the Prime Trilogy. I partially agree with you on the bosses.

A player is more likely to get hit by one of those bosses in the Trilogy due to them having more complex attack patterns; however, taking damage in the Prime Trilogy is not as significant as taking damage in Federation Force. None of the final bosses do anywhere near as much to a player relative to total energy compared to what Samus can do if a player isn't able to avoid her (more so outside of her Boost Ball and Bombs, when her movement is a bit less predictable). That's not including how spent a player could be on their equipment when they go into the Samus fight after dealing with the Space Pirate waves beforehand. Enemies and bosses don't drop energy for the player in Federation Force, they do in the other games as well as the player having a much bigger cushion of energy to work with.

Every Prime Trilogy game has a ceiling of 1499 energy, Federation Force has 99. Hunters has a ceiling of 799, second lowest of the first person Prime games but still significantly higher than what's offered in Federation Force. I think a player is much more likely to die in Federation Force, regardless if they're a veteran of the series, new to Metroid, good at FPS or bad at FPS.

No spin-off for Pokémon?

If you ignore the Virtual Console and remakes, I don't have any of these best sellers (unless you count "Pokémon Yellow")!

Although, part of that is because I don't yet have a Switch, and partly because my first Nintendo console was the GameCube.

@Dualmask Personally, I bought both versions, and the 3DS version is also really good.

Anyway, if you were one of the many people who had a (2/3)DS but not a Wii U, would you pass up the opportunity to get one of the two brand new Super Smash Bros. games since "Brawl" released over 6 years ago while having no idea when we would get the next one, just because it was a handheld game?

@iLikeUrAttitude Remasters/Remakes don't count. The worst selling Xenoblade is almost certainly "Xenoblade Chronicles X."

@shoeses Aside from the obvious hardware advantages of HD graphics and easier (and up to 8-player) local multiplayer, how was the Wii U version of Smash Bros. so much better than the 3DS version? Smash Run on 3DS is much better than Smash Tour on Wii U, and the games have mostly the same or comparable content otherwise, while they control equally well (unless you're someone who just can't give up right-stick smash attacks). The Wii U version does exclusively have Event Matches and Master and Crazy Orders, but is that enough?

@BLD So "Radiant Dawn" was indeed really that hard, since it didn't actually have an easy difficulty mode at a time in the series when permadeath was still mandatory. I know I wouldn't be able to beat "Awakening" on normal difficulty if I had permadeath turned on, not even with full abuse of the Pair Up function.

@BAN "DK: Tropical Freeze" has the disadvantage of people not wanting to double dip after buying the Wii U version. While the Wii U of course flopped, and many people double dipped anyway, it's still a significant disadvantage for the upgraded version of a game to have its sales partly divided among two consecutive consoles like that (aside from "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" as basically a simultaneous Wii U and Switch release). It also shows just how amazing "Mario Kart 8: Deluxe" is to have sold so well on the Switch despite that disadvantage.

@BulbasaurusRex Well it's not a remake/remaster, its a port.
But yes if you weren't to include Xenoblade 3D Xenoblade X would be the worst selling Xenoblade game.

@Broosh Squeak Squad is a THOUSAND times better than that garbage. In fact, STAR ALLIES is better than that.