Haywired

@Silly_G
Indeed. Releasing 4 very similar NSMB games in a fairly short space of time (especially 2 and U, which literally came out within a couple of months of each other...) seems to have given the series a bad reputation, even among fans, but it shouldn't be forgotten how good and fresh at the time the first two were, just because the next two (while technically still very good in their own right) felt so stale and derivative.

It's almost as if the 3DS didn't really need a fourth Mario & Luigi game.

I think Nintendo's next console should just be a more powerful Switch (ala NES > SNES, N64 > GC). I don't think there should be any need to do anything particularly crazy or kooky (well I hope not anyway). Unlike the Wii and Wii U, the Switch isn't based on a gimmick whose novelty quickly wears off and just becomes an annoying burden, instead it's based on a gimmick that's actually very practical (thus isn't really going to wear off).

And also, while I could see some sort of Switch Pro at some point within this generation, I don't think the Switch necessarily needs to worry too much about its power being cutting-edge because it was never cutting-edge in the first place. That was never its appeal.

@Incarta
That 80% digital statistic wasn't just console games though (which this chart is). That included mobile, PC, all sorts of DLC/microtransaction stuff, which obviously skews the digital percentage way higher than it would be with just console gaming. It was a somewhat misleading headline.

Also, of minor interest perhaps, it seems that in the pre- and post-Christmas charts, none of the Labo kits re-entered the Switch chart (as I know some people had pinned the holidays as being Labo's potential saviour).

I don't think Fitness Boxing did so well. It doesn't seem to have entered the Switch chart, let alone the all-formats top 40.

@LuckyLand
I think that's just a fancy line they trot out nowadays because it sounds nice. "Innovation" "New ways to play" blah blah etc. Considering it's a philosophy that almost killed them with the Wii U, I doubt they adhere to it that steadfastly. After all, if they would heed the words of Yamauchi-san they would know that actually "the hardware is just a box that people buy to play Mario games".

If, as some commenters have pointed out, this statistic includes mobile, PC, etc. rather than just console, then that 80% headline isn't quite as alarming as it first appears. In fact, it's pretty much what you'd expect.

As a Wii/Wii U owner, there were a number of PS3/360 games that I would liked to have played and would very much welcome Switch ports. I realize some of these probably have like 0% chance of being resurrected on Switch, but oh well, it's just my wish-list anyway:

Vanquish, Portal 1/2, Dead Space 1/2, Dishonored, SoulCalibur 4/5, Braid, Bioshock 1/2/3, Resident Evil 5/6, Tales of Xillia 1/2, F.E.A.R, Crysis 1/2/3, King of Fighters 12/13, Enslaved, Eternal Sonata, Lost Planet 1/2, Dead or Alive 4/5, Metal Gear Solid 4.

Wii U: "The second problem was the GamePad, which was just lacklustre in every way imaginable." Except during the four years when it was on the market, when we were claiming it to be the greatest, most innovative controller of all time...

Physical because I'm a collector (and boxart enthusiast).

A procedurally generated Metroidvania sounds like hell (given the importance of navigation and memorization in such a genre). Looks very pretty, but will definitely be avoiding this one. But then, I'm getting pretty tired of Metroidvanias anyway.

"Snipperclips, ARMS, Mario + Rabbids" Greatest console of all time confirmed!

Ha, no, as much as I rag on these lists and their apparent policy of putting the Switch or Switch game at number 1 every time, I will actually say (as sacrilegious as it sounds), that unlike others, I don't have a problem with the NES being low. Yes it's a hugely important and iconic console, but generally I don't think its games have aged that well. Plus, I was a kid during the NES era, yet I don't feel that much nostalgia for it, compared to other Nintendo consoles.

@WaveBoy
Oh, I always thought you loved the 3DS in the early days. Did you go off it? Or was it just the 3D effect that you liked rather than its library?

@carlos82
Haha, so true.

NintendoLife: "Switch is greatest console of all time because Snipperclips".

It always surprises me when I hear people say that the GameCube didn't have a great library or didn't have great third-party support. Compared to the Wii and Wii U (and even perhaps the N64 considering the lack of Japanese support for it), the GameCube had great third-party support. Sure, it didn't get everything, but when I think generally about the big multi-platform games of that generation, the GameCube tended to get them. The likes of: Resident Evil, Burnout, Soulcalibur, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, Super Monkey Ball, Need For Speed, Tales of Symphonia, Sonic, Timesplitters, Viewtiful Joe, SSX, Prince of Persia, Hitman, Skies of Arcadia, True Crime, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Splinter Cell, FIFA, Madden, NBA, WWE, etc. During the subsequent Wii and Wii U eras I would've killed for the kind of AAA third-party support the GameCube received. And obviously that's not even mentioning Nintendo's titles (Smash Bros. Melee, Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, Animal Crossing, Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, Pikmin, etc.)

I'd love to know what was going through the head of whoever chose the photos... "We're going to show that the Switch is the best console of all time and we're going to use 1-2-Switch and Just Dance to prove it!"

My list (I'm going to separate home and handheld because it's hard to directly compare them. Plus, while I'm sure it would eventually rank highly, I'm not going to include the Switch because it's only been on the market for less than two years!! As my list doesn't exist purely to shill the Switch, this shouldn't be a problem):

Home:
1. SNES
2. GameCube
3. N64
4. Wii U
5. NES
6. Wii

Handheld:
1. GBA
2. GB/GBC (I consider GBC an enhanced redesign rather than a whole new console generation).
3. 3DS
4. DS

Well I think that does it... Putting the Switch at number 1 when it's only been on the market for less than 2 years surely proves beyond doubt that these lists are an absolute sham and are made purely to promote the Switch. The Switch has been great so far, and when it's all said and done, I can see it ranking highly on my list, but it's far too early to rank it.

So NintendoLife's lists/"guides" have gone:

Best Zelda ever: Switch game
Best Mario ever: Switch game
Best Monster Hunter ever: Switch game
Best Smash Bros ever: Switch game
Best console ever: Switch
Best Metroid ever: Oh my God, not a Switch game!! (oh, but only because there isn't one yet...)

Jesus... If ever anyone wants to know what recency bias is, just show them these lists.

Also, you may want to use a different photo to represent the Switch. The one you've chosen doesn't exactly scream "BEST EVER!".

Nice one. Though to be fair "fastest selling" is usually a bit of an empty statistic. I remember when the Gamecube was the "fastest selling console ever! It beat the PS2!" etc. Or when the 3DS was the "fastest selling handheld console ever! Crushed the Gameboy and DS!" etc.

I agree that short games are great and a game's value shouldn't just be determined by its length.

Glad to hear this turned out so well. Thought it looked amazing, but was still a little hesitant as I have been fooled by indie games with beautiful art styles before.

Nintendo's online will be having some major issues in the next few days. Consumers say "How will we tell the difference?"

@NintenDan_
Same here.

@AstralOrange64
Well IMO the ultimate Smash Bros was released on the Gamecube in 2001 ha.

I thought Persona 5 looked awesome, then I heard that it takes like 100 hours to complete... Oh, OK, maybe not then...

Interestingly, this is actually the only Smash Bros game NintendoLife has ever given 10/10.

@Rekiotsu
It's ridiculous. Especially when they have to rearrange the damn boxart just to accommodate it. I don't know why Germany doesn't just use the PEGI one like the rest of Europe, or at least not make the symbol so unfeasibly big.

It looks stunning, but then I have been burned by indie puzzle platformers with beautiful art styles before...

"Not only did it introduce the world to the wonders of motion control" Well, that and all the tons of video game motion control devices that came before it.

As a collector and boxart enthusiast, I don't know how I'd cope in Germany with those huge ugly USK rating symbols ruining my whole collection. Thankfully, in the UK, we get the perfectly fine PEGI rating symbol (which, considering it's supposed to be the Pan European rating system, I don't know why Germany still needs the USK one). I think Australia has huge ugly rating symbols as well don't they?

"I'm really against the idea of merely creating a Smash Bros sequel that would add modes or increase the number of characters on the roster. All those sort of things that simply fatten up the game is something I'd like to avoid."
Masahiro Sakurai, 2008......

I was a big fan of Stick It to the Man, but to be honest, I didn't enjoy this one quite as much. I still loved the art style and humour, but some of the puzzles are incredibly confusing (thank God for the hint system I guess. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to make some of the giant, insane leaps of "logic" without the hints). I think for a puzzle to work, it needs to exist within fairly small paramaters, but with these big sprawling levels with multiple characters and multiple puzzles going on at once (where it's easy to miss a bit of scenery, or forget a line of dialogue that was said ages ago, that are integral to the puzzle), it can be hard sometimes to narrow things down to the right solution.

I'd choose the SNES because I'd choose the SNES over everything.

Bare in mind though that as the UK hates Nintendo so much, all these copies were bought just so we could burn them.

Being generally allergic to motion controls, I never bought Skyward Sword, as I didn't really fancy playing Zelda: Just Dance Edition, but if they were to port this in its original form, it would be insane to put a Zelda game on the Switch that you couldn't play in handheld mode (I know that was the deal with 1-2-Switch, but this isn't 1-2-Switch. No one's playing single player 1-2-Switch on the bus...) But then, from what I've heard, the game is so heavily built around motion controls that giving it a traditional control scheme would be a massive task...

@Hikingguy
But equally you could say; If the game is still popular and people are still buying and playing, why keep updating?

People aren't still buying or playing Splatoon 2 because of updates, it's because it's a great game (just as people are still buying and playing MK8DX despite no significant updates ever). The fact that it won't be receiving any more updates doesn't mean everyone's going to suddenly stop playing it. That it suddenly becomes an unfun game. Plus, it can't just keep bloating forever. There has to be a cut-off point.

People here acting like you can't play the game anymore because there'll be no more updates... It's not dead... People will still play the hell out of it. Updates are irrelevant to its core evergreen appeal. There's already more than enough maps. What more do you want? If you're a true fan of the game then that should mean absolutely nothing to your enjoyment of it. It wouldn't have mattered to me if the game had never received any updates.

Thanks @Trajan for talking sense at least.

It will almost certainly be the biggest selling Smash Bros ever, but then again, that's mainly due to the fact that it's on a red-hot Switch and its predecessors were released on a dying N64, a Gamecube, a Wii U, a handheld and a very casual orientated Wii (in the sense that Brawl only sold half of what the likes NSMBWii, MKWii, Wii series games, etc. did)

The first half of this game is great. There's atmosphere, intrigue, scary creatures, creepy humans, nice puzzles, cool set-pieces. Then for some reason the second half just becomes '1001 Tedious Crate Puzzles' and all the promise of the first half fades away to a repetitive slog.

While I imagine it might be quite hard to see what's going on sometimes, the art is absolutely incredible.

Let the butt battles commence!

Probably too old-skool and too much of a purist for my own good, but I'm not really a fan of it. I preferred the days where you bought a game and that was the complete game for the complete price and when you beat it you could move on to the next game, rather than said game then expands afterwards and you now haven't had the complete experience after all, so you have to go back to it. And then it gets further bloated again and I'm like "Oh my God, would you just stop now!" There's barely enough time to play all the games anyway, it doesn't help if they all keep expanding...

Only in video games would such a thing be seen as good, because sadly, for some reason, quantity is everything, but I believe that often; less is more. It's clearly already conditioning gamers into thinking that nothing is ever enough; "More Mario Odyssey worlds plz!" "More Mario Kart 8 tracks plz!" etc...

Obviously people say that DLC is "optional". True, but a) everything is optional. Buying the game in the first place was optional, and b) if you're a fan of the game then you kind of feel you have to get it to get the complete experience. I've bought DLC, but only ever out of FOMO (which I guess is what DLC preys upon). I just think it's quite vulgar and it's all a slippery slope really (well unless EA and the like have already lead us to the bottom, or maybe there's further depths to plumb, I don't know).

Vanquish and Nier Automata would be awesome.

Let's hope they don't have any network connectivity problems. (Kudos to anyone who gets that Chris Pratt reference)

@Axlroselm
Yeah, the amount of comments I saw after the StarFox reveal along the lines of "I had no interest in this game, but now it's a must-buy!" It's like; yeah thanks, you're really doing wonders for the old Nintendo fan/third-party games stereotype there... Plus Ubisoft also knew that, like with Mario + Rabbids, they were guaranteed 9/10s from Nintendo sites (that would've been 7s or 8s without the crowbarred Nintendo characters).

I'm curious as to what the technical limitations might be. If you can get Doom on the Switch (ie. a current gen AAA game), I can't see why King of Fighters would pose too much of a problem.

The stench of Wii lingers on... I probably would have got this, but the motion control focus is obviously, as always, a major turn-off, but we'll see.

Cheesy feels.

That is really nice.