@Teksette Yeah, it was mainly an arcade game. Released all the way back in 1980.

@Teksette I believe Phoenix is both the first shmup and overall game to feature a boss fight.

@betterman „The first 2 Bubsy games were actually considered good games in the 90s, at least in my part of the world“
Same here, as a German.
This retconning of decent or good games on the net can be annoying at times.
Same with Castlevania 64.

@Serpenterror He didn’t create Tekken. He only came into leadership position later in the series.

Proud to say I never buy from Amazon, and I have boycotted them ever since their „humble“ beginnings ripping off book publishers.
Good on Reggie here.

The US one is terrible. Way too busy.
Meanwhile, EU/JP is classy and bold. If it would just show a face, that could end up generic, but it actually blending the facial features in with a solid background color? Classy.
To everybody saying it’s low effort: Still, no other cover maker had this idea before.

„On top of a stellar selection of games from every retro console you can imagine (including a particularly impressive set of complete-in-box SNES and Super Famicom titles)“
Do you mean the paltry selection of utterly run of the mill SNEs games in one of those pictures. Those are exactly the SNES games that you will ALWAYS see CiB. If that is the heightlight of the best shop in town, then that is really sad.

The green on the US cover makes it look like Rayman is smashing straight into a beer bottle.

@Falien „the sublime Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death-adder, possibly the best side-scrolling beat ‘em up ever which has had no home release of any kind“

It‘s on the Astro City Mini.

Ethan Zack of past Kotaku days now writing for Nlife? That’s rather recent, or did I just miss to see it before? Either way: Welcome.

Edit: Or was it Ethan Gach? And Zack Zwiezen? Were the two combined into a new writer? ^^

@SuntannedDuck2
„ But does anyone remember the PS4 game with the longest title?“
Comment #6 mentioned the same game. So I guess that yes, people remember it.

Buying Horace based on Nlife‘s 10/10 review was when I lost all confidence in their ratings.
That was maybe a 6/10.

@JJtheTexan „Vampire Survivors (endlessly addicting, created an entirely new genre)“
Not really, as it was a blatant clone of another game. It just popularized the formula.

@batmanbud2
"I also want to mention that it's kinda bizarre that Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! is on this list but not Elite Beat Agents. I know both are technically different games, but EBA is the same thing with English music covers. Why would it not get the same score?"

Nothing bizarre here, as OTO2 got the 10. Not the first game.

@Juanblue85 „I think this marks the third game to escape the Cloud and have a proper native release. RE7 and RE Village were the first two though the later was only available in Japan“
So you only read the headline but still decided to post a comment?
The news outright mentions those two games and also a third game before GotG.

@gojiguy What? They even mentioned in the interview how they played those two recent Bubsy games. But sure, they are trying to gaslight people…

A 3 year old should not play games. It’s as easy as that. Don’t go blaming Nintendo for lack of options.
I swear, 20 years ago people would not have proudly boasted „hey, look, I let my 3 year old play games“.

@Elbarbo That’s why a publisher needs to have released at least 5 games to be eligible for this list.

@StarCollector I genuinely think that for all I know it might be even the better game, but it was just never going to stand a chance commercially against Mario Kart World.

Shinobi was just fugly, and Sonic released too close to Mario Kart.

„Finally, for good measure, here's a few titles coming out in 2027...“

Why would you have this sentence, when nothing follows up on it? No 2027 games to be found here.

Terrible direct. We truly got to watch Koizumi do a thumb fight?!? And then a five-second teaser of OoT not showing anything? Every direct I think it cannot get worse, but Nintendo finds a way. I have owned every Nintendo platform when it was current, but I still have 0 interest in a switch 2.

Never gelled with Shovel Knight, so…good luck, I guess?

How the heck does the author not mention that the JP Cover indeed shows Hitler, and that it‘s even in the title?
Sloppy article…

Played it back in the day and was rather disappointed. It’s a thoroughly mediocre game. Fortunately the home console sequels were considerably better.

So, only the Box will feature a special design, but not the console?
Skip.

@Ogbert I never found the N64 controller to be confusing, but ok.
I just thought it was funny that you brought up the Cube‘s C stick in reference to the naming of the Switch 2‘s C button, when the C stick was just an evolution on the previous gen‘s C buttons. That’s all.

@Ogbert „The GameCube used to have a ‘C stick’“
How about the N64‘s four C buttons? ^^

@PikaPhantom Your example is about taking a game and then slapping a license on it, while this discussion was about games with a license then getting their license stripped out. That is very much a dead practice.

„A story-driven prequel to the popular TV show“
Never even heard of it, but I‘ll take your word for it, I guess? ^^

@Henchdog Mighty No. 9 was planned for Vita but then that version got cancelled? If so, we are in the same boat, as I am still waiting for my 3DS copy that I was supposed to receive.

Nintendolife should have kept it secret. Without you guys making it a big headline here, I wouldn’t have known…
Why not make the headline something like „new character unveiled“, and then only if you click on the article you will actually get to know who it is?

JP‘s drawing quality looks so cheap. No contest really.

I.e. a disappointingly mid game? Let’s wait and see.

@Tasuki What?

This is not a „cult classic“. It was bad back in the day, and it still is.

Again. The physical release in UK did not „underperform“, as it was sold out. It makes no sense to say otherwise.

The term „Monstie“ will never not be cringe af.

If it’s undersupplied and subsequently sold out, it cannot at the same have underperformed. No matter how high or low the actual numbers are.

Neither is good, but I guess the Western one is better for various reasons outlined already in other comments.

Angry Birds was terrible right from the start (the physics were all wonky and random), and it only got worse with more reliance on microtransactions.
And the designs are ugly as sin.
shrug

Wow, pretty bad list and ratings overall, and some of the author's comments are really off.
E.g. my son has been playing Pokemon Smile (twice a day) for some years now, and he could ALWAYS catch a pokémon unless he purposefully messed around. Also, Pokémon Smile is great for what it does, but people here probably just downvoted it for not being a "true game" or whatever. And why are so many games missing here, like Sleep or all the Mini games and TCG2?
I absolutely love Channel, both Parks and several other lowranking games. They are heaps and bounds better than most of the freemium games on this list (except for Picross where the text is way off again).
Lastly, Dash is really not all that bad. I bought it back in the day and enjoyed it quite a bit. The controls are creative and really convey the rush and haste of a race. It's not perfect by any means, but I even enjoyed improving my times after I beat the game.

@Twilite9 Yup, me too. They should have offered us a key for another platform then.

It bears repeating, but they truly scammed people out of their money, and I am among those being scammed.
I backed Might No. 9 on Kickstarter with an amount high enough to grant me a digital key of the game.
So, when Comcept asked me which platform I wanted the game on, I chose 3DS. That version never came and has never been officially cancelled. It just never came. And thus I also never received my key.
Now, I can see why business considerations might lead them to cancel that version. That in itself is ok. But then they should have reached out to me (and all the others) and said "Hey, 3DS is not gonna materialize. Can we give you a key for a different platform? How about a Steam key?".
Then, I would have happily switched, but they never gave us any option.

To think that I once thought really highly of Inafune...I even once interviewed him and it truly was a special day for me back then...

Doesn’t remind me of the GCN at all. Yeah, it’s a cube…and that’s about it for similarities.

Like others here, I was just about to skip the article a second time, simply because of the terrible headline.
I am glad I did end up clicking on it, though, because it turned out to be a genuinely wonderful story.

@purple_shyguy You misread the quote. Tanabe said that it was their first Nintendo game, meaning a game made under the Nintendo brand and published by Nintendo.

Glad the Western Cover won, as the pose is rather nice and not often seen, whereas the JP one is rather generic.

@Nick2054
„ Wow, I thought that 'Zumba' marble game was a typo because 'Zuma' was the original. I guess theres a knockoff of 'Zuma' called 'Zumba' that shares the name with the 'Zumba' workouts.“

To be fair, Zuma was a blatant clone of Mitchell‘s Puzz Loop.

@Warioware My question was what part of the world you are in. Because in my part of the world, all the magazines back then understood that this was a successor to the Shenmue series and evaluated it as such.