TheRealKyleHyde

First 'sportswashing', now 'gameswashing'.

'Zelda 64'? Are we seriously making this an acceptable synonym of Ocarina of Time?

Gah, I'm jealous. The cheapest I've seen it here in Germany is €53 (£44).

Having not played a Lego game since Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga on the Wii, it looks from the trailer like they've done a lot more than just add the sequel trilogy and touch up the graphics. The more complex combat and upgradable abilities are completely different.

The question is whether these new bells and whistles will actually make the game more fun. Part of the joy of the old titles was the simplicity of the hack-and-slash (and solve some Force puzzles) gameplay, even if it did get a bit repetitive. One to keep an eye on.

@chapu2006 Another flawed but interesting method of comparing the overall quality of Switch games released each year is to look at the minimum score required to get into the top 50. At the time of writing, this is as follows:

2017: 7.44
2018: 7.98
2019: 7.86
2020: 7.48
2021: 7.59

From these results, 2021 is third behind 2018 and 2019. There is a bit of a gap between these two years and the others.

Hmm... Finding Paradise was supposed to be coming out in summer 2021, but it's now December of the same year and we haven't heard a peep. Its predecessor, To the Moon, had one of the best stories I've experienced in a video game, so I hope this sequel will be making its way to the Switch eventually.

The decimal point appears to be in the wrong place for the Mini Pikachu Mug Set, which is currently listed here as £1,499.00!

@RupeeClock It's possible that it is in fact German but someone got confused between Deutsch (German) and Dutch.

The link to the page about the DS Lite is broken.

If I understand Alex's intention correctly, the clause in the conclusion that says 'but it’s hard to argue that this is the best Mario Party has been in over a decade' is missing a 'not'. It currently reads as if there have in fact been better entries in the series in the last 10 years.

The 'V' is missing in the article's reference to 'Grand Theft Auto-style controls' (sic).

I'd be interested to hear which controllers people use to play retro 2D platformers like this on the Switch, especially in handheld mode. I like playing in this mode, but neither the control stick nor the face buttons on the left Joy-Con are a proper substitute for a good D-pad.

Now I want some fish and chips.

Well done, Wario! I think Smooth Moves sold a lot back in the Wii days and it seems people want another slice of micro-game mayhem. The relatively low launch price (£40 RRP) would have helped too.

The announcement turned out to be a new set for Japan called the Starter Deck 100.

@BrazillianCara The first TCG game for the Game Boy is available on the 3DS Virtual Console. However, I know what you mean regarding the copyright.

I'd love them to make more games like the Game Boy one, and/or release a translated version of the Japan-exclusive sequel. It probably won't happen though, and if it did, you just know any new entries would be riddled with micro-transactions.

Abomasnow's types are mistakenly listed in the table as 'Grass/Snow' rather than 'Grass/Ice'.

Also, Chatot is Normal/Flying, not just Flying, and 'Hisuian' is spelt incorrectly in the table.

Thank you, Nintendo Life, for including (A) the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions for the pronunciation variants in the article and (B) the obvious 'fee-fi-fo-fum' pun in the poll!

I used to love racing through Cheese Land in Mario Kart: Super Circuit. The Mario Kart 8 version of the track is nice but it feels completely different to the GBA original.

Not necessarily a 'bad' game, but Mario Power Tennis on the GameCube got ripped to shreds on its release for the intrusive and repetitive Power Shots. I didn't mind these (and you can turn them off in some modes) and in fact really enjoyed the game, putting in many hours to try and complete all the modes (some of those mini-games still haven't been conquered).

Aksys Games previously published the Zero Escape series. Any chance of a Switch port, do you reckon?

How disturbing / gruesome is the horror content in this game? I've played the Zero Escape games and Corpse Party, and found the former to be just about within my tolerance threshold while the latter went beyond the level of good taste for me.

Lovely stuff. Shame they forgot to localise 'June 25th' as 'the 25th of June' for a British audience.

I remember when Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour came out for the GameCube, people criticised it for having generic courses with not enough Mario whackiness. 18 years later, people are comparing this game unfavourably to Toadstool Tour on those grounds. Not sure what to make of this...

'The games have a strong co-viewing potential.'

I've never heard this particular piece of business jargon before. Thankfully the next sentence explains what it means - otherwise I'd have no idea what he's talking about.

I hope we get a review of World's End Club. Anything by Kotaro Uchikoshi of Zero Escape fame will pique my interest.

I've loved Ace Attorney since around the time the series was released on the DS, but for some reason I decided to skip Ghost Trick at the time. I finally put that right at the start of 2020, just before the pandemic struck and caused retro game prices to skyrocket. It turned out to be a brilliant decision: I got the game on eBay for £17.50 (the going rate now seems to be about £60!) and it was brilliant. I didn't quite get the same giddy vibes as Kate, but it was really innovative and stylish with a fantastic story that's up there with the best Ace Attorney titles.

(I do share Kate's sentiment about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, though, but maybe that's because those feelings are from 2004 when it first came out!)

@Slowdive Before visiting this website, I'd never come across the term 'shmup' before, and I don't think I've encountered it elsewhere since either. It sounds ridiculous to me. I'll be sticking with 'shoot-'em-up' or 'shooter'.

These figures are really impressive. If anyone's wondering why the Switch hasn't received a Player's Choice / Nintendo Selects range yet, this is why. Some of these games are from the first year of the console's life and still selling like hot cakes. If we do ever get a budget range, I think it will start with first-party games that aren't on this list: titles like Yoshi's Crafted World, Kirby Star Allies, Arms and Mario Tennis Aces (which still sold well at launch but haven't sustained the numbers since).

The bit about Tinkerbell and 'excuuuuuuse me, princess' was part of the quote from Eve Forward's brother, not Eve herself.

For those who are confused about the make-up of this list, here's why...

A game can only appear on this list if it has received at least 50 user ratings. This is why it is dominated by titles that have appeared on the Nintendo Switch Online service, which has previously been the subject of its own Nintendo Life list and thus those games have already received lots of ratings.

If you want to see your favourite on the list, then get rating! For example, Faxanadu has been mentioned by many people, and based on its current average score, it would be in the top 25. However, it has only received 16 ratings, hence it is a long way off from reaching the threshold of 50.

The good news is that there has already been a fair bit of movement since the list was first published. For example, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse was initially absent, but after it got 50 ratings, it went straight into the top ten. When I first checked the list, a game only needed an average score of 5.4 to make the top 50, but now it would need around 5.8. So the cream gradually is rising to the top, even if the competition here isn't as fierce for other consoles, where a game's average score might need to be in the upper 7s or 8s in order to get into the top 50 (see Nintendo Life's other system lists). Clearly many games from 30-odd years ago simply don't stand the test of time; to put a positive spin on it, though, it goes to show how brilliant the top titles are if they can still command high user scores all these years later!

Finally, Nintendo Life might want to consider lowering the threshold for entry to make the list more representative of the quality of the NES library. For the Game Boy list, they reduced the eligibility from 50 votes to 20, so why not also for the NES? Something to think about.

For anyone interested, the following titles on this list are currently available on 3DS Virtual Console (in Europe, at least):

• Pokémon Red / Blue / Yellow
• Pokémon Gold / Silver / Crystal
• Legend of the River King 2 (and its predecessor)
• The Sword of Hope II
• Lufia: The Legend Returns
• Mario Tennis
• Mario Golf

@invictus4000 "It's a coffee table. There's a thick book lying on top of it. The cover art is of some medieval punks with swords and bows and whatnot. Then there's a pair of kids sitting in front of a TV. No idea what that's all about. Maybe Bradley would know..."

If the 'Is The Legend of Zelda an RPG?' debate wasn't enough, here we have Castlevania listed as one. Let the floodgates open!

In all seriousness, this looks like a lovely coffee-table tome.

My favourite GBA games are probably Mario Kart Super Circuit and the third-generation Pokémon titles.

A few missing games from the database (some of which have been mentioned above):

• Crash Bandicoot XS (also known as Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure in North America)
• Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced
• Crash Bandicoot Fusion (aka Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage in NA)
• Crash Nitro Kart
• Spyro: Season of Ice
• Spyro 2: Season of Flame
• Spyro Adventure (aka Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs in NA)
• Spyro Fusion (aka Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy in NA)
• Final Fantasy IV Advance
• Breath of Fire II
• Space Invaders (also known as Space Invaders EX in Japan)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (to be fair, this game is awful)
• Monsters, Inc. (enough said)

I'm not a fan of plain white backgrounds on game covers. They remind me of the posters for many bang-average Hollywood comedy films, which often have the main characters doing weird poses in front of a white background.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedAndWhiteComedyPoster
Warning - the link above goes to TV Tropes. Do not click if you have anything important to do today.

Lovely article. Your story mirrors my own start with Pokémon - experiencing the first generation through the anime, the TCG and friends' games before finally beginning my own adventure with Pokémon Gold. I went for Totodile and on my very first play-through, did not use any other Pokémon for battling. This worked out fine until I reached Elite Four Karen's Vileplume. A fair bit of grinding later and I prevailed through sheer brute force (it never occurred to me at age 8 to train other party members or even teach Feraligatr an Ice-type TM move). Yet the big surprise was still in store - going to Kanto, a region I knew about from other Pokémon media but had never explored myself. Mind blown. This article allowed me to relive those happy memories of a more innocent time - thank you!

I've had my eye on this ever since it was announced. I hope we get a review soon!

Typo in the headline - it should be disastrous.

This probably sounds absurd, but sometimes I wish Nintendo were a company where members (fans) owned a 50%+ stake in the business, like Bundesliga football clubs in Germany. That way, decisions like this that maximise profit at the expense of customer satisfaction would be voted down. Of course, it would also bring a whole range of problems, but hey, a man can dream...

Irrelevant rant alert:

Almost every paragraph in this article has some unnecessary italics.

Yes, italics are fine for occasional emphasis. Nintendo Life, however, use them multiple times in most articles - like this, you see - which I find very distracting and annoying. If the editors read this, please consider toning down the italics and sticking to a more standard house style. This is supposed to be a news website, not a comic.

Exciting news! I'm surprised no one's mentioned Mother 3 yet!

One of my very first eBay purchases was a fake copy of Crash Nitro Kart on the GBA, though I only realised it was fake years later (the 'Nintondo' label and incomprehensible instruction manual should have given it away immediately, though!). The game worked but it had a terrible frame rate - whether that was inherent to the game or a result of the forgery process I still don't know to this day.

I also ended up buying a fake version of Pokémon Emerald, but this was from a physical second-hand games shop. Fortunately I realised my folly shortly after purchase and they gave me a partial refund voucher to compensate.

The game has been heavily advertised on TV in the UK in the last week, so I'm glad the marketing spend has been worth it for Nintendo!

I'm amazed there are enough NBA fans in the UK to get that game in the yearly chart.

The food looks lovely, though that salad would barely be enough to fill up a rabbit.

The Zero Escape vibes are off the charts. The red- / pink-haired girl's design is like a fusion of Akane and Clover. If the gameplay is good, though, then I for one am interested!

Both are great covers. I love the sunset in the NA / Japanese one and it feels more epic, but I don't think it's a great look to have the hero with his back turned on the box art. Link's pose is a bit weird in the European version, but it's almost like he's beckoning you in to come and join him in discovering the bright and vibrant world before him. Honours even for me this week.

'[Animal Crossing] also represents the only way to play the game (semi-officially) on GameCube.'

Technically this isn't true if you include the ability to play SMB Deluxe or the GBA NES Classics version via the Game Boy Player.

For large parts of the 2000s and 2010s, Champion was bottom of the barrel of coolness, thanks to its huge, garish logo and baggily shaped clothes. Trendy people wouldn't have been caught dead in it. I know fashion is cyclical and all that, but I still find it jarring seeing teenagers these days wearing clothes that would have got them laughed at not too long ago.