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majormitch

Playing FF7 Rebirth is giving me the Bad Thought of replaying other FF games.

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My Ranking of Nintendo Franchises

This list is exactly as it sounds: my personal ranking of Nintendo franchises. I certainly haven’t played every Nintendo game out there, but I have played a lot of their games across many of their franchises, to the point where ranking them by my personal preference feels like a worthwhile endeavor. Nintendo is unique in that it has a large array of diverse franchises, and we all have our own favorites. So I thought it would be fun to sit down and think through which have meant the most to me.

That said, since Nintendo does have so many franchises, a list like this comes with a few additional caveats that are worth addressing:

  • First and foremost, this ranking is based on my personal, subjective preferences alone. The number of games within a franchise, and how many of those games I liked are the primary metrics I have to judge a franchise. Which is, of course, subjective!
  • In some cases there are multiple ways to define a certain “franchise.” In these cases I made my own judgments, and made a note as to how I’m defining said franchise. For example, I break “Mario” into “Super Mario” for the platformers, and then each non-platformer franchise gets its own entry (“Mario Kart,” “Mario & Luigi,” and so on)
  • This list is not a comprehensive list of every single Nintendo franchise. I didn’t include anything I’ve never played (such as 1080 Snowboarding). I also excluded a few franchises that I only played a tiny bit of (such as Clubhouse Games), and also a few that I don’t really think of as “Nintendo” franchises even if they could technically be considered as such (such as Drill Dozer). This list is already too long, and a comprehensive list would be even more so. I made judgment calls where I could.
  • I originally was only going to consider franchises with multiple entries, but ultimately decided to include single-entry franchises. Take that for what you will!
  • I will update this list as I play new games in an included franchise if it affects the order. I will also update it to add any new franchises that I play.
  • Finally, the ordering in the back half of this list was very tricky to me. It’s a long list, and many of those entries I feel similarly about. Point being, don’t put a ton of stick in the order for the back half of the list in particular.

With those caveats out of the way, I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Last updated on July 27, 2023 (original list creation)

See my other rankings of: Metroids | Marios | Zeldas | Final Fantasies | 2D Castlevanias | Fire Emblems | Gaming Years | Consoles and Handhelds | From Software Games | Nintendo Franchises

List items

  • It’s the obvious pick, but it’s also impossible to deny the impact Zelda has had on me, and on gaming at large. There have been a lot of Zelda games, multiple of which have been in the conversation for “best game of all time” at one point or another, and at least a dozen of which I have personally enjoyed; including a few that would also rank near the top of my all-time favorite games. No other Nintendo franchise can claim that combination of quantity and quality for me, over such a long period of time through different eras of my life, making it an easy pick to top this list. In fact, I can take it a step further and say it’s my favorite video game franchise, no qualifiers needed. Hot take: Zelda is good.

  • Metroid has my heart, and hits on so many things I love about this medium, as evidenced by the seven part blog series I wrote on this very website dedicated to Metroid. When it comes to quality, my favorite Metroid games are also my favorite Nintendo games – and perhaps my favorite video games overall. The primary reason Metroid doesn’t top this list is simply because it can’t match the sheer quantity of good games from the franchise above it. Metroid is a second (or third) tier franchise in the treatment it gets from Nintendo, but when it hits, it’s practically unrivaled for my personal tastes.

  • (Note: This entry is only for the Mario platformers, not any other spinoffs) As Nintendo’s mascot, Mario bludgeons its way to third place on this list by sheer quantity of releases it's seen over the years. I can be a little up and down with Mario nowadays, and there are a fair number of entries that I’m indifferent towards at best. But there have undeniably been multiple fantastic and important Mario games over the years, including a handful that I personally love. That’s absolutely worth acknowledging and celebrating, even with the inherent advantage Mario has as Nintendo’s favorite child.

  • Fire Emblem has enjoyed a surge of popularity ever since Awakening revived it from almost certain death, but even before then the Fire Emblem formula was one that clicked with me and my personal tastes. Its deft mix of tactics and RPG mechanics is right in my wheelhouse, and there have been enough good Fire Emblem games over the years to earn it such a lofty position on this list; my favorite Fire Emblem games are truly memorable experiences that I hold very dear.

  • (Note: This entry includes both Ouendan games and Elite Beat Agents) Elite Beat Agents is straight up one of my favorite video games, and I was fortunate enough to get my hands on copies for both Ouendan games as well, which are equally excellent. To put it bluntly, the only reason Ouendan isn’t higher on this list is because it only saw three games total, and only one in North America. Because if I’m going on quality alone, it’s right near the top. They’re truly incredible games, and easily my favorite rhythm games I’ve ever played.

  • Advance Wars is another franchise that’s hurt on this list due to a sheer lack of releases; with only four main entries, it can only go so far. Yet even with so few entries, it more than earns its high place on this list. It’s a unique formula that works so well for me, I have a blast every single time I play it, and I've spent a lot of time with each and every game they released. Advance Wars is a special little series, and it makes me sad that we haven't seen more of it.

  • Smash Bros. has become diminishing returns for me over the years, but at its peak, it was one of my most exciting and formative gaming experiences. It’s easily among the multiplayer games I’ve spent the most time with in my life, and as a fan of a number of Nintendo properties, it was magical to have so much Nintendo “stuff” packed into a single game and jumbled all together. Smash Bros. had a big impact on me, and among the Nintendo franchises I think of very fondly.

  • After Mario, Donkey Kong Country was the second most formative platforming franchise in my life, and there have been just enough good ones for it to sneak into the top ten on this list. I played the original SNES trilogy to death, very much enjoyed the later reboots too, and consider the soundtracks for all of them to be legendary. It needed either a couple extra games, or one more great one, to move higher on this list, but it’s still a franchise I have immense affection for.

  • (Note: This entry is only for the core Pokemon RPGs, not any spinoffs) Pokemon is another Nintendo franchise with diminishing returns for me, including the last handful of entries doing nothing for me. But there was a time where Pokemon was a magical thing that I was heavily invested in, and it has given me plenty of positive and memorable experiences over many years and multiple games. I can’t deny Pokemon’s impact on me, and that’s worth celebrating.

  • Pikmin is another franchise that’s ripe for moving up given a few more games, or one really great new entry. As it stands, it’s a series that hasn’t seen a ton of action, but I have greatly enjoyed every game that has come out. It’s also a unique experience unlike anything else Nintendo makes, and I’m always excited when a new one does come around; it’s a rare franchise without any duds.

  • Despite containing at least a half-dozen games, when I think about the Paper Mario franchise, I’m primarily thinking only of the first two entries; none of the others have done much for me. But those first two games were a pair of wonderfully unique and polished RPGs that I hold in very high regard among Nintendo’s pantheon. I also struggle deciding between Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG on this list, but feel I have to give the slight edge to the former for containing two excellent games, compared to the latter’s one.

  • (Note: This entry is only for the game(s) called Super Mario RPG; other Mario RPG franchises have their own entries) Despite being a single game, Super Mario RPG had such an outsized impact on me that it deserves its high place. It was such a creative blend of platforming and RPG at the time, which served as the perfect coda to my gaming tastes of the early 90s. And it was full of personality in a way that captured my heart. Super Mario RPG is the highest ranked single-entry franchise on this list, but I think its place is well earned.

  • The first Mario Maker had me absolutely hooked for months creating and sharing levels with friends. It was a truly magical idea that was executed very well, and sparked my imagination in a whole new way. With only two games it can only do so much here, and I also fell off the second game faster than I expected, so the long-term appeal for me is questionable. But my time with Mario Maker was certainly memorable enough to earn it this placement.

  • For me, the Yoshi franchise boils down to the original Yoshi’s Island and nothing else. I haven’t played many other Yoshi games, and the ones I have played I didn’t care for. But that original game remains a personal favorite that I hold very dear, and is strong enough to earn this placement. If only there were more good Yoshi games, the franchise would place even higher.

  • Rhythm Heaven is such a great concept, and has so much charm and personality I can’t help but love it. It may be a bit simple, there haven’t exactly been a ton of Rhythm Heaven games, and it hasn’t even changed much across those few games. But I have a great time every time I play it, which is very much worth this placement.

  • Along with Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi was another excellent RPG take on Mario. While I have (slightly) fonder memories of the other two, Mario & Luigi builds its own identity and stands just fine on its own, with multiple good games to its name. None of them individually reach the heights of its Mario RPG cousins for me, but when taken collectively it’s still a gem of a franchise. They are quite possibly Nintendo’s funniest games, too.

  • My interest in Mario Kart goes up and down over the years, and I mainly think it’s a game I can enjoy in the right setting, but otherwise have little interest in. That said, they are (mostly) well made kart racers that I’ve had plenty of fun with in my life, and the sheer quantity of Mario Kart games has kept it relevant and meaningful for a long time in a way that helps it on this list.

  • Picross is great. While many entries are somewhat lifeless puzzle packs, the best Picross games are charming and endearing collections of excellent nanogram puzzles. I’ll give a special shoutout to the best game in the series, Picross 3D: Round 2, which blows up the concept in impressive ways while still very much being Picross. It’s a series I always enjoy having access to on the go, and I don’t see myself getting tired of it.

  • I have mostly been a lukewarm Animal Crossing fan; it’s a game I tend to respect more than I enjoy playing. That said, I have had fun with it in spurts, most notably with New Horizons like everyone else during the initial COVID-19 lockdown. At its best it’s a magical concept and a relaxing escape from the demands of life… until I get tired of catching critters in an attempt to pay Nook his damn bells to get out of his debt.

  • I have only played Earthbound within the Mother franchise, and while I didn’t fall in love with it the same way many others have, I certainly enjoyed it enough for it to place this high. It’s a memorably quirky RPG that was like little else at the time, and even holds up well to this day, and I have a lot of respect for it.

  • Pushmo and Crashmo are nice, charming little puzzle games. I don’t have a whole lot to say about them, and I admittedly didn’t spend a ton of time with those two games in the grand scheme of things. But I think they are very good, and I did enjoy that time I spent with them enough to earn this placement.

  • WarioWare is a deliciously silly game, and one I’ve mostly enjoyed in party type settings. I’ve dabbled in the series on and off, and tend to lose interest fairly quickly when playing by myself. But I’ve had good fun playing multiplayer WarioWare, and I very much enjoy the weirdness of it all.

  • I missed the NES and SNES Punch-Out games at the time, only later going back to them to see what they were all about. I did spend some quality time with the Wii version on its release, however, and had a good time even though it kicked my ass. I found fun in the challenge, even if I never got super into the series.

  • The original Wii Sports single-handedly made the Wii the phenomenon that it was, and I had my share of fun playing the bowling minigame. That said, that’s the only part of the package I really enjoyed, between both the original and Wii Sports Resort. Wii Sports certainly deserves credit for its success, but my personal enjoyment was fairly limited.

  • I enjoyed the original Luigi’s Mansion; it was a nice change of pace from Nintendo’s usual platformers, and I was happy to see Luigi get his own unique game to himself. Since then I’ve kind of fallen off the franchise, as I burned out from Dark Moon’s overly lengthy and repetitive campaign, and I never got around to playing Luigi’s Mansion 3. Maybe someday I’ll get to it, and this series may move up a few places as a result.

  • I had some fun with both Wave Race 64 and Blue Storm, and simultaneously think they are solid racing games, and also good showpieces for their respective consoles. Blue Storm in particular was an impressive launch title for the GameCube, and I ended up playing it a fair amount.

  • BOXBOY was another clever and charming puzzle game from Nintendo, and I’m happy they’ve made a number of fun puzzle games like this. BOXBOY didn’t quite win me over as much as Picross or Pushmo, but I enjoyed the brief time it took to play through its campaign. It had a lot of smart ideas that were worth seeing.

  • I had some multiplayer fun with the original N64 Mario Tennis, but my favorite Mario Tennis game was the Game Boy Color version which was also an RPG. That was a really neat idea that I wish they pursued more in later games. Instead, I’ve mostly fallen off the series in favor of other tennis games since.

  • Before Mario Maker, there was Mario Paint, which was kind of magical to me as a kid. In retrospect its tools were pretty limited, but that didn’t stop me from spending hours doodling, making simple animations, and playing that damn fly swatting minigame. I don’t know that I’d say it was a great game, but it was a very memorable one for me.

  • Similar to Earthbound, I didn’t fall in love with Golden Sun in the way that others seemed to. But I did have a decent time playing through the original game, which stood out as a solid if unspectacular JRPG to me. I never got around to playing any of its sequels, and if I ever did then maybe it would stand out to me more, and gain a few places on this list.

  • I’ve never been a huge Kirby fan, as while I’ve tried a number of Kirby games, I’ve only managed to see one through to the end: Kirby: Canvas Curse. But I quite enjoyed Canvas Curse, and I can see the appeal in some of his other games, even if they are too light for my tastes. If they made a Kirby game with a bit more depth to it, I’d probably be all in.

  • I only played Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 on the DS, but I had a good time with it. Enough so that I was happy to see the entire game through, but not so much that I wanted to seek out more Mario vs. Donkey Kong. So like a lot of other games near it on this list, it occupies that nebulous space of, I liked it fine, but didn’t love it.

  • I’ve only played the first Splatoon on Wii U, and I think it’s a neat idea that I also didn’t get super into. It’s a game I respect more than I enjoy playing; I like its style, think it has some clever mechanics, yet as someone who doesn’t play a ton of multiplayer games, this was never going to be one of the few that hooked me.

  • Pokemon Snap is a great idea! Unfortunately, the games have only partially capitalized on it. I’ve only played the original N64 game, and I did have some fun with it at the time. But I also remember thinking even that game could have done a whole lot more with the concept, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the eventual Switch sequel did so.

  • Outside of your Mario/Zelda tier games, not many NES era Nintendo games hold up that well today. Among them, Ballon Fight always fared a little better to me: it’s intuitive and fun enough to control, and its simplicity works in its favor more than a lot of other games of the era. I also had some fun with Balloon Kid on the Game Boy as a nice little single player adventure on the go.

  • I don’t actually remember Battalion Wars all that well; I mainly remember thinking it was totally fine, but not nearly as good as Advance Wars. But I did make it all the way through the first game, which is more than I can say for most of the entries below it on this list.

  • Nintendo Land was never going to be to the Wii U what Wii Sports was to the Wii, but there were still a couple fun minigames in here. Primarily, Mario Chase and Luigi’s Ghost Mansion were fun asynchronous multiplayer games that made clever use of the gamepad. It wasn’t a great game overall, but you could do a lot worse for a free pack-in.

  • (Note: This entry is for the arcade style Donkey Kong games; Donkey Kong Country has its own entry) I was never big into classic arcade games, but if I was, Donkey Kong would probably be one of my favorites. I respect it and think it’s a well made game for its time, which earns it a few spots here. But I’m not someone who has ever wanted to spend a whole lot of time on games from this era, for better or worse.

  • Not to offend any Star Fox fans out there, but I never thought Star Fox was all that great. The original was impressive on a technical front, but I don’t think it was that fun to play. Star Fox 64 was OK for a rental, but was a short and easy game that was outclassed by multiple other flight combat games of the era. And the downward trajectory of Star Fox after that is well chronicled. I did have a little bit of fun with those first two games, which earns it a few places here, but even that was limited.

  • Let’s get this out of the way first: Mario Party is not good. With that said, the original N64 trilogy of Mario Party games came out when I was in middle school, which was the right time for me to con people into playing it, and fool ourselves into thinking we were having fun. And to be fair, the idea was kind of neat at the time! But once I realized that the games were kind of bad, actually, the spell wore off.

  • Duck Hunt is one of those classic NES games that everyone seems to have played, whether they owned a NES or not. And I certainly played my fair share whenever we visited our cousins’ house as a kid, and enjoyed it for what it was. Still, it’s too light of an experience to move up higher than this.

  • I feel like the original Excitebike is a game almost everyone played, but I don’t know any diehard Excitebike fans. To that note, I played and enjoyed Excitebike at the time, but it wasn’t all that good or memorable for my tastes. I never played any of the sequels either, though I heard the Wii era ones were decent.

  • For whatever reason I never got into F-Zero. Perhaps between Mario Kart and Wave Race I didn’t have room for a third Nintendo racing franchise, or maybe F-Zero was always too hard when I tried it. I don’t think it’s a bad series, and don’t put too much stock in its low placement here. It just never grabbed me for whatever reason.

  • Pokemon Stadium wasn’t that good, but the first game came out when I was deep into Pokemon, and it was kind of neat to be able to transfer my Pokemon from Red/Blue to Stadium, and see them duke it out in 3D on the TV. Also, some of the minigames were kind of fun in their simplicity. The “Clefairy says” game lives in my head and I don’t know what to make of that.

  • I had a little bit of fun with the N64 and GameCube versions of Mario Golf, but as someone who doesn’t really care for golf games to begin with, that fun was pretty limited. This is a series that’s probably mostly fine if you’re partial to golf, but that’s just not me.

  • Dr. Mario is a totally fine puzzle game of the “falling block” variety, but not one that ever really grabbed me. There are other games of that type (primarily Tetris and Meteos) that I would always choose over this. Mario dispensing drugs is always a fun idea though.

  • Part of me feels like I should give Xenoblade Chronicles another shot given the high praise it earns from plenty of people I respect. But I spent roughly 20 hours with the first game, and already felt burnt out on the grind in that relatively short time. It’s a long game with a lot of combat and content to churn through, none of which grabbed my interest early on. It’s a big commitment, and the thought of putting in dozens, if not hundreds of hours into a game that didn’t win me over after 20 hours didn’t feel good.

  • Art Style seems like a neat thing, yet I didn’t play that much of it before getting bored. I don’t know if that says more about me or the games (I tried Aquia and Pictobits), but they were very slight experiences, ones that didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

  • For me, Brain Age was mostly useful as a collection of Sudoku puzzles on my DS. And, well, it was a totally solid way to play Sudoku on the go. But I have to acknowledge that the actual “brain training” tool it was meant to be was kind of lame, and by that metric I have to rate it pretty low on this list.

  • Ice Climber was another older Nintendo property that I tried well after the fact, and found it fairly hard to go back to. I wouldn’t say it was a total waste, and I could see it being fun in its day. But nothing about it seemed interesting enough for me to put more time into than I did.

  • Apologies to the Kid Icarus fans out there, but I tried the original Kid Icarus and Uprising, and immediately bounced off both. I attempted the original decades later, so that was likely always going to be rough. But Uprising in particular did not endear itself to me with its imprecise controls and bland combat. I felt that even for the type of rail shooter gameplay it was going for, it could have done much, much better. I know it’s a fan favorite game, and while it may seem harsh to place it last on this lengthy list, it’s hard for me to justify any other place for a franchise I tried multiple games in and didn’t like at all.
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