Hello, and welcome to the back page of Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Hello, Matthew. I was going to ask you about something. What was it? Oh, yes. How was your exploration of the Apple TV+ catalog going? It’s going well. We’ve polished off Man Hunt. Spoiler alert, they get John Wilkes Booth in the end. Does Lincoln die in it? It won’t, yeah, well, that kicks it all off. But yes, that was thrilling. I finished Sugar. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, I read about the twist. I’ve not seen it, but. I quite liked it. I won’t say what it is. It has a sort of notoriously big swing of a twist. Divisive twist. Yeah, around two thirds of the way in. But actually, like at the moment itself, I was like, oh, this is dumb. But afterwards, I felt like they managed to sort of make some sense of it. I finished it going, oh, I would happily watch a second season of that. Classic Stockholm syndrome symptoms there, Matthew. No, no, honestly, I like LA detective stuff, from LA confidential to long goodbye and things like that. If you like people mooching around LA and calmly interviewing people, Colin Farrell is pretty good at that. Yeah. The twist sounds dumber than it is. Yeah, because I decided I probably wasn’t going to watch it, and then I thought, I will look up what this twist is, because I had heard it used as a stick to beat it with, and as a comparison point with other twists and other things. So I looked it up, and I was a bit like, I would never have guessed that in a million years, so that was what the twist was. But if you’re not going to watch it, I do recommend looking up just to see what the twist is, and the accompanying images as well, I will say. Well worth a look. But yeah, it’s nice to hear that you enjoyed it, Matthew. Hard to tell if it’s going to get a second season or not. I can’t tell if it’s really been a… I don’t think it’s been a smash, that show, but… No, no one seems to be talking about it, which is a shame, because I think it is… Like I said, I think it’s pretty good. It’s got some interesting people in it. We just started watching The Lady in the Lake. Oh yeah, Natalie Portman thing. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, yeah. She’s good in it. It’s got an amazingly stat cast, like just interesting vibes. I don’t know the director of it at all. I can’t even remember their name, but there’s a lot of interesting choices being made in that one. And yeah, two episodes in, the vibes, the vibes are good. Okay, interesting. Other sort of like good mystery dramas with Lake in the title, Top of the Lake, that’s good. I recommend that with Elizabeth Moss. I’ve actually had Apple TV for about a year now. I just, I basically get it for Slow Horses and then that’s it. Once a year, and then I log off again. But yeah, they kind of racked up a decent array of stuff. I might go in at some point and just poke around, watch a bunch of pilot episodes, see if anything sticks. Okay, part two then of the Nintendo Top 50. It’s a Sunday morning, so I’m still waking up, so bear with me before things get really exciting. So I had to like kick off with a little bit of chewing the fat about streaming services just to sort of get my motor going. I thought we were going to go in with Deadpool, but there you go. Oh, right, yeah, I guess I just think that MCU Chat is so tired, do you know what I mean? I never see any good, do you ever see a good Marvel take online? I never do, I’m never like, oh wow, they really got it. I think actually the one I did enjoy was the Vulture headline for their review, which just said, look, I laughed. That was the entire headline, which I quite like. That was a good, like, that got me to click and read it, so well done. But yeah, I find that, don’t you? It’s just a little bit tired, the chatter around Marvel stuff? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, there’s just every, you’ve heard every take under the sun, for sure. I did laugh to wake up this morning to see that they’d pressed, you know, in case of emergency, break glass on Robert Downey Jr., which really made me laugh. The idea of just bringing him back as a different character, that isn’t a Deadpool thing, that’s just in the news. So to future listeners who are listening to this in 2027 or 2028 or whatever you’ve discovered this, quite evergreen sounding podcast title, and you’re listening to this very 28th of July ass content at the start of this podcast, yeah, log on to the Discord, let us know you’ve reached this point, let us know that I am speaking to you right now from the past, and let me know how you’re doing in the future. Yeah, that’s good, I think. But yeah, I wasn’t too surprised. You know, I’ve thought about getting my post, my pre-pandemic homies back together for one last ride. Do you know what I mean? I’ve had that urge sometimes, Matthew, but I’ve just, I instead decided to move on and find some new homies. Our guys at the Eternals, you know, snubbed, I doubt they’ll be getting a little cheeky shout out in Secret Wars. So yes, this podcast then, Part II of our Nintendo Top 50. So you heard last week’s episode where we talked about list making and discussed the 2014 list that Matthew wrangled. That was quite interesting to dig into. I think some people came out of it feeling like a little bit undernourished. Someone said it was like a McDonald’s podcast, which was, you know, harsh. But I think McDonald’s is very tasty. So what can I say? It is what it is. But in this episode, we compile the long list ahead of next week’s episode where we’ll arrange the list on air and come up with our final Top 50. So I think it’s going to be fun, but it’s interesting because we’re going to have a lot of Nintendo chatter by series in this episode, more so than we ever have before, really. It’s going to be fairly comprehensive, but I imagine the actual per game chat will be quite light. Matthew, what do you think? Yeah, I think so. I think it will be more about picking out what broadly matters to each series. I think the challenge with this one as well is not getting too far ahead of ourselves because there’s stuff which will go on the long list that I know won’t make the Top 50. Right, yeah. Like, in my heart of hearts, but to the point where I was like, I started, but I don’t know if I’ve pruned too aggressively already. Right, yeah. With my suggestions for the long list because there’s stuff I’m like, well, I just would never put that on the list, you know, of the Top 50. So why even bother? Why waste its time? Yeah, yeah. I sort of, I did a little bit of light research for this episode. The main thing being, I played like 10 NES games yesterday to sort of scope out, if any of that should be on the list, because you mentioned that Kid Icarus was one of the NES games you would have considered for the original list you did in 2014. So I thought I’d play that. I wouldn’t put it in the Top 50. It’s way too fucking hard. Like it’s pretty good as retro games go, but good Lord, it is punishing. It’s just like, back you go to the bottom of the fucking screen and then back up, you go, I just couldn’t believe how complicated it was. I would have considered that for the Top 100. It wouldn’t have been a Top 50 pick. Interesting, yes. I also played original Zelda on the NES longer than I ever have before. That game is just like endless screens of death. It’s like I can see why it’s very gruelling and doesn’t tell you anything and just leaves it to you to suss out. It’s quite a bold game in the context of where Zelda goes. It’s bold in the sense of just how difficult it is. When was the last time you played original Zelda? Oh, not for a long, long time. Like probably Wii Virtual Console. Interesting. See, I was oddly enchanted by it. I’m going to go back to it after this. I’ve started creating a lot of restore points using the Switch Online thing. Trying to keep all the retro heads on the side. I also played, maybe I should save this for later chat, played a bit Kirby’s Adventure as well, which is one of the games that really pushes the NES to its limits, which you can feel in its presentation. Some of the animation in that is amazing for how primitive the hardware is. I did do a bunch of that and concluded that probably not, we won’t have any NES games in the list. But is that too harsh if you come to the table with a bunch of NES games? No. Well, we can get into this, but I feel like it’s going to be quite a modern-leaning list. Yeah. My gut instinct says. Okay. Well, let’s answer the big question then. So section one, we’re just going to give a bit of background on what the criteria is, and what the shape of the list will be, and a few other key considerations going into it, rules, that sort of thing. So Matthew, what should the criteria for our top 50 lists be? How much should it reflect the past of Nintendo versus the present? I mean, that’s a huge question. Completely changes whatever list we get out of it. The thing I’ve had kind of in the back of my head, and I’m not saying I’ve settled on this, but I keep referring to it in my head as the Smash Brothers list, as in to say, the breadth of Nintendo should… Maybe it would be fun to approach it to try and capture the breadth of Nintendo and the variety of its roster, and in doing so, maybe you don’t go as deep into some of the individual characters as you might expect a list. That’s my opening pitch. Yeah, I think I kind of understand that. The thing I sort of wrestled with was, do you just try and say that old games are too old for people now coming to a list to go back and discover, versus are maybe N64 games more playable now than maybe we give them credit for? Because I think there are certain kind of assumptions about retro games that have been made, much like me with the NES games, describing them as all basically very graphically primitive, that are maybe a bit too dismissive. Like I played a few N64 games as part of the mix as well, and actually I thought some of those held up a little bit better than I realized. Maybe it’s just because on Switch, for example, or Modern Emulation, the performance is a little bit better, so you don’t have as many blurry visuals or bad frame rates to contend with, because the hardware is so much more powerful. I don’t know if you ever take on that. Yeah. So I wouldn’t say any of them would be dismissed just on the grounds of, oh, it’s old and so it doesn’t go in, or old equals shit. I think there’s a definite case to be made that because Nintendo have worked in, you know, the same series over and over again and have evolved those series, that most of them broadly have improved over time. And so it’s not a case of these things are bad, it’s just that they’ve been supplanted by later versions with more, like, ambition or mastery or craft. That isn’t true for all series, but like, generally, they’ve gone back to these characters again and again and again and have applied, like, better technology to them. And so through that, I think you’re going to see a creep towards, you know, newer entries representing those series. That’s sort of how I feel about that. Like, it is a case by case basis. I think there are individual games which, for very specific reasons, maybe their character is better served by the limitations of the time or what, you know, the kind of habits of game design at the time. Pick an obvious case, Super Metroid is a really interesting one, because there have been prettier, sharper, more technologically ambitious 2D Metroids since then. But at the same time, one of the things Metroid as a series trades on is that sense of loneliness and not really knowing what the fuck’s going on and really feeling oppressed by your environment. And actually, Super Metroid probably still is the best example of that, just because Nintendo haven’t gone in and smoothed it out with quality of life improvements. So I think there are a lot of genres where that smoothing out that happens over time has improved them, but there are a couple where they maybe haven’t. And maybe that’s where you can think about older games in a more positive light. Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I think the other consideration, you sort of get into it a little bit there, is that I think in some ways, 2D Nintendo games are kind of their own evolutionary chain, basically. And the therefore or strain, I don’t know, I don’t know much about evolution clearly or DNA. But I feel like that with some of these series, it has to be a consideration of which 2D entries are going to make the list, because we understand that these represent the peak of the form, a peak of game design in some form versus the 3D entries where it’s almost like a different parameters. So there are like different tracks to some series that have to be considered. At the same time, it’s very easy with a top 50 list to get so hung up on the past that you’re just paying homage to it eternally, to the same 5 to 10 games. And to be a bit bold seems like it should be part of the purpose of the exercise, Matthew. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree with that. The thing I’ve thought about the least is, is this thing important? Yeah. Because I just, I don’t really think that means anything in the context of actually playing these things. Yeah. I’m not saying this is like the top 50, like you must play now, but like the kind of playability and enjoyment you get from them is definitely at the sort of front of my mind. That is just going to weigh in favour of more modern feeling stuff. But I don’t know, I just think that feels, I don’t know, maybe it feels more like useful as a list rather than necessarily, I don’t know, there’s almost a difference between kind of correct and useful. Yeah, that’s true. Do you think we could define it as, these are the games you should play now with one eye on the past? Is that like the way we should look at this? We’re taking from across Nintendo’s history, but we are saying to some extent that this is a curated list of things that you could play now and feasibly have a good time with or see the value in or it will still do something to stimulate your brain or make you excited in 2024. Yeah, I would say a list that honors the complete Nintendo story, but in a way that is still enjoyable to actually engage with. Okay, that makes sense then. Well, I’m glad we settled on that. Seems like we both approached this from a similar angle then. So that’s good. I think maybe just because of the nature of this podcast, it was always going to be something in this ballpark, you know? Just because you and I just had… I don’t think we had an interest in doing another list that just has Ocarina of Time at number one, you know? Yes, it could still be number one. Yeah, I guess we’ll see. I’d be amazed if it was number one. Yeah, also, where do we stand on back page host bullshit? Where do we stand on the infamous heart picks? I think it is our list. I think that it should have traces of our taste in the list. Otherwise, we’re just we’re being too conscious of a wider consensus and not making our own sort of choices, really. Yeah, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t pitch Kid Icarus Uprising for this list, for example, you know? Right. Yeah, I think there’s almost a flip side to the heart picks as well, in that there’s like there’s like spiked picks or like spiked exclusions. Right, yeah. Which is the kind of the equivalent of like, this thing always appears in the lists, but I personally have like no affinity with it, and I don’t, I think it’s overrated as a Nintendo series and shouldn’t be in a list. Right. Which could also happen a bit. But I don’t know whether that should happen at the longlist stage or the 50 itself. I think, well, I suppose this will probably come up when we go series by series, what exactly you’re referring to, right? So, well, okay. So Jam With The Band is our number one, greatest Nintendo game. Thank you for, and Trauma Team is number two. Thank you for participating. That might be a third party game, actually. No, Trauma Team is Nintendo published, wasn’t it? So anyway. Okay. So how much does the massive success of the Nintendo Switch affect this exercise, Matthew? How much should we let the sheer volley of great Switch games win out here? I don’t think we should be too hung up on it. Switch has been a great generation in terms of new games. It’s also been a really productive generation in terms of like revisiting things. There just are a lot of games which have their best version on Switch, whether that’s, you know, like a technical remake, like Thousand Year Door, or just… I’m not saying like we should… I don’t know how much we’re going to get into the nitty gritty of like which individual version of a game goes in the list. I mean, probably should consider that. Yeah, that was one of my questions. Maybe not. I don’t think we should maybe get as granular as XNES game on the Switch Online service. Right. Even though I probably do think of it in those terms, because I think some things are more palatable with like the save points on Virtual Console. And, you know, in the past, things like how saving works in older games has sometimes changed the kind of consensus on which version of Super Mario World is the best. You know, for example, or Super Mario Brothers 3 is probably a bare example. You know, is it the NES original? Is it the All-Star one where you can save a bit more? Is it the Game Boy Advance, Advance one? You know, you can kind of go down lots of rabbit holes with that stuff. You know, that’s probably by the by. I mean, generally, I just think, you know, Switch has been an incredibly positive thing for Nintendo and a lot of Nintendo games have really benefited from their versions there. So I’m not embarrassed for this list to be modern feeling, which it probably would if we’re looking at, you know, is this thing still good to play now? Yeah, absolutely. So that was going to be one of my questions, actually, is to what extent do you think we should allow compilations or remakes or remasters to be part of the mix here? My gut feeling is compilations should probably be banned because they’re just a bit too, like, it gets you too much at once and I think the exercise… They are overpowered. There’s also something slightly kind of chickening out about them, you know. It’s nice to go, well, actually, like, the Metroid Prime you’re interested in is Metroid Prime 1, you know, it isn’t 2 and 3 in the trilogy. So that’s the case there. This isn’t a draft where obviously, like, getting as many games in your mini console is definitely, you know, a winning strategy. But yeah, I’m trying to think if there are any, there are a couple of things I was looking at where I was like, is that technically the best way, like, the Advanced Wars, you know, OnePlus 2 reboot, or whatever it was, the boot camp, or the Switch version of 1 and 2, like, you know, if you were going to put Advanced Wars in, do you put that, or do you go for the kind of charm of just one of the originals? I guess we can kind of get into that. But, um, Mario All Stars is a weird one as well, I guess, because they sort of technically redid the, you know, it isn’t just a compilation, it is a, you know, considered redo of elements of those games. But again, we can get into those in the long listing. Yeah, I think they, the one thing I did want to ask was, do you factor in ease of access to this, in the sense of, let’s say there’s a Zelda game on, you know, on GameCube, a GameCube era console that, you know, maybe on Wii U has a nice remaster, but no one’s going to buy a Wii U in 2024. Has that affected your thinking at all? Not really. Makes sense. Like, while I have thought about, you know, is it fun to play, I guess it’s sort of a theoretical, like, is it fun to play if you had all the bits, you know, rather than, like, can you and is it fun to play? Yeah, I just think otherwise you do limit yourself and you end up cutting off some, you know, some good things which are, I think, still fun. Although, saying that, I haven’t played them in lots of years, so I’m assuming that they’re still fun. Yeah, you talk yourself out of a lot of things. I think there’s a risk of that. Because it could all be that DS and 3DS are not accessible anymore, you know? Well, that’s it. And there’s, like, downloadable games that you just can’t buy anymore because, like, e-shops are closed and things like that. So, if we lived in a magic world where, by some means, on the internet, you could play just about any game ever made… Like Star Fox 2. Say, if there was somehow a route to playing games without owning them originally, you know, I think, hopefully, you could hear about these games in this list and then go and discover them somehow. Hopefully, at some point, most of them will be made commercially available again, through some means. It might just take 20 years for The Three Basterds to come out. Failing that, you can just go and DM Andy Hamilton. Good stuff. So, my last question for you, I think the last thing to figure out the criteria is, should we set an arbitrary cap of number of games per series to keep it varied, like 5 or 10? Or does some series just need to be more dominant because of the nature of where the highlights of Nintendo’s catalog are? Yeah, I mean, 5 is 10% of the whole list, which does feel like quite a lot. I was less hung up on this when it was the top 100 in O&M, because, I don’t know, there was a small breathing room, and actually when it got to the end, the list of offcuts wasn’t as severe as I thought it was going to be. I think there’s definitely a difference between Mario and Mario spinoff games. I wouldn’t want to say only 5 games have got Mario in the title, because I think that would make it quite limited. But at the same time, I like the idea of having something in place, just to make our thinking a bit more disciplined. Interesting. So you’re thinking 5 per series, unless it’s a spinoff. Yeah, but I would say the only thing that really counts for is… I’d say there’s the mainline Mario games, and then Mario spinoff games, I would say, are separate categories. But yeah. I would say 5 Zelda’s is quite tough, I would say. Well, that’s why I think that’s good, though, because it stops. Zelda is always the one which just ends up stomping over the lists and taking up too much of it, and I’d be sad to push out, like you say, some of that breadth of Nintendo, just to tell everyone that Zelda is good again. Right, right. Yeah, okay, interesting. Okay, so, all right, let’s set the cap, then, of 5 games per series. I’m sure that won’t come back and bite us in the arse. 5 games per series. I guess in the long listing process, more than 5 per series can be long listed, right? So it’s… Yeah. Yeah. But in the final list, it will be 5 games per series. Unless it’s a spinoff. Okay, that makes sense, Matthew. Bold, bold decisions there. Yeah, can you tell we used to be editors? Well, Matthew still is, technically, but yes. Anything else to add, Matthew, on the criteria before we take a quick break and come back with the long listing process? No, I did wonder when I laid out that sort of, oh, let’s try and make this the Smash Brothers of lists. I originally had this pitch of like, let’s tick off every Nintendo owned character on the Smash Brothers roster. Like they all have to have a game represented. Fucking Ice Climbers, mate. No, Ice Climbers is not going in this list, and there’s no fucking Game & Watch games going on this list. So that much I know. So that’s why I thought that was dumb. I did wonder like, is there a way that like, should we set ourselves a bonus challenge of can we get every piece of Nintendo hardware represented in some way? Yeah, but there’s a Virtual Boy, isn’t there? So, you know what I mean? Yeah, that’s a tough one. Virtual Boy is basically the Wario Land game or Bust. And I just don’t think putting that in… That’s why that’s not a great exercise. But maybe at the end we can take stock and go how much hardware did we represent? And then we can just think on that rather than limit ourselves to that. No, I like that idea. That’s a good point. Welcome back to the podcast. So here we go. We’re going through every single major Nintendo series here and picking what is going to go into the long list and that will later be assembled into the top 50. So you’ll get the final top 50 next week, but for now, it’s basically like a massive battle royale of platformers, adventure games and racing games, and pretty much everything else from across history. So it’s gonna be quite chaotic, I think. To keep it orderly, we’re doing it by series. So we’re starting with Mario. You might be familiar with him. He’s a Japanese plumber, Italian plumber. That’s great. It’s a great start, isn’t it? Fucking great start. Yes, platforming icon, you’re probably quite familiar with him. So Matthew, my first thought with this was, what are you going to do about the two galaxies because you’ve got Odyssey to contend with? And what goes in as our 2D Mario pick or picks? I, like I said last week, I found it slightly kind of, slightly kind of depressing just to see Galaxy 2 sitting in the mix. They are, they are very similar games. I’ve made my piece with Mario Galaxy 1 representing the Mario Galaxy series. Right, right, right. That’s good, I think. Okay. So, shall I just read what I’ve written down as my little long list? Yeah, that sounds good. It’s, I really pruned it. So I’ve only, I’ve pruned it down to four games. Wow. I, so I’m making the case for Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3. So, I kind of get that. What about, you don’t think that someone who’s discovering Mario now would rather play Mario Wonder than play Mario Bros. 3? Just because that is kind of on the, that is on the 2D evolution, you know, that kind of like line basically. It is, but it’s also, it pushes Mario a lot. It’s like the most accessible 2D Mario there ever is. It’s like bite size and it’s, you know, it’s like pick and mix Mario. It’s really fun. It’s really polished. But I do think there’s something about the kind of, you know, the origins of Mario, very purist, quite difficult. The challenge is part of it, quite obscure, like the weird kind of, you know, the secrets and hidden exits and weird little strategies. I think they are part of the DNA, which kind of gets lost from Mario as, as he just becomes so much more kind of polite and acceptable and mega famous. I would not object to, I know, I put down these four as I was, so I went into this, I was really trying to be as aggressive as I could with my pruning so that the long list wasn’t like 150 games. Super Mario Wonder, absolutely, I’ve got no problem with that being on the long list. I thought you were going to go, where’s Mario 64? Oh, do you know what? That really didn’t cross my mind because what crossed my mind more, I think the list should have variety, not just in terms of characters, but also types of experience. So that will come, that’s why I think some series will end up having older entries on the long list, because what they did in their previous games was maybe never perfected, or became less relevant to modern games. So that will definitely be a consideration with one series we talk about at the very least. But I think that’s why over Mario 64, I’d probably go for 3D World instead, because where else do you get a co-op experience like that on a Nintendo platform? I’d probably put 3D World over Wonder as great as I think Wonder is. But I know that you are cool on 3D World. Did it make your list on the O&M list, Matthew? I think it did. Or maybe… Yes, it did. There’s a little bit of recency bias. Also, generally, most people love that game. I like that game. If anything, I like that game more now because I really enjoyed that plus Bowser’s Fury. That I thought was really compelling. I would make the case that if we include it on the list, we include that version with Bowser’s Fury. Yeah, that makes sense. Can I probe the thinking behind Super Mario World? Now, I know it’s always on these lists, but does this game really get your blood pumping? Weirdly, I think I prefer Mario 3 to Super Mario World. Like, I don’t think there’s ever quite… Maybe because I came to it so late, just never quite really got my engine going this game. I just thought it was a bit… I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, they are, they are, they’re, like, reasonably close. Like, the things I pointed with that out for Super Mario Bros. 3, in terms of, like, the difficulty and the kind of weirdness and the secrets, I would definitely apply those to Super Mario World. Maybe, like, you know, the biggest gulf between these two things is sort of production values and, like, music. I like both these worlds. I kind of probably like them the same amount. World is definitely, like, in my mind, just because I replayed it before Mario Wonder came out, because I was trying to get myself all kind of in the 2D Mario, like, mode, I guess. Yeah. And had, yeah, had a really, really good time playing it. I mean, if we’re being really strict with ourselves, you know, technically, do they both, they tick a lot of the same boxes? Yes. I mean, you know, if this was just a Mario list, you obviously go into the thousands of granular differences between the two. But maybe, yes, if you zoom out a little bit more, it’s, you know, this is the howls from the retro heads. You’re like, they’re two retro 2D Mario games. Do you only need one? Maybe we do in our, if we are limiting it to five, certainly 3D World or 3D Land, it would definitely be 3D World over Land, represents a different kind of mainline Mario. Okay, so I think we can keep Mario World. What I did want to ask was, Yoshi’s Island, beautiful looking latter day SNES game. How do you feel about that game? I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that game on this podcast. Yeah, I mean, I have that down as my one Yoshi pick. Oh, okay, interesting. So I’ve put it in as a… Because it establishes the Yoshi mechanic of like throwing eggs. I do think there is… I don’t know if there’s as much to Yoshi as a platforming character. I think everything you ever kind of need to say about Yoshi is in Yoshi’s Island. Yeah. I definitely think that should be on the long list. I just categorized it under Yoshi rather than Mario. Yeah, I guess I always thought of it as a Mario World sequel, but I guess… Yes. But just because of how they were released on the DBA. It literally says that in the title, so that isn’t me ignoring that. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it’s… Yeah, Yoshi is a weird one. Like, I’ll just say, I don’t think any of his other stuff makes the cart. I think they’ve desperately tried to do other things, basically recreate the kind of magic of this and maybe realize that it isn’t a character with a huge much more to kind of squeeze out of them, short of doing the old sort of ascetic redo with like Yon, Yoshi or whatever it was called, woolly, woolly world. But that doesn’t really fix any of the, not fix any of the problems, that doesn’t, he’s still flutter jumping and chucking eggs and eating enemies, like, you know, that’s just what he does. Like Mario, they squeeze a lot more out of. So I think what we’ve kind of like settled on so far is Mario Galaxy, Odyssey, Mario 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury. And okay, I think that’s fair. That’s five. Well, that’s okay, isn’t it? The reason I think that I’m using Yoshi to basically like get around it as a technicality, the five limit. That’s right, it’s a Yoshi game. The reason I think I’m comfortable with letting wonder drop in the midst of this is that the invention of those levels is kind of baked into Odyssey and Galaxy anyway. So if anything, like if that’s the thing you want, the kind of like big swing levels with the like crazy core idea that really kind of like, you know, just puts a big smile on your face, then those games take care of that while also being, you know, being 3D games, they are bolder. They’re just bolder platformers. They’re more interesting platformers, right? That’s fair. Yes, yeah, I agree with that. I was also gonna make the case, because I was fully expecting my ignoring of Mario 64 to be quite contentious as far as these lists go. I would make the case that Super Mario Odyssey does a lot of what you want from Mario 64. I think a lot of people kind of missed about 64 in Galaxy, you know, was the kind of the larger worlds that you could explore, the kind of bigger spaces, the idea of sort of digging out secrets. You know, I’ve said a thousand times, I lean slightly more towards leaner Mario. I don’t think Mario is necessarily an exploration game. That’s not how I think of it. But if that is what you want from it, I just think Odyssey does that in just a way, way bigger, way more varied scale than 64. And I’m not saying 64 is a bad game in any way, shape or form. I just, you know, when I went back to it in the All-Star Collection, the three that they did for Switch, you know, it seemed a little more quaint than it had, before. And I think what had changed was Odyssey. So that’s why I don’t think it necessarily needs to have a space anymore. That is true, actually. The exploration factor of Odyssey is a strength it has that Mario Galaxy doesn’t have, isn’t it? Mario Galaxy’s levels are much more sort of handcrafted little, you know, little toys for you to jump through, basically. Whereas Odyssey, their canvas is a bit broader. That makes sense. Mario 3, I will allow on the list, even though it’s a NES game, and it has discussed that NES game is unlikely to make the list in too much, in too great a form. I think in some ways, this is the first Mario that does the, like you say, the kind of like the variety, like the different powers, the slightly unusual kind of like level color palettes, and the different sort of like audible things that you find on the maps in the between levels and stuff like that. Like a lot of that stuff, you know, arrives here. I absolutely revered this game when I was a kid. Like it was the number one game that when I went over to my friend Reese’s house, that I would just beg to play. I just wanted to play this, wanted to turn Mario into a raccoon and do the little glide power because I thought that was the fucking best thing I’d ever seen. Thought Sonic can’t fucking glide, can he? That was like my basically my thought process there. It’s just such a great game. Coming back to it as an adult, playing it on first on Wii Virtual Console, I was struck by how much harder it was than I remembered. It is quite tricky, but now you’ve got like Switch restore points. It is true that that takes care of that for you. That’s the question actually about Mario Galaxy. Are we putting the original Wii version in Matthew, or are we saying that the one in the All-Stars collection is the one to play now? I would still make the case for the Wii version. I just think the remote-pointer mechanic is baked it into that game enough that you want the proper input. Whenever I play it on Switch, I love how smooth it is, and that’s obviously amazing. But whenever it gets to one of the touch screen bits or motion control bits, there’s this little part of me going, and this isn’t quite right. This wasn’t made for this. Okay, interesting. One last bit of thought process to outline here from my side actually is, so 3D Land was on the O&M list. I think because it and 3D World are so similar, 3D World basically larger versions of the same types of like diorama-style levels. You don’t really need 3D Land as well, even though I think that’s a fucking great game. But yeah, 3D World pretty much ticks that box, so no need to have both clogging up the list. Anything more to say about Mario Bros. If they’re not in the top 50, it means they are bad. Those games are now bad. I’ll tell you what is bad actually, Mario Bros. I played that for the first time yesterday as well, and it was a proper what the fuck from me dog. Just jumping on enemies and them not dying instantly, Matthew. So confusing that game. It’s just that it all becomes about throwing root vegetables at things. Really weird, just so odd. Yeah, that’s really funny that they would follow up such an influential and mega selling game with something so bizarre, and just stuck a till on it. Very, very strange brand decision there. Proper early days of video game shit. Anything more to say on Mario, Matthew, before we move on? I mean, there’s loads more. We’ve never done the proper Mario rankings. We will do that. I think we should save that for when the next mainline Mario comes out for Odyssey 2, for Switch 2 or whatever. That’s bound to be their launch game, right? That’s gotta be, right? That’s gotta be it. So that’ll be early next year at some point. We’ll do that later. That’ll be good. Yeah, sounds good. Anything you want to say about the other modern new ones? Like, people seem quite fond of the Wii U one, right? That seems to be the one that people like the most of the recent version. Yeah, I think, you know, there are just, you know, there are millions of Nintendo vans who, these are just such a key part of what games are. That is 2D Mario. You know, it means so much to them that just, you know, the feel and the mechanics of the thing are kind of enough to carry them through. Like, they are kind of, you know, purer games more about, yeah, like the fear and the challenge rather than the more sort of superficial kind of endless parade of madness that that is now a 3D Mario’s. And, you know, maybe it speaks to, you know, the modern mind in the 21st century. But I just, I love the speed and, you know, the sheer kind of exuberance of where 3D Mario is. And the new Mario Brothers games just feel a little bit too, just a little, I don’t want to say foamed in. That’s probably too harsh. But they’re just a little too vanilla compared to that. Yeah, I do agree with that. I don’t think that’s too harsh, Matthew. Okay, good. So, we are progressing with Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury as our five Mario picks to go into the long list, Matthew. So, we move on to Zelda. I’m sure this will take no time at all to figure out. So, have you done the same thing where you’ve made a little aggressive short list? I have, yeah. Go for it. My aggressive list, they’re in no particular order. My aggressive list is Majora’s Mask, Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker HD and Link’s Awakening. Interesting. I mean, the big question… Weird, but not totally unexpected. That’s interesting you’ve got in with the five game rule, even from the off, like before we even agreed that. Well, there was also Oracle of Ages, but I was like, come on, what we’re doing? Okay, so there are two main questions here. I’m actually glad you went for Majora’s Mask, Ocarina of Time, because I think unlike Super Mario 64, I don’t think those are as easily discounted from the history of Zelda for the very simple reason that if you want that 3D Zelda games that nailed the dungeon traditional Zelda aspect without any other kind of like novel element attached to it, i.e. the sailing in Wind Waker, I think you need these games as like the core building blocks that are still arguably the best of their kind of a very specific type of Zelda experience. Then obviously, Majora’s Mask is the kind of like weird flip of that with like the time mechanic. Why don’t you explain your thinking a bit, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much it for Ocarina of Time. I think it is easy to sort of roll your eyes to it and go, oh, well, obviously. But it is also, like you say, that template sort of straight out the blocks already really, really impressive. Majora’s Mask, I think, as just a very weird narrative experiment, like an example of weird Nintendo, which happens rarely but should probably be honoured in some way. And this is probably the weirdest thing Nintendo have done. That makes the case for that. I feel that the modern open world Zelda, I think that just has to go in the list. I’ve been the bigger man and willing to accept Breath of the Wild because I would like it to be a game that we’re in agreement on. And I don’t want to ask you to have to just humour me on Tears of the Kingdom. That’s OK, both are lists, I wouldn’t mind. It is, but I wouldn’t have both. If I was doing my own list, I would probably put in Tears of the Kingdom. But as a joint list, I think I wouldn’t necessarily want both. And I think, you know, spoiler alert, this is going to be incredibly high in the list. Right. And I don’t think I can. I it wouldn’t be true to us as a podcast. If like if Tears of the Kingdom was the number one game on our top 50, that is so far from true for you. I think we could make a much better case for Breath of the Wild. And also, like, there’s not much in it. You know, like Breath of the Wild is still absolute. You know, I love it. You know, it’s. Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing. I think like there’s a few aspects to this. So I thought we would end up doing what you did in the O&M list with the two Mario Galaxy games. Once it’s at number one and then once it’s kind of awkwardly at number nine or something. Yeah, yeah, but I yeah, they are. I mean, that probably is the closest comparison is the weird relationship between Galaxy One and Galaxy Two. Yeah, that’s a thing that that is true. But I don’t want to fill up two slots with two Galaxy games at the same. I don’t want to fill up two slots that are, you know, two Zelda games that are that quote unquote the same. Yeah, they’re not the same, though. That’s the thing. They’re not. They’re not. Yeah. You’re thinking of breadth brackets of the wild. I’m sorry. The breadth of the wild. You know, what crucially like the things that are most important to me in both these games are the same across both games. Like the world, the music, the vibe, just the scale of it. You know, Breath of the Wild one, like the Breath of the Wild obviously has the surprise factor of never having seen that before. You know, I obviously think what was added to Tears of the Kingdom in terms of the sky and the depths was enough to kind of like renew that surprise. And I do love the building and the crafting, but not everyone does. I think it should be on the long list, because… Well, I’ll happily have it on there. It’s just sold a monstrous amount of copies, it is beloved by many, many people. And just because I’m a grump about it, I don’t think it should be discounted, at least at this stage. I think we should at least have a conversation about it. Yeah, that’s probably why. I’m probably accelerating my thinking too much in terms of the final list. Yeah, I just think it would be odd not to have it on there, because there were two things I thought about. I thought, well, one, you can’t have Tears of the Kingdom instead of Breath of the Wild, because they should really be played sequentially. They’re both, you know, they are of a piece, essentially. But also, I just think, yeah, it’s just too weird not to have it, to pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s too strange, I think, for a Nintendo Top 50. So that’s part of my thinking. I’m happy. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I was maybe overthinking the collective opinions of BlackPage. Well, controversially, the one that I think would probably be a better candidate for bidding off would be Wind Waker HD, for the simple reason that pretty much everyone seems to agree that Wind Waker, they ran out of time to make it as good as it should have been, in its final stretch of that game. Even though Wind Waker HD has, I think, a lovely visual overhaul. I know it’s not exactly the same art style as the GameCube original, and you did do the GameCube original in the O&M list, which is interesting actually. I feel like there’s probably some thought process to went into that. Obviously, you have the option to sail around faster, so that alleviates some of the backtracking issues with the game. I know that it’s a beloved game, but I don’t know if it’s like… Is it the peak of its form in the way that these other Zelda games are? I think it’s different enough with the boat exploration, the thrill of all the little islands. I think mechanically that gives it a different flow. This is definitely like… A large part of my thinking revolves around just the way it looks. Like, if I think of a grid of like 50 screenshots from these games, it would thrill me to see something that looks as distinct as this, to show you like, well, look at all this mad stuff Nintendo got up to. But that, maybe that is too superficial, because like, I would dismiss like, you know, the wool and the yarn, various games on the grounds of like, well, that’s just an art style. You’re voting for an art style. Well, those are games for very small children, as well, I’ll argue. Yeah, but I am sort of voting for the art style here. You know, if we’re being really strict with ourselves, you know, as wild as the ocean is, this is the Ocarina template again, and that is represented by both Ocarina and Majora’s Mask. Yeah, I think it’s, we don’t need to be too harsh on ourselves at this stage. So we can have our six games, I think, taken into the long, to the shortlisting process. So I think that’s fine. I think Wind Waker HD, I think a lot of people would probably hear us stripping that out of the list at this stage and thinking, you joyless motherfuckers. And you know, they’re maybe not entirely wrong doing that. I also… They’ve already stopped listening when I didn’t include Mario 64 in the 25 Mario games. I do think that’s going to make a lot of people log off. Yeah. The thing is, the thing is though, I think that there is something to be said for Majora’s Mask in Ocarina of Time. They are, they’re not just important. They are, they are legitimately good. They are still very playable. They, there’s some, maybe some weird quirks to them. That’s another question actually. We talking 3DS versions for those ones, Matthew? Definitely Ocarina. I know, like, the real hardcore Majora’s Mask heads are a little bit sniffier about Majora’s Mask because some of the changes to various elements of the games and the controls and I still think it’s just way more accessible than playing original Majora’s Mask. Right, yeah. Okay, what’s… It feels like a very internet opinion. Well, I think the performance boost is worth it alone for the 3DS ones. That’s it. I mean, for like 99% of players, I’d say that is still the version you would want to be playing. They’re very handsome. The thing about the 3DS, the thing that’s great about the 3DS versus the Switch is that its screen size means that there are certain types of games that still look better on it than they will look on Switch. And that is true of Majora’s Mask and Ocarina of Time, in my opinion. Like, those games are N64-ass games and they make sense on a slightly smaller screen. They just do, in my opinion. So, I think that, combined with the performance boost is worth it. Granted, the gyro controls are not as married to, you know, that’s more of an acquired taste. But, yeah, I think, I don’t, honestly, don’t be afraid, Matthew, to pick 3DS for those. If you, maybe you could just pick Ocarina for 3DS and Majora’s N64 if you really want to, but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it, does it? I just, I just can’t stand those people. And Breath of the Wild, you’ll be taking the Wii version, I assume, Matthew? Oh, grim. Well, okay, so, okay, so the other thing to resolve here, 2D Zelda is taking some fucking, taking a beating here, really. So you’ve brought it down to Link’s Awakening. How much of that is you being diplomatic with me versus you preferring this to A Link to the Past, which feels like the obvious alternative here? A Link to the Past, I just don’t think is as entertaining now as it used to be. I think coming to it after all the Zeldas that followed, a lot of it feels feels quite rudimentary. That is my least popular Nintendo take. I’ve voiced it before. I do not think the dungeon designs in this are very fun. I think there’s a lot of just baffling shit that without a walkthrough or like an incredible memory of what you did 30 years ago is just kind of like old crusty Nintendo design rather than like magic. A lot of people have just carried the memory of this through their lives. I have replayed this in the last, probably only in the last 10 years. I did it on the, I think I replayed it on Wii U. And yeah, I just, I don’t know. I, like, when I played Link’s Awakening on the Switch, and this wasn’t just the Switch-ness of it, just as a game, I thought the kind of character of the thing and the size of the thing was just much more enjoyable. I would honestly take, like, Link’s Awakening. I would probably take Minish Cap. I would probably take Oracle of Ages. You know, these are, those are all games I like. I just think Link to the Past is, for me, it is just slightly slipped off the is, is this as, as entertaining to play now? I think the answer is no. Okay. Well, despite how long to be suggesting they’re of the same length, I agree. There’s something about the structure of Link’s Awakening, maybe because it was made for the Game Boy originally, that everything in it is quite bite-sized and can be done in about half an hour, if you really know what you’re doing. I mean, it’s a Zelda game, so there are puzzles that will stand in the way of that, or progress like blockers that you have to figure out. But I think it is a perfectly paced little Zelda experience, and the fact that it’s been remade and is still beloved is a key thing. It’s very much got a life of its own. This game, obviously, it was re-released on Game Boy Color as well. I think as well to represent the Game Boy more specifically, it’s nice to have it in there because I think other SNES games are going to make the cut here. So there’s maybe a little bit of that consideration too. Yeah, I do agree with you. I prefer Link’s Awakening to A Link to the Past, but because the O&M list had A Link to the Past so high, I wondered if that was going to be the one you went for. So I’m quite pleasantly surprised you didn’t. That was contributors. Like most hardcore Nintendo heads, it is in their top 10. I hope, especially if you go back and listen to our Zelda ranking, that I explained more fully than we’re thinking, but I really do stand by that. It isn’t a contrarian take. I’ve got nothing to gain by throwing Link to the Past under the bus. Nothing to gain. No, I genuinely think that to be true. Yeah, that’s fair enough. I controversially still think you should chuck in one more 2D game here for the long list, because we can always iron it out in the wash, I guess. But that’s two analogies that don’t work together actually. You can tell it’s earlier on Sunday still. But just for the simple reason that if you get to a point where you’ve got, let’s say like a Kirby game that maybe you end up liking less than Oracle of Ages or Minish Cap, then you do at least have this in your back pocket because you can go, you know what, fuck it, I’ll put this in here. I guess if we have our five game limit, that’s tough. But I don’t know, maybe just treat yourself to one more, and then it goes into the long list process at the very least. The thing is, if we put another 2D Zelda in, and Link to the Past still doesn’t make the cut, people will be absolutely fuming. I think it’s easier to make the case that Link’s Awakening should be in that long list instead of, but it’s much shakier to say Minish Cap, even though it is… Nice looking game. Oh, and it’s really, really inventive. It has big, big ambition by 2D Zelda standards. Also, the arrival of Fujibayashi, or the continued descent of Fujibayashi, aka Mr. Breath of the World and Tisly Kingdom, as a director. Come on, let’s do it. Let’s be bold. Let’s say Minish Cap, because we want to represent that amazing era of GBA, particularly graphics, the way those games looked. It’s a very distinct period of Nintendo art. Yeah. This is also the only original Zelda or Mario on GBA. The rest were all re-releases, right? So I think maybe that’s another factor, is those series are amazing on GBA, but only because they’re old ass games that have been ported to the system. So yeah, I think for that reason, fair enough. Okay. So with zero restraint, we’ve got Majora’s Mask 3DS, Breath of the Wild on Switch, obviously, Ocarina of Time 3DS, Wind Waker HD, so the Wii version, and Link’s Awakening. Are we going to say the DX version for that, Matthew, the Game Boy Color one? I think that’s handsome. Because as nice as the Switch one is, I think what you’re reacting to is still the core of the game rather than necessarily it’s the best looking thing ever. I completely agree. Yeah. I think that’s a handsome use of the color palette, the original, sorry, the DX version. So I think that makes sense. And then, yeah, Legend of Zelda, Minish Cap on GBA and Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. So seven games there. So I think that makes sense though. That’s a fucking hard series to account for with a five game limit, I would say. So that makes sense. There’s a lot of different bits of its history and things that they would experiment with to try and tick off there. So that makes sense. We will get it down to five. Yeah. The only other thing I was going to ask was did you consider the GameKeep version of Wind Waker, Matthew? No, I like the quality of life changes from Wind Waker HD. I don’t know that I could go back. Yeah. Okay. That’s fair enough. That makes sense. Okay. We move on to Metroid then. I think this is going to be a bit easier. What do you think, Matthew? Have you got a short list of this one too? My short list. Super Metroid, Metroid Prime, Metroid Dread. That is very lean. Okay. So a few things to mention here. I do agree with you that only Prime should go in out of that trio. I think actually it made me think about how when next year when Prime 4 comes out, people are going to complain it’s not as good as Prime 1, and that it’s not really evolved much, because there’s not much more you can really do with Prime, and what’s already done in Prime 1. I think that’s definitely going to happen next year. So saving that little preview of our 2025 predictions there, people complaining about Prime 4 in 2025. But I think, so Dread I agree with, I guess the other thing you think about here is Samus Returns, the 3DS port that Mercury Steam did. But I don’t think there’s any need to have that and Dread. Dread is an original game and it’s really fucking good. Athletic, kind of like 3D, 25D take on Metroid that you and I both agree is one of the all-time greats on Switch. So that makes sense. Super Metroid being the only 2D game in here, why don’t you explain your thinking? Well, it was, like I was saying in the intro, I think there is a particular sweet spot in terms of this character exploring a strange alien planet that I think is better served before they become a little bit more linear in Zero Mission and Fusion. Which I think are just smoother rides generally, and I think it’s the bumpiness of the Super Metroid ride that is part of what makes that game so special. Again, this was just me being really lean with my thinking. I have got nothing against those games, I would not object to… I would probably make a case for Fusion. Fusion, and possibly Zero Mission, which is a really nice redo of the original, right? Yes, yeah, but they can absolutely go on there. I think that would be a lot, like 5 Metroid, 10% of this Nintendo list being Metroid would… I’d be like, is that right? Okay, here’s what I think we should do here, right? Because I think Super Metroid should definitely be in there for the reasons you say. However, Fusion again is one of the all-timer GBA games, and there aren’t that many original games on that system in the major Nintendo series. It’s also really one of the best-looking TD games ever, Metroid Fusion, so I would go for that. Zero Mission is great, but I think Fusion does tick that. Fusion and Super Metroid kind of tick the same boxes between them. You only need one of those, sure. Yeah, and I would take Fusion being the original one and being the most recent 2D Metroid before Dread, basically. Okay, no other M, Matthew? No, I don’t think so. I think it can be in the mix for an real… I’m basically where it sat in the O&M list, in the bottom 10, and part of that was a bit of a sort of, fuck you to all the monas, because that’s what I’m like as an editor. Well, I think this is a good choice anyway, yeah. Yeah, but I think what people really love about it is represented by those. Okay, good. So Prime, Super Metroid, Dread and Fusion go through. With Prime, are you saying the Switch version from last year, Matthew? Yeah, why not? Yeah, okay, so remastered. Okay, awesome. That was a lot simpler than the Zelda one. Okay, Kirby is next, Matthew. So this is probably more your area than mine. I did go back and look at your Kirby list from two years ago for this one. What did you land on for this? It probably mimics the top picks in that list. I don’t think Kirby got a lot of love in the O&M list. We didn’t think about it much. Kirby is like the Nintendo franchise. I am most sort of changed on, I guess, in the last few years from kind of getting into it more and kind of clicking with it a bit more. I would make the case for Kirby’s return to Dreamland Deluxe, which is the Switch version of Kirby’s Adventure Wii. Kirby Planet Robobot, which was the excellent 2D, the one on 3DS, the second one on 3DS, where Kirby gets into a mech and it kind of goes all a bit Platinum at the end, in terms of the… That’s my pick for sort of modern, loopy 2D Kirby. I think there maybe is a case for Kirby in The forgotten Land. I think so, because I think it’s gonna, in terms of setting, I think it’ll wow people more than any of the other games will, if that makes sense. Yes, that is true. It’s quite frictionless as a game, isn’t it? I would quite like there to be a… I wouldn’t object if there was like a 2D and a 3D Kirby in the top 50. And Return to Dreamland Deluxe, Planet Robobot, both do similar things, so forgotten Land is its own thing. The only other one I want to throw in is Kirby Super Star Ultra, which is the DS remake of that sort of SNES anthology of quite weird mad Kirby minigames and minicampaigns. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, arguably, Return to Dreamland and Robobot take a lot of what was great in that game and make it into one coherent campaign. But there is something about, part of what Kirby is about is Sakurai’s original love of just clutter and just let’s fucking do everything. Let’s make six Kirby games in one, see what happens. And the DS version is a much smoother version of that. There won’t be four Kirby games in the list. So Return to Dreamland I’m not that familiar with. Is that like kind of a sort of sequel to Kirby’s Adventure kind of thing? No, that’s the Wii game remade for Switch. Right. Okay. But so the one thing that confused me is that it was called Kirby’s Adventure Wii in like the UK apparently. So that was the thing that was confusing me, but it was cool. But obviously there is a game called Kirby’s Adventure already, right? So that was kind of confusing. Yes. I think it was called Return to Dreamland in the US. Yeah. So they’ve now just unified it under that name. Yeah. Okay. So we’re going with Return to Dreamland Deluxe. That’s a Switch game, right? Yeah. And then Planet Robobot, which is only on 3DS. Yeah. And then Kirby in the forgotten Land, which is on Switch obviously, and not another game. Let’s put on Kirby Super Star Ultra on DS. Okay. Like probably not going to be needed, but let’s do it anyway. All right. Fair enough. I just need the Kirby real heads to know that I’m cool. And now I’m in on it. Yeah. The thing is, I wouldn’t say forgotten Land should go anywhere near the top 20, but I would say that it’s a good ancillary, maybe 45 or something like that. Yeah. It’s funny, some of these entries, as I’ve written them down, I’ve been like potential 50. This kicks it off. Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s do Donkey Kong next then, Matthew. So what have you got for that? Donkey Kong. So this is another one where I think I probably split from the consensus. I’m not a Donkey Kong country guy. Like, I don’t really rate the SNES games. I don’t really like the look of them. I don’t really like the feel of them. I know everyone loves those fucking soundtracks. They don’t do it for me. I would not put the SNES Donkey Kong games on my top 50 list. Do you arguably need them when you’ve got a couple of really good, sort of like, modern 2D Donkey Kong games? Well, yeah, there is that. I mean, as a platforming series, I think it’s one of Nintendo’s weaker ones, generally. So I’ve written down Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. I think if any of them are going to make the cut, it’s that one, even though it nearly got me fired on O&M and fucked that game. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, the Bongo Drum’s one. And I do think Donkey Kong 94, the Game Boy game, and it’s one of the few Game Boy games where I think it’s still, like, fun to play. That’s, like, original Game Boy as well. Yeah, that’s like, like, there aren’t many original Game Boy games where, you know, they’re so sort of simple, but that one, you know, I liked it as a kid, and I still think it’s all right. So- I will play that before we do the final list, then. But yeah, but I have, I mean, that is quite a small list, and people will be like, why is Donkey Kong Country 2 not on there or whatever? I don’t know, but you’ve got Tropical Freeze. That’s like one of the greatest modern 2D platformers, you know, like the set piece design is fucking amazing. Like it really is- That’s the thing, I’ve always thought it, yeah, that one’s, that series has been more about the kind of flash of it, and the set pieces, and you know, it’s quite blockbuster-y, and that is a series that’s just benefited from where tech is at now. Like to go back to it, like they, I really hate those like digitized sprite, I just think it looks like, ugh. Yeah, I don’t think it holds up nearly as well as the pixel art does. It’s okay as well to be like, something was technically very impressive in the era that it was in, but doesn’t age as well as some other ways of tackling the same problem. That’s the thing, those graphics are always going to date because of the approach they took to having that faux 3D effect. So I think that’s okay. I mean, likewise, the Sonic game that did that, I can’t remember which one it is, the Game Gear one looks like complete ass these days. So it makes sense. Okay. So, right, okay, Donkey Kong 64, they’re not your kind of game. I feel like rare games in general are going to get a bit of a short shrift. You’d be right. Yeah. But I mean, Donkey Kong 64 again, I don’t think it’s considered the peak of their games on N64 anyway, right? Because of the number of collectibles. Because if you do like the Banjo-Kazooie template, it was just so bloated. I mean, it was like going through those levels, because they were designed for multiple characters. You’d go through a level and you were so aware that you could only interact with 20 percent of it and it’s just all this shit, they’re like come back later and the balance was just off. Okay. Well, I think that’s a solid little list anyway. So we’ve got Tropical Freeze, Switch obviously, go play that. It’s on Wii U too, but obviously you’ll play on Switch now. Jungle Beat, is that GameCube game, Matthew? Is that right? Yeah. They did a Wii New Play Control version, which replaced the Bongo drums with the shaking the controllers, but no. Come on. Well, hopefully they’ll excavate that at some point, because I would like to play it. I know it’s considered a sublime. The Matthew Castle promise, Bongo’s a bust. And Donkey Kill 94 on Game Boy. So, okay, interesting. That’s an intriguing little list. So, Yoshi, do you want to do Yoshi next? So that’s just one game, right? Yeah, Super Mario Land 2, Yoshi’s Island. Okay. I don’t think there’s any objections there. That’s just, these are basically like diet platformers for the youngins, aren’t they? These sort of like even softer than Kirby in most cases. Is that fair or too harsh? Because the mechanic is like throwing and aiming and like egg management, you can basically sort of fuck yourself a little bit if you’re bad at the aiming arc. It’s almost got like a golf swing mechanic for throwing the eggs. I’ve always found these games quite fiddly and unsatisfying to play. Might add egg management to my skills on LinkedIn, and just if you can endorse me for that. Yeah, if you can play these games, you can definitely manage your eggs. Okay. Well, that’s fine. Yeah. These games, the direct sequel to them just got progressively worse. Actually, I think people was like, why do they keep getting it wrong? It’s like maybe they just did everything you can do with it first time out. It’s a really imaginative game, Yoshi’s Island, some absolutely amazing bosses, push the snares incredibly hard in terms of using sprite rotation and whatnot. Yeah, really good stuff. All right then, we move on to Matthew’s favorite franchise of all time, Pokemon. This is interesting because the original list that they did in ONM had SoulSilver HeartGold as its highest ranking entry, but it also had Red and Blue and Snap. Now, I would say I see why people like Snap, but I wouldn’t put that in here. I don’t think that’s a particularly great game. I think the concept of the game is better than the actual game itself. I think people like the idea of photographing creatures in the wild. That’s almost like a kind of indie game concept that was smuggled into the biggest franchise of all time. I think the fact that they got a new version and everyone just went. Shrugged. Yeah, like, this is the thing I’ve always dreamed of, and then they got it and they were like, oh yeah, it’s just going along a track and taking pictures of Pokemon, and you’re like, yep. The key thing is, obviously, me and Matthew are not Pokemon fans. So people who like that series are going to have really strong feelings on this. Like I know some people who really like the black and white games, for example, or like Pokemon Legends, Arceus, that whole thing. I’ve played about five hours of that and it is bold as Pokemon games go, but I will admit to it not really massively doing it for me. I think we’re probably going to just lean on the traditional easy picks here and pick either HeartGold and SoulSilver or Red, Blue, Yellow or Silver, Gold, Crystal. Did you have anything written down for this, Matthew? I’d only written down HeartGold, SoulSilver. That’s fine. I think we just need one to kind of represent the vibe of what Pokemon is. To the outside, the differences, I don’t think they’re interesting enough. The Pokemon experience I’ve probably enjoyed the most in the last 10 years is probably playing Crystal on 3DS through the Virtual Console. I genuinely enjoyed that. I think something about Game Boy Color graphics, it just looks so nice despite the simplicity of the color palette. But at the same time, HeartGold and SoulSilver loads it up with more features, so you kind of have to pick those, I think. Yeah, you get a pedometer as well, so you’re going to live a little bit longer. Yeah. How much does that encourage you to do additional walking? Not at all. I remember I used to stick the pedometer in my pocket and then jiggle my leg under the desk, just when I was revealing it, just to get my steps up. That is the most like fat man anecdote I’ve ever heard on this podcast. That’s saying something for too many who enjoy sandwiches on the reg. OK, one Pokemon game makes the cut, then it is HeartGold, SoulSilver on DS. That sounds about right for this podcast. I think so, and it probably won’t be that high, but I do like… I think the original Pokemon formula is still very good, so it makes sense to have it in the mix. OK, Star Fox, Matthew, this feels pretty self-evident to me, but what have you got for this? Star Fox 64 3D. Yeah, agreed. That’s it, done. It’s like, it’s not bettered. You can’t get an experience like it anywhere else from Nintendo by this specific first-party criteria we’re using. I probably should have explained that earlier. These are the first-party Nintendo games. Oh, yeah. But yes, so Lilac Wars slash Star Fox 64, but we’re specifically picking the 3D version on 3DS. Still an absolutely top-notch arcade spaceship shooter, never bettered. Still great fun to play now. So I’m glad that’s made the mix, Matthew. I think that’s very worthy. Mario spin-offs. Is this going to take a while? I mean, what have you got, Matthew, for this? I’ll read through my whole list. It’s really scattershot, so we’ll probably have to dig into some of it. I’ve put Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door, A Mario and Luigi? Question mark. Mario Kart 8, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Super Mario Maker 2, Mario Tennis N64, Mario Golf on the N64, or we’ll accept Toadstool Tour on GameCube. Okay. Is there not a Smash Bros on there? Did I blank? Well, I put that in my End Everything Else list because I didn’t see it necessarily as a Mario game. Yeah, fair enough. That makes sense, I guess. I think it was the Bros that threw me there, the Super and the Bros. Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah. So, right. Okay. So, yeah, quite tricky to ball this down. Interesting that last week on Luigi’s Mansion specifically, you were a bit down on that being represented generally in your top, in the O&M Top 100 because you considered that, I think, like, not necessarily a peak Nintendo undertaking. I thought we could put it on the long list. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. So, Paper Mario Thousand Year Door, I see that you let the Internet win on this one, Matthew, explain your thinking. There’s not much in it. My case has always been, I don’t think it is particularly better than the others, but it’s much of a muchness. There is this nice new Switch version, it is agreeable. I’ve got problems with it in the same way I have problems with all of them. I just don’t think I can get my beloved. I don’t think I can make a proper case for Origami King. I think Thousand Year Door probably is it. I would say whatever the Paper Mario is, I imagine it will be very low down in the list. Okay, that makes sense. That’s the thing I’m willing to concede. I’m willing to concede, yes, that this is the best one, but as a series, it is not quite as special as I remember it. What about then the choice of one Mario and Luigi, but not knowing which one to pick? I think you should just pick Bowser’s Inside Story. That’s the one you like the most, right? Yeah, that is a heart pick. If we can accept a heart pick, like, again, Consensus’ Superstar Saga, that’s fine for a little bit much in it. And going back to it, it didn’t do it as much for me. Going inside Bowser’s body, that’s pretty cool and weird, isn’t it? Yeah, I like Bowser’s Inside Story. Again, both of these are not necessarily, like, you know, they’re not bothering, like, the top 20, I don’t think. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I think let’s go with Bowser’s Inside Story then, for that one, I think, that makes sense. And then Mario Kart 8 is very self-evident. There’s no reason to pick an older Mario Kart. I think there’d be some controversy in not picking Mario Kart 64 for people who maybe rate importance, because I would never play Mario Kart on the SNES, no offense, I tried it on the SNES Mini, I just no, no complaint there now. The bone I will throw to the retro Mario Kart lovers is that they are distinct games, and it is wrong just to go, oh, it’s all the same game. They’re not, they’ve got their own mechanics, their own feel. I just think on balance what Mario Kart 8 has in terms of production quality and just fun to play and just the exuberance of the thing. Summarizing the series in general as well. Yeah, I just don’t know why, like, I don’t think people will argue with that. You don’t want to fill this with loads of fucking Mario Kart. No, I do have loads of affection for Mario Kart 64, though I know a lot of people will. Like, the way it looks and feels is just so specific to that era and, you know, it is a wonderful thing. But yeah, I do agree, like, it just, why waste an additional entry on it, really? Like, it makes sense to just do Mario Kart 8 in luck, if that makes sense. Mario Maker 2, like, why have you picked this when we’ve kind of been a bit down on 2D Mario in our kind of like picks? I mean, maybe this was just a, you know, Mario Maker obviously hadn’t sort of come into being when we did the O&M list yet. This was late Wii U development. More that I just thought maybe it should be part of the discussion, be interesting just to, you know, think about it, albeit for 30 seconds. So, like, putting on the long list, do I think it’s going to get into the top 50? Probably not. Like, it’s a thing for making a lot of very, very difficult levels, is what people seem to use it for, which isn’t necessarily what I want. But I, like, observe it from afar and… What it represents, you like? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Long list candidate it is, then. It goes through. That makes sense. Finally, the sports, Matthew. Marriott X64. I feel like you’re mostly hue to the consensus here. Yeah, I’ve only included tennis and golf, rather than any of the other sporting games. I think the football ones are fucking shite and shouldn’t be near this list. I find that these are games where, basically, a lot of people have an affection for the one that they played as a kid. I still feel like Mario Tennis, like N64, just the actual kind of controls the thing. You know, the pure, is this a very fun tennis game? That is the one you want. Mario Golf is maybe slightly, slightly kind of hazier. I say Mario 64, but then that’s the… I say Mario Golf on N64, but then that’s the… that is the one I sort of first played. And maybe I am being overprotective of it. A quick squeeze of online, like, there’s a lot of, a lot of love for Toadstool Tour. Though I always remember that. RPG elements there? They were there? Is that the one? Or maybe I’m thinking, I feel like one of these, either Tennis on Game Boy Color or this on Game Boy Color has like… Tennis on Game Boy Color had RPG elements. That’s what I’m thinking of, yeah, yeah. Which I think that made the cut on the O&M list, probably because it had that extra element to it. I think we’re not having two golf games in this list, or two tennis games, that’s absolutely madness. If we’re having them at all, they are not guaranteed a place. Okay. I’m going to play all three of those over the next week and then have a take on it when we come to determine. I’ve played all three of these before briefly, but I will boil it down to one thing. I think it should go in there and maybe that can help steer that conversation. Okay. In which case, Mario’s been asked. We got it down. I say down. It’s not really down. Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door, I’m guessing the Switch version there, Matthew. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Mario and Luigi Bowsers Inside Story on the DS. I don’t think they remade that for 3DS, did they? They did, yeah. Okay. Would you pick that one or the original? No, I like the DS one. Okay, cool. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch. Gets you the DLC, which makes sense. Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Switch. Super Mario Maker 2 on the Switch. Super Mario Tennis 64. Mario Golf 64. And Mario Golf Toadstool Tour on the Game Boy Color. Those have all gone to the long list. So, good stuff, Matthew. This will be a brief conversation. Zelda spin-offs. I feel like there’s only one or two candidates here. What do you think? Well, I’ve written Four Swords Adventures, and that’s all I got. Oh, fuck, of course. I was thinking maybe Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity, but I wouldn’t necessarily… I think if we included that, but didn’t include Tears of the Kingdom, that would be madness. So, I’d maybe include it for variety, because it is a bit different. I mean, we’ve got Four Swords Adventures and not Tears of the Kingdom. I mean… Exactly. There’s a lot of these games that go in above Tears, that’s, like, bad. Yeah. Also very funny, the idea that Mario Golf 64 makes the cut, but not Super Mario 64. That’s pretty funny. Okay, Four Swords Adventures, that’s a GameCube game, isn’t it, that also requires some GPAs. Yes. And, yeah, okay. And Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity, just for variety, I think, but probably won’t make the cut. All right. We move on to Wario, Matthew. What have you got for this one? WarioWare, Inc. Mega Micro Games. Agreed. Pure and simple. Let’s keep it original. And I’ve also included Wario Land 4 to honor Wario’s platforming past. Some debate over what the best Wario is. I saw there seems to have been a resurgence recently of love for Shake Dimension on the Wii, which I thought was pretty rubbish. Just looked absolutely amazing. Thanks to the 2D sort of illustrative art style. But Wario Land 4 is one of the classic examples of the kind of get in and then do a mad dash out Wario, which is like his platforming mechanic, if you’re not familiar with it. Okay. I think Wario Land 4 feels like a safer pick, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It’s no Pizza Tower, says Sam. Fuck you, I didn’t say that. I said it was inspired Pizza Tower, which is an excellent game. I should play that at some point. So WarioWare Mega Micro Games, the original GBA one is what we’re saying for that. That makes sense. You’re never really better. Like it is still perfect. You can play it on Switch online. It’s so fucking good, even to this day. And yeah, somehow even when you play WarioWare Gold, there’s still something so perfect about the original. I don’t think it needs to be messed with. Also just some of the best pixel art ever in the original WarioWare. I’m not as familiar with Wario Land 4, but that’s another one I’ll try and play before next week, Matthew. So I’ve got some thoughts on it. So just the two games there. I think that makes sense for WarioWare. Pikmin then, feels like it should just be one, doesn’t it? So it’s gotta be three or four, I feel like. But which one is it, Matthew? I would say Pikmin 3. For the reasons discussed last week, I think four is the richer package, definitely. But they just added a little bit too much noise to it, too much guff that you didn’t need in Pikmin. It lost a little bit of its charm, like all his fucking space mates. Oh my god, the absolute galaxy of tough hags. Yeah. It’s where the whole idea clicked in for me. Pikmin 3 is the proper kind of, source was apprentice, you’re standing in the middle, just conducting all these little vegetables and the efficiency and the purity of the little roots that you’re building is, everything a Pikmin game needs to be. Though I am thankful for Pikmin 4, I did enjoy it. Yeah, I enjoyed it too. I think it is slightly too long for how stimulating it isn’t at times for Pikmin 4. Like it’s just a bit too gentle. The last couple of levels, I think it starts to reach the level of friction you really need from Pikmin, but I think that maybe Pikmin 3 just boils it down the experience a little bit better. It’s as much as I like Ochi and dislike Evil Ochi. I think that 3 is the, like you say, just maybe them purifying the original idea into a form that people really like. 4 is a cool alternative. If that’s your first Pikmin experience, you’ll have a great time, but 3, I think, is 3 feels like more of a purist choice, I think. Okay, Platinum Games, Matthew. So, can’t count the original Bayonetta for this because Sega funded that, right? So, that wouldn’t count. Bayonetta 2 and 3 are on the table, though, as is Astral Chain. All good to great games. I think there should probably only be one Pik from Platinum in the mix. I think you’re probably going to say Bayonetta 2, but what do you think? Well, I was gonna say The Wonderful 101. Oh, of course. Oh, interesting. That’s probably an even more contentious Pik than either Bayonetta 2 or Astral Chain, right? But it’s like a lot… Yeah, it’s the last cameo action game. Right, okay. Isn’t that exciting? It is, but I feel like it’s a bit more of a… I guess it’s a heart Pik, right? Which is kind of like… It is a heart Pik. So I wrote down Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 in brackets at a push. Yeah, I think Bayonetta 2 I would probably opt for. I think Astral Chain is not quite as mechanically complex as Bayonetta 2, even though I do like it. I really like Astral Chain, but I think I’d just be wasting its time to say I’d put it in the top 50. Yeah, okay. I think Bayonetta 2, there is a real shout for Bayonetta being like a core Nintendo thing these days. I do hate that I have to go to bat for two over one. That’s like tough that I’ve been put in that position, but here we are. Wonderful 101, I’ve got to confess, other than how it looks, I don’t really get this game. It’s just not quite my sort of thing. I think it’s just an acquired taste in the way that many great things are, Matthew. It could be a 50. That’s one of the games you got earmarked, is it? That makes sense. Okay, that makes sense. Bayonetta 2 on Nintendo Switch, that will go in and Wonderful 101. Switch or Wii U, Matthew? Wii U. Yeah, because you got the screen right and the damage. Yeah, it was made for it, yeah. Yeah. Okay, makes sense. Time for a bloodbath. It’s time for the rare games that are on Nintendo platforms. What have you got, Matthew? Originally, I wrote none of them, and that was there for quite a long time. I’ve begrudgingly and for the sake of discussion, put Perfect Dark, GoldenEye, Blast Corps and Banjo-Kazooie. But in brackets, over my dead body, next to Banjo-Kazooie. We can’t pick Conker, because that was published by THQ. It’s not a Nintendo game, right? That is eligible for the third party list that we do on Patreon in September. Come back to that. I think we should pick one of Perfect Dark or GoldenEye, personally. And I think the reason to pick… I think this is where we got to have the importance conversation, right? And say that GoldenEye is super important, but I have enjoyed revisiting it for sure. But I think if we take the thing that it does best and ask, what is the greatest version of this? And that is split-screen multiplayer, right? Like that was like why GoldenEye was king on N64. We have to surely agree that Perfect Dark does that better, right? It’s got better maps, it’s got more options, it’s got all the kind of like cool weapons and stuff. I would say Perfect Dark over GoldenEye for that reason, even though I think that people would probably prefer the campaign in GoldenEye over Perfect Dark. What do you think, Matthew? Yeah, I mean that is very much the split. I haven’t revisited Perfect Dark yet for our XL episode. I think it’s pretty good. I’m enjoying it. I’ll have fresher opinions. Between them, two of my most played games of all time. The last time I went back to both of them, you know, not on Switch, admittedly, on the Xbox releases, I didn’t have the same affection that I think you have for them. I still think they feel more important than still good. But I do need to go back and give them a proper, proper go. So having them on the long list, or having just Perfect Dark, if we think that’s just going to replace GoldenEye, fine. But yeah, these are things I need to revisit before we make the final call. Yeah, I think, again, don’t think there’s going to be another split screen FPS in the mix here. This makes sense to have this for variety sake. And yeah, like, you know, admittedly the Xbox version is a bit shinier than anything you’d find in a Nintendo platform. Maybe there has to be part of the consideration. But in any case, there is a, you know, that this game is, I think, still just good enough and not just in the important category to be, to be in there. Like it’s, I agree it’s borderline. But I think having none in there would be a bit, a bit too unsporting. Okay. So Perfect Dark goes in but not GoldenEye. Sorry about GoldenEye and Mario 64 in the bin they go. That’s tough. Banjo Kazooie. I think like I would refer to you as the kind of like platforming expert with this list. Yeah. All the platforming fans are like going, no, don’t do it. Don’t do it. He’s wrong. I feel like it would be good color for like the bottom 10 of the list personally. Like it’s, it is, it’s like not, I would definitely pick the original and not the second one, which I found just too sprawling and a bit of a headache. And not that fun. The original with its sort of little bite size levels and stuff. I kind of like, I get why people have affection for its little pocket worlds and that sort of thing. Clarify again why you don’t like Banjo Kazooie, Matthew? I just don’t think it’s much of a platformer. I think in the same way that Mario 64 is an exploration game, I think this is like a weird character abilities game. It feels like you just take them to the spot they’re meant to be to unlock the jigsaw, and then you do the one of the many confusing finger combinations to make the bird shoot a thing or fly up into the sky and I don’t know. I just don’t really buy it as a platformer. I don’t think you actually do much interesting platforming in this game. It’s just like a weird, because I replayed the thing. I 100% did it as part of Rare Replay when that came out. And it was absolutely fine, but I just don’t think it should be mentioned in the same breath as 3D Mario games. Yeah, that makes sense. Also, like, it’s whole… That can really fuck off. Maybe that was funny when I was 10, but I cannot stand that shit now. Yeah, it’s wall of noise is like up there with Akami as some of the worst kind of like character noises you’ll hear for sure. Oh, and the music. I would like to put it on the long list, but I don’t think it’s going to be worth it because there’s just so many 3D Marios in there that will basically… You might as well play those instead. So I think that Banjo is going to miss out. That leaves Blast Corps, which is not going on the long list, in my opinion. I just think it’s not quite as good as everyone says it is, unfortunately. Doesn’t necessarily stand the test of time. That camera needs to pull further out than it does. I’m afraid that’s a big weakness of this game. But I will admit it’s better than Jet Force Gemini, which is ass. I’m on the record saying that in this podcast. What about SNES or NES era rare games, Matthew? Like your Battletoads and the like, or actually is Battletoads may be published by… I think it’s the Donkey Kong Country is the other ones, aren’t they there? Yeah. And then obviously there’s, they did like Viva Piñata on DS, which is all right, but I wouldn’t put that in there. Like Perfect Dark on Game Boy Color. And they’ve got a few different, they’re like Original Conker on Game Boy Color as well. But I don’t know, I don’t think any of them are quite top 50 material, but I don’t know. I loved Rare when I was a teenager. I loved playing their games at the time. I think they were really of their time. I think they absolutely like ruled the roost back then. But I think it is just the chunk of the Nintendo story that has aged the poorest, unfortunately. Yeah, this isn’t like some personal Rare vendetta. I would love nothing more than to put loads of Rare games in there. And I know that everyone, you know, they still, you know, there are a lot of people who are just like Rare heads for life. But the worst thing Rare ever did, really, was letting me go back and replay everything in Rare Replay to realize I didn’t really like them. Like up until that point, they were enshrined in my head as classics. When you replay them, you go, oh, yeah, they’re not. What about Killer Instinct, Matthew? Not your sort of thing. I can’t really speak to it. Like, The Boys Across the River had it on the SNES. I always hated it. But I’m not one to talk about fighting game mechanics. I definitely know that it came with a CD, Killer Cuts, and that was absolutely rank. We listened to that one time and never again went back to Divine Comedy. Yeah, that’s okay. Fair enough. So, Rare has taken a bit of a breezing there, but I’ve pushed Perfect Dark through. To the people listening, I will ensure that Conker makes the cut in the third party list. I almost think that is the pick because it does a lot of the stuff that Banjo does, but it’s just got a load of other kind of like oddball, weird stuff in it that makes it quite notable. It’s much faster than Banjo, I think. Yeah, so I think Conker will… I will definitely push hard for that to get in that list. So, yeah, okay. So, only Perfect Dark gets through. Should we say the Switch version by default, Matthew? Because you can remap the controls, but I mean, you know, the Xbox version is ideally the one to play, as weird as that sounds. Fire Emblem Matthew are nearly at the end of the series here. Feels like there should only be one or two picks for this because it’s the kind of thing of what you were saying where series have just sort of developed and then have progressed in this really nice way on modern Nintendo hardware. So that said, there are some different flavors to the Fire Emblem experience in recent years. What have you got for this one? I think Fire Emblem one, I can’t remember the subtitle on Game Boy Advance. So the first one that was localized here, just as like very stripped back, this is like Fire Emblem in a nutshell. You know, it’s got like handsome enough graphics for the platform. I do think this is quite a nice like handheld game in terms of like little sort of bite sized missions and whatnot. And then Fire Emblem Awakening as the kind of modern Fire Emblem, which just sort of sets up a bit more like that, you know, that the, you know, the characters have always been important, but the characters felt a bit bigger, a bit richer, a bit more present. This is definitely begins to feed into this modern habit of like fandoms around characters. And I feel like you can kind of hold on to the characters in Awakening a little bit better than you could the previous ones. They’re a little bit sort of stoic and unknowable. Mechanically, I mean, there’s a case to be made for, you know, the core of them is so good, so rock solid. And then there are like little tweaks here and there and little rifts in different games. But I think, you know, maybe this list only needs a Fire Emblem in it, but I feel like we can either go ultra pure or a bit more characterful and Fire Emblem and Awakening will tick those boxes. So why not engage your Three Houses, Matthew? You’re not a big waifu’s guy. I think they go a little too far into the social side of it. But that is now what the series is for a lot of people. So if we want to represent that as a, like we know this is important to everyone, but that’s too much fandom, I would argue. Interesting. I think I kind of agree. Yeah. Okay. I think that’s fine. It’s our list. I think that makes sense. Again, we should just pick the thing that makes sense to us. So I think that makes sense. So Fire Emblem on GBA, the original Fire Emblem on GBA. The first one localized for this market. And then Awakening on 3DS. Those are the two that made the cuts there. So that makes sense. Advance Wars, Matthew. Just one for this one, I feel like. What have you got for this? Maybe one of the Game Boy Advance, one or two. I don’t particularly like the graphics on the one and two compilation. It’s not a series I particularly love. I don’t think it’s just not for me. Even this is too much like military strategy. Yeah, it’s a weird one. I think people, I would probably just pick the original for the reason that, okay, so like the DS ones as well, there’s quite a lot of chatter about which of those is the best one. So some people are quite down on the darker Days of Ruin, and Dual Strike is kind of like quite similar to the GBA ones. If I remember correctly, I can’t remember what else that one does, but I think they have slightly more enhanced multiplayer options. So maybe that was of interest to people. But nonetheless, it is a tough one. I kind of feel like it’s a bit of a much of a muchness pick. It’s one pick to represent the entire series. I can’t. Yeah. And there’s such a split on what the best one is. I don’t know if it’s even self-evident which one to pick. It feels like it should be one or two, though, Matthew, just based on our own experience with the series. I just think to discover Advance Wars in the early days of the GBA era, it was an amazing thing to have in your hands on the go. I know it was an existing series in Japan, but just to be like, just to have this largest tactical experience in the palm of your hand was pretty amazing. Did they add an option to build levels in II maybe as well? There have been map builders along the way, again, just not a thing I’ve been invested in enough that I can make a particular case for any of these games. This is where we need obligatory Chris Schilling to pop up and do his bit, because this was the series he was properly addicted to. It almost cost him his job, didn’t it? Because he was playing at work. Oh yeah. Here’s what I propose then. We put through an Advance Wars game and we’ll pick which one next week when we do the final list. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. An Advance Wars game on either GBA or DS is going through, but not the compilation on Switch as discussed. Okay. That makes sense. Animal Crossing feels like it should just be New Horizons, Matthew. I think this is important to represent in a list. What do you think? Yeah. That’s what I’d written down for this. I feel like these replace the last one as they go along, apart from the Wii one, which was arguably worse than the DS one. Yeah. That makes sense. Splatoon, Matthew, this should probably only be one, but it should be in the list. You were a bit cooler on three, but I was wondering if it should just be three by default. What do you think? Yeah. I was cooler on three in terms of it just felt like the most conservative bit of sequel work from Nintendo. Like it was just a straight, you know, it’s more like a FIFA update, you know. Again, I know there’s platoon heads will say there’s a lot of subtleties there, but three probably still is the one, yeah. Okay, cool. That makes sense. So three goes through then on Switch, obviously. Okay, nearly there. Wii Series, so Wii Sports, etc. I’m not really that fond of any of these games. My personal pick would be Wii Sports Resort, because I think that’s like a more refined version of this. But I know there’s been a recent like Switch version of these kinds of games, Matthew, which I’ve not played. But you are the expert here, so what do you think? I’d written down Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. Wii Sports maybe has now become like a, like it has moved over into the important game list rather than, like it’s not something I ever think about and I don’t go back and I haven’t played newer versions of it. Would I play either of these, honestly? Like go out of my way? I don’t know. I do love Table Tennis and Wii Sports Resort. That is good, but. Yeah, I’d say put one through and then see how we feel when we get to the short list. Wii Sports Resort I think is the slightly more interesting pick. It is. It’s just more precise because of Wii Motion Plus. It’s just a better overall experience. You can chuck a Frisbee and it feels really convincing. Like yeah, I think that makes sense. And yeah, Wii Sports is again, I would like to have played that Switch one to have some take on it, but I just haven’t picked it up. Have you played that one at all, Matthew? No, no. Yeah. Okay. Sorry listeners, I’ve let you down there. Us and sports, it’s not necessarily the best fit unless Mario happens to be in them. So yeah. Okay. Xenoblade then Matthew, you obviously the authority here. Only, it feels like it should only be one, but what do you reckon? Oh, definitely. Surely it’s definitive edition. Yeah, it probably is as like the gateway drug. I think two might be the one I love the most, but it’s also the most idiosyncratic. Yeah. And it’s got some like harder stuff to get over. I think in terms of like pure crowd pleaser, this is everything Xenoblade is gonna be. This is like, if you’re into this, you should definitely check out the others. I think Xenoblade 1, Definitive Edition is still the one. Okay, that makes sense. I still kind of think you should pick the one that you like the most, though. Like if you like two the most, should that not be the one? I wrote down one and two, because I don’t think it is three. Okay. That much I know. Right, in which case, Definitive Edition and two are both going on the long list. That’s fine, and we’ll figure that out next week. Okay, that makes sense. I think that would be a hard one for you to figure out. So, obviously, that’s Xenoblade Chronicles, Definitive Edition on the Switch, and two, which is also on the Switch. So, basically, number one and number two of the top 50. All right. Nintendo Download Games, quite a broad canvas here. I put this here to talk a bit about Box Boy, for example, which I think is a really nice little puzzle-y series, and probably would be a good 40 to 50 fodder. It’s hard to tell which one is the right one. I feel like Box Boy, Box Girl, because it has the co-op. Maybe that makes it the right one, Matthew. But do you have a take on that particular series? Not massively. Catherine absolutely loves it and has played all of them to destruction. I’ve only dabbled. It’s the kind of thing I would definitely put in the top 100. I don’t know if it would make the top 50. In this category, I wrote down Pool Blocks, Flipnote Studio, not really a game, but anyway, Boxboy, Picross, because there’s been all those Picross packages for Switch. Tetris Pac-Man F099. Oh yeah, of course. And Snipperclips, which I really liked, Switch Launch. They’re all things that I would be in a lower 50. Whether any of them can be sort of anointed and elevated to the top 50, I don’t know. Box Box Boy is definitely a fun one. Flipnote Studio is an app. That’s a bit of a wankers pick. It was cool, but… It’s the Game Boy camera of this list, so… And like, I have liked the 99 games that they did for the Switch Online service, but… I don’t know if they’re all like, they’re all like fun to play at first, but once you try and get to the ceiling of them, I wonder if they’re all a little bit like, you don’t really know the criteria of why you’re losing. Sometimes, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, it’s because there are 98 people who are better at Tetris than you. Well, I won at Tetris like twice, and I don’t think I was… I didn’t feel like I was playing at my best when I did win. Sometimes I feel like shit just happens to you in Tetris 99 without you understanding what’s happened. It’s when you’re in Tetris 99, you look across at the username, and you see it’s Alexey Pajitnov, and you shit yourself. Yeah, F-Zero 99 is cool to behold, but just quite incoherent, I thought. Yeah, I just put them down as these are developments. I don’t think Nintendo has done as much of this download-only stuff across the board. So, I mean, this list is kind of what I consider the ones that you would think about, whether any of them make the long list. I mean, do we throw a bone to Boxboy? How about we throw a bone to Boxboy and then you can pick one of your other ones if you want to, like it’s, if you want to put pool blocks in there, you can. So I know you put that in one of your top 10. Yeah, I do like pool blocks. Not a thing I’ve necessarily thought a huge amount about in terms of, oh, I must go back to it though. Yeah, I would definitely put a Boxboy in the long list because Boxboy and Boxgirl was a nice thing to play in the pandemic. It’s a cool remix of it to have it in two players. And I think it’s just a really nice little robust puzzle formula. I think it is stimulating and genuinely good. It is great Nintendo design in miniature. It’s just not as splashy as, you know, if they put fucking Mario in it, if it was like Mario Boy or Box Mario, people would have been all over that shit. This whole game should be the story of how a question mark block is made. That’s the twist at the end. He falls in some yellow paint and then Mario comes and just fucking headbutts him and that’s it. Okay, right. Let’s say probably Box Boy and Box Girl, but we’ll ask Catherine which one should be in there because she’s played all of them to completion. That makes sense. That can go on the long list. What about pool blocks and Matthews? Let’s put that on the long list as well. I mean, we’re putting it on the long list to instantly not make the top 50, but let’s do it for the sake of drama. All right. Now we come to the and everything else category. Where to start with this? I imagine Matthew, you’ve got a little list here, so why don’t you go through it? Yeah, but I feel it’s quite long. I figure we should go through these one by one, just do a yes, no. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Otherwise, we’re going to end up with way too many things. I’ve put F-Zero X and F-Zero GX. F-Zero X? That holds up, I think. That’s a really nippy game. It’s great on Switch, actually, as well. I was playing it last night, fucking 60 FPS. It is just throwing some triangles around a track, sure, but it looks really impressive for what it is and holds up very well, I think. You’re more familiar with GX, but it’s like a rock paper. I prefer X. I threw GX, that’s a little bit like a should it be in the discussion just to keep people happy. I mean, absolutely glorious looking GameCube game, obviously made by Sega’s arcade wizards, but also one of the most frustratingly difficult games on GameCube. How much of this game did I actually play or unlock? Probably not a vast amount. She had to be so fucking good at it. F-Zero X, I think. Gets it right. Yeah, and it does hold up. You’re right. It’s just so simple, visually as well. It hasn’t aged a lot because there’s just not a lot going on. No, it’s just so, so fast. If it was running like so many other N64 games at 15 FPS, absolutely not, but it is a technical marvel, and the colors are so sharp. I think it really holds up. So definitely a candidate, Matthew. All right, Kid Icarus Uprising. Yeah, hard agree that should be in the list, just for variety really. It’s a third-person shooter with a bunch of narrative in it on 3DS. It’s a very unusual thing that should be celebrated in my opinion. With 99 difficulty modes, or whatever it was, something dumb like that. Do we throw a bone to Wave Race 64 and 1080 Snowboarding? I think that’s a Matthew Castle choice as to whether they go in. I think Wave Race 64 is more of a S. Great water. Great water. Also, I know that the GameCube version is shinier, but I just think the feel and the way the 64 one moves is still really, really impressive. 1080 Snowboarding, it’s just a little bit too distant a memory, maybe. It doesn’t particularly feel like that being in the top 50. A game that I’ve just not really thought about until we were making this long list. Again, a classic sort of bottom 50 kind of game, I think. Yeah, but Wave Race 64, if we can keep that on the long list, I think that’s part of it. We’ll keep that and I’ll play that again for next week as well. Earthbound. I think that should be in the list. Yeah. There’s nothing else like it, right? I know it’s sort of like a bit hackneyed as the kind of cool Nintendo pick, but what do you think? Yeah, no, that’s… it is interesting. It does hold up as well. It’s still worth playing. I know there’s lots of people who are like, well, I think Mother 3 is better with the unofficial fan translation or whatever. It doesn’t quite fit our criteria as a thing that just didn’t technically come out here. So I think Earthbound should probably represent this series. I do think, like, for years, the fact that it wasn’t available and it just had this kind of reputation here, this strange, interesting thing from afar, it looks very unusual in screenshots and whatnot. And actually, now you’ve got it, maybe some of that allure has kind of sacked a bit, but it’s still good. I just don’t know if it felt special because it was sort of a bit illicit at one time. Yeah, yeah, it’s just a cool thing to go and discover. It’s like it’s as unusual and weird as people say it is. And I think basically all of those turn-based RPGs from that SNES era do hold up pretty well. It’s like, yeah, quite an evergreen genre, I think, so that makes sense. Yeah. Oh, and Dan? I think so. It feels like the DS hasn’t had loads of representation in this list so far. I know there’s bits and pieces here and there, but Wendon is a genuine achievement. It’s a genuine show you why this hardware even makes sense kind of game. I think it quietly sold the DS to a lot of people. Yeah, I think it holds up and you just can’t really, you couldn’t replicate this on Switch to any great effect. It needs that bottom screen and the music’s so good. So, original or Wendon, you’re thinking? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Won’t be top 20, but top 50, yeah. It’s got potential to make the top 50, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Go on. I’ve put down Rhythm Heaven Megamix in that I… DS1, 3DS1. That’s the 3DS1 that kind of takes games from across the series, mainly because the O&M list obviously had Rhythm Tengoku and Rhythm Paradise, the Wii one. And like, you don’t need multiple versions of this. This one sort of splits the difference, brings loads of it together. Is it powerful enough to make the top 50? I don’t know, but I’d like it to be in the conversation. That makes sense. So some people told me like the GBA one is really the one to play from the series. Well, that is… I mean, that’s the purest pick. So the original Rhythm Tengoku. I only put this in because, you know, I wanted if more people had had experience of like the DS one or the Wii one, and because the 3DS one brings together games from all of those, including the GBA game, it kind of, it’s sort of the everything Rhythm Heaven game. It’s like WarioWare in that respect, isn’t it? Where do you go the purest route or do you try and get your arms around everything, right? I mean, yeah, actually on that ground, I don’t mind the specificity of going with Rhythm Tengoku. All right, that’s fine, then. I will, again, come armed with some takes for that next week. That makes sense. Okay, I think that’s a good choice, actually. What do we go next, Matthew? Well, we get to the Smash Brothers discussion. Oh, this is quite hard, isn’t it? Because there are two candidates, right? It’s Ultimate or Melee. Yes. And Melee you put so high in that O&M list, but I wonder if you were just bullied into that by people. I think the votes would have had an impact on that. I can only see there being one Smash Brothers in the top 50. I agree. In the same way with Mario Kart. I am not… Is cooler the right word? I don’t play Smash Brothers much anymore. This was a big, big game for me when I was younger. Melee was the one which was big for me because I was playing it so much on GameCube. But in terms of maybe what interests me more about Smash Brothers now, which is like just the absurd curation of it, I think Ultimate is maybe the one. We’re not talking about which is a better technical fighter. We just don’t give a fuck, I don’t think. No, that’s not our area. That’s not our core. I think that is the reason you put Melee in over Ultimate. Yeah, I agree. Post-DLC as well, the amount of characters they put in there, it’s such an amazing thing to just sink your teeth into. I do agree, I don’t really play it much, but every time they did a DLC character, I dipped into it for like three or four more hours just to kind of take everyone through their paces to see, oh, wonder what level they’ve made for Persona 5 and all that stuff. So, yeah, I think it ultimately makes sense on that basis, Matthew. We don’t need to pretend that we have creds to the FGC crowd, they don’t care about us, we don’t care about them, so that makes sense. Yeah. What have you got next? I’m unsure about, do we think we need to have Golden Sun in the top 50? Well, does anyone care enough about Golden Sun? I thought it was weird that you put the DS one into the O&M list, because I feel like the two GBA ones were the ones that people really loved and really played. Yeah, but that was a total heartbeat, you know, I just, I really, really liked the DS one, I thought it was fantastic. I just don’t know, like, replaying Golden Sun when they put it on to the Switch Online service, and it is nice, the first one, GBA, and I like the look of it, but I don’t know if it’s, like, top tier Nintendo for me, necessarily. It’s a bit like a four star Nintendo series. I wonder if we’ve just got the RPG stuff ticked off between Earthbound and the different Mario games, and Xenoblade. And Xenoblade, yeah. And Fire Emblem, arguably, as well, so. Yeah, I think we can, I know people do like it, but I think, yeah, for a top 50, let’s bid it off. Yeah, okay. Tetris. I was thinking about this. Do you think it should be either very original Tetris or Tetris DX? For the simple reason that I love Tetris DS, but I do wonder if the purity of Tetris is still what is majestic about it. And so… Yeah, I mean, I think either way, the fundamental act of Tetris is in the list. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, and to be honest, I’m so all in on Tetris Effect these days, but it’s kind of like blitzed my idea of what Tetris is. So I wouldn’t say I mind either way, really. Yeah, I think I’m going to say that DX is the one. I love how DX looks. What a beautiful looking simple thing. It’s so nice. I think it adds a couple of modes as well. Is it controversial to pick DX? I don’t think it is to pick DX. I think a lot of people enjoy that. Yeah. Okay. Let’s say Tetris DX then. I will say I love Tetris DX. I think it’s a fantastic game, but I don’t mind going down the purest route with this specific series. I think that’s fine. Okay. What’s next, Matthew? Getting some weird stuff. There’s already some things here, because I’ve written down PitCross DS and Puzzle League DS, but I’m also not particularly feeling them, like as this conversation has been going on. Right. Okay. Yeah. I just think they’re fine DS puzzle games, but just maybe not that top tier. I just don’t know if they’re very exciting in the top 50. Yeah. Likewise, I wrote down Coo-Coo-Coo-in, but… It’s a cool game, that. It is cool, but it’s a little bit of an oddity. It does hold up. Yeah. It’s a nice… We can put it on the long list and see where it sits once we start compiling the list. Yeah, that might make sense. It’s a really nicely made sharp thing. It’s good. It’s fucking hard. Yeah, I think a lot of people probably played on Switch, maybe rediscovered how nice it is. It’s a great handheld game. It’s a bit more… Maybe a bit renewed and relevant now because of the Switch version, the online version. I don’t think there’s much more to cover, though, is there? No, I mean… Chibi-Robo? A bit more of a quiet taste, that one? It’s just not top 50. I’m sorry, Ash. I’m sorry, Ash. It just isn’t. It’s great. Entering my DMs as we speak. It’s a real oddity. Like, I would say Chibi-Robo, like, that probably shouldn’t be on the long list, for the same reason, like, in my heart of hearts, we probably shouldn’t have a sin game on the long list. Uh, oh, no, I think it’s our list. You should put fucking Hotel Dusk or Last Window on there, my friend. Okay, but, yeah. Yeah, you absolutely should. Okay, I just, yeah, I mean… Don’t talk yourself out of that. Okay, well, definitely Last Window. Last Window is the one for me, rather than Hotel Dusk. Right, that makes sense. No another code, though? That’s kind of like… No. No. What about Sin and Punishment? Pretty cool game. Not really anything else like it. Did enjoy it when I discovered it on Wii. Would pick the first one over the second. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah, I had actually written that down. I don’t know why I’d removed that. Maybe that was to stay, I got deleted in a bit of Google Doc chaos. Yeah, and it’s on the Switch Virtual Console service, so you can play it now. Maybe a little bit fiddly. I think you have to maybe recalibrate some of the controls, or some of the controls are a little bit screwy. Maybe they’ve sorted that out. But yeah, as a very strange take on the shooter, almost a little bit space harrier-ish, but not with like a melee element to it as well. I thought it was cool. I like having a Treasure game in the mix as well. It’s just a cool… I imagine Treasure will also reappear in the third-party list when we do that, because they’ve got a bunch of cool stuff on GBA. But yeah, I think it’s just a cool… Because it’s on your original list, and when you see it there, you’re like, yeah, that’s nice variety amongst all the Mario and Zelda stuff that you expect to see in a list like this. So it really is nothing else like it out of the rest of what we picked. Closest is probably Kid Icarus, to be honest. Yeah. Okay, anything else you want to cover, Matthew? No, having looked into it and read around it, I think it’s hard to make the case of Professor Layton being a first party game considering Nintendo. I think they had a hand translating and distributing it, and it made the cut for the O&M list. But I just… Save Layton for third party then? Yeah, I would maybe slip that into third party now, personally. Yeah, okay, fair enough. The only other thing I had down was some slightly more obscure series like Endless Ocean, for example, but I think those are always considered a little bit middle of the road or like Nintendo Land. But that was in the Wii series category really. But again, not all of those mini games are good. I don’t think there’s anything else. I think we’ve done pretty much the sweep of it. At least what’s likely to be relevant to us. So yeah, I would read that out, but there’s fucking loads of it. I think that’s going to be a bit too much for me to just riff off here. So what I will say is that we will read out this long list at the start of next week’s episode. And I will put all of this, it’ll be free to view posts, patreon.com/backpagepod, the accompanying text for this. I will dump this entire long list into that. So you can just read that free of charge. Just go take a look at that. If you wanna pass everything we’ve just talked about over the last two hours. But because my voice is sort of like running low on capacity, I think it makes sense to just say that we’ll come back to it next week, Matthew, when we do the final top 50. Any regrets, Matthew, as we round up here? I don’t think so. No, I think we did some quite vicious pruning up front, which was important, which was the goal. As I said, if it didn’t make the list, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. These are 50 of the best Nintendo games, so they have just pretty much 50 of the best games full stop. Yeah, and no shade on older. We’re not dismissing older things. We laid out the criteria. This isn’t a list of important games. Yeah, exactly. I will also double check afterwards to make sure there are definitely 50 games that we’ve chosen here. We’ve picked more than 50 for sure. I would imagine we have, haven’t we, just from all of that. But yeah, I think this is fun though to go through. Hopefully, it illustrated the compromise element of how these lists are curated. Hopefully, that was fun. We had some good Nintendo chatter in the midst of that, Matthew. I’m reviewing the episode again after recording it. I think that was good though. What do you think? Yeah, I enjoyed going through it. I feel like you’ve heard most of my Nintendo takes over the 100 and whatever episodes of this podcast. So apologies if I sound like a broken record on any of it. And I’m really sorry if anyone from Rare listens to this podcast. They do. I think they do. Oh, God. I mean, Rare are a very different company now. And Sea of Thieves, excellent. If we do an Xbox list, Sea of Thieves will be top 20 for sure. Yeah, I mean, this is so, you know, it just, you know, we just move on. And I think GoldenEye still bangs. I’m one of the only people in the Discord who’s saying this. And I think it’s still really good. I played it last year, very much enjoyed it. And I think Perfect Dark is, I think that holds up pretty well, too. I think some of the first couple of missions I played, I thought were a bit sharper than the GoldenEye missions. They just don’t have James Bond shit in them. So maybe they’re slightly less exciting. That’s good. Cut to the rare listener, wiping the tears from their eyes, now that you’ve cheered them up with that. I do wonder if I should have fought a bit harder to have Banjo Kazooie in there. But then that gets into importance. If you outright don’t like it, it probably shouldn’t be an hour top 50. That’s just what it comes down to, isn’t it? So, yeah. Okay. Then we wrap up, Matthew. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll be back next week with the final part of this, compiling the final top 50, just placing all this stuff basically. It might not take that long. I guess we’ll find out when we record it. It seems how spicy we want to be. Yeah, exactly. Some of the unanswerable questions like Tears of the Kingdom versus Breath of the Wild and all that stuff. So, I look forward to litigating that, Matthew. But in the meantime, if you like to follow the podcast, we’re twitter.com/backpagepod, same on Blue Sky, and we’re patreon.com/backpagepod if you’d like to support us financially, and the work we do. We never put ads in our podcast. That’s part of the reason why, because we are supported so well by our lovely Patreon folks. So that’s good. backpagegames.gmail.com if you’d like to email us, including letters, games, core entries, et cetera. The Discord can be found on the Twitter page if you’d like a link to that. And I’m Samuel W. Roberts on all social media platforms. Matthew, what about you? I’m at MrBazzill underscore pesto on Twitter, and at MrBazzill pesto no underscore, and no content on Blue Sky, so don’t look me up there. Like I say, every game that we’ve long listed here, I will put that into the Patreon post that goes along with this episode. Thank you so much for listening. The podcast is over. Goodbye. Goodbye.