Hello, and welcome to The Back Page A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined, as ever, by Matthew Castle. Hello. Hello, Matthew. welcome to the Nintendo Top 50 Part 3, Beyond Thunderdome. So that’s something for people to look forward to this week. And a couple of things to talk about right off the bat. First up, I wanted to ask anyone who’s on Spotify, which is our main, where the main free feed listeners come from, if you haven’t reviewed the podcast before, can I politely ask you to drop us a review, if you like the podcast, of course. Just go in there, give us a star rating, see what you think. That’s just a little experiment to see if we can find more people by giving that a little spike. So, crave and attempt to grow the audience, I guess. Yes, thank you so much if you have already. And if you do drop us a review, obviously, I’ll be very grateful. So, thank you for that. The thing I want to discuss, Matthew, because it felt relevant to us before jumping into the subject of this week’s frivolous nonsense episode, was the fact that Game Informer has closed down. Even though it’s a US mag and we cover the UK mags primarily on here, feels like a pretty, like a grim milestone for where print media is at. And it seemed like a very unceremonious way that they closed it down. It seemed to be out of nowhere, a surprise to the staff. They’re apparently 70 percent of the way through an issue. They changed the site, so it’s just one page saying goodbye, and so no one can access their work, which is really bad. So, I was curious what you made of this news. I think we’re both in the same headspace, but I thought it was worth discussing, given what we talk about in this podcast more generally. You know, I was definitely surprised that the whole thing went down all at once, magazine, website, the works. The thing that always struck me about Game Informers is that they just had that unparalleled access. And certainly, you know, to the people they were working with, they were still getting that access, and people were still rolling out the red carpet for them. So, you know, they clearly seemed relevant in the eyes of partners who were working with them on covers and whatnot. If that stuff had dried up, then maybe you’d be like, oh, okay, maybe this magazine isn’t long for the world. So I think that’s why I was surprised, because it seemed in pretty good health to me. More generally, it’s just a shocker, because I mentioned this on Twitter, but when you worked on games magazines in the mid-naughties, it was to work in the shadow of Game Informer, even though it wasn’t sold in the UK, and it was a US magazine, its influence was so massive that it could send out shockwaves that did impact you very heavily in the UK. They could have a global exclusive on something which would prevent UK magazines from being able to look at stuff. So, you know, often it was a relationship with a lot of annoyance in it. You’d be from afar going, why is this magazine that isn’t even sold here impacting what we can do in the UK? Ah, fuck this, fuck this thing. But it was probably more like jealousy than any kind of sort of hatred or malice. So, you know, it’s kind of, yeah, I don’t know, it just feels like a real big beast, the biggest of the beasts, really, which is, which is, which is sad. And, you know, just as a service, you know, as jealous as I was of all that amazing access they got, I did think they made good use of it. And they’ve blown open some studios and some developers in ways that probably wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t have had that access and been able to talk to those people. And whether it’s in print, online or video, I thought they revealed, you know, not just a lot of information about games, but a lot of information about the game makers themselves. So that’s kind of sad. I don’t really know what takes its place. Yeah, I think the thing about Game Informer is it’s owned by GameStop, right? So you’ve got to think about it as a magazine owned by a retailer. That is the best case scenario for what that magazine could possibly look like, in my opinion. Like it’s getting amazing access. It’s not wasting it. It doesn’t feel like you’re reading a leaflet. It’s actual editorial. It’s like good writing and has many great writers and editors have gone through their doors over the years. It’s worth bearing in mind that is kind of miraculous. There’s no reason for it to have been as good as it was, other than the teams have worked on it, have made it as good as it has been. I do agree that my memory of working in print was very much, like you say, being the shadow of Game Informer. When it comes to GTA covers or the amazing Bioshock Infinite Access, or just basically every single major game throughout the late noughties into the early to mid 2010s, even right up to, I remember reading their Spider-Man 2018 coverage, because it had the most information on how web swinging worked and that sort of thing. It was always amazingly put together. Very, very hard for a magazine to be run really well alongside a site and for the content to not be completely identical. It’s really hard to do that. Even on PC Gamer, I struggled to do that myself when I worked in the magazine. I think it’s really sad it’s closing. I think it’s really sad the staff couldn’t archive their writing. Usually you get a bit of notice, it doesn’t just disappear. That’s key. You had a couple of months to wrap up O&M and do your big list, which makes it odd that this happens in the middle of us doing this process which is inspired by that last issue that you did. The key thing I would say is that I have a lot of sympathy for the staff, first of all, that’s really important to say. But also, we said it before, but if you like a print product, don’t wait until it’s gone to support it because it will just disappear. That you won’t be told, oh, you need to subscribe now or vanish, it will just vanish. That’s how these things work. So if you like Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, any of the indie hobbyist games mags that are out there, just support them if you can. I’m not forcing you to, but it’s more like if you think those things have value, if you think they bring something good to the world, then definitely support them because that is how you move the needle and stop that from happening again basically. I don’t think there’s anything Game Informer could have done because the US print market is really weird. It’s built on subscriptions first of all and like advertising based, and the subscriptions are normally really cheap, much cheaper than they are in the UK because the understanding is that the advertising balances it out basically or that the copies they can sell on shelves, they sell at a premium and therefore the economics of it will balance out. It’s completely bizarre compared to the UK where it’s much more straightforward. Are we making money on every issue we sell? Yes or no, basically. In the US, it was way more fraught and weird. I never quite understood it when I was editing the US PC Gamer version, how it worked. It was like $20 to subscribe to the magazine for a year. I was just like, that seems ridiculously cheap for how good it is, but what do I know? I don’t think there’s anything they could have done, but yes, I feel for the staff, Matthew. I thought it was worth discussing. That’s good. From that somber note into the third part of our Nintendo Top 50 Project, I just woke up this morning to a comment saying, really nice to hear about the inside baseball of how these lists get made. However, I am not interested in the list because we didn’t pick one criteria of most impactful or games that are worth playing now. I thought, first of all, I shouldn’t dwell on one negative comment. That’s the wrong thing to do. We’ve had lots of good feedback to these episodes, but I was a bit like, we did say, brother, good to play now with one eye on the past. So we were pretty clear about that in the second part. But anyway, Matthew, how have you found the response to this project overall so far? Yeah, good. I thought there’d be a lot more moaning about a few of the sacred cows. Weirdly, what notes I have seen are for things which I am so comfortable not being in the top 50 that I just don’t really care. No offence to them, but if someone thinks what’s wrong with this list is it doesn’t have Super Mario Brothers 2, it’s like, that’s absolutely fine by me. I mean, that take is very outside of the norm, so that’s okay. I thought more people would be like, where’s Mario 64 or whatever, but people seem generally fine with it. The criteria was there. I think we justified everything. I think it was pretty solid. I think it’s a pretty solid long list. Yeah, I think that’s the thing about these episodes. I think in some ways the final top 50 is, seems like it’s the point, but it’s not really. The point of the episodes is the exercise and to hear it happening live, because the thing that comment did tap into, which I agreed with and thought was interesting, was you never really understand why people come to the conclusions they do in top 100 or top 50 of all time lists. I think that is true, even though there’s always three to four paragraphs at the start that explain how they came up with it and stuff like that. You don’t actually understand the thought behind every individual pick. So when something weird and wild steps out of nowhere, it makes no sense to you. It does seem oddly offensive because you don’t understand the conversations that led to it. This is literally you hearing the conversations as they happen. So it’s harder to object because you’re listening to the logic in real time in a way you just wouldn’t get with a normal list. Yeah. In the list, you get the individual entry, which by the time you come to write the entry, you just focus on what the game is itself and celebrating it. The entry isn’t talking about why it’s where it is in the list. It’s not like, what makes this game 56 compared to the game that was 57? Because that list would be absolutely baffling to read, I think. Yeah. If every entry had to individually justify its place in a top 50 or top 100 or whatever, you wouldn’t enjoy it. But hopefully this list gives, this process hopefully gives a bit of context. Surprise I didn’t get any more hate from the rare heads. Maybe we’ve just driven them away. Maybe I’ve just driven them away over 100 or whatever episodes of this podcast. Well, again, I think we were just very strict about the criteria for the most part. I think we just found it hard to get buzzed about any one particular rare game in the modern age that isn’t Sea of Thieves. It’s not to say they don’t have archival value, because I think with rare, so the Rare Replay Collection is really nice to just dip into and poke around the little bits and pieces and just trigger those memories. But it is very hard for games from that era we’re talking about. I mean, that’s an era that ends in the early GameCube times basically. So it’s not like there are modern rare games to even really challenge the list, and there aren’t loads and loads of old games in our list, really. It’s a lot of mid noughties onwards, a lot of DS, Wii era onwards stuff. So I think that’s the thing. It kind of makes sense that Rare would lose on that criteria anyway. There’s not like tons of N64 games in our list, and that’s where most of the great Rare stuff comes from. So it’s nothing personal basically, and we wish you well obviously, Rare fans. So to put it in terms you’d understand. I heard those TCGS boys taking a pop, Matthew. I don’t know if you heard that. I think I was overly familiar about it. I don’t think they took a pop, and I don’t think we took a pop at them. No, that’s true. That’s true. I think it was kind of like a gentle- There was no pop, so let’s not escalate. Gentle ribbing, is that okay to say? I think, I don’t even dare off of what I think, because I know it will be taken in bad faith. Big Dave Turner will come after you. I feel like people would love the drama of Beef. Yeah. And I don’t think it exists, sadly. No. I think it’s sort of like, yeah, we’re just too polite basically and deferential. I think it was probably fair to say, I was slightly over-familiar towards Sean Bellamann I’ve not met in how I described them. I think you can have an idea of someone, if you don’t know them well, I don’t know Sean that well. Yeah. But you can definitely have an idea of someone’s taste from having followed their work over the years. I’d say that’s a compliment that you could think that something was a Sean Bell ass game. Yeah. I wondered if using ass was maybe making it sound spicy, and it was supposed to be as well. Everyone knows the parlance of the Internet. Well, there you go. So basically, we got all of our notes from the previous episodes out of the way now. It’s like bits and pieces of ephemera that have been going on around the top 50 process. It’s nice to get to the third and final part of this though. It’s been very enjoyable. I’ve definitely got the appetite to do it again. I think people were maybe skeptical about why we were doing it in three parts including you Matthew until we actually did it. I always had a vision for it. I always say, trust me Matthew, I know what I’m doing with the pod planning, and here we are. But it could all go wrong in the final stretch here, so let’s find out. Shall we recap the long list Matthew, and is it worth putting on the old Wii Shop music behind as we recap it? Can do. Let’s do that then. Okay, so I’ll start then. So these are all the games that we came up with in the long list episode 62 games in total. We will whittle that down to 50 games. Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. Super Mario Odyssey. Am I meant to be saying the flat form? No, that’s fine, that’s just too annoying, isn’t it? Super Mario Bros. 3. Super Mario, brother. Oh, fucking hell. I know, it’s too early, right. Super Mario World. Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser’s Fury. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D. The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask 3D. The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker HD. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening DX. The Legend of Zelda Minish Cap. Metroid Prime Remastered. Super Metroid. Metroid Dread. Metroid Fusion. Kirby Return to Dreamland Deluxe. Kirby Planet Robobot. Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Kirby Super Star Ultra. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, the game that got Matthew fired. Almost got Matthew fired, sorry. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. Donkey Kong 94. Super Mario Land 2 Yoshi’s Island. Pokemon Heart Gold slash Soul Silver. Star Fox 64 3D. Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door. Mario and Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Luigi’s Mansion 3. Super Mario Maker 2. Mario Tennis. Mario Golf. Mario Golf Toadstool Tour. The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures. Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity. WarioWare Mega Microgames. Wario Land 4. Pikmin 3. Bayonetta 2. The Wonderful 101. Perfect Dark. Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem Awakening. And Advance Wars, brackets not sure which one yet. Animal Crossing New Horizons. Platoon 3. Wii Sports Resort. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. Xenoblade Chronicles 2. A Boxboy Game. Ball Blox. F-Zero X. Kid Icarus Uprising. Wave Race 64. Earthbound. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Awendon. Yes, I’m so glad you had to read this one out. Osu! Tatekei Awendon. Is that how you fucking say it? I don’t know. Written by Kaku. Tetris DX. Kuru, Kuru, Kuruin. Last Window, The Secret of Cape West. Sin and Punishment. I should have said AKA Hotel of Bad Hags. That’s what I should have said. Yeah, okay, so that’s the long list. That’s gonna be whittled down to 50, as explained. Couple of updates then. So I did go away and play a few different games, as I promised in the last episode. Played Wave Race 64, Donkey Kong 94. I played Mario Golf on N64, Mario Tennis on N64. I didn’t get around to the Toadstool Tour one. I didn’t play that. Did play Rhythm Tengoku, though. And we did decide that the Boxboy game was going to be Bye Bye Boxboy. Actually, no, I think, actually, I think Catherine said we should do Boxboy and Boxgirl as the most recent one, because it will have the most contemporary, it will just advance the mechanics a little bit. Oh, no, wait, then she changed her mind and said, because you manage lots of little dudes in Bye Bye Boxboy. So I think that’s the one we go with. Bye Bye Boxboy. I mean, there’s a big case to be made for this not being one of the 50. In that we don’t even know which one it is. Well, I personally, maybe we should just pick the one that I’ve actually played then rather than like a hypothetical. So Boxboy and Boxgirl, I’ll pick them. So it’s a really good game. Yeah, that’s the current one, right? Yeah. It’s on Switch. So even more of a reason to play it because you literally can’t purchase the ones on 3DS anymore. That’s just gone as a feature. So that’s tough. Okay. So we are going to map this onto the top 50. We will try and make this as legible, I guess, to listen to. Is that a thing? Legibility in terms of listening? I don’t know. But we’ll try and make it as clear as possible as you’re listening. Where things are going, make sure to say game names so we don’t get too caught up in the process as we do it. Got a few things to figure out first of all. So we’re not necessarily going to do this from 50 down to one, because we don’t think that’s conducive to good list making. I think that will upend it a little bit and make it a bit scattershot. So I think we should do this a little bit more, jumping back and forth until we get the right result, Matthew. So here’s a really key thing. What should our 50th place game be? We talked about this in the previous episodes, but the first entry in the inner list often means as much as the top five entries, because you’re setting your stall out, you’re saying this is the type of list we’re making. Have you got a take on what this should be? So I’m torn between putting one of the more esoteric or unknown things there to say, this is a list that’s also going to contain some of the stranger cuts or lesser known things, and maybe announce that there might be some heart picks in the list. Or there’s the… Put a relative biggie there to show that there are no sacred cows in this list. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I sort of agree. Those are the two approaches. Those are the two approaches. So in terms of the kind of esoteric oddball ones, obviously bearing in mind that 12 of these have kind of got to go as well. So this is the 50th game, but it’s also better than the 12 that don’t make the cut or the 11 that don’t make the cut. Yeah. This feels like maybe a good place for something like Last Window. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I think it. Not to sing entire kind of output for Nintendo, but without putting it too high because it is an acquired taste. But it’s kind of an interesting part of the Nintendo story. I was noodling that or potentially Earthbound or… You see, I was also thinking Earthbound as a potential. Yeah, because I think it also says that we’re, let’s say the No Sacred Cows thing. Wait, is that the right term? Again, very funny. We’re not sacrificing it by putting it 50, but we’re saying that this isn’t the most important thing anymore in Nintendo, but it does still matter. And I think that’s, I think, yeah, in some ways, I think that and Last Window occupy a similar sort of head space for me. So that makes sense. Someone did say, I wish I had a penny for every time Samuel said that makes sense in that last episode. And I’m going to end up saying it loads more in this one. The only other one I did think about was Luigi’s Mansion 3. Yeah, yeah. As a very well made, but definitely lesser. I mean, there is, you know, it does Luigi’s Mansion 3 make the top 50 at all? Well, I think it should because, well, I’ve got some takes I’ll say for some of the other games. But why don’t we say that either Last Window or Earthbound at 50, then Luigi’s Mansion at 49. And then I think that’s good because Luigi’s Mansion, like you say, is a modern game that’s made very well. It’s not necessarily the top, top tier Nintendo, but it does still matter. Then you’ve got that combination of something quite old and esoteric into something pretty new that someone’s likely already played and knows is good. I think it recognizes the general limitations of the Luigi’s Mansion idea, but without disrespecting it so totally that it’s not acknowledged. Okay, shall we say last window at 50 then? And then we’ll put Luigi’s Mansion at 49. Like, I think that’s fine. I mean, Earthbound can… Maybe Earthbound could go just after that, then, at 48? Yeah, I still think Earthbound should be bottom 10, for sure. Okay, in which case then we have 50, last window, 49, Luigi’s Mansion 3, 48, Earthbound. I think that makes sense. Okay, so what should our number one game be? I think there’s only two games that make sense for this. Based on what our established criteria is, which just to reiterate, is games that are great to play now with one eye on the past, that’s like the key thing. So if it’s old, it still has to be good now. That’s the key thing. I’m curious to know if you landed on the same two that I have, Matthew, what do you think? You tell me your two first. Okay, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Interesting. And I think it’s probably Breath of the Wild because it arguably pushes forward that series in such a monumental way. It was so kind of like game changing in terms of the number of people playing Zelda games suddenly spiked massively because Zelda was at the forefront of game design again. And I’m not saying Mario Odyssey doesn’t do that, but I think it’s like, it’s just a really good example of the form of 3D Mario, which is also really important and really good, but there’s just something, there’s a rarefied air about Breath of the World. It’s just, it’s a real one-off turning point in like the history of, modern history of game design, you know? I agree with all that on Breath of the World. I think just as well as being incredibly playable and just, you know, an incredibly special experience, I think there is also an importance to it. It feels like as big a leap in that genre of games, as we celebrated in Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time back in the day, you know? And we maybe haven’t had that, you know, you could argue that what Nintendo did in terms of opening up audiences with Wii and DS, you know, it was groundbreaking, but it’s harder to say like this one game that is really fun and we all love is the thing which encapsulates that. That’s more of a general change of attitude, where I think Breath of the Wild is arguably the most sort of exciting development in open world gaming, which is a huge and very popular genre. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Here’s the thing, I was going to make the case. So my top two that I was wrestling between was Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Galaxy. Okay, because you revisited Odyssey this week, right? Yeah. So I spent all day yesterday playing it, because I thought, in my hair, I thought, you know what, Odyssey is probably going to be number one. Odyssey surely has supplanted Galaxy. And I played it all day yesterday, and it is absolutely outstanding and top five. But I still think Galaxy clinches it for me on the grounds of, I think it’s super focused and there’s stuff in Odyssey, there’s a bagginess that comes with Odyssey’s exploration focus. You know, if we’ve got, like, linear platforming gauntlet Mario and sort of exploration 3D world Mario, you know, Galaxy and Odyssey are the respective peaks of each. So this is just down to a, you know, which do you fundamentally prefer? I still think Galaxy is just only fun, all the fun, all the time. And I think Odyssey has, like, 2% fat, which are not, you know, when I encounter just the tiniest wobble in terms of confidence in it. You know, like, when you get a power moon, that’s just on a rock, and you grab it, and then it says the power moon that was on a rock. That was the name of it. And you’re like, oh, yeah, I guess that’s fine that you can put one of those there. And that’s how a 100% game drops down to a 98% game. Is that one message? There’s something about it. There’s just something. I’d forgotten that stuff. I’d forgotten that some of it is just, well, you walk over to this side of the map and it just gives you a prize for walking over there. And you’re like, oh, yeah, that seems a bit flat. I mean, that may sound like the most nitpicky of things, but that’s only talking down, like, you know, the thinnest fraction of a difference between these games. Fundamentally, the Galaxy Odyssey of it all, there’s not really much in it, and I don’t really mind. But what I think that there is that difference between us on Galaxy and Odyssey, but there is the agreement on Breath of the World, suggests Breath of the World is the number one. Yeah, I think it is. So the other thing I wanted to just make clear about our criteria, because I think it’s important to say this, is that when we say great to play now, we are assuming that we’re speaking to an engaged player, as in someone who is willing to go and play these in the best form, to properly engage with this, not just like your dad who is looking on TechRadar’s list of the best Switch games, and goes, oh, I’ve never heard of Mario Strikers or whatever, and then goes and buys it. I’m not talking about people who have a very elementary understanding, have just seen a Switch and an Argos catalog and are curious about it. It’s like, this is why we need to… The reason I say this is I think that Galaxy is a weird one, because on Switch, it’s almost not completely at home, and almost kind of needs you to play it on a Wii U with a HDMI cable and a Wii Remote. I mean, is that fair? Do you think? Like, is that how you… For most people, I think the All-Stars version will do, but also, like, the Wii controls were still a fundamental part of it, right? That’s why we put it as the Wii version rather than the Switch version. Yeah, I think as long as we agree that somehow when you play this Wii version, you know, that’s fine. I mean, later in this list, we’re going to be demanding that people have access to the donkey bongo drums. So, yeah, that’s that’s true. OK, in which case, then the other thing to just litigate before we settle on Breath of the World being the number one is like, are you sure it’s not Tears of the Kingdom? I mean, yeah, if this was my own personal list, it probably would be Tears of the Kingdom. Right. But as I was trying to articulate this last week and I’m going to struggle again, I think it’s only just Tears of the Kingdom for me, whereas it’s much more Breath of the World for you. Yeah. So that’s why I think it’s okay for it to be Breath of the World. I think fundamentally, the core magic, the best thing about both these games is in Breath of the World. The open world, the smashing of Zelda conventions, the really just coming at it completely fresh. That’s what’s exciting about it. And that is entirely Breath of the World. It does make Tears of the Kingdom like this quite awkward thing. Because given that I am an av- Like, this is what happened with Married Galaxy 2 in the O&M Top 100, which as everyone will remember, Married Galaxy was number one, and then Married Galaxy, which I said was basically the same game, was number nine. And you’re like, well, what happened there? These two things which are the same, but there’s eight difference between them. Because it feels dumb to go like Breath of the Wild 1, Tears of the Kingdom 2, you know? That would be unsatisfying. But then if you drop it down, if you try and sort of negate that dissatisfaction by dropping it further down, then it no longer represents what Tears of the Kingdom is. Okay. I mean, what you would probably do, and what we should have done in O&M, was we put Married Galaxy in at one, but just said in the write up, listen, there is also Married Galaxy 2, which is basically the same thing. This honors both of them, which is a cop-out in itself, but that feels like a neater cop-out than having Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the World take up two top 10 spaces. Yeah. But isn’t it more fun to try and figure out where it goes? Is that not a more interesting exercise than taking the cop-out route? Yes. But then it probably goes for me, Breath of the World 1, a Mario game at 2, and then Tears of the Kingdom at 3. Then let’s do that. It’s our list. We can do that. It’s only your brain telling you you can’t do that. Editorially, you’d look at a list running a magazine and be like, you can’t do that. Although I feel like I have read lists that have had Ocarina of Time member Jura’s Mask next to each other or very close to each other. I feel like I have read lists like that. It’s never bothered me because I understand that they’re a gestalt. Is that the right word? They’re just sort of like, you know, they’re a pair. They are sort of like, they come as a pair. It makes sense. Okay, then here’s what I suggest then. So Breath of the World at number one, Mario Galaxy at number two, because you’ve decided that gets to place over Odyssey, which is absolutely fine with me. That’s only my thing. Of course. Well, I still think that the wandering around the little garden bit in Mario Galaxy is not very interesting. And that’s like where that’s got a bit of like fat that could be trimmed. Like I’d be happy with just a… Help me to the next level rather than making me wander around this little area. But you probably find that quite delightful. And I know you like the music in that area. Not particularly. That is also fat. But that’s the… That’s what it… Everything outside of that is like, you are in a level doing that level. I think in Odyssey, there’s a little… There’s just a little bit of… You have to climb up this thing to reach the new challenge that you’re actually trying to do. I’m not knocking Odyssey. I’d like to say, I think it is a top five all-time Nintendo game. Just playing it yesterday, I was a little bit like, oh yeah, I remember this, buying the moons from the guy. That’s a bit tough. It just gives away too many meaningless moons. There’s a serious risk I’m going to get my Wii U out after this episode. Fuck’s sake. The one thing I said I wouldn’t do this year and like… Don’t do it. You haven’t got the plugs. No one’s got the plugs. I have got the plugs though, because I’ve got like… Yeah, I’ve got two multi-plug things. Next time I tell you this, I can hoard all kinds of bullshit. Don’t enable the Wii U like that. It should know its place and its place is in a box in the attic forever more. Right. Okay. Or at that guy’s house who has all of them. Wait. I’m not allowed to say his name. Bleep that out because his wife might be listening in the car. So bleep that out, Matthew, and he’ll have a chocolate at that, I’m sure. Okay. So we’re saying one, Breath of the World, two, Super Mario Galaxy, three, Tears of the Kingdom. I think it goes there. Four, Mario Odyssey. It seems like they’re all just collapsing on top of each other, but they’re not all the same thing exactly, and there is a logic to them being there. It makes sense to gum them up that way, then try and split them apart arbitrarily and drop in things that don’t necessarily have as much value to us. I mean, that’s the thing, because the idea that there would be a top 50… Because I was looking at it again, do you just be brutal and go, no Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the World is what represents this new era of Zelda? Like, that’s the bold thing. But hopefully you can see what happened with Mario Galaxy 2 in that O&M list. You get yourself in a pickle because they’re too similar, but you can’t just make them one and two. Yeah. Like that’s very unsatisfying. Is it making them one and three more satisfying? How about we say that’s where it lands for now? Then we populate the rest of the top 10 and then argue afterwards whether we should reshuffle the top 10 based on that. So we’re tentatively saying, I think Breath of the World is sealed at number one. I think that’s fine. I think Mario Galaxy is sealed at number two as well. I think what happens to Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Odyssey is the bigger question here. So, what else do you think is a bolted on top 10 for our top 50 list, Matthew? Can I suggest one? Yeah. I think Metroid Dread is one of them. Interesting. Do you think that’s the highest Metroid in the list? It’s obviously between… I think it’s going to be between this and Prime Remastered because they, again, both represent… And I’m not saying that Metroid Dread is the peak of 2D Metroid. I just think there’s something very contemporary feeling about it that would give it the edge over Fusion or Super Metroid to me. But I still think that those 2 other games deserve to be in the top 50. I don’t think any of these Metroids should be trimmed. I think they should all make the top 50 somewhere. But I think in terms of the order in which I would play them, Dread is the one game that when people have asked me, what should I get for my Nintendo Switch? I bought Animal Crossing and Zelda. I’m like, buy Metroid Dread, it’s awesome. Am I out of whack there, Matthew? Do I just not understand this series enough? Or is Prime, do we need to just celebrate Prime a little bit more here because it is an evergreen masterpiece? They have updated the graphics, so it looks like a modern game. What do you think? I think traditionally Prime tends to sit a bit higher. I actually thought playing Remastered, I was like, this is excellent. I still remember why I really like this, but I am maybe on board with Metroid’s main strength lies in the 2D games, and Prime is a really exceptional translation of that into a 3D. But what has been fun post Prime, and maybe why Dread was such a pleasant surprise, was to think, oh, wow, often it’s hard to come back from those 3D transformations. They feel a bit more ambitious or grander in their design or more immersive. Actually, I had as much fun playing Dread as I did Prime. If anything, Dread kind of reawoken a bit of a general 2D Metroid loving me, which is why I sort of advocated for Super Metroid being in the top 50 and Fusion in there. It made me go back and go, oh, actually, these are all still really shit hot. Prime had somehow kind of rewired my brain a bit or just sort of stamped over it. Maybe unfairly so, which would maybe suggest Prime should be lower. And I’m happy having a 2D Metroid higher to just represent it as, I think this is it in its purest form and at the end of the day, what it’s really about. They both go top 20 for sure. Yeah. I think Dread could be like potentially bottom half of the top 10. Yeah. I think it could be like 6, 7, 8, 9, you know. Maybe I’ll just like pop it in 8 for now and see where we stand. I think that makes sense though because again, it’s just a real, there are so many fucking games on Nintendo Switch that Nintendo has made. There are so many really good ones, but the truly exceptional ones, I think is actually a much smaller, more elite list. I do think that Dread gets onto that list. You know what I mean? It’s like, yeah. There’s like a top 30 Switch games, and then there’s like the S tier, and I think that Dread is in there. This will annoy the one guy in our Discord who whinge about not liking Dread, but oh well, never mind. They did the same thing for me. I went back and played Zero Mission and Fusion after playing Dread. It really did the same thing for me, and I think it did for a lot of people as well. It just made Metroid relevant to quite a large number of people again. So yeah, go on Matthew. What were you going to say? I was just going to suggest another top 10 entry. Go for it. I think for encapsulating traditional 3D Zelda, I think Ocarina of Time should still be in the top 10. Okay. I would say definitely bottom half. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, okay, cool. Where do you think that should go then? 10? I think that makes sense. I sort of like, part of me was also a bit like, does it end up being awkward if you’re sticking like Ocarina of Time in like number 40 or something? Like is that being a bit too smart? But yeah, so I think this kind of ticks the one eye on the past thing. And because it’s the 3DS version, it is a more contemporary edition of the game to enjoy. Okay, that’s good. I have another suggestion. I think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe definitely has to go in this top 10. I agree. I think there should be some Nintendo multiplayer in the top 10. Yeah. I would say that could even be number five. It’s just that essential, you know? It is the only representation of Mario Kart in this list. Yeah. Which I know some people were a little snooty about. I’m not saying that they instantly replace what came before. Yeah, I had to weigh up as well. I really did think about 64. Yeah, they all have different handling and rhythms and vibes. I think in terms of a broader celebration of what Mario Kart 8 is about, four people dicking each other over with that very particular combination of weapons. It ticks that box for sure, but also just the production values and the way it does pull from the heritage of the games as the newer Mario Karts do by having the retro tracks but turning them into these spectacular things that make sense alongside the brand new tracks. I think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is really special. It feels comfortable at five to me. It’s just such a major strand of Nintendo and it’s worth celebrating the highest level, I think. And I think it jumps out to me as it should be as high as that. What else do you think goes in the top ten, Matthew? You’ve got three places left to fill. Six, seven and nine at present. It’s really hard. Wonderful 101 at number six. What about, maybe this is controversial, but Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. That feels like potentially bottom five of the top ten, like top fifteen territory. You know, it’s a great one. It is high. Yeah. I don’t know. I just think put Donkey Kong Country next to like the very best of Mario and Zelda. But then what I’m currently struggling to do, looking at this is like you’ve got Mario and Zelda represented quite comfortably. Got a bit of Metroid in there. That makes sense. Mario Kart, yes, it’s more Mario, but there’s a bit of multiplayer. You know, like if Mario and Zelda are like the absolute kind of triple A tier of what Nintendo is about. You know, what else is in the regular A tier? You know, it’s Metroid. It’s probably not Kirby. Probably not Kirby because none of this, there’s no one game that’s like the Mario Galaxy of Kirby games. It’s a bit more evenly split. And what are your preferences in terms of type of experience going on there? Is it Animal Crossing? I was thinking this. Like, that’s, it’s just so big. Well, it’s so big, but it’s also, it gets better every single time. The core gameplay loop is perfectly done. It’s like a lot of what I think people get from, or used to get from playing Facebook or phone games, but it’s all on the cart, and it’s so rewarding over a long period of time. And it’s like, it’s Nintendo perfecting something that was always great. And it’s, you know, I think it could definitely go in at nine, or maybe switch with Ocarina of Time at ten. But I don’t think it should be higher than that. I think that bottom five of the top ten makes sense. Let’s say nine for now, shall we? Yeah. Animal Crossing, New Horizons. Okay. But then, I guess the other question, even though this is already fat with Mario and Zelda, is where do we feel 2D Mario and Zelda live in this? So, like, I feel they’re definitely less important to you and I. You say that. I think Link’s Awakening is one of my favorite games of all time. I love that game. So, but I don’t think it needs to be in the top ten because the ten is already… I think the shape of the ten has sort of, like, formed around mostly, like, best of the best modern games. Yeah. So, it feels a bit… I almost think it’s okay to just put it in the top 20, but not the top ten for something like Link’s Awakening, for example. Yeah. But yes. Okay. So, does anything else obviously stand out to you, Matthew, as top ten fodder? We have basically two spots left to fill, six and seven. Should we just move the entire thing up? So, Dread is at six, Animal Crossing New Horizons is at seven, and then Zelda is at… I mean, that is that… Rather than go, if we can’t find anything which in our heart says better than this, then yes, those things are… Then you crush them up. Okay. So, that’s what I’m going to do then. So, all right. So, now we have like nine and ten to fill, basically, which I think eases the pressure a little bit. Now that’s pushed things up a little bit. So, we have like, yeah, we have our top eight, at least the first draft of it, in progress. We can sort of plug in some other bits and pieces. This is where I was going to ask you if, do you think like Xenoblade counts as really top tier Nintendo, and therefore should one of those poke into the top 10 here? Would that not be a perfect number 10 for a Xenoblade game? Xenoblade at its best is something I put in, maybe alongside Fire Emblem, and it’s like a slightly oddity. I wouldn’t say it’s quite top 10 material. Right. It might be high in the 20 to 10 bracket. Right, okay. Then let me ask you this. Should we plug Majora’s Mask in right next to Ocarina of Time? Is that neat to have those alongside each other? Yes, you have a lot of Zelda in the top 10, but guess what? Zelda is really fucking good. So should that go in there? Yeah. You’re kind of like one or the other, right? With Ocarina of Majora’s. You either like the trad, oh, I love riding across this beautiful field, or you like walking around the town, eating all the freaks, you know? Yeah. Like those two things, I’d say those games mean as much to their respective fans. Also, there’s not much in it on a technical level because they’ve both been polished up beautifully for 3DS. Okay. Well, I’m just going to say it then. So we’ve got number 10 left to fill basically. So we’ve got, just as a little recap so far, Breath of the Wild at one, Mario Galaxy 2, Tears of Kingdom 3, Mario Odyssey 4, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 5, Metroid Dread 6, Animal Crossing New Horizons 7, 8 is Ocarina 9, Majora’s Mask. So I think 10 could be something like Pikmin 3 or Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. I think that’s really good modern versions of great Nintendo series or this is where you could put your first Xenoblade game, I think at number 10. So I was trying to think of like other, basically like one game from each of these different series we haven’t represented yet that represent the peak of their form, if that makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? I would obviously much rather it was Xenoblade than Donkey Kong Country. And not just because it nearly got you fired? No, no, I’m putting that aside. I just think it is a very different kind of platform. It’s much more like limited, old-fashioned, almost like a scripted platformer. But obviously that works really well with the kind of set piece stuff and Wii U could do so much more with it. And it is truly spectacular. They’re both 20 to 10s. Xenoblade, let’s put Xenoblade. Okay, so definitive edition. I think so, yeah. Okay, good stuff. So we have a first draft of our top 10 then. So that’s good. Yeah. So the next thing I was going to ask you actually, was having thought on it for a week, is there anything that you would chuck out of the list, just giving it a bit of time to settle in your head? So I have a couple of suggestions. So yeah. I just noticed the list doesn’t have a Smash Brothers on it. Then I must have just omitted that by accident. It’s meant to be Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, right? No, that’s fine. That wouldn’t have been in the top 10 for me. No, it wouldn’t have been. I was just like, wait a second. No, that’s fine. But that’s fine. I’ve typed that back into it, so it’s all good. Hopefully nothing else has been left off in that fashion. Okay. So with a bit of time to think about it, I thought Kirby, Return to Dreamland Deluxe, and Planet Robobot are both from the same era and the same kind of Kirby, like the modern 3D Kirby era. I think Planet Robobot is a bit more fun, so I think Return to Dreamland Deluxe doesn’t need to be on here. Okay. So that dies. Interesting. Anything else that you have turned on? I think we should just make the call on one Mario Golf. So we put down Mario Golf, Mario Golf Totostle Tour. Looking into this, Totostle Tour is actually the GameCube one, sorry, not the Game Boy Color one. Yeah, sorry, I got that wrong. No, that’s fine. As an advocate for the N64 one, I went searching for this for scientific proof that it was better in terms of what the people on Reddit say. People are very torn between the two, and it’s a little bit like the one you played is the one you think is the best. We’ve been trying not to let that kind of thinking blind us too much in terms of it. The truth is, it’s not a top tier Nintendo series for me that I particularly care about either way. I think it’s cool to represent it on here because it is a long running thing and it has been solid at several times, but you know, it’s not like Mario Golf means a lot to me so that it couldn’t be Toadstool Tour, which may be edges it on the internet. Okay, so Mario Golf, which I did play Mario Golf N64, it’s a very pleasant game. The same is true for Mario Tennis, I actually couldn’t really decide between them. They both seem pretty good, fun representations of the sports. But I thought that would help cut down one, so maybe we could just get rid of Tread Mario Golf. That makes sense. I think we only need one Xenoblade on here. Yeah, I think that’s probably true. And I’m alright with it being Definitive Edition. The place I would tell people to start is that one, and then you play it, and then you play two and three. The idea of just playing like two would be mad to me. Like the overworld in the end didn’t quite do it as much for me in three as it did in one and two. I think one has got everything you want in Xenoblade. Two may build on it if you’re really into it, but for the sake of this list, I think one is it. That makes sense. I guess it is fulfilling the same function as Mario Galaxy’s a pic there where it’s like, you can go and play the other ones if you like this one. It’s representing the series in general, which I think makes even more sense to have in the top ten in that ten position. Yeah, because it carries the weight of the trilogy, I think. Even though we say it’s one. Yeah, yeah. I did wonder, while it’s important to tell the story of Nintendo’s limited dabbling with downloadable games, or smaller, quirkier puzzle games, whether we need all of Box Boy, Pool Blocks and Kuru Kuru Kururin. Of those three, I think I’d keep Kuru Kuru Kururin. Yeah. It’s just sort of simple and spectacular. It’s like available, easy to access now. There’s no ambiguity about which one you pick, like there is with Box Boy. Yeah. I mean, I know Kuru Kuru Kururin isn’t a downloadable game like those other two, but I don’t know if in a top 50, I don’t know if Nintendo’s done such astonishing work in the download, the more kind of indie game feeling space that it needs to be on it. Yeah. All right. So, Paul Blox. I realize we’ve been to all that length of arguing about Box Boy. No, it’s fine. That makes it even funnier. Okay. So that’s gone then. And we’re definitely saying Kuru Kuru. I want to keep Kuru Kuru Kururin. I think keep it a back pocket for variety. Let’s see how we feel once we tutor all these elders. Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. Box Boy can go as well. And we’ll keep Kuru Kuru Kururin. And I’m not going to say that again until we actually place it, because it’s just, what a mouthful. Okay. So any other ones that you chuck out, Matthew? Do you really want Mario Maker 2 in there? Should that really have had a spot over like Mario, what was it called? Last year’s one? I forgot the name of it. Mario Wonder. Yeah. I wondered if that was the wrong take afterwards, just because it represents something quite novel and different. But does it really have more value, which is it really more fun than something like Mario Wonder? That is a bit of a including it for the sake of other people who are really into it. Yeah. But that’s not what we’re doing here. Which is maybe what I was thinking about. But in terms of things which are very Back Page: games important to us, probably not. Yeah. The exercise isn’t to account for what other people care about, right? It’s like it’s us saying this matters. So, yeah. So, no. That’s right. I did wonder if while it’s interesting, in the top 50, do you really need Four Swords Adventures? It has to count as a Zelda. That’s the thing, right? Well, it is fun, but it’s a little bit of the, well, trust us if you’ve got all the parts, this is really fun. It’s that there is something a little bit annoying about it. There’s just no other way to play it still, right? So this is still trapped on GameCube, is that right? Yeah, that cool one, but you can play- The GBA one. Yeah, like the reduced version of it, I guess. Why isn’t that fucking available on something? Why have they made that so hard to re-access? Very annoying, that, isn’t it? Okay, that’s fine then. But I don’t know, do you not think that’s a kind of like, if you can do it, this is an amazing thing to say you’ve done? Only because I feel a bit weird cutting something out that I know to be sort of like a pure great Zelda experience next to Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity, which is like basically very nicely re-skinned Dynasty Warriors. I guess, yeah, I don’t want to cut Four Swords Adventures out. That’s fine, that’s absolutely fine. Let’s do that later instead. Yeah, okay. So here’s the thing, right? I thought Donkey Kong 94 on Game Boy, which I did, I played a bunch of. Yeah. I thought it’s really good. So this game, you basically play through four Donkey Kong levels and then it turns into like a whole other game. Yeah. That’s really fucking cool idea, first of all. Like I thought that was a really good like, and then the kind of curtain opens kind of moment. Yeah. I was like, oh, oh shit, this is actually the game, is it? That’s really cool. It is great. I do wonder if in this list with its like more contemporary focus, if I would truly recommend this over any of the other platformers in here, just because it is so old feeling. I guess my thinking with it was, it’s the closest thing there is to a Donkey Kong 2, in that it opens with the original Donkey Kong levels, and then like you say, becomes this game which like mixes up the kind of mechanics and field of Donkey Kong into a regular platformer. That was part of my thinking. Also just we weren’t going to really represent a lot of Game Boy games. You know, a lot of them are very, very simple. This is like weirdly quite fleshed out as they come. I think I prefer this to like The Super Mario Land’s, the other big platforming series on Game Boy. Is it the role of this list to politely represent all these platforms? No, probably not. Like it’s not, it’s not like, I wouldn’t be devastated if it wasn’t in there. I was just trying to kind of cover all the, cover all the different facets, I guess, of Donkey Kong. Yeah, okay. I wouldn’t be upset if Jungle Beat gets cut. No, that’s fine. I’m not going to challenge that one. The other one I was going to challenge was, how much is Wii Sports Resort us trying to represent something versus would you actually play this now? If I said to you, would you actually play this now, Matthew? Would you get, I’m not saying like, let’s say your Wii U is already set up. Yeah. Would you actually play this now? Probably not. I would bore everyone by going, oh, the table tennis is so good. Would that be enough for me to try and find where my Wii Motion Plus dongles are somewhere in this house? Probably not. Yes. I think it comes out on that criteria. That was just the one I thought, are we really saying we actually love this? Would it really cut out other things that we do love to accommodate this? I didn’t think so. Controversially, I wondered if, do we really need Wave Race 64? Because we have F-Zero X, which I definitely want to keep in the list, and this is still a pretty good game. It’s not quite as slick as F-Zero, which has the magic 60 FPS thing, which I don’t know how the fuck they did it. But it’s like, is it so essential now that you really would play it? You know what I mean? Is this underpowered next to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and F-Zero X? I was just curious what you, about the thinking here. Again, in the long list process, I think this came from a, you know, should we try and represent the part of Nintendo, which wasn’t tied up with mascots and used to make games that just try to capture the essence of a sport? It’s a long heritage, if you think back to NES, just all those games that are called, you know, tennis, baseball, that kind of thing. You know, it was something that they kind of thought they had to do and they kind of wrestled with for several generations. Whether we need to include it into the list, you know, like I say, not including it in the list doesn’t like delete that heritage. I just think Wave Race is one that sometimes slips through the cracks because it doesn’t have like an easy to love mascot. It’s quite hard to be a vocal Wave Race stan, you know, you’re not, there isn’t a lot of material, it’s like you can basically play this game or that’s sort of it. Kawasaki Jet Ski didn’t make it into Smash Bros. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s fun like when little things like that do crop up in Smash Bros. In the same way that like we didn’t necessarily need to represent Nintendo’s downloadable game heritage in the end, we maybe don’t need to represent this part of the timeline. Okay, fine. So that’s coming out then. The last one I wanted to suggest getting rid of, I thought on it, right? As we were, you and I were playing Perfect Dark last night. It’s a great game, but the best version of it is on Xbox now, and it now belongs to Xbox, I think. So if and when we make that list, Perfect Dark would absolutely be in contention for a place. But I do wonder if, because it’s hard to place the best place to play it on Nintendo, i.e. you probably wouldn’t want to try and play on N64 these days. You have to wrestle with the controls and Switch Online. Oh, but that’s the thing, Mike. I played a bit of it on Switch Online yesterday because we are doing this Perfect Dark episode and partly because we’re doing this list. And I think they’ve done such a shit job of putting it on there. Like, there’s so little thought for how it controls and whether they should have tried to have made some bespoke controls for it or something like it’s or just mapped in the very workable control scheme that the Xbox has. Yeah, they’ve kind of done it to themselves by treating it so poorly. But yeah, I just don’t think there’s a version of Perfect Dark on a Nintendo platform that you’d still want to play. No, that’s it. So that’s the only reason it would come out. It’s if those controls and switch were just identical to how it feels on Xbox, it would have a place in this list. But it they haven’t done that by not fulfilling that criteria. It cannot have a place. So it’s gone. It cannot have a place. That’s a tough break for Rare. It is. Does that leave Rare with zero games in there? Okay. That is tough, unfortunately. Yeah. Again, I would play GoldenEye, but I play on Xbox. You just use two sticks and it’s very simple to play anyway. Okay. All right. So those are like the ones I wanted to take out. Actually, the only other one. Yeah. We care so little about Advance Wars that we can’t pin down in Advance Wars. Well, I do like the series. I do like dabbling with the series. But I just… It’s not exactly the same as Fire Emblem, Advance Wars. No, it definitely isn’t. It’s completely its own thing. Because I just keep seeing an Advance Wars, something so vague taking a space. I think we should just call it and just go like, Advance Wars, just the first Advance Wars. Yeah. Just Game Boy Advance. Part of its charm is how it looks. I did weigh it up and I did think the one I spent the most time with was probably two when I was emulating it in the mid-noughties on PC. Well, that one’s fine. I just think it should be a Game Boy Advance one. Dual Strike’s got loads of features though. It’s got better multiplayer options as well. It’s genuinely one of those series that no one can pick, the one that they like the most. Some people like Days of Ruin because it’s a bit closer to the Fire Emblem in terms of the character of it. Yeah. But yeah. Okay, fine. Let’s just say it remains on the long list, but it’s like original Advance Wars GPA. I guess because we said no compilation, so you can’t even pick the Reboot Cam thing if we wanted to, because that’s not what we’re doing. So all right. Okay, fine. Original Advance Wars it is. That makes sense. In which case, Matthew, I actually do have something to upend the top 10. It’s not too much. So what I want to do and because I thought about it and then it just jumped out to me, I think WarioWare Megamicrogames should be in the top 10. Interesting. I came close to proposing that earlier. I was going to say, let’s swap it in after Metroid Dread and move Animal Crossing out of the top 10. So Animal Crossing goes to 11, which I think probably better represents where it lies in our estimations. And WarioWare Megamicrogames slots into that spot. I think that is a top 10 Nintendo series at its peak, which is this game. It’s perfect out of the gates. And it’s amazing to rediscover this. I’ve rediscovered this so many times over the years. I did first emulate it on my PC in the mid-noughties, much like Advanced Wars. That’s how I first played it. I played it when they put it on 3DS to apologize for dropping the price. I played it again on my little handheld device. I played it again on Switch Online. It’s just such a fucking perfect game to just come back to at any time. You will always forget something about it and it will always delight you again. I think it’s a truly evergreen Nintendo game, just completely ageless. You’re in agreement that the top 10 is a good placement for that? Yeah. We both really rate it, so I think that makes perfect sense. Cool. In which case, I think the way we were doing it of working our way from the top down was kind of working. We’ve got Xenoblade at 10 and we’ve got Animal Crossing at 11 now. So I feel a lot less pressure with the bottom half of the top 20. So what do you think goes next, Matthew? Is it Pikmin? So I think definitely in that 20 to 10, there should be Pikmin, Fire Emblem. Smash Bros. Smash Bros, Metroid Prime. Yeah, Donkey Kong. Yeah. Should we bung those all? Yeah, yeah. Let’s do that. So let’s start with Metroid Prime then. Where do you think that should go? I feel like top 15 makes sense for this. Yeah. Again, we try not to do the thing of separating them arbitrarily. So we could just say 12 for that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. That makes sense. Fire Emblem then. So got two here, the GBA one, the first one released in the West, and then Awakening on 3DS, which brought the series back to life. Which one would you put up there, Matthew? I assume Awakening. It’s probably the more complete package. I want you to include the Game Boy Advance one, just because I think there’s a purity to that earlier Fire Emblem, and it begins to get a little bit more fan service-y from Awakening onwards. Right. But Awakening is almost the sweet spot between those two extremes. So, definitely the one that kind of put it back on so many people’s radars, including mine. I think that’s a top 15, maybe 15. Yeah, okay. I wouldn’t want to go straight from that into Metroid Prime. Yeah, okay. That’s fine. 15 for that one, then. Should Smash be quite high up here? Yeah, I think Smash can go after Metroid Prime, because you’re sort of celebrating the larger Nintendo project. We do want to say it’s important, right? Like, it does… And it’s still just, like, really fun. Again, we don’t have, like, loads of multiplayer in there, so it represents that very nicely. And, yeah, it’s like the ultimate celebration of Nintendo’s history, so perfect to have that there. And it’s after Metroid Prime, so we’re not saying it’s, like, a better game than that. Like, it’s a better design game, because I don’t think Smash Bros. is like a… I don’t think either of us think it’s, like, a standout, you know, sort of experience. It’s not like the peak of its form in terms of, like, mechanical sophistication. It’s really good at what it does, is kind of how I think of Smash Bros, you know? Yeah. Where does Pokemon live in this top 50? I think that can go in the bottom, like, somewhere from 30 to 50. Yeah, okay. That’s fine. I think Link’s Awakening has to come into play in the top 20. Yeah, that’s true. I think that maybe that can go in after Smash Bros, but before Fire Emblem. So, yeah, after Fire Emblem before Smash Bros. Okay. So, that’s at number 14, then. Link’s Awakening DX, Game Boy Color. Still, as we agreed last week, the version to play of those games, preferably on a smaller screen, if you can. Okay. That’s good. That’s pretty good. That’s a pretty good top 15. Do you think that’s where, do you think Pikmin comes in at 16? Do Donkey Kong comes in at 16? I like Pikmin. I think it is, as a franchise, a little weirder and outside of the real mainstream faves, but I think this version of it is so good that it deserves to go that high. Something that was brought up by one of our listeners was, is this game better on Wii U with the controls on there? Do you have a take on that, Matthew? It’s not that they butchered it on Switch or anything, but I played it on Wii U and really loved it, so. Okay, so Pikmin 3 on Wii U comes in at number 16. I quite like that. That we had our minds changed by the listeners. See, we can be reasonable listeners, not just a bunch of cry babies. I think you got to have a Donkey Kong in this top 20. Tropical 3, I’ve not played Jungle Beat. You have played it with the bongos. Yeah. You can speak to that. It was ranked pretty highly in the O&M list. Tropical 3 is just really fucking good modern platformer. It’s almost as good for that series as Dread is for Metroid, really. I’m not saying it necessarily ignites the same interest to go back and play the old ones. You have roundly dismissed the Donkey Kong Country series in the previous episode. But it’s really good set PC inventive beautiful-looking platformer. But you can decide Matthew between this and Jungle Beat as to which one goes in. I know Jungle Beat is more of an acquired taste. It’s one that you put in the 50s just so that the real heads know. The lengths you probably have to go to to play this properly, I would put it lower just for that. I’m happy having some Donkey Kong in this top 20. In which case, Antropical Freeze tentatively goes in to that number 17 spot. So, 17, 18, 19, 20. Sorry, 18, 19, 20 to fill. I think Super Mario 3D World should be in there. Okay. We really love it. And I really like Bowser’s Fury. Yeah, I do really like it. I was just wondering if there was anything we’d missed in terms of like Metroid Fusion or Super Metroid or… Oh, yeah. That’s a good point. I just sort of like, yeah, just some like maybe some sort of middle-era classics that we’re not representing. But I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s… Maybe I would just be comfortable with putting it here. It’s a different type of Mario, except that’s the other ones. All right. In which case, then fine. For now, we will say that it can go at number 18. So I was wondering if Bayonetta 2 should be here. It’s not my favorite Bayonetta game, but it’s a great series. It is something I would recommend that people play the series in general on Switch, and it’s in a really nice form on Switch. I do wonder if this is worth putting in to celebrate something that’s just very different to anything else in this list. Hack and slash, sort of like 3D action game. You really like Bayonetta 2. It’s a great modern Nintendo series. That is the purpose of the exercise to a large extent. It’s what would you play now. I really would recommend people play Bayonetta now in general. It’s got that top tier mechanics based sophistication that I think is worth rewarding with a high place. Is this too high though? What do you think? I think that does feel a little bit too high to me. All right then. So on another tack, what about Splatoon? We’ve not represented that yet. Does that count as one of the… Is that like a Pikmin or Donkey Kong level series? Do you think? It’s definitely under them, which it would be, but it is a really exciting strand of Nintendo for sure. Admittedly, neither of us are massive splat heads, but I’ve loved what I’ve played of it. I don’t have that ongoing relationship with any game, really. I think it being in the top 20 is good though, because they’ve made it tricky to pick any one game in the series to represent the overall experience. But I’ve never had a bad time dipping into Splatoon. The basic mechanics of it are just so good and so fun. It’s a really nice multiplayer thing to drop into at any time. I do think that, again, to play now, if you’re new to Nintendo or you haven’t picked up a Nintendo console in a while, or you should just play Splatoon if you have access to a Splatoon, it’s worth just having that experience. So, should we tentatively say 19 or 20 for that one? Let’s put it 19. For 20, I’d like there to be some Kirby in the top 20, just because I’ve done the guy dirty in the past, and I need to make amends. I’d like Kirby Planet Robobot to be at 20. All right. Well, I appreciate your forcefulness now with that one. So that’s fine with me. That can go 20 for now. We can always rejig this order. I just think our top 20 to 10 is a lot of Nintendo mascots at their best, and I think for Kirby, that’s Planet Robobot. So that’s what I think it deserves to live with that bracket of games. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So now that we enter 21 to 30, I think we can maybe let some of our slightly older picks that are still great to play now breathe a bit. So I was wondering if we should just drop Tetris DX here. So again, really key part of the Nintendo story, really basic pick, but still great. I think 21 is high, but we’re not giving it such elevated importance. It’s pushing out things that we really, really care about. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that’s fair. I mean, it’s still really good. I mean, I probably still play this game in some form every single year. I think everyone does, right? Yeah. I don’t think Alexey Pajitnov is cancelling his Patreon over this. No, I don’t think so. So I think that’s safe. Right then. Well, I wonder if we should put Star Fox 64 3D next, Matthew, because it’s another series that’s like, another series at its peak, another of those Nintendo mascots. It’s still really good. I don’t necessarily want to force out any of the stuff we’ve got in the top 20 to include it. But it’s really, really strong still. So why not? What do you think? Because I was going to suggest that, or maybe Kid Icarus Uprising. But I think Star Fox is a little bit easier, like just a little bit friendlier to people. Yeah. Still just really fucking good. I didn’t want it to be too low down because I do think it’s still one of the best things you can pick up and play on a Nintendo platform. On similar grounds, should we put F-Zero X at 23? Oh, yeah. That’s interesting. Because it’s only representation in this list. It feels like it’s still in play as an idea. I know they haven’t done much with it recently, but they obviously did the F-Zero 99, which was just cute. While it’s obviously very simple looking on the N64, it’s an N64 game that still absolutely flies and does everything it’s meant to do. Yeah, that’s fine. I would say a Kid Icarus going in the top 25 makes sense, just from how much you love it in particular. Would you recommend F-Zero X over Kid Icarus if it came down? That’s an arbitrary thing to ask. Kid Icarus does come with that unavoidable wrinkle of it, will probably age your hands a billion years to play through it. They can’t get around that. I wish that by now they had made a friendlier port of this for Switch, which could potentially be higher. But in terms of like, it’s fucking rad, I love it, but it is a bit of a pain in the ass. Somewhere banging the middle of the list feels okay to me. Yeah, that’s fair. So, all right. Then next up then, so our 25th place game. I had a few, I’ve still got a few candidates, I think like need to be in this upper echelon of the list. I’m curious to know what you think. So I do wonder if this is where Rhythm Tengoku or Awendon should go or Metro Fusion, potentially Wind Waker HD. But then I guess it all depends on, and we already hit our Zelda limit. Do we say we’d have five Zelda games in total? How many have we got so far? I think we have got five. So do we just break that criteria and say, actually we need to have more Zelda games. It’s not a list ultimately. We don’t have to obey what we said last week necessarily. Zelda does come up the top half of the list, but as you get to the bottom 25, I think it’s okay to have a couple in there. For fuck’s sake. This is the curse of every Nintendo list. You go in with the best intentions, but then you just can’t get a tingle out of your mind. For fuck’s sake. Or we try and represent some of the, again, like the 2D greats, like Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3. I think they begin to look a bit funky if you put them in too low. Yeah, they do. But also it’s a true representation of what we think, right, is that those games matter, but they don’t matter as much as 3D World or Odyssey or Galaxy, you know? It just seems, yeah. I see we’re sort of getting hoisted by our own petard here a little bit, Matthew. I don’t think we should overthink it. I think we should. Let’s stick Metroid Fusion at 25. So, I said easy. Actually, is that controversial over Super Metroid? It definitely is, isn’t it? But would I play it over Super Metroid now? Truth is, I’d play both. That’s the truth. That’s the truth about it. Again, it comes down to exactly what you want from Metroid. Super Metroid is really hands off and more alien for it. Metroid Fusion has the thrill of being Samus and exploring in those environments, but it opens with like three minutes of this crazy exposition. I replayed the opening half an hour ago this morning. It really made me laugh how much it just talks at you. Where it’s like, all this stuff happened, you became an alien and then they rescued you from that. You’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is like several games worth a blot. Yeah. Yeah, it made me laugh. But they’re both really, really satisfying. They’re just going to speak to very different mindsets. Okay, let’s… Ah, all right. I’m 50-50. Do you have a… Do the alien element of Super Metroid, the fact it’s so influential and a little bit spooky? I think there’s something special in that. It’s doing something a bit more atmospheric and cinematic in that way before lots of other people are. Like, it’s such an excellent exercise in atmosphere and it still kind of holds up. Like, it’s one of the really special sense games that I think does still feel really, really special now. Yeah. This was a conversation we had last night, wasn’t it? Where I said to you, the reason I was a bit cool on Super Mario World as a pick is that relatively speaking to its series, I don’t think it’s as visually spectacular as A Link to the Past was on stairs or Super Metroid was on stairs. And I think you and Catherine kind of agreed with that. There’s like a presentational upside to Super Metroid. You just have to keep in mind. So I think it makes sense for that to be our highest ranking SNES game, which it is. Yeah. It was funny after that chat, I was thinking, do we just dump Mario World? Because that’s like a move no Nintendo list ever does. It’s that they’re always like, honor the past, you got to have Mario Brothers 3, you got to have World, don’t you? When someone in the Discord said, I don’t know why, would I really play those over Mario Wonder? And I thought that was a good point. I still… Yeah, I’m not saying I haven’t done Mario Wonder dirty here. Like, I’m not saying that, but I do think they are offering different things. Yeah. I think Mario Wonder is just like a… It’s not really a challenging platform. It’s just like a joy machine. It’s just like a 2D joy machine. And that’s absolutely fine, but I think it’s a different kind of design discipline. I don’t know. Yeah, fair enough. Okay, that’s fine. So we’re having Super Metroid at 25. So what I will do to help the listeners keep track, I will recap what we’ve got so far. 25 Super Metroid, 24 Kid Icarus Uprising, 23 F-Zero X, 22 Star Fox 64 3D, 21 Tetris DX, 20 Kirby Planet Robobot, 19 Splatoon 3, 18 Super Mario 3D World Plus Bowser’s Fury, 17 Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, 16 Pikmin, 15 Fire Emblem Awakening, 14 Zelda Link’s Awakening, 13 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, 12 Metroid Primary Mastered, 11 Animal Crossing New Horizons, 10 Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, 9 Zelda Majora’s Mask, 8 Ocarina of Time, 7 Original WarioWare on GBA, 6 Metroid Dread, 5 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, 4 Mario Odyssey, 3 Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, 2 Mario Galaxy, and 1 Legend of Zelda Breath of the World. That’s a really good top 25 actually. I don’t look at that and I’m like, oh, we really fucked it there. Maybe the order of it could be rejigged a little bit, but we can do that at the end, I think. That’s when we can make our switcheroos. I did just read them out and think, oh, would I play Splatoon 3 over Star Fox 64 3D? Anyway, we’ll come back to that after we’ve filled out the rest of the top 50, Matthew. So 26, so bottom half. So I do wonder if we should start, we can put an Oendan or a Rhythm Tengoku in here, right? So which of those two would you pick? So I prefer Oendan, but I know you really like that Rhythm series. So what would you have in the series? Is it mad that they’re, why can’t they be close to each other? Yeah, they can. Because they speak to different people. But also, is this where Wind Waker HD should come in? Because this will be considered low placement for that game anyway, I think. I feel like I know why we’ve done that, but still, it might prove controversial. What do you think? I’m struggling with this bit. It does come point in the lists where there is vibes. It’s beginning to feel a bit low for that. You just have a sense of something innate worth. Yeah. Wind Waker is one of them. In the same way that I’m looking at some of these, I’m like, these are like bottom 10 for sure. Yeah, but still being in the top 50 is still high praise. Yes, that’s the thing. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Should we slap Wind Waker in for now then? I think Wind Waker should go in. Yeah. We are confirming that we’re breaking our rule on five games per series just for Zelda. I mean, I don’t know if there’s still a couple of other potential Zeldas on this list and maybe they won’t make it because of that. I don’t know. I think there’s room for- We have to be disciplined. Yeah, that we do. I don’t think all of the Zeldas that we’ve got should make it. But I’d say of the three Zeldas or Zelda spin-offs we’ve got left, only one should make it from those, I would say. I think Paper Mario should probably be in the mix soon. Yeah. Why don’t we just put that next then? Yeah. Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door. All right. So that goes in at 27. Yeah. Crucially, that will put it above Mario and Luigi, which obviously is pinning our Colors of the Master bit in terms of… Yeah. Paper Mario probably is the biggest screen experience. Mario and Luigi is the portable one. It’s slightly smaller in feel because of that. Paper Mario just has a grander ambition to it. Maybe makes it a bit zippier to play. Fair enough. I will go to bat for A Wendon at number 28 anyway, because I really love that. I think it’s like a whole other thing basically in terms of like it uses the DS hardware in this very specific way that’s worth celebrating. It arguably uses what the hardware does better than any other game that we’ve talked about so far in terms of like the specific functionality of it. It was just like a real magic. One of the games that was like just unlocked to your head what the DS could do. So I think that’s okay to put that there. Did you want to put Rhythm Tengoku next? Yeah, I think so. Very special series. I think it’s like, is it the same devs as WarioWare, Matthew? There is, I can never quite remember the exact connection, but yeah, there is a lot of crossover. Obviously, there’s some extra people who aren’t there with WarioWare in terms of the music production. Musical WarioWare basically. Is there anything else that you’re panicking hasn’t come up yet and feels like it should come up soon? Not unlike a personal I like it level, but I think Pokemon. No, it should represent where it sits in our estimations, which is, I think it’s fundamentally good and I like this particular version we’ve picked, but it doesn’t have to be higher than things that either of us love. Yeah. Like now. That makes sense. In which case, I think now is time to deploy Bayonetta 2. Yeah, I was going to say Bayonetta 2. Top 30 is fine for Bayonetta 2. Yeah. I still prefer one, but what can you do? Okay. So 31, it gets a little bit pressure off here a bit, I think. What about, isn’t Wario Land 4 a game that you love, Matthew? Definitely not in my, like, my personal top 30. It makes sense for it not to be there. I don’t know if it should be higher than a 2D Mario, though. But do you love either of those 2D Mario games enough to, like, hug them here? Actually, when I look at what’s left, it’s not too egregious to do that necessarily. Okay, let’s stick with the It’s Us, It’s Our List. I’m just seeing if there’s anything here I’d have above Warioland 4. What about Minish Cap or Fusion? Real talk. For Warioland 4, above it, I would have Minish Cap. I’d put Fusion above it. I’d probably put Mario and Luigi above it. Well, that tells our story. So in what order should they go be plugged into the list now, then? I love Minish Cap, but I think it’s like a beautiful looking game. It’s not like the most complicated Zelda, but it’s like a really nice thing to discover now. Yeah, it’s pretty fun. I like championing it as well. I mean, it does become our fucking 20th Zelda game in this top 10 or top 50, which is a bit of a bummer. But Zelda’s good. They put us in a bind by making fucking good Zelda games. People love it. People love it. Let’s say I think we should go Metroid Fusion, Bowsers Inside Story, Minish Cap. Okay. So 31 for Metroid Fusion, 32 for Bowsers Inside Story, 33 for Minish Cap. All right. A lot of me cutting and pasting, by the way, going on listeners. So apologies for all the clicks you’re hearing. I’ll cut around that. Yeah, fine. That’s interesting to be in the home stretch of it now. This is where you can stick in one of your obligatory 2D Mario games, Matthew. So you put Mario World here? Let’s be bold. Let’s just put in Mario Brothers 3. Okay. Yeah, okay. What about Yoshi’s Island though? That was probably something for me to ask, because I think something that I didn’t elaborate on last week was that Yoshi’s Island was only technically a Mario World sequel here, and it wasn’t in Japan, right? It was like a whole other thing. I think you kind of explain that by saying it’s like the first of those types of games. Right. Would you put Yoshi’s Island in the top 50? See, this is a sacred cow, this one. Mario World is more of a sacred cow, I would assume, but… Yeah, they’re both… I mean, yeah, a list without either of them is kind of hilarious. It’s weird. It feels like we’re running out of games now to, like, put in the list, which is a weird thing to say. We’ve got more games than we need, than we’ve got spots. Yeah, it’s true, but for some reason in my head it just does. Yeah. I think we’ve maybe just exited the tier of really, really important stuff to us, and now it’s come down to stuff that we like, but is definitely not in that top tier of things that we adore. I’m looking at some entries here, and I’m like, they have to go in. Is that because you love them or because? I would be uneasy not having this game that I personally really go to bat for. I’m getting the wonderful 101 in this list. Yeah, that makes sense. Before, when we were talking about the last trio of games we dumped in, you were saying they should all go in above Wario Land, but does that mean that now is the time to drop Wario Land into the list? Yeah, I think we can do that, actually. Yeah, Wario Land 4 then goes in. Wario Land 4, Proto Pizza Tower. Such a good game. Not out of Kirby in the game for a little while, have we? You know, maybe it’s recency bias, maybe I just really like that last incredible boss, but I’m thinking Kirby in the Forgotten Land should maybe get a little bit of love soon. I actually think that could go like bottom five. Oh, really? Yeah, it’s really good, and I do think it’s worth… I would really recommend… Again, if I was recommending like 10 games on Switch to someone who’s picked one up, I would definitely recommend it. So what here do I really care for? Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. Yeah. Well, that’s very high by most people’s lists, but I think it’s such an important step towards Galaxy, weirdly, and plants the seeds a lot of what makes EAD Tokyo so exciting. Shall we say that because we’ve taken Minish Cap, that Four Swords Adventures and Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity have to die? I think so. Yeah. This is too much Zelda otherwise, right? Too much Zelda. Do you think that maybe next should be where you put Wonderful 101 as something that you love? Yeah. That’s Hyrule. I love it. I will say, I don’t agree with this pick, but that’s fine. It can still go in there. That’s too close to Bayonetta for the quality golf there in my opinion. Okay. That’s all right. I mean, there’s going to be a couple in here that I think we’re going to have to buy our tongues on, right? Do you know what? I don’t mind Pokemon going in there next. Yeah. It’s a really good version of that type of thing. If you do, I still think, again, like the visual style, this, I would take this over the modern 3D games personally. It’s just a great little, it contains the worlds of both gold and gold, silver and red, blue. It’s got all those different Pokemon in it. It’s got a bunch of features on top of that. It’s a really nice celebration of those games. It’s still beloved, quite hard to get hold of these days. And just, yeah, it’s still got the good Pokemon designs in it, relatively speaking. I mean, you know how I feel about Voltor, for example, but all the sort of two legendary birds and the legendary, I fucking say legendary dogs without being ironic, is like hard to do on this podcast, I will admit, but I think all that stuff does, it is like world enhancing the changes they made with gold and silver. It does feel like they really expanded it in a great way. They did make all the new Pokemon feel really exciting. This is a great tribute to that first generation of Pokemon games. So, in it goes. I don’t feel too embarrassed about putting it in there. Actually, that makes sense. Good for variety as well in the list. Maybe I’m fighting Kirby in the Forgotten Land too much, Matthew. Is that more of a jumping out to you as a could go in here pick? I’m less sure that Kirby Super Star Ultra is going to make it. Yeah, I did. It’s hard though, because it’s sort of like, it’s again a series where there’s not necessarily like a consensus on what the greatest ones are. Yeah. But I would say that most people will get something out of playing Kirby in the Forgotten Land. Yeah, I just, I got properly Kirby-pilled when we did that Kirby episode like two years ago. That was really good. A good episode that. Ironically, it was always underrepresented on all the magazines I worked on. But now I’m like, I’m definitely making up for that. Lost time with my big pink son. All right, fair enough. I would like Fire Emblem GBA in there. Slightly purer, the first Fire Emblem that came to the West, but the seventh Fire Emblem in total. So very well established mechanics and ideas by then. You can play this on the Switch Online and it’s very satisfying. There’s the other GBA one. Is that not the Sacred Stones? Is that what it’s called? That’s right. Also excellent, but we can’t go down the road of endless Fire Emblems. No. So we have six games left to place. I think now that we’re in the 40s, I think we could put Sin and Punishment in here. It’s not to mean we really have anything like this elsewhere in the list. I think it’s important that we have it in there, so that Simon Parkin thinks we’re cool. Well, that will never happen, but that’s fine. Plus, it’s just really good as well. It’s another technical showcase of what we have to do. It is good, and it’s still fun. You cannot make this one work on Switch Online with the weird controls app. It’s okay. It still holds up. I played this on Wii Virtual Console back in the day, and had a really good time despite it costing a fucking fortune, 1600 points where it was. In which case, should one of your beloved Mario Sports games go in here Matthew? They’ve not come up yet. I feel like they haven’t got the best cheerleader in me. They’re just like, oh really good. You love sports, famously. I don’t know if just years and years of them making not very good tennis and golf games has just knocked it out of me a bit. But I played both the N64 ones on Switch in the run up to this, and you’re like, this is just good. It’s not a complicated idea. Mario plus this sport done in a pleasing arcade manner. I don’t think Mario tennis has ever been good as like Virtua Tennis, say. Yeah. And likewise, golf, what’s the PlayStation one? Everybody’s Golf. Yeah. It’s probably an even better version. So they’ve definitely been surpassed elsewhere, but they’ve just brought a lot of multiplayer fun over the years. You know, they were the key things and they still hold up and they can still be played in that way. So let’s go Mario Tennis on the N64. Okay. All right. Let me tell you something that I’m thinking. It’ll be controversial. Do we think that Earthbound should now come up a few places? Because we’re kind of like, as we’re trying to place these last few things, maybe it’s like slightly more interesting than we’re giving it credit for being a 48. Yeah, that’s fair. Like we went in quite heavy on these three games at the start. We did. And some might say- I think we thought we had an embarrassment of riches, and now we’re both sort of circling Donkey Kong 94. And like it’s like a dog turd, no one wants to step in. But I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just- All right. So Mario Tennis is in, EarthBand has moved up. So we’ve got 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 to Phil. I say Phil, I mean, put place a great game there. I think it’s now Yoshi’s Islands time. And that’s going in not Super Mario World. Yeah. All right. Mario is in this list. Yoshi is now also in this list. Can we put Advance Wars next? Advance Wars is really fucking good. Yeah. We don’t need to pretend that that series is not good, just because we couldn’t pick one game to represent all the games. Yeah, I know. I just felt like if there was, it would have been much higher had one game really jumped out as like, I am the one. Well, they’re all pretty good. But that’s the thing, it’s not its fault that they’re all good. Give all of them a go and see which one you like the most. I think that what I remember liking about the original was having quite a good story campaign in it. Then I think that I remember it having some quite big difficulty spikes as well. I think they may be ironed out. What we’re saying is that 45 is the concept of Advance Wars. Fuck it. Let’s just put it. It’s our list. Let’s put the concept of Advance Wars. The concept of Advance Wars is done. It’s that is cheating actually. I’ll just get Advance Wars GPA. You can just hear us on this podcast saying, the series more generally as well. Okay. I’m glad I kept Kuru Kuru Kuru in my back pocket, Matthew. I think that could be our new 48 where EarthBound was. Yes. That’s a great game. That’s still great. It’s on Switch Online. It’s really fun. It’s just so instantly grasp the concept. Can I get this spinning stick through a narrow hole? Yeah. We have four games left on our long list. We have Super Mario World and The SNES. Well, technically Matthew booted that off. Kirby Super Star Ultra, technically Matthew booted that off. Donkey Kong 94, Game Boy, Mario Golf Toadstool Tour. Those are the games that are left and there’s two spots to fill. Have we made any errors? Should we bring Four Swords Adventures back, Matthew? Or Hyrule Warriors. I don’t think this is Hyrule Warriors moment. I’m kind of thinking Donkey Kong 94. Yeah, fine. Just because I think it’s… I think it… I know this… I’m really tempted by how interesting it is. But even I wouldn’t play that over Super Mario World, and I don’t really love Super Mario World. Then… OK, then no. Then that’s fine. We’ve got to… We’ve got to stick to the rules. It’s like… That’s the criteria, right? It’s like games you play now with one eye on the past. That’s two eyes on the past, that is. Sam, do we admit we were wrong and put Super Mario Wonder in this list? I was thinking this. Yes, let’s do it. Because we are looking at these and I’m thinking, I will obviously play Super Mario Wonder over these games. Yeah, we can admit we were wrong. Super Mario Wonder is in it 46. Is there anything else we were wrong about? You know what? Pokemon Snap’s not that bad. This is how it happens. Every time you look at an entry on this and you scream about how wrong it is, just think that it could have come about like this. Yeah, it’s true. People chickening out at the end. Buffoons arguing about it. The thing is, there’s not actually anything else on Switch that jumps out to me as we should absolutely represent that. I do wonder if we’ve done the modern Fire Emblem games a bit of a disservice, because there are things that people love about those that you just don’t value. And I have no real opinion on personally. But I think if we’re being really strict with it, I think there’s just enough of what people like in truly modern Fire Emblem in Awakening. I just think it’s that exaggerated to a slightly obnoxious degree. What about… Gosh, you’re gonna hate me saying this. What about fucking Oracle of Seasons or Aegis? Can we put more Zelda in this list? I mean, we’re really reluctant here with Super Mario World. Well, yeah, that probably shouldn’t be in the list if we’re like deliberating this. So Captain Toad Treasure Tracker it is, Matthew. No, I’m joking. I do wonder if you should cycle in a game that you actually love into this bit. And that’s one strand of Zelda we’ve not… Well, we have represented it with Link’s Awakening, but I don’t know, you really fucking like Oracle of Ages. I don’t know. Yeah, I do. I do. And you love Skyward Sword and you haven’t forced out into the list, which I do appreciate. Yeah. I think you just knew that wasn’t going to fly. It’s so unnecessary. Oh, God. So you’ve got Mario Golf Toadstool Tour. Should that not just be the last game here? Or do you think you’ve done the sports? I feel like, in my heart of hearts, I prefer tennis to golf. Yeah, fair enough. I think I just, I do as well fundamentally the feel of it, the immediacy. It’s sort of, just more immediately pleasurable. That is what it comes down to. Is this… Oh, man. Go on. No, no, I just keep thinking of the things we’ve deleted. I just keep thinking, like, is this where, is this where Wave Race comes back in? Yeah. That’s not the end of the world, if we put that in. Should we do that? Or is this a Box Boy or a Pool Blocks? No, because neither of us was, well, actually, you’re speaking, Pool Blocks, I can’t actually speak for. What do you think? Should Pool Blocks be in there? No. Should Picross DS be on here? Oh, here he comes with all of his little fucking nonsense. I think it’s brave to put another Zelda game in there. I think that’s just, that’s sheer brave. Oh, so brave to fill a Nintendo that’s full of Zelda. You know what? Diddy Kong Racing, this is your time to shine. Go on. Let’s do another Zelda. Let’s do Oracle of Ages. I think people will be pleasantly surprised that we deviated from our long list, ultimately. They will be annoyed. But there’s no rare in here that there’s 10 Zelda games. And that we didn’t even take two of the Zelda games that we put in our own long list. That’s list-making, baby. It sure is. This is how it happens. So I’m not going to read out what we’ve got so far. We have a complete top 50, but I think we need to reshuffle it before we do the long reading out all these game names thing. Let’s like, you and I, Matthew, we’ll just like quietly scan this list for 30 seconds and look for anything egregious and then discuss it. Does that sound good? Yeah. What are you thinking? So first thing that jumps out to me, scanning this, is I think that we should swap Link’s Awakening with Animal Crossing. Because even though we have a lot of Zelda gummed up near the top, we don’t have a 2D Zelda that close to the top. Yeah. I think Animal Crossing is great, but I think that Link’s Awakening is a masterpiece. So I think that, swap that. So 14 is now, is Animal Crossing’s new place. Link’s Awakening goes at 11. Do you object to that? No, that’s fine. Okay. What about you? Is anything jumping out? Is Splatoon 3 too high? Yeah. I think it might be for us. I think it might be in top 20. I was wondering. I was going to say, do we swap it with Super Metroid? Yeah. Okay. Let’s do that. My suggestion was going to be we swap it with Star Fox, but there’s not much in it there. So I think Super Metroid makes more sense. Okay. So Splatoon is now at 25. Super Metroid is 19. Yeah. I think that’s quite a robust top 20, to be honest. That feels like the most considered part of the list, and then it gets a bit like, it’s almost like each bracket of 10 has its own criteria. Do you know what I mean? It feels like the 40 to 50 is a very fraught zone of reshuffling. That’s like, hold on to your butts. You don’t know what’s going to happen in there. That’s just wild. I did wonder if Mario Tennis should be moved down a little bit. Like if, like maybe that should be it. Do you really think that Oracle of Ages is the 47th best Zelda game? Probably not. Well, the thing is, the problem is now that we’ve put Mario Wonder in this list, I’m like, should that be higher? Yeah. But why don’t we just do a straight swap of Mario Wonder and Mario Tennis 64? Yeah, that’s good. Because I don’t think we’re saying that Mario Wonder is top-tier Nintendo. We’re just saying it’s a really cool thing to check out now. When we made the long list, it was a really genuine attempt at working out what mattered to us. Sometimes you just have to put games in a list to really see what matters to you. Yeah, I agree with that. Mario Wonder emerged from that as like, oh, this does, we like this more than we, this is actually important to us. Yeah. Can I challenge one of your picks? I think, I think you should swap Wonderful 101 with Oracle of Ages, only because I don’t believe Wonderful 101 is, oh, actually, would I, oh, I don’t know, that’s probably too harsh, but I just wonder if that’s slightly too high. That’s got the character of a bottom 10 pick. I’m okay, I’m okay with that swap. Okay, if you’re sure, it could still be higher. As long as it’s in there, that’s the important thing with the Wonderful 101, is like, can I force this bullshit on people in some way or capacity? But then I think that’s, let’s say, that’s as far as Oracle of Ages can go. Like, it can’t keep climbing. It can’t keep climbing. No, it’s sort of like, there’s a cadence to where there’s Elders of Place that represents, you know, where they, I guess the truth is, there is a little bit of what matters going on at play here, but only to keep the list varied, I would say, rather than gumming it all up with Elders. Yeah, but looking at the top 20, I’m quite happy with that. You Kirby at 20, I don’t know that game, so I don’t know how, like, top tier that game is. You just got to trust me on this one. Yeah, I trust you. I trust God in Space. I trust you. Right. But I don’t, I wouldn’t mess with the top 10. I think that’s a pretty good top 10. The only thing I might do is swap Metroid Dread with WarioWare, maybe. Just, but then I just, I wonder if that’s just my bias. I just really love WarioWare, the original one. But I think that’s just maybe a bit like semantics. Yeah, I think so. I don’t think there’s anything to agree just there. No. Anything else jumping out to you? What about that, that sort of like, the sort of like the wild lands of the 39 down to 21, Matthew? There’s like no individual thing here. I’m like, oh, that’s technically wrong. You know, like they’re in, I think they’re in the right order. The only thing I was going to suggest was maybe should Splatoon 3 fall a bit further. Like maybe it just like goes down to like, maybe that goes into the 30s instead or something like that. I don’t know. 25 is not too high though. I don’t know. It’s a great game. That’s probably overthinking it. I think that’s overthinking it. I think that’s okay there. Anything else? It’s a pretty good list. It is a pretty good list. It’s a pretty good list. I’m not going to get us to move it. And it is probably just trauma. That is as high as Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze could ever go in a list like this for me. Do you really think it’s like, between that and Kirby, is Kirby much better than Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze? Surely they’re comparable. I think there’s a more experimental energy to Kirby. But then Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is something simple done really, really well. It is, it absolutely is. And that is just, listen, my extreme platforming prejudice has already kept rare entirely off this list, which is probably gross, but also funny. So that’s okay. Would Banjo have made it into that bottom 10? No. It might have replaced like, no. Actually, I don’t think it would have done. No, I don’t think so. It’s a pretty strong bottom 10. I’m willing to accept Banjo would probably be in play in the top 100. I will say that I don’t have that much love for any of the Mario sports games. Like, they’re all pretty good, but it’s a bit like Wave Race where I play them. Like, yeah, this is pretty good of something quite old. And I don’t know. Like, it’s not like a, I wouldn’t say it’s like a standout experience to me, but then I wouldn’t say Banjo is either to me. So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. That’s fine. We don’t need to start forcing Rare in there for the sake of it. No, no, no. Like, we just accept that we did them dirty and move on. All right. I think I like it. I think I like it. It’s kind of mad. It’s kind of us. It’s kind of us. I think the thing that, the weakness of it, arguably, is that great games in series that are already overrepresented end up being dinged in spots because we don’t want to gum up certain parts of the list too much with those games. I would say- Yeah, but then, if you don’t let that, if you aren’t strict with yourself, you end up with a very unsatisfying list because, and this isn’t me calling out or anything, like Nintendo Life has a top 100 greatest Nintendo games that I think is actually voted for by the readers. And the top 20, it’s not just Mario and Zelda, it’s multiple versions of the same game. There’s Wind Waker and Wind Waker HD in the top 20, and you’re like, it’s madness. You’ve got to go in and go, I don’t know, there has to be a bit of rhythm to the list. I do agree. Otherwise it’s just, I think we allowed the top 10 to properly breathe and then the rest of the list pays the price for it a tiny bit. I think that’s kind of what happened. But I think the top 20 is really robust, actually. I think that’s a great top 20. There’s nothing there that I’m like, yuck. Yeah, and it’s almost like when you get to the 30s and 40s, you’re not evenly placing the games necessarily, but there are tears in your head of what matters. So fitting something into a bracket, it’s like the placement of individual things is pretty good as it is. But I think to try and get any more scientific wouldn’t necessarily matter or make sense. I think I like it. Should we settle on this? Yeah, let’s do it. All right. Okay. So you got to play some music, and then we’ll come back with a final top 50. Should we do that? Yeah, sure. Perfect. Showmanship. Hello, listeners. Before we get to the top 50, a correction of sorts in all the excitement of making this top 50 list, Samuel and I forgot the existence of Eternal Darkness Sanity’s Requiem, a game I really love and we definitely wanted to include in this top 50. So I am after the fact inserting it in place of Mario Tennis. Sorry, Mario Tennis, I feel like we talked about you and your other sporting games for way too much of this episode, given that you are now getting booted out. But at the end of the day, the lure of a Lovecraftian survival horror game made with input from Shigeru Miyamoto proved just too tempting for us. I mean, come on, what a pitch is that? Miyamoto trying to drive around the bend with insanity effects, a storyline that jumps through history with multiple protagonists, a huge, daring narrative experiment from Nintendo who rarely take their games down that route. So we feel it deserves to be included. Apologies, it didn’t get properly discussed, but it will be inserted at number 46. Now onwards with the list. Okay, Matthew, let’s read out our top 50 Nintendo games. Thank you for listening for 14 hours to get us to this point over three episodes. I think it’s been a fun exercise. So let’s read them out, Matthew. I’ll start. Number 50, Last Window, The Secret of Cape West. Number 49, Luigi’s Mansion 3. 48, Kuru Kuru Karurin. 47, The Wonderful 101. 46, It Was Mario Tennis, It’s Now Eternal Darkness. 45, Advance Wars. 44, Super Mario World 2, Yoshi’s Island. 43, Earthbound. 42, Super Mario Wonder. 41, Sin and Punishment. 40, Fire Emblem. 39, Kirby and the Forgotten Land. 38, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. 37, Zelda Oracle of Ages. 36, Donkey Kong, Jungle Beat. 35, Wario Land 4. 34, Super Mario Bros. 3. 33, The Legend of Zelda, Minish Cap. 32, Mario and Luigi, Bowser’s Inside Story. 31, Metroid Fusion. 30, Bayonetta 2. 29, Rhythm Tengoku. 28, oh, fuck’s sake, Osu! Tatekei Uenden. 27, Paper Mario, The Thousand Year Door. 26, The Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker HD. 25, Splatoon 3. 24, Kilikrus Uprising. 23, F-Zero X. 22, Star Fox 64 3D. 21, Tetris DX. 20, Kirby, Planet Robobot. 19, Super Metroid. 18, Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser’s Fury. 17, Donkey Kong Country, Tropical Freeze. 16, Pikmin 3. 15, Fire Emblem Awakening. 14, Animal Crossing New Horizons. 13, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. 12, Metroid Prime Remastered. 11, The Legend of Zelda, Link’s Awakening DX. 10, Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. 9, The Legend of Zelda, Majora’s Mask 3D. 8, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time 3D. 7, WarioWare Mega Micro Games. 6, Metroid Dread. 5, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. 4, Super Mario Odyssey. 3, The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. 2, Super Mario Galaxy. 1, The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. What a good top 50. What a good top 50 that is. That’s pretty good. I like that. I think that is good. The games that pay the price for like, we need a bit of rhythm and variety, just to kind of like name check them for the listeners. Wind Waker HD absolutely paying the price for that. Metroid Fusion, that’s absolutely paying the price for that. I think that might be it actually. I think Oracle of Ages is kind of about where it would probably land. But yeah, I think those are the two that I think probably pay the price just for a bit of rhythm. But they’re still pretty highly placed and there’s a lot of variety in that list. Yes, it’s good. You can’t make a top 50 without Mario 64 or Super Mario World. Indeed. Maybe you can’t make a list without those games, without making people angry, but that’s something else. I also like that Kid Icarus Uprising is so high. That feels right because it’s a heart pick, but it’s a slightly less you heart. I mean, it’s a slightly broader heart pick than Wonderful 101, for example. Yes, I think that’s true. More agreed upon. When I was younger, I would have more aggressively pushed up Wonderful 101 and The Last Window and whatnot. But now I understand that it’s enough to get them in. Absolutely. That was a fun exercise, Matthew. So the three-part experiment of the top 50 Nintendo games comes to an end. Did you have a good time? I did have a good time and it really did take me back to doing these things on the magazines, like the conversations and the way that you get really granular with the games you have and then actually something can just come in that wasn’t even in consideration and end up really high. That happens a lot. It does. We didn’t think about Mario Wonder and the next thing you know, is Mario Wonder a bit low now and you’re like, well, we had a reason not to include it, but making the list, it locks you in to a certain mindset and you just begin to see the holes more clearly. You do, it’s true. Then it’s nice to challenge ourselves out of reverence for what are always the games to get picked in these things. It’s interesting because I think you could argue that 2D platformers get a slightly short shrift in this list, but I would also say that Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is a truly great agreed upon example of a fantastic modern 2D platformer. Then you have got a little dash of old Mario in there with Mario Bros 3. I think it just about holds together when you interrogate it from those different genre angles. There really is a bit of everything in there. I think it’ll probably be next year before we do another one of these. Do you have a preference on which we do next, Matthew? PlayStation, Xbox, PC? Whichever is most your home turf, I’d say. Yeah, I also don’t know because obviously I didn’t work on any Xbox or PlayStation Top 50 lists, or Top 100 lists that are easily comparable to this. So I don’t know if we hijack someone else’s list or we just remove that element from it. I don’t know. So maybe it’ll be a two-parter rather than a three-parter. But I’m not sure. We’ll think about that. In the meantime, people who support us on Patreon, on the Excel tier, patreon.com/backpagepod, can look forward to our Top 50 Nintendo third-party games coming in September. So that’s going to be a lot of fun, I think, going through those. So if you’ve enjoyed this exercise, you want it to keep going, you’ll get a little bit extra on that part. Who knows how long that will take to come up with. I think we’re going to come up with the Top 50 before we do that episode. So it’s not as much about- It’s not about the art of list-making, it’s the list itself. Exactly. I think it’s good because it means those games will get a good little bit of discussion. Whereas I think all these games individually have had a pretty decent run at it across the two episodes of us doing the long list and then the final list. So I think it’s just about you’ve got a bit of meat on the bones for each of the picks, which is good. Nothing else to really add Matthew, other than if you want to see this Top 50 list, I will include it in the Patreon post at patreon.com/backpagepod. You don’t need to log in or to be a paying subscriber to get it. It will just be like a free-to-view post, so you can just go click on it if you’d like to have that Top 50, just for your records or whatever. You can do that. I very much enjoyed this, Matthew. It’s been a good time. Where can people find you on social media? At mrbazzle underscore pesto and at mrbazzlepesto no underscore on blue sky. Brilliant. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on both those platforms as well. It’s backpagepod on Twitter. I’ve already mentioned the Patreon twice, I won’t do that. backpagegames.gmail.com if you’d like to email us. Matthew, it’s been fun. Let’s get out of here. Goodbye. Goodbye.