First party nintendo games you didn't like?

[Manhattan Sports Club]

What first party Nintendo games for any system did you feel were not worth playing more than once, if at all?
They tend to have a great library so even the worst games are at least 'decent'.

I can say I honestly wasn't too flattered with Kirby's Air Ride. Such a long wait for a game that was mediocre at best.
I also don't care for any of the Mario Party series. That is one franchise Nintendo should give up entirely, if they haven't already.
Despite that recent thread bashing Super Mario Sunshine, I quite liked it. Not the killer app the Gamecube should've had, but I tend to enjoy most of the games in the Mario Bros. main series.

[The Adventurer]

Radar Scope wasn't that exciting.... :wink 2:

[Gameguy]

Off the top of my head, anything they made for the N64.

[The Adventurer]

Off the top of my head, anything they made for the N64.

lol. Okay. *snicker*




Honestly the only 'not very good first party N64 title that comes to mind is Kirby 64. Its just kind of... slow and plodding compared to other Kirby outings.

[Gameguy]

Are we going by first party published or first party developed? Kirby 64 was developed by HAL Laboratory, and it's not actually that bad for an N64 game though it is lacking compared to earlier titles. At least it kept a 2D plane rather than going full 3D.

I just never got into the Mario Party games and hated Super Mario 64, technically the Mario Party games were by Hudson soft so I don't know if they count anyway. Mario Kart 64 was decent but it's basically the same type of game as Super Mario Kart, only with using a terrible controller. With Super Smash Bros(by HAL so does it count?), I'd rather be playing a beat-em-up instead of a Street Fighter II knock off. Then there's the Pokémon games, 3D Zeldas, StarFox 64, Wave Race 64, 1080 Snowboarding, and Yoshi's Story. Overall, meh. StarFox 64 is probably the best of these but I still prefer the SNES version.

[kupomogli]

They tend to have a great library so even the worst games are at least 'decent'.

Depends on what you call decent. Or great for that matter. A long time ago you could have said that, but not now, far from it.

Outside of the depth of pvp, the Pokemon series has never been good. Around 20 hours single player each game, each of them with almost the same boring storyline, each of them with some brain dead easy difficulty gameplay where the first six Pokemon you find you could easily blow through the game sometimes finishing entire gyms with only one of those six Pokemon. It's only after the garbage single player that you can only get into the pvp but that's after putting as much time you put into single player to put into organizing a great party. This is of course if you want to guarantee you don't lose, what's the point in the pvp otherwise? In order to get to the only decent part of the game, you've got to easily put in 20 hours or more. Without the pvp these games would be complete ass yet these games regularly get rated in the high 80s or 90s while much better RPGs were panned for very minor faults on a regularly basis.

So Nintendo games I've played but didn't like.

Super Mario 64
Super Mario Kart series after the first. I liked the first game, but the later games penalize you for being a better player.
Pokemon series minus Pokemon Snap.
Animal Crossing
The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask, and Four Swords.
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime Hunters
Super Princess Peach
Pilotwings Resort
Yoshi's New Island
Tomodachi Life
Wii Sports

*edit*

Could be more but I can't think of them.

[Manhattan Sports Club]

I agree the N64 Kirby was slow, but I've just gotten around to playing it and am still enjoying it nonetheless. Not the best Kirby game in any regard, though.

I'm referring to both first party developed AND published. Nintendo usually only publishes stuff that they've had a hand in contracting. Anything they didn't mine as well have been theirs since they usually only accept candidates that they consider to be their own.

Kupomogli: Again, I find most of the ones you listed to be relatively decent. There's a few that are all-time favorites though like Mario 64.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember Geist or The Pokemon Channel? No one ever speaks positively about them, who actually remember them to begin with. As far as Pokemon goes, I do enjoy the games, but one of them in enough to have in your collection as they are all really similar.

Smash Bros. only sucks because in general it tends to be so addictive that you'll get absolutely sick of it eventually. That's why I sold my copies of the N64 original and the GC sequel. Never bought the Wii one.

StarFox Adventures comes to mind. It was decent as an action/adventure game but didn't really innovate in the genre. Not really worth playing more than once.

[Tupin]

Mario Party after 4 comes to mind.

[Tanooki]

I'm going to guess you mean 1st party developed, or at least 1st party mascot someone else worked on for them (IE: Kirby from HAL people bring up for N64.)

I have a nice little list of stuff. :)
- Zelda Majoras Mask - Truly awful, worst of the franchise - A quickly slapped together turd to extend the usefulness of the dying N64. The clock screws you over losing progress in areas and your goods if you don't bank them, most the masks are stupid time fillers to add hours onto the clock.
- Donkey Kong Land 1-3/Country GBC: They don't adjust the play to a square from rectangle screen, characters are larger than necessary, controls a little slippy, and too many leap of faith jumps making for stupid deaths and lack of room on screen to avoid stuff as you're big.
- Kirby's Canvas Curse (and let's throw upcoming WiiU sequel of that in) Awful-- touch controls are sketchy (no pun intended) and sloppy making it a hassle and not fun to play.
- Mario Party anything -- If you're playing this against AI, assume you'll lose as it's rigged to if it can't whip your ass, pull some magic star grab crap in the back end off one of their turns to make sure you lose. If playing with 4 people, it's all good.
- Zelda DS (both) Poor forced stylus controls causing unncessary rolling to death/hits issues, loose control due to it too, also horrid backtracking that's well beyond overkill
- Starfox DS Again poorly forced stylus control makes for painful flying at times, but the issue is the limited turns per map or you fail mixed with a fog of war and moving targets -- you can be perfect playing and still lose on the asinine map.
- New Super Mario Bros (All but WiiU) -- A mix of wonky floaty physics, boring ass generic platformer with Mario graphics thrown on them design, on the portables buying the right to save with coins which is idiotic for a handheld, and the original DS game hiding 2 full worlds if you don't take the alternative boss non-fight exit path.
- Wii Zelda - Both -- TP being a rushed GC port with questionable controls causing the game to be more difficult due to that, wolf didn't work well. And Skyward Sword being 1:1 was nice but it wears you out and both games had a large amount of retread over the same spots which tended to be sparse which got boring.
- Mario Kart Wii/DS - Ugh, heaps of online cheating and hacking to cheat, generic courses mostly. DS game on 150cc cheats in 1P mode to keep you in 2nd, AI in first, and all AI ignores #1 and attacks you which is lame. Wii one I just didn't like the bikes or the stages.

I don't really dislike the whole concept, just how they've handled it is Pokemon. You take a fun simple concept and turn it into a life and time sucking vortex making it where each little creature has to level up individually which takes a LONG time, and you need probably at least 10-12 due to various weaknesses each have to go through the game and you can only pocket a party of 6 so you do the math. 3DS fixed it nicely enough with the exp share option in the menu, but the game overall has not evolved so it's kind of stale. I keep FireRed around for a fix if needed. Animal Crossing can be hit for the same fault as they did so much on the GC game, then the DS and Wii titles were so freaking boring. The 3DS changed it up a bit but there's only so much you can do.

[theclaw]

SNES Star Fox. Early 3D can be novel looking. But the framerate and hit detection, or something, throws me off.

Mario Pinball Land. Too much trial and error.

Advance Wars Days of Ruin. Not as entertaining to play, or my kind of soundtrack.
I'll give them credit for cutting back excessive powers/units and number of characters. Still I think I'd have liked a throwback in the story somewhere.

Animal Crossing Wild World. Could've been optimized better. The boring dialogue font took away much of the series' intended feel.

[PizzaKat]

Mario 64. Never played it on release. Played it a few years ago. Just plain sucks. Hate the controller an makes everything annoying. The legend of zelda NES never impressed me. I remember renting that. Love the 2nd though. Mario kart 64 is jus plain terrible. Never liked it

[kai123]

Mario Kart. I only enjoy the SNES and Gamecube one these days. The AI drives me insane (get it?). I also think a lot of the hate that I have for most of the more popular Nintendo titles are from the fans of those games. If you criticize any part of the games you get a million messages about how you have no idea what you are talking about.

[Leo_A]

I've never played any of the Mario sports titles, but have a suspicion that I'd enjoy them.

But one I've tried and know isn't for me, is Super Smash Brothers. Just not a fan of fighters, even with a healthy dose of Nintendo nostalgia everywhere you look.

And one I've never tried, but I'm certain isn't for me, is the Pokemon franchise. Beyond five minutes taking pictures in Pokemon Snap, I have np experience with this series and no urge to rectify that. And viewing video of Earthbound was enough to convince me that it wasn't for me.


Off the top of my head, anything they made for the N64.

F-Zero X and Star Fox 64 kind of disappointed me, but in general, I loved their output during the N64 years. GameCube had many more misses for me than the N64 did.

[Tanooki]

I think the misses increase with age. As the franchises converted to 3D and then felt the need to be more splashy but ever so changing very little as to not offend the big fanboy pool they've become very stale and played out, and then you have some odd run of Nintendo laziness in testing the last generation and this making the issues even more obvious. Throw down a good franchise and then force incompetent gimmick only control options which would wreck and otherwise very cool title and I can totally see where the hatred comes from in increasing numbers from non-kids players who have experienced their stuff over a longer period of time. Notice how much of the complaints have been from their 3D capable systems.

[Leo_A]

I'm not seeing that discontent from long-time fans. Hard to imagine a fan of platforming Mario titles not getting a big kick out of Super Mario 3D World, for instance. A game such as that is quality through and through.

I know you've become a disgruntled Nintendo fan, but I'm confident that most long-time fans of Nintendo don't take much issue with their internal game development, a resource that is responsible for them still being a player here despite so many other issues.

These skills are why folks still pay attention despite the near absence of 3rd party support, primitive online integration, and many other problems. If the typical long-time Nintendo fan has any issue with it, it's when a favorite franchise like Metroid isn't given the attention they'd desire.

And your control complaints have some merit, but is largely an issue of the past. 3DS and Wii U don't cram touch and motion control down your throat. And Nintendo was already largely remedying this well before the DS and Wii were even phased out. When these control elements remain, chances are, it's because it complements rather than detracts.

And frequently, a 100% traditional control option remains as frequently seen in many 1st party Wii U releases despite the presence of motion and touch control.

Nintendo gets a lot wrong, but what they don't get wrong is the output from their top internal development teams.

[SpaceHarrier]

Yoshi's Story

Easy, uninspired, boring.

[Leo_A]

And such a missed opportunity after Yoshi's Island...

[Tanooki]

Leo I think you're misreading me. I'm talking beyond the confines of this board too. For people who started out before the N64 I'm finding an increase in the amount of people who have more issues with the later stuff is all. I never said a bad thing about Super Mario 3D World (or 3D Land) I like them a great bit, my only gripe is the star system having to grab enough to keep playing but that goes back to Mario 64. You're right that they do more good than harm to their franchises still, and for those who get the stuff now as their first or second system odds are they're even more pleased as anyone would at a younger age too.

I know my gripes of the Wii and DS releases were of the past, that's why you saw me single that out and not go after the WiiU or 3DS releases. They learned that was for the most part a stupid move, but they'll still do it a bit but it will be a design choice, not shoehorning forced usage, like the Kirby Canvas Curse sequel. I wouldn't touch that if i were paid to, hated the DS game that much, but others loved having a lack of control other than doodling, it just wasn't for me. That game the stylus as you put it compliments it, but with the dual Zelda DS releases and the Wii games too, they weren't much of a compliment and greatly a detriment to playing the games (not so much Skyward Sword, but the others definitely.) I can't say I'd give them a blank slate of approval though on their internal development (1st/2nd party) as they do foul up, or at least misjudge the market, but it's like a once a year thing among many projects, not a consistent trail of failure or they'd be finished.

I agree on the Yoshis Story being poor, just didn't want to pick on the obviously super short and flat game that it was, but I think I saw people(never touched it) saying the DS release of Yoshis Island was even worse and just straight boring. I had Touch N Go for awhile, and for a tech demo turned game it was fairly fun.

[Leo_A]

Again, too bad, too. Take Nintendo's development skills, the framework that Yoshi's Island provided that had just came out a couple of years or so prior, their 2D platforming prowess in general, the power of the Nintendo 64, a game engine that seemed very capable, and the system's fine d-pad and it should've been a recipe for the greatest 2D platformer of the late 1990's and a contender for all-time. Instead, it's a dud.

That said, I thought Yoshi's Island DS was excellent. The innovation of switching babies didn't add anything, but it also didn't detract. And otherwise, they stuck extremely close to the template established by the original. If I had any criticism for it, it's that it seemed to be only about 2/3's the length of the original.

I think people criticized it simply for the lack of innovation, not that it wasn't a good game. Take it as a sort of level pack for the original and it's largely excellent.

Yoshi's New Island on the other hand is a definite C.


I'm talking beyond the confines of this board too.

So was I...

[kupomogli]

I'm not seeing that discontent from long-time fans. Hard to imagine a fan of platforming Mario titles not getting a big kick out of Super Mario 3D World, for instance. A game such as that is quality through and through.

A lot of us are the long time fans. Those of us who played NES and SNES when it was new moved onto PSX/N64 and beyond which is when the quality started to drop. I still play their portables, because these have some mostly third party games I'm interested in. Some of their yearly/bi yearly first party titles like Super Mario 3D Land/World good, most aren't. Imo, Nintendo's best games aren't their constant rehashes, but some of the games they don't frequently revisit, games like Advance Wars, 2D Metroid, and Fire Emblem, and Fire Emblem has been getting worse and worse each release so I've heard. I'm playing Awakening now, haven't played anything since Sacred Stones and I think it's a lot less enjoyable.

[Leo_A]

I don't really agree with that, but I agree about it being unfortunate that some of their more overlooked franchises continually are ignored.

I think it's just a consequence of their business situation. Without much in the way of outside support on both the Wii U and the 3DS, they try to focus on the projects that offer the most bang for the buck. Right or wrong (I'd argue the latter), they go after the projects with the widest appeal.

I think they're the worst off for it.

[Tanooki]

I agree with that last post entirely. They have a nice list of stuff going back to the NES if not earlier they just seem to have no interest in tapping into other than Smash Bros trophies that could be made or remade into some excellent stuff. There hasn't been much of a Road Rage type bike smash up game in awhile and with them owning Mach Rider, it could be a game to exploit. With that tablet game everyone called a 2D/3D knockoff of Excitebike, it could be a great game to properly revisit, just not like how they did on N64 that tanked. They have the NES Remix packages, how about a black box package for the 3DS and WiiU, even the light game guns could be tapped out or on WiiU using the Wii controller (which is happening shortly with Duck Hunt NES.) Even within that NES package I'm thinking of, they could ape their own Game & Watch releases and have a modern version right next to a clasisic cart. Imagine a 3D/2D Balloon Fight and Kung Fu. They have a lot they could tap that's been long left in the dust. Custom Robo, Advance Wars, F-Zero, all pretty dead since the Gamecube days and flat Metroid since the GBA titles.

They're very much worse off for it walking the fine super similar line of rehash hell that wears people out. Various franchises just seem to be bleeding interest, few can get away with it yearly outside of the EA junk with new rosters or Call of Duty with the new coat of paint to that.

[calgon]

The number of bad Zeldas now outnumber the good ones in my opinion

[Tanooki]

I'm curious what your good to bad list on that is, and do you including the mostly junk Capcom (as Flagship) released on handhelds as then I'd understand it. I'd like to compare lists to see if they line up.

[Tupin]

Whoa, the Capcom Zelda games were amazing. What are you talking about?

[calgon]

I'm curious what your good to bad list on that is, and do you including the mostly junk Capcom (as Flagship) released on handhelds as then I'd understand it. I'd like to compare lists to see if they line up.

Well I think most of us can agree that the "essentials" are the original, adventure of link, links awakening, link to the past and ocarina of time

Outside of that essential list, there's not a single entry that lives up to the quality of the above. Wind waker is tricky because I know it has a rabid fan-base but I just don't get any joy out of the fetch quests, sailing and linear story.

The second batch of gameboy color games are nothing more than average and lack the charm of the originals. Minish cap never clicked with me and I never got far into it to be honest.

Twilight princess was sadly a repeat offender doing little more than a playable wolf character as its sole innovation. Skyward sword was terrible and the less said the better.

I'm neutral on majoras mask

[calgon]

I'm curious what your good to bad list on that is, and do you including the mostly junk Capcom (as Flagship) released on handhelds as then I'd understand it. I'd like to compare lists to see if they line up.

Oops forgot to add the two DS games which I consider pretty poor based on the general lack of quality

[Tanooki]

I can kind of see that. I think of Wind Waker as an essential too, more than Ocarina as it does far more right than Ocarina does, but I get why some detest the slow sailing but the WiiU version fixes up the issues.

The only portable Zelda I ever really loved enough to finish was Links Awakening/DX. The other two on GBC I found fairly poor, and a big issue was that they were obscenely linear to the point some places had you feeling like you had to walk a one Link wide path (and in little spots you did) and the annoying level of backtracking in some dungeons like the one with the rail car was over the top. The other 'good' unique handheld one was Minish Cap but I did get bored of it about 2/3 into it, and I'm excluding the SNES re-release there.

Majora we've seen me tear into, not going to re-run that one. Twilight was awful on Wii with sketchy controls that bogged down play or just sucked, and glitched on the wolf. The GC version was tolerable but had so much boring empty areas to run across, it was like a soulless Ocarina other than the gloomy story bits, and saving was a SNES era throwback so if you didn't hit a cave/town(door) you'd lose your work so I quit on that one due to lack of time to do that. Skyward Sword was alright, tiring in longer plays and the re-run over areas and the annoyance factor of the collection in it got on my nerves and I never felt compelled to do more than around a little over 1/2 of it.

The DS games I already ripped on, over the top re-run dungeon in the first, the other to a lesser degree, and really poor forced stylus play. The 3DS game is SNES like, admirable with that, but I for one dislike open world games as I hate not having a sene of direction, I'm not in elementary school or some dateless teen who can sit around for dozens of hours and bumble to the next place and that in itself scares me that the WiiU game is supposed to be even more open so odds are great I'll pass on it. Zelda has been a downward spiral for me after the climaxing quality of Wind Waker on the Cube (and WiiU remaster.)

[LaughingMAN.S9]

If it isn't zelda, Mario or star fox related, i don't give a fuck about it


Smash bros, Pokemon, metroid, fire emblem, wario, Kirby etc etc, they can all go to hell. Just not my bag

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

I was never over-the-moon about Dr. Mario. It's alright, I guess, but if Mario wasn't in it at all it'd just be another random puzzle game on NES like Palamedes that no one cares about. Palamedes is better, imo.

I'm also not crazy about Skyward Sword, although I have not beaten it, I didn't find the story to be that appealing in the beginning, and I just find the graphics to be a little off. Idk why, he doesn't look like Link, he looks weird and it unsettles me. I'll play more and give it another chance, though.

I also don't like Super Mario Land 3 at all. Wario is the clunkiest character ever. He's good in Wario Land Shake it, but SML 3 on Gameboy, ughhhhhhh.

I've never been crazy about the DK country games, I just find DK to be a little slow also as a platforming character, but I can appreciate the games, and will probably give these more of a chance.

I did enjoy Kirby 64, but it doesn't feel like a Kirby game, so much as it just looks and feels like an N64 game, and even though it has the same gameplay mechanics as the older ones, they just look sooo much better on SNES, and play much better, also. For what Kirby 64 is, it is good, but I'd just much rather play the NES/SNES Kirby games. I would love to get Kirby's Dreamland 3 if it wasn't so damn expensive, cuz imo that game looks way better than Kirby 64.

[Tanooki]

Super Mario Land 3 was a kick in the nuts to me when I got it. I hadn't read up on the game in any magazines and though Wario played a bigger role, but didn't know they were like Non-Super Mario World 2 was just using a game to sell a lie to consumers. It should have straight up been called Wario Land, as the other should just have been Yoshis Island. Very disappointing tactic when you're a kid on a budget and in the pre-internet days.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

Super Mario Land 3 was a kick in the nuts to me when I got it. I hadn't read up on the game in any magazines and though Wario played a bigger role, but didn't know they were like Non-Super Mario World 2 was just using a game to sell a lie to consumers. It should have straight up been called Wario Land, as the other should just have been Yoshis Island. Very disappointing tactic when you're a kid on a budget and in the pre-internet days.

Super Mario Land 2 was awesome though

[The Adventurer]

Super Mario Land 3 was a kick in the nuts to me when I got it. I hadn't read up on the game in any magazines and though Wario played a bigger role, but didn't know they were like Non-Super Mario World 2 was just using a game to sell a lie to consumers. It should have straight up been called Wario Land, as the other should just have been Yoshis Island. Very disappointing tactic when you're a kid on a budget and in the pre-internet days.

You didn't notice WARIO LAND and YOSHI'S ISLAND being bigger and bolder then the Mario Land or Mario World (Yoshi Island is only called Mario World 2 in North America I think) titles?


Also Wario Land is the BEST of the GB Mario Lands. Mario Land 2 is decent, but probably objectively bad when looked at carefully.

[Tanooki]

I noticed them sure, but at the same time was not expecting a 100% fake title with the subtitle being the real game having basically nothing to do stylistically with the franchise it's aping. I thought Wario Land was terrible compared to Mario Land 2 and I did finish it and other than a little time on WL4 with a cheap cart I came across I've avoided buying the things as they're not fun to me (have played 2-3 using an emulator in the 90s.) As to the other I'm actually not a fan of Yoshis Island. I've tried to make myself like the series and each time I buy the game I rapidly lose interest and get sick of it, not bored, just sick of it. For some reason I keep the original around, probably since it was something I blew money on back when it was new, but out of no sense of nostalgic loyalty.