5 Best Nintendo Games Everyone Forgot

Nintendo has been one of the top game developers for the better part of five decades. Ever since the Nintendo Entertainment System launched in 1983 (1985 in North America), the company has been a consistent player in the market. Even when its consoles weren’t doing massive numbers (I’m looking at you, GameCube and Wii U), Nintendo has always churned out great games. That said, with so much quality coming out over the years, plenty of games have fallen through the cracks despite having that typical Nintendo charm. Among those games, a few stand out as the best games nobody really talks about anymore.

Here are the best Nintendo games that everyone forgot.

5) BoxBoy!

BoxBoy and its three sequels are some of the best puzzlers Nintendo has ever released. All four were made by HAL Labs, which is best known for the Kirby series, but has plenty of puzzle game bona fides in the form of Picross 3D (which, for the record, is Nintendo’s best puzzle game), so it’s not too surprising that they were able to put together such an imaginative game with BoxBoy.

It starts off relatively simple, but as you progress, the puzzles become true brain-teasers. You’ll need to use BoxBoy (whose government name is Qbby) to create boxes and get over, around, and through all of the obstacles. Future games expanded on those ideas, opening up even more possibilities for ingenious puzzle design. Hopefully, we see a fifth game from HAL sooner, rather than later.

4) Wave Race 64

Wave Race 64 was pitched by some at Nintendo as “F-Zero on water,” which makes sense. You can feel that sense of speed, and the colorful cast of characters definitely helped it stand out on the Nintendo 64. That said, the standout feature of Wave Race 64 was the water physics.

Nintendo painstakingly worked on the waves to make them actually impact gameplay. It’s not just a racing game that looks like it’s on the water; you’re literally racing on lifelike waves. That does give Wave Race 64 a decent learning curve, but it’s worth mastering so you can dominate your friends in the excellent multiplayer mode.

3) StarTropics

StarTropics was one of Genyo Takeda’s best works, which is saying something about the producer of Punch-Out!! and one of the lead developers behind the Wii. For StarTropics, Takeda worked as the producer, writer, and director, so it’d be fair to say that the action-adventure game was the developer’s baby.

Players control Mike Jones as he explores a large world filled with characters to meet. Mike uses a yo-yo in combat, though he can upgrade to various baseball-themed items as you progress. It’s kind of an evolution of the original The Legend of Zelda‘s combat, though A Link to the Past would come along soon after to show what a true evolution of Zelda looked like. Notably, StarTropics included a physical letter in its packaging, which you had to dip into water to reveal a secret code needed to progress. The ’90s were a different time.

2) ARMS

Nintendo tried to take its magic to the fighting genre with ARMS for the Switch. The 3D fighter lets up to four players duke it out with extendable Arms that let them close the distance between each other. Every character has its own special abilities, and you can equip new Arms for even more customization.

Unfortunately, the package around the gameplay was a little too slight to ever take off. If it had included more robust online multiplayer (part of that blame has to go to Nintendo’s weird stance on online in general), players might’ve stuck around longer. Unfortunately, we’ve never seen a second entry, which could’ve ironed out some issues and continued another great Nintendo series.

1) Golden Sun

Camelot Software Planning is best known for working on some of Nintendo’s best sports games. Between the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis series, Camelot has had a ton of hits, but its best game doesn’t have anything to do with sports.

When Camelot announced it was working on a medieval fantasy game on the Game Boy Advance, fans were likely taken aback. After all, its most recent releases were the first Mario Golf and Mario Tennis games. Thankfully, Camelot delivered, giving GBA players Golden Sun, one of the best RPGs of all time.

Even on the portable console, it looked phenomenal. The story had great character development, though it did rely on RPG tropes at times. Camelot made use of magic in combat and puzzle-solving, leading to excellent opportunities for exploration. And it ended on a cliffhanger that left players wanting more. Camelot delivered on that, too, with two solid sequels. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen Golden Sun since 2010, outside of cameos in Super Smash Bros.

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