What is the worst Nintendo game?

[Big Finger Jim]

I know it's not developed by them, but I would genuinely rather go through that Kaiji fingernail torture than ever experience Xenoblade 2 again.

 

[Max]

It could possibly be Pokémon Scarlet/Purple or Legends ZA
Both are practically unplayable and I'm sorry but I don't play games for the memes or the asses.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Pokemon, take your pick.
They all suck.

I disagree about Gen 1&2 sucking though.

Nor
Mystery Dungeon (at least the GBA/DS ones).

I know it's not developed by them, but I would genuinely rather go through that Kaiji fingernail torture than ever experience Xenoblade 2 again.

Kaiji mentioned!

I wasn't interested in any of the Xeno games but I heard Gears was great.

 

[χKai]

I disagree about Gen 1&2 sucking though.

I don't care
I didn't say it to have others agree or disagree, just to state my observation and move on.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I disagree about Gen 1&2 sucking though.

Nor
Mystery Dungeon (at least the GBA/DS ones).


Kaiji mentioned!

I wasn't interested in any of the Xeno games but I heard Gears was great.

I haven't played much of Gears, but from what I remember, it was pretty good.

 

[blahbleh]

sonic 1 port on gba

 

[PhantomTohsaka]

sonic 1 port on gba

It's pretty impressive that Sega not only made two games which were terrible (Sonic 06 and Sonic and the secret rings) but also made one of the worst ports of all time. Sonic's 15th anniversary is one of the anniversaries of all time.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

It's pretty impressive that Sega not only made two games which were terrible (Sonic 06 and Sonic and the secret rings) but also made one of the worst ports of all time. Sonic's 15th anniversary is one of the anniversaries of all time.

This may explain why people mostly want to talk about Sonic Riders.

 

[What's His Face]

Just going by games Nintendo developed (as opposed to published), I gotta go with:

• Noughts & Crosses (Super Famicom) - It's Tic-Tac-Toe!
• Urban Champion (NES) - It's ass!
• Gumshoe (NES) - It's boring!
• Nintendo Badge Arcade (3DS) - It's...a bloody virtual crane game?!

 

[strawberry29]

in my opinion (please don't hate me) earthbound

now give me a min : earthbound?! REALLY?!

i played earthbound 4 times and trust me i sleep everytime i play it from how boring it is and it's not that good. not even the beginning makes you wanna go forward. i also seen the ending and the last boss fight and ngl i pissed myself and that's what made me hate the game. i personally wish they didn't include it into the SNES mini that i used to own 3 years ago

 

[Cheeks]

I don't know about the worst game, but my worst experience is Pokémon Ultra Sun. It's a remix that introduced so little and accomplished nothing to advance the game's setting or story. It was such a bad experience it turned me off from the franchise until Legends Arceus came around, and even then it felt like a one-off experience that Nintendo would never replicate. Given the company's BS as of late, I have no interest in trying out Legends ZA.

 

[semyaza]

I know it's not developed by them, but I would genuinely rather go through that Kaiji fingernail torture than ever experience Xenoblade 2 again.

 

[Blue Buddha]

I'll assume worst Nintendo game as in worst game to be released exclusively on Nintendo hardware (in its original incarnation, not accounting for later port jobs) rather than just purely games made by Nintendo and associated devs.

It's hard to definitely state what the worst Nintendo game is on the whole, since I try to avoid playing a lot of obviously awful garbage I know I won't like going in (as a random example, a lot of the various licensed film tie-ins on the NES, or all those Mario sports games from the last 15 years or so). A lot of them are just mediocre and uninteresting or offer nothing particularly unique to justify putting them over other installments of the series they're part of moreso than they are outright poorly conceived or incompetent.

I think the Nintendo game I like the least out of the one's I've played is probably Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All. Unbelievable step down from the first game in almost every aspect. Weak music, less murders to solve, writing (especially character writing) is a lot lamer, and the main prosecutor during trials is so one-note and cartoonish that she becomes almost impossible to take seriously. The game doesn't really succeed at anything it's trying to do.

As far as big flagship Nintendo series' go, the worst of those games I've played is almost certainly F-Zero: Maximum Velocity on the GBA, that game feels and looks absolutely dire. It's not even a hardware issue because you can look at F-Zero Climax on the same system and it runs leaps and bounds over that game in just about every way imaginable.

 

[NeonKnights]

Metroid Prime. Worst for the unknown to me, non saving checkpointless beginning section. (I have played most of the 2D games though I perfectly missed all the prime games because we had a PS2, except for Prime 3 which I played shortly after release at a GameStop in the mall while my gf was shopping. ) Played Prime for the first time on GameCube yesterday (It's been on my backlog for quite some time.) and didn't know about not being able to save until after escaping the station. This was also poorly telegraphed as I would not have even tried the game at that time if I knew this in advance. I was taking my time reading all the scannable tags and enjoying the fine graphical details and learning the controls. I beat the queen boss and was down to 15 or so health and turned a corner and got taken out by a space pirate after a short firefight. Metroid Rage. That should be the name of a rom hack. Once I knew I was playing by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rules I blasted through the entire section quickly with absolutely no respect for the level design or the unskippable cutscenes. I was finally able to save and spent the rest of the day playing Zelda. The NieR: Automata intro was better.

My real answer is still "Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast".

 

[TechBlisSTer]

Super Mario Wonder

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Super Mario Wonder

Hahaha!


You were joking right?

 

[starseeker300]

Paper Mario Sticker Star and Color Splash, enough has been said about these already so imma keep it brief, did away with both mechanics of previous games making it too braindead and in the first one actively incentivizing the player to not participate in combat. as well as replacing unique and varied character designs with more generic ones

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

While I'm not sure if it's the WORST Nintendo game ever made, Star Fox Zero hurt me. I have deep nostalgia for Star Fox, 64 in particular, and I went into Zero full of hopes and excitement and left devastated.

The most frustrating part is that it could've been good if it wasn't trying to justify the use of the Wii U gamepad so hard, and I feel that wasted potential is far worse then no potential as far as bad games go.
It's one of the biggest disappointments in my lifetime of playing games.

 

[starseeker300]

I know it's not developed by them, but I would genuinely rather go through that Kaiji fingernail torture than ever experience Xenoblade 2 again.

out of curiosity, what specifically did you hate about it?

cause personally i found the gameplay mildly enjoyable, though torna the golden country's is much better, and absolutely despised the story and half the main cast to the point that i wanted malos and jin to win

 

[PhantomTohsaka]

While I'm not sure if it's the WORST Nintendo game ever made, Star Fox Zero hurt me. I have deep nostalgia for Star Fox, 64 in particular, and I went into Zero full of hopes and excitement and left devastated.

The most frustrating part is that it could've been good if it wasn't trying to justify the use of the Wii U gamepad so hard, and I feel that wasted potential is far worse then no potential as far as bad games go.
It's one of the biggest disappointments in my lifetime of playing games.

I think the circumstances around the game definitely made the worst Nintendo game of all time, alongside that StarFox 64 3D was on the 3ds.

 

[petran79]

Metroid Prime. Worst for the unknown to me, non saving checkpointless beginning section. (I have played most of the 2D games though I perfectly missed all the prime games because we had a PS2, except for Prime 3 which I played shortly after release at a GameStop in the mall while my gf was shopping. ) Played Prime for the first time on GameCube yesterday (It's been on my backlog for quite some time.) and didn't know about not being able to save until after escaping the station. This was also poorly telegraphed as I would not have even tried the game at that time if I knew this in advance. I was taking my time reading all the scannable tags and enjoying the fine graphical details and learning the controls. I beat the queen boss and was down to 15 or so health and turned a corner and got taken out by a space pirate after a short firefight. Metroid Rage. That should be the name of a rom hack. Once I knew I was playing by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rules I blasted through the entire section quickly with absolutely no respect for the level design or the unskippable cutscenes. I was finally able to save and spent the rest of the day playing Zelda. The NieR: Automata intro was better.

My real answer is still "Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast".

Gamecube did not get Alien vs Predator 2 unfortunately, so Prime was heralded as the FPS of the future

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

alongside that StarFox 64 3D was on the 3ds.

Why?

 

[PhantomTohsaka]

Why?

Think about it, Nintendo had little to show for the Wii U, while it had good games that wasn't even enough to show, The game also had terrible controls and even if you get used to the controls the short is short and you'll just be done with the game at that point. And on top of that Nintendo handcuffed Platinum games into making them integrate forced Wii U gamepad controls unnecessary into the game.

Side note: There's little reason to even revisit this game because well the story is just StarFox 64 again and the StarFox 64 3D is just a lot better.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Think about it, Nintendo had little to show for the Wii U, while it had good games that wasn't even enough to show, The game also had terrible controls and even if you get used to the controls the short is short and you'll just be done with the game at that point. And on top of that Nintendo handcuffed Platinum games into making them integrate forced Wii U gamepad controls unnecessary into the game.

Side note: There's little reason to even revisit this game because well the story is just StarFox 64 again and the StarFox 64 3D is just a lot better.

Ah, my bad I thought you said that SF64 3D was also terrible.

On the other hand I do agree that making yet another reboot/retelling of the original SNES game is already tiring. I am also tired of seeing Andross alive yet again when he came back for Starfox 2, Starfox 64 and Starfox Adventure already, give some new villains or something.

SF Zero could've been a prequel with James...

 

[Big Finger Jim]

out of curiosity, what specifically did you hate about it?

cause personally i found the gameplay mildly enjoyable, though torna the golden country's is much better, and absolutely despised the story and half the main cast to the point that i wanted malos and jin to win

The combat wasn't the worst I've ever played, and yes, it was better in Torna, and I thought the actual level design and how you can find stuff in these little nooks and crannies was well enough done. Everything else, though. went from passable to liquid feces. I usually try to do as much as I can in a game before finishing it so I can get the fullest experience, but this is one of the few games that I just gave up on with that. Having to swap my party around to do anything, in combination with the whole rng based crystal system and having to grind so much to get rare blades with specific skills was so god damn tedious and horrible to the point where I just went absolute ape shit at one point and started yelling at the screen. I completely agree with the writing, too. It's mid as fuck, and other than maybe the whole concept of Blades, everything it tries to do I have seen done better in other pieces of fiction. But I think the absolute most damning thing for the story and characters is the voice acting. There is not one performance where I thought to myself "Shit, they actually did decent for this game", no, it was all dull as a wooden plank. Even with mediocre writing, a good, passionate performance can win me over, but this game has neither good writing nor voice acting.

I was willing to defend this game at first, and my opinion wasn't influenced by some youtube video or some shit saying that it was bad. Actually, it was quite the opposite. I was told it sucked by a guy I trust while I was still very early in the game, but I still kept a positive view on it despite that. Then I heard it a masterpiece by so many people, and my hopes got even higher. I was told it gets good later, but it never did, and I only got more and more sick of the game's bullshit. I get the whole "decent gameplay but great story" bit, trust me, my second favorite game is Red Dead 2, BUT BOTH HALVES OF XENOBLADE 2 ARE DOG WATER. I've had such a god awful experience with this game that I have little to no interest in playing 3, despite it being downloaded on my Switch for half a year by now.

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2025

Sorry for the absolute wall of text, but Jesus fucking Christman, man, this game...