Rating Nintendo’s 2024, Switch games and announcements

It’s another year in the books for Nintendo Switch, and for what is most likely the console’s final stretch, it wasn’t quite as empty as people were expecting. We had many prolific releases, from Zelda to Mario to Mario to Mario. Okay, it was mostly Mario, but between a new Mario Party title and the first entry in the Mario & Luigi series in over ten years, there was a lot to love in 2024. We’re going over all of Nintendo’s news, announcements, and games from this year and asking you the question: how would you rate Nintendo’s 2024 on a scale of 1-10?

2024 started off rather slow. In the early months of the year, we got Another Code: Recollection, a pair of remakes from the Nintendo DS and Wii. We also got both Golden Sun and its sequel on Nintendo Switch Online, which is one of the only acknowledgments the series has had outside of Super Smash Bros. for several years. Later on in February, we received a full remake of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong on Game Boy Advance. In a way, this was an odd release: Game Boy Advance on Nintendo Switch Online is still missing a fair few notable titles, and you could have just added Mario vs. DK to that service to pad it out a little. But Nintendo went with a $50 remake instead, which means we likely won’t be seeing the original version of the game anytime soon. For what it was, the remake turned out just fine – but the high price tag made it a tough sell for some. At the very end of February, a Pokemon Presents revealed the new Pokemon Legends: Z-A for Nintendo Switch. At the time of writing, we have not heard a single additional tidbit about the game. Hopefully that means development is going smoothly.

March was a rather quiet month for Nintendo, all things considered, but there were a few happenings regardless. Starting off with Mar10 Day, we got a release date for the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie – April 3, 2026. We also received release dates for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which we’ll cover in just a bit. Towards the end of the month, Princess Peach: Showtime released, marking the first game to star Peach as the main playable character since Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS many years ago. The game was generally received decently well. Its developer, Good-Feel, is known for strong aesthetics and visual presentations, and that’s absolutely the case here as well. Its gameplay was criticized as a bit shallow, but that’s to be expected given that it was likely released to capitalize on The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Surprisingly, the game often dropped frames and stuttered a little bit, which also drew some criticism at the time. April was almost entirely uneventful for Nintendo; in fact, arguably the only thing that happened was the shutdown of online services for the 3DS and Wii U. We wrote up a list of the best 3DS games of all time in case you’re looking to revisit some old favorites.

May was fairly eventful in terms of releases, but the early part of the month marked a very important announcement – the announcement of the announcement of the Nintendo Switch’s successor. At the time of writing, Switch 2 still has not been revealed or officially named, but this moment did confirm that Nintendo would preview its new hardware by March 2025. Fans have been discussing and spreading rumors about Nintendo’s next hardware since 2021 (when it was the Switch Pro instead of the Switch 2), and this was finally confirmation that we’d be seeing it sooner than later. The big release this month was the full remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, something fans had wanted for a long time. And it delivered in just about every way – the gameplay carried over perfectly, the art style received a huge upgrade, and it even received some minor extra content. It was incredibly well-received, and is quite possibly Nintendo’s best game of 2024. Endless Ocean: Luminous also released this month, sporting a neat visual style. Unfortunately, it didn’t review very well; it was criticized for basic and (ironically) shallow gameplay that didn’t provide a ton of interesting content. We haven’t heard much about this game since.

June saw the release of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, a faithful remake of the Nintendo 3DS original. This was likely done for some “popular variance” in 2024 – lots of releases this year were Mario or Mario-related. Mario vs. Donkey Kong gave DK the spotlight, Princess Peach: Showtime gave Peach the spotlight, and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD gave everyone’s favorite green plumber another shot in the limelight. Overall, this is a very competent remake – if you liked the original, you’re just about guaranteed to like this version, too. The base Luigi’s Mansion 2 is often regarded as the weakest in the trilogy, but it’s not bad by any means – the mission-based structure separates the gameplay into 20-30 minute bursts, which some players like and others don’t. There’s also the ScareScraper, which offers extra multiplayer content for those looking to take a break from the main story. The remake did a good job at updating the graphics to HD while almost perfectly retaining Luigi’s Mansion 2’s art style. A Nintendo Direct did happen in June, which focused on game announcements for the latter half of the year. For being one of the Switch’s last years, it was surprisingly packed – the presentation announced Mario & Luigi: Brothership, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, and even gave a look at the highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

In July, we got Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a game that revolved around clearing mini-challenges in a variety of different NES games. It’s a fun time, especially in local multiplayer, where you can have multiple players on the same screen competing in the same challenge. That said, the game didn’t have a ton of longevity; there was no way to play online directly against other players and once you finished all the challenges, there wasn’t much replay value other than going for high scores. We’re not sure how many players like going for high scores as a game’s main form of replayability, which probably explains why we haven’t heard much discussion about this game since it came and went in July earlier this year. Still, it was not a bad release, and with a price tag of $30 instead of $60, it was more affordable.

Two big things happened in August: the release of Emio – The Smiling Man, a brand-new game in the Famicom Detective Club series, and the release of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team on Nintendo Switch Online. In contrast to some of the other titles that released in 2024, a lot of players still talk about Emio – The Smiling Man, and some even consider it Nintendo’s strongest release of the year. It was revealed via a vague marketing campaign that caught players’ interests, although many thought it was Nintendo teasing an original horror game rather than a visual novel. Still, Emio – The Smiling Man turned out good and reviewed well, and all in all it’s one of Nintendo’s more discussed games of the year.

Moving into the last quarter of the year, September saw the release of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. This is the first original Zelda game the developer Grezzo has ever produced, and it’s a really solid entry in the series. It uses the same general art style as the studio’s Link’s Awakening remake, and this time around, you play as Zelda instead of Link. You can copy objects and enemies and then summon them to work for you, which created some interesting gameplay loops and scenarios. Echoes of Wisdom has a solid story, very high-quality graphics, a great overworld design (though it is at least partially copied from A Link to the Past, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), and unique gameplay. Like many other Switch titles in 2024, however, it does suffer from frame drops and occasional lag. We also got Splatoon 3’s Grand Festival, which even featured a completely unique venue and some of the best soundtrack the series has ever seen.

October marked an interesting occasion: the release of the Nintendo Music app for Nintendo Switch Online members, which is the first time Nintendo has allowed players to stream video game music directly. The app has been fairly positively received overall, and it is updated with a new game just about every week. Some fans don’t like the drip-feed of new music, which is totally understandable – but pair that with Nintendo Switch Online receiving new games on a regular basis and you’ve at least got some minor announcements to look forward to now and then. Perhaps more importantly, though, we got Super Mario Party Jamboree, which many have regarded as the best Mario Party title in years. It includes seven boards to play on, which is two more than in Mario Party Superstars and three more than in Super Mario Party. There’s also a great character selection, tons of game modes to choose from, and a solid party mode. Since there are so many game modes, however, there are relatively less mini-games to choose from in party mode. This means you’ll generally get some of the same mini-games over and over again. That’s really the only noticeable flaw with this game, though, and it reviewed very well overall.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership released in November of this year, and it’s the first new entry in the series in almost ten years. It has a gorgeous art style, with expressive visuals and animations that really catch your eye. Its pacing is a bit slow and the technical performance leaves a lot to be desired (especially in the endgame), but overall it’s a return to form for the series. We’re really looking forward to the next Mario & Luigi game, whenever that is, now that Brothership has set the standard for full 3D entries in the series. November also marked the end of official support for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which ran for over half a decade. It did receive a Complete Edition that removed microtransactions, however, so the game lives on. December marked the release of Fitness Boxing 3 as well as the opening of the Donkey Kong Country expansion in Super Nintendo World Japan – that hasn’t come to the United States yet, but will at some point.

And that’s where we are right now! The only games with definitive release dates from here on out are Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, the latter of which was revealed via a surprise announcement on social media not too long ago. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokemon Legends: Z-A are still on the horizon as well, but without defined launch timing. We’re also going to be hearing about Nintendo’s next hardware by March 2025, and possibly even earlier depending on how things go. For being the Switch’s last year as Nintendo’s main console, we think 2024 wasn’t too bad. Though there were long periods where not much happened, we did get some good releases especially in the latter half of the year.

How would you rate Nintendo’s 2024 on a scale of 1 to 10? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below.