Top 20 Worst Nintendo Games of All Time

“Paper Mario” fans are a passionate bunch. But ask any one of them about “Sticker Star,” and they’ll condemn it to the depths of the underworld. The biggest problem was the change in progression. Since Mario no longer earned XP through combat, there was really no point in fighting enemies. Instead, you earned more health, power, and different attacks by collecting and using stickers. Yeah, not exactly an exciting gameplay loop. There was also the lack of unique party companions from previous games, making the overall story and world duller. While it still had the same visual charm, playing through this one was a slog.

“Fatal Frame” is one of the most respected survival horror franchises around, that we hope will one day make a comeback. So long as it isn’t anything like this gimmicky spin-off. “Spirit Camera” was built around the use of the 3DS’ AR mode. Using the feature with the franchise’s signature camera obscura mechanic to see ghosts was a neat spin. However, technical issues held it back, and being forced to constantly move around in order to see anything was awkward. Plus, the short length of its story, which wasn’t all that interesting to begin with, and the fact that you needed to be in a well-lit environment for the AR to even work, made it far less frightening than it should have been.

If you wanna know how bad “Wii Music” really was, we’d point you all the way back to the game’s debut at E3 2008. Yeah, this game was about as disastrous as that. Attempting to capture the same success as “Wii Sports”, Nintendo tried making “Wii Music” a music simulator, for lack of a better phrase. All you had to do was imitate the movements of playing a real instrument, and you’ll sound like a real musician in very little time! ...Well, that was the idea. More often than not, you’d wind up sounding like Squidward Tentacles. With a ludicrous price tag of fifty bucks, you may as well buy a real instrument and try to teach yourself.

2016 marked six years since we last saw Samus (the last game being 2010’s “Other M”), which is part of what made “Federation Force” even more infuriating. Rather than giving us a sequel or even a remake, Nintendo shelled out this multiplayer game for the 3DS. Much like “The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes”, the entire game was designed around multiple players, making it impossible to play solo. The kicker here was that you don’t even play as Samus, but as generic space marines! Reception for the game was so bad that it never broke top-selling charts and failed to outperform 3DS titles that were released prior. Might be safe to call “Federation Force” a total commercial failure.

Forgive us; you’ll see “Pokémon” pop up a few times here, since the series has seen more than its fair share of crummy spin-offs. One of the earliest was “Hey You, Pikachu!,” a virtual pet game starring the franchise’s mascot. Even taking into account that it was geared towards younger players, the premise is utterly boring. Players would spend time yelling into the microphone, which came packaged with the game, just to get Pikachu to do the most mundane activities. That is, if the microphone would even work because that was a common complaint upon release. A tedious game with a finicky method of playing? Yeah, not great.

Now, if you want to talk about insidious monetization, this is, by far, the WORST mobile game Nintendo has put out! “Mario Kart Tour” was supposed to be the pinnacle entry in the series. Finally, a legitimate “Mario Kart” game for our phones so we can race with our friends wherever, whenever! Only one thing - the game didn’t launch with multiplayer. It does now, but its other problems persist. This is “Gacha: The Mobile Game” as you’ll have to spend Rubies in order to shoot pipes, which is your only way to unlock drivers, cars, and gliders. On top of that, exclusive content is locked behind exorbitantly-priced paywalls. How greedy can you get!?

When we spend our hard earned money on a video game, we at least want it to actually play like a video game. “Pokémon Channel'' seemed to have forgotten what format it was made on and thought we wanted to spend fifty bucks so we could watch TV with Pikachu. Yes, the entire point of “Pokémon Channel'' is to watch random Pokémon themed programming with some occasional gags. The game was so void of any real content that it felt you had unknowingly Hyper Beam’d your wallet in a blaze of glory.

It isn’t as if the first “1-2-Switch” was that great, so Nintendo’s decision to release a sequel several years later is pretty confusing. The party title is a collection of team-based mini-games, but good luck finding a group of people that actually want to play it with you. Naturally, there isn’t a lot of depth here. But the biggest problem is how dated it is. This can be seen in the host, a horse-masked MC Horace, which maybe would’ve been funny in the early 2010s, and the actual mini-games, which were criticized for being unoriginal, even when compared to older titles in Nintendo’s library. It just isn’t fun.

On the surface, “Pokémon Battle Revolution” seems to be a triumphant return for the “Stadium” spin-off series. My, how we were quickly disproven and utterly disappointed. Rather than making this a full-blown adventure like the “Colosseum” games or replicating the formulas of “Stadium”, “Battle Revolution” acts more like an overpriced spin-off of the “Diamond” and “Pearl” games. Your options are to either take on one of the eleven Colosseums or go online and fight other players. Thing is you kind of needed “Diamond” and “Pearl” in order to experience most of the game. If you didn’t, you basically dropped fifty bucks for a whole lot of nothing. So, what was really the point of this?

Is this the worst video game to star Mickey Mouse? Probably not. But is it the worst one published by Nintendo? You betcha. “Magical Mirror” is a point-and-click adventure that follows Mickey, trapped by a ghost inside a strange mansion. Developed by Capcom for the GameCube, that may sound like a winning combination. Sadly, even the most diehard Disney fan would grow bored pretty quickly here. The monotonous puzzles, which should be a heavy focus in an adventure game, dragged down gameplay. The plot was also incredibly slow, not helped by simplistic cutscenes of Mickey only giving basic reactions.

Life has not been easy for the adorable little robot, and as the years have gone by, Chibi-Robo has faded into obscurity. If there was any entry that signified the death of the franchise, however, it was “Chibi-Robo! Photo Finder” for the Nintendo 3DS. Using the handheld’s built-in camera and augmented reality capabilities, players must find common household objects and snap pictures of them to fit a specific outline. Sounds neat until you experience the various technical issues and pickiness of composition. Please, Nintendo, just give us a port of the first game so we can show what made Chibi-Robo so great.

The “Pokémon Rumble” series isn’t exactly filled with stellar games, but the absolute bottom of the barrel is the one that was released on the Wii U. Like its predecessors, “Rumble U’ takes the RPG elements of the main series and makes them more action-oriented. Your Pokémon face others in arenas, found in much more linear dungeons. There’s much more button mashing involved, with stats and strategy basically ignored, and that gets boring pretty quickly. The visuals are also incredibly basic for an HD console, combining with gameplay to make each fight an ugly mess. Additionally, the overreliance on Amiibo to get your favorite Pokémon hurt the already-bad experience.

“FlingSmash” flew pretty under the radar when it was released, and we can’t say we’re surprised. Even if you did play it, the game is shallow and simple in everything from its plot to its controls, making it very easy to forget. You help Zip the hero save his island by whacking him with the Wii mote. It’s sort of like a single player “Pong” or a side-scrolling “Breakout,” just released decades after the novelty of those titles. Even though it was bundled with the upgraded Wii Motion Plus controller, the inaccurate control scheme was a frequent point of criticism. So, a boring gameplay hook with frustrating controls? It’s no wonder this game has been forgotten by the masses.

The poor quality of Donkey Kong’s racer can be attributed to its development. It was originally intended to release for the GameCube using the Bongo peripherals, used in several DK titles like “Jungle Beat.” However, development switched to the Wii. That meant visuals were slightly worse, not that the Wii was a graphics powerhouse anyway. More importantly, instead of using the bongos to race, which could have been a novelty, you used the Wiimote and Nunchuk. Shaking them made you go faster, and lifting them up together made you jump over obstacles. If you think that sounds repetitive and tedious, that’s actually being too kind. Even when the Wii was still fresh and new, this was a poor display of its motion controls.

Over the past decade, “Animal Crossing” has become about as big as Mario and Zelda, making it ripe for some spin-off games. “Amiibo Festival” looked to be a solid “Mario Party”-esque title up until we realized just how critical it was to own amiibos. In order to play as certain characters, you’ll have to buy their amiibo figures. This design choice is repeated across the other modes as well, meaning you’ll have to spend more than sixty bucks to get the most out of this title. And to think they only made this game JUST to have “Animal Crossing” amiibo!

A Pokémon-themed racing game is the type of game we’d sign up for any day. “Pokémon Dash” could have been the start of a great spin-off series, and yet it went against everything that made racing games work. Controls were wonky, did nothing interesting with the DS’s capabilities, and the entire game was an absolute slog to sit through. But you know what made the whole experience worse? Typically, racing games give you a diverse roster of characters to play as. Here? Your only option is Pikachu because Pikachu is love. Pikachu is life, and no other Pokémon exists in the franchise.

There was a bit of hype surrounding “Devil’s Third” before launch, since it was a third-party, M-rated exclusive when the Wii U desperately needed outside support. But there was a lot wrong with the game that was unanimously agreed on. Combat, a hack-and-slash and shooter mix, grew repetitive. Visuals were definitely weak, not helped by framerate drops and other technical issues. Even its multiplayer, which did earn some praise, was brought down by microtransactions that leaned heavily towards pay-to-win. Needless to say, it was not the win the Wii U needed, and ended up being one of the worst reviewed games of 2015.

A lot can go wrong when watering-down a Mature-rated series, as well as transitioning a series from console to handheld. “Tenchu: Dark Secret” is a perfect example as the worst of both worlds. Released on the DS in 2006, and the only entry to be published by Nintendo, none of the greatness from previous games was kept intact. It looked awful and the music was a massive downgrade. Its lackluster stealth and simplistic enemy AI made playing a pain. And the story was filled with unlikeable characters. It really was an assault on all your gaming senses.

If a game is so poorly received that it cancels plans for future releases, you know you’ve got something especially terrible. “Donkey Kong Jr. Math” is exactly what it sounds like; an edutainment game that blends DK Jr.’s mechanics with math equations. Not only was Math the last thing NES players wanted in their games, but it didn’t even control well. There was more emphasis placed on solving equations than gameplay, so the whole climbing aspect was an utter chore. With its reused assets and educational focus, most felt it was barely a full game. Unsurprisingly, it was a critical and commercial bomb, stopping Nintendo’s plans from creating another in the series, “Donkey Kong's Music Play.”

At release, “Urban Champion” was considered one of the weakest Nintendo-published games on the NES. And time has not been kind to it. It’s a 1v1 fighter where you attempt to knock your opponent off the sidewalk, or, in some cases, through open manholes, in order to progress. Even by mid-80s standards, it’s an extremely simple gameplay loop delivered over and over again that most players grew tired of after five minutes. Continuing past that is a good way to lull yourself to sleep. The abysmal reception made Nintendo’s decision to re-release it as part of the 3DS’ classic series a completely baffling one. And trust us, that version wasn’t any good, either.

What do you think is the worst game Nintendo has ever produced? Share your thoughts in the comments!