2024 will probably be remembered as a transitional yr for Nintendo. Final yr noticed heavy hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Tremendous Mario Bros. Surprise whereas subsequent yr is all concerning the Nintendo Swap 2, leaving this yr in type of a clumsy center floor. Even so, Swap house owners nonetheless had a ton of nice video games to play throughout the getting older console’s eighth yr in the marketplace as Nintendo by some means managed to publish a recreation each single month, whereas third-party and indie builders continued to help Swap with superior sequence revivals and intelligent new concepts.
Whereas many followers have been begging to show the web page to the subsequent technology, Nintendo proved Swap nonetheless had sufficient within the tank for another yr with a shock Zelda recreation the place you really play as Princess Zelda, our favourite Mario Occasion in years, and an entire lot extra. These are one of the best Nintendo video games of 2024, beginning off with the honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
A pair of titles simply barely missed out making our high tier or picks for the yr. For years, the idea of a Paper Mario: The Thousand-12 months Door remake felt as legendary and unattainable as opening the titular door itself, however Nintendo lastly listened to this RPG’s extraordinarily vocal fanbase and delivered a close to good retelling of Mario’s iconic GameCube quest. It’s outstanding how properly The Thousand-12 months Door holds up 20 years later, with its hilarious script, satisfying fight, lovable celebration members, and memorable areas.
Mario actually climbs the ranks of a professional wrestling league set on a floating island within the sky, and that’s simply the setting for one chapter of this epic journey. And, following the previous couple of Paper Mario entries that traded in distinctive, authentic characters in favor of hordes upon hordes of samey Toads, it’s an entire delight to see the slimy metropolis of Rogueport and its surrounding areas peppered with recent personalities. Merely giving The Thousand-12 months Door a stunning new coat of paint and sprinkling in a number of quality-of-life enhancements has immediately positioned it on the checklist of one of the best RPGs on Swap.
After which there’s Tremendous Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, a shocking return to kind for a sequence that had fully misplaced its approach for the higher half of the final twenty years. After a number of misguided makes an attempt to get the monkey ball rolling once more, the items lastly fell into place in Banana Rumble because of the tightest controls, physics, and degree design the sequence has seen since Tremendous Monkey Ball 2 in 2003. Tilting the stage to roll your monkey to the end feels proper once more, and the brand new spin sprint means considerably opens up speedrunning and trick shot methods with out feeling like a betrayal to Monkey Ball’s core mechanics like some previous gimmicks did.
It doesn’t maintain again by the tip both, with devilish late-game obstacles that may throw your monkey off the stage dozens of instances earlier than you lastly break by way of that candy, candy objective. It’s additionally a incredible recreation to play with others, as you may sort out all of Banana Rumble’s 200+ phases in native or on-line co-op with as much as 4 gamers. It could not fairly soar to the lofty heights of the GameCube originals, nevertheless it’s simple that Tremendous Monkey Ball is again after years of fall outs, and I’m each shocked and overjoyed I get to say that in 2024.
Runner-Up: Tremendous Mario Occasion Jamboree
Now we transfer onto the runner-ups – the video games that narrowly missed out on the highest spot. First is Tremendous Mario Occasion Jamboree, one of Nintendo’s best efforts of 2024, which concurrently turned a go-to multiplayer recreation on Swap and a standout entry within the longrunning dice-rolling, backstabbing sequence. It has just about all the pieces you’d need from a terrific Mario Occasion: an exquisite set of seven boards every with their very own distinctive wrinkles, an extremely enjoyable and different set of minigames you’ll need to return to repeatedly, and an enormous roster of 22 playable characters stuffed with each fan favorites and deep cuts. Plus, if you happen to’ve been on the incorrect finish of one too many Likelihood Occasions or Bowser Revolutions and simply can’t take it anymore, the all-new non-obligatory Professional Guidelines provide another tackle Mario Occasion that reduce the luck-based components and emphasize talent and technique.
Jamboree is especially thrilling as a result of it’s simply one of the best authentic Mario Occasion recreation developed by Nintendo Dice, the studio that’s been in cost of the sequence since 2012’s Mario Occasion 9. The builders spent years attempting to fully remodel the Mario Occasion formulation – from placing all 4 gamers right into a automobile, to having everybody take their flip on the similar time – and it simply by no means actually labored. However the Swap period represents a comeback story for the Mario Occasion sequence, starting with Tremendous Mario Occasion which was a step in the appropriate path, however nonetheless not fully there. Then, Nintendo Dice returned to the franchise’s best hits in Mario Occasion Superstars, which was a ton of enjoyable, nevertheless it wasn’t authentic content material. Lastly, the Mario Occasion comeback arc is full with new boards, gadgets, and minigames that stand side-by-side with the greats and cement Jamboree as a contemporary multiplayer basic.
Runner-Up: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
When you like head-scratching, mind-bending puzzle video games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Witness, then Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a must-play so as to add to your Swap wishlist. Created by Sayonara Wild Hearts developer Simogo, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes options the identical unequalled presentation and environment with a tantalizing thriller to match. The story begins with Lorelei arriving at a creepy, surreal resort and inside minutes you’ll be enraptured by unraveling its best mysteries and discovering why she was summoned there within the first place. Our reviewer Tom Marks known as it “the closest factor I’ve performed to a modernization of what a point-and-click journey may very well be,” saying “Its story is enticingly recent, its vibes completely eerie, and the need it evokes to uncover each inch of its intricately interwoven thriller is irresistible.”
It’s additionally not afraid to scare you. Whereas it by no means treads too far into horror recreation territory, it successfully retains you on edge with a handful of scary moments as you dive deeper down its ever-expanding rabbit gap. As Tom mentioned, “Lorelei and the Laser Eyes does do a incredible job of unsettling you as you go, utilizing its lovely black-and-white visible fashion with pops of neon to create haunting, summary imagery that may typically be as anxiety-inducing as any monster.” That is one of one of the best examples of a small developer bringing a superb set of concepts to Swap in 2024, leading to an unforgettable journey that’s not fairly like anything on the console.
Runner-Up: Unicorn Overlord
It’s been an exceptional yr for RPGs, and Unicorn Overlord is an enormous cause why. It is a excellent high-fantasy technique RPG from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim developer Vanillaware, and the developer’s iconic artwork fashion is on full show with Unicorn Overlord’s fantastically animated characters and backgrounds, together with some of essentially the most unnecessarily handsome meals we’ve ever seen in a online game. Our reviewer Eric Zalewski mentioned Unicorn Overlord has one of his favourite technique RPG fight programs ever, praising its distinctive mix of real-time technique and turn-based RPG mechanics that lead to one thing fully new and delightfully deep. You’ll have to expertly maneuver your squads and totally have interaction with its complicated means system to succeed on the upper difficulties, and our overview praised the eventualities you’re thrust into throughout Unicorn Overlord’s numerous maps, calling the mechanics and gimmicks introduced some of the easiest within the style.
Unicorn Overlord’s pretty stereotypical story a few prince combating to take again his kingdom is immaculately introduced throughout 5 separate arcs that every add very important context to the story, with Eric saying, “Reasonably than prolonged exposition or 30-minute lore dumps, its splendidly realized world is steadily fleshed out by the folks you work together with, offering attention-grabbing views as you study the tales of each your allies and your enemies. Its overarching plot could also be relatively easy because of this, sticking intently to style tropes, however when paired with a fantastic presentation, even acquainted tales handle to really feel recent.” Unicorn Overlord is a particular RPG in a yr full of them, and proof that some third-party builders are nonetheless bringing the good things to Nintendo Swap.
Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Knowledge
There have been so much of nice Swap video games this yr, however in the long run it’s powerful to beat The Legend of Zelda, and Echoes of Knowledge is IGN’s choose for one of the best Nintendo recreation of 2024. Echoes of Knowledge marks so much of thrilling firsts for the sequence: It’s the primary new top-down Zelda recreation on Swap, the primary time a Zelda recreation is performed largely with out a sword, and most significantly it’s the primary time Princess Zelda is the playable character in a mainline entry.
Nevertheless, this isn’t only a conventional journey the place Zelda merely takes the place of Hyperlink. As an alternative, Echoes of Knowledge carves out its personal area of interest in Hyrule’s historical past because of its central copy-and-paste gameplay mechanic the place Zelda can summon Echoes of objects and enemies she encounters to resolve puzzles and take down highly effective foes in distinctive methods. From plopping down a mattress to revive her well being with a fast nap each time and wherever to lastly turning the tables and commanding enemies which have been nuisances for years, there’s no scarcity of enjoyable, progressive makes use of for the handfuls of Echoes at Zelda’s disposal. It takes a web page from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom by setting gamers free to search out their very own options, the place the one incorrect solutions are those that don’t work. It solely took hours after Echoes of Knowledge’s launch to see loopy improvisational mixtures surfacing on social media, like twister beds and crows endlessly chasing after a bit of meat simply out of their attain, resulting in a reasonably dependable kind of flight.
Echoes of Knowledge doesn’t fully return to the basic top-down setup that so much of longtime followers miss, nevertheless it takes a number of half steps that bridge the hole between the trendy formulation and the outdated favorites. Hyrule is suffering from Coronary heart Items to search out, heat orchestral melodies accompany practically each step of the journey, and plenty of characters, areas, and different references make Echoes of Knowledge really feel like a love letter to cherished Zelda video games like A Hyperlink to the Previous, Ocarina of Time, and plenty of others. With Echoes of Knowledge, Nintendo as soon as once more took the Zelda sequence in a daring, sudden path, giving Hyrule’s princess her long-awaited starring function with new gameplay ideas we by no means might have imagined beforehand, and that’s why it’s our choose for one of the best Nintendo recreation of the yr.
Tell us what your choose is for one of the best Swap recreation of the yr, and make sure you try all of the opposite classes for the 2024 IGN Awards.