The 10 Best Nintendo Games of the 2020s So Far

By Paste Staff | November 4, 2024 | 3:19pm

Video Games Lists best games

The 10 Best Nintendo Games of the 2020s So Far

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We’re almost at the halfway point of this decade, so obviously it’s time for us to do what websites and magazines love to do the most: rank some stuff. Two weeks ago we shared our list of the best games of the 2020s so far; now we’re going to get a little more specific and focus on one company in particular. The best Nintendo games of the 2020s so far run the gamut from new installments of our favorite long-running Nintendo series, to remakes and remasters of our favorite long-running Nintendo series. It’s a real diverse bunch, I tell you what. But they all have that unmistakable Nintendo stamp of quality—not that official seal which doesn’t mean anything other than the software will actually work with your hardware, but that ineffable bounty of joy and fun that has always separated games made by Nintendo from games made by almost anybody else. Because when we say “Nintendo game” we’re not talking about any game playable on the Switch. We mean games actually published by Nintendo, and made by Nintendo itself or one of the studios it owns. That greatly limits the field of games we have to consider, but didn’t make our task any easier. There aren’t a lot of bad Nintendo games, so sorting a list of the best ones can be tough. We put in the work and did the math and came up with the list below; feel free to argue about it in the comments, as always.

10. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

At this point in my life I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time in Hyrule than some of the towns I’ve actually lived in. Echoes of Wisdom isn’t exactly a Hyrule we’ve known before—these games have always treated their DNA as oral myths that consistently change and mutate as they drift through the air—but it has all the ingredients: the churning desert, the yawning plains, the Zoyas and Gorons and Gerudos. What it doesn’t have is the same lead character as every other one of these games over the last 40 years. Zelda, always the MacGuffin, becomes the hero, this time trying to save Link and the rest of the world from the corruption of Ganon and his Bible black rifts. Echoes is too formulaic in its structure—go meet and help these people, now go meet and help these people, and then do it a third time to end this act… and then do it all again with different people, etc. But its central echo mechanic, where you conjure dupes of defeated enemies or useful objects on the fly, is unlike anything else in the series; although it can create a worrisome distance between player and action at first, it eventually starts to tie in well with combat and puzzle-solving, at which point it becomes a deep, challenging new approach to classic Zelda business.—Garrett Martin

9. Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Forgotten Land is approachable for less experienced players, and yet stuffed with reasons for veteran gamers to stay both interested and invested. It’s adorable at basically all moments, and it’s lovely to just look at the way Kirby moves around and interacts with his environment. It manages to straddle the line between valuing and carefully adapting the Kirby that was, while completely revamping what you thought Kirby could even be. Maybe it won’t sell you on the franchise if you aren’t already buying, but if any of the available titles were going to change your mind on that score, it’s this one, and well worth finding out if it will do the trick for you. After all, who doesn’t want to feel joy?—Marc Normandin

8. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

The beloved, hard-to-find GameCube original gets a Switch remake with a few notable changes, updates, and restorations. Guess what: it’s just as great as it was 20 years ago, a charming, clever RPG romp with a unique perspective on classic Mario characters and concepts. It somehow manages to be a genuinely deep, rewarding RPG, with emotional highpoints and memorable relationships, while also maintaining a fun and breezy tone most of the time. The remake doesn’t just render this once hard-to-afford game attainable again; it also restores a key character trait that was cut out of the initial American release, with the ghost witch Vivian finally announcing her trans status here 20 years after it was edited out during its original localization. Yes, its roots stretch back to the ’00s, but the remake is one of the best Nintendo games of the ’20s.—Garrett Martin

7. Metroid Prime Remastered

I’m always reluctant to put remasters and remakes on lists like this, but 2023’s surprise release of Metroid Prime Remastered deserves recognition. The original is one of the two or three best Metroid games ever made, and an all-time Nintendo classic, and the fact that the remaster only needs to make a few minor changes to upgrade it for the modern day only underscores how excellent its foundations are. This is a vital piece of gaming history that has barely aged a day in over 20 years, and that’s why it’s one of the best Nintendo games of two different decades now.—Garrett Martin

6. Pikmin 4

The passion and splendor behind Pikmin 4 is underscored by its horrors. Castaways, including young children, are besieged by nasty carnivorous creatures and forcibly mutated by deranged leaflings. To save them, you must venture out at night when the already horrifying creepy-crawlies of the world go berserk and charge your base. Pikmin 4 would not be as gorgeous of an experience without the brutality faced within; to watch 10 or so Pikmin be impaled, eaten, or flattened in less than a second to absolutely no fanfare is to realize these moments, too, possess a certain serenity. The uncomfortable pain and sadness of Pikmin counterbalances an appreciation for my own toil and the nuance of approaching problems not only creatively and cleverly, but as perfectly as possible.—Austin Jones

5. Super Mario Bros. Wonder

One of Super Mario Bros. Wonder ’s major new additions to the Mario canon is the Wonder Flower. It’s a big blue bouncing flower that triggers a psychedelic hurry-up state called a Wonder Effect that warps the level and its characters in weird and unpredictable ways. Wonder Flowers can incite some of the most hallucinatory and memorable sequences in recent Super Mario history, which help make Wonder one of the most unique games in the series’ long history. A perfect example: in one early level, the Wonder Flower turns a legion of Piranha Plants—those Venus Mario-traps that pop out of vines in the Mushroom Kingdom—into a veritable chorus line right out of musical theater, with an elaborate song- and-dance routine that’s one of the most unexpected and charming things I’ve seen in a game in years. Moments and details like these have made Wonder an unpredictably refreshing new spin on the most basic Mario-isms, and the first side-scrolling Mario game that could be considered genuinely revelatory in about 30 years.— Garrett Martin

4. Metroid Dread

Samus’ return to two dimensions restores something essential to the appeal of the original Metroid, and it’s right there in the title: yep, we’re talking about dread. And not just the claustrophobia or paranoia you expect when you’re the only living thing not trying to kill you on the whole damn planet, but legitimate terror as you’re being hunted by an unbeatable foe that will immediately kill you once caught. Being stalked by an E.M.M.I. is almost as frightening as your first encounter with a Metroid in Tourian back on the NES, injecting true horror into a game that ably captures the magic at the heart of this series. Metroid Dread gives the people what they want, resulting in the best Metroid game since the Prime series.—Garrett Martin

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom looks like Breath of the Wild, sounds like Breath of the Wild, and even plays like Breath of the Wild, and yet it’s so fundamentally different that it’s almost impossible to confuse the two. The sequel to our favorite game of the last decade expands greatly on the original’s map, introducing both upper and lower levels to trek through, and also introduces an Erector Set-style construction toolset that gives you an extreme amount of freedom to experiment and explore. Many love it more than Breath because of that freedom, while others (uh, like me) think it overcomplicates the elegant, immersive beauty of Breath just a little too much. Still, it’s an absolutely amazing Zelda, one of the best games for the Switch.—Garrett Martin

2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a worthy addition to the franchise, one that succeeds in its mission as a culmination of the Xenoverse so far, and one that, despite building on top of pre-existing systems with even more of them, manages to streamline itself enough and in enough ways that it wouldn’t be a surprise for it to become the best-selling title in the series. It turns out you can sell philosophy to the kids, so long as that philosophy also has mechs. Monolith has come a long way since Xenogears and Squaresoft, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is evidence they’re still going to have places to go without needing to find a new developmental process or bosses, too. Whether it’s the “best” Xenoblade or not doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it fits in wonderfully with what already existed, and ensures that we should be looking forward to whatever those next steps for the series end up being, too.—Marc Normandin

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Originally Animal Crossing applied almost no pressure to the player. You could pay off your house, or not, and that was pretty much it. Much has changed since 2002, though. Almost everything you do in New Horizons has the residue of productivity on it, even if you’re trying to be as aimless as possible. Instead of playing games within this game, the only way to not accidentally be productive is to literally do nothing—to sit in a chair, or lay on a hammock, and put the controller down. To sit quietly with your own thoughts—thoughts that exist fully outside of your Nintendo Switch.

The fact that you can do that, though, is an example of the confidence within Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo might have ramped up the numbers and the to-do lists, all the tasks and chores that make New Horizons feel like one of the last outposts of whatever notions of normalcy we might’ve once had, but you can still tune that out and live within your own head for a spell. That head might naturally drift towards the hellishly contorted world we live in, and not the delightfully cartoonish one of Animal Crossing, but escapism is overrated anyway. I’d rather worry about every aspect of modern living while quietly reflecting on the rhythmic roar of a videogame ocean than while sitting slackjawed in a living room I won’t ever be able to leave again. Give me these New Horizons—rigid, commercial, and staid—over the chaos of the last decade.—Garrett Martin