8 of the most unexpected games Nintendo has ever released
Posted on August 15, 2026 by Ethan in 3DS, Features, GBA, Switch, Switch 2, Wii U
If you’re on social media these days, you might occasionally hear the claim that Nintendo only releases games for the same few franchises over and over again – Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and the like. Yes, the company does definitely release titles for these properties very often, but they’ve also released some unexpected and even impossible titles for less-loved franchises over the years. We’ve seen this become especially prevalent on Switch 2 – Nintendo launched Donkey Kong Bananza in 2025 instead of a new 3D Mario and Kirby Air Riders instead of a new Super Smash Bros. entry, for example. Both a 3D Mario and a new Smash are probably in some stage of development, but at the end of the day, Nintendo is willing to take risks from time to time.
Today, we’re going over some very surprising games Nintendo has released, for better or worse. You can find our full selections below.
Honorable Mentions
After the massive success of the Switch, it sort of feels like Nintendo got more creative with which games they develop and release. On Wii U, the most “creative” titles, as in major development projects that didn’t utilize an existing super-popular franchise, included Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Pikmin 3. Compare that to the past few years, in which Nintendo has shipped Kirby Air Riders, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Rhythm Heaven Groove, Mario & Luigi: Brothership (despite AlphaDream’s bankruptcy), and Metroid Prime Remastered, among many other titles. These were all thought to have been impossible or at least very unlikely, but these days, it seems Nintendo is more open than ever to giving their lesser-known franchises second chances. Being honorable mentions, though, these titles aren’t anywhere near as crazy as the ones we’ve listed below.
Everybody 1-2 Switch
Everybody 1-2 Switch is one of Nintendo’s most baffling titles – and given that it released relatively recently, it’s also one of its most forgotten. The original 1-2 Switch, for being one of the console’s “big” launch titles, isn’t very well-liked or even commonly discussed. Its $50 price point sort of doomed it from the start, so a sequel wasn’t something on anybody’s mind, to say the least.
Supposedly, Everybody 1-2 Switch tested incredibly poorly in playtest groups, with Nintendo employees warning the company the game wouldn’t be well-received. The final product isn’t hideously offensive or bad or anything like that, but it faded into irrelevance almost immediately after its release. Many of the mini-games reviewed poorly among critics as well, which is certainly problematic given that the game is a mini-game collection and therefore should have fun mini-games. Either way, we don’t see a third 1-2 Switch game happening anytime soon.
Mother 3
Technically, Nintendo hasn’t released this game… in anywhere but Japan. As fantastic as Mother 3 is, it’s unfortunately very easy to guess why they haven’t translated the game into any other languages.
It touches on just about every mature subject in the book, from trauma to drug use to anti-capitalism. Whether these themes were originally intended to be political or not (and they most certainly were), they’d no doubt start all sorts of political discussions on social media even though this is just a video game, and in the end it would likely cause Nintendo much more trouble than it’s worth. If for some reason this game was to be translated and released officially in English, it’d be a miracle – but we already have the excellent fan translation, and for most players that’s going to be more than enough.
Famicom Detective Club
No one would have ever expected that Nintendo would try to revive the Famicom Detective Club series on Switch of all things. The originals on NES were only released in Japan, which makes it extremely surprising that both titles were not only remade for Switch, but fully translated and released worldwide. And then a brand-new entry, Emio – The Smiling Man, arrived in 2024, and it’s incredibly well-received despite being one of Nintendo’s more obscure recent releases.
If Nintendo can revive Famicom Detective Club, they can revive any one of their franchises – maybe we can get F-Zero next?
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Nintendo went crazy with Mario RPGs from 2023 to 2024. We started off with Super Mario RPG in 2023, which arguably deserves its own entry on Nintendo Switch, but I personally found the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake to be even more surprising. Paper Mario: Sticker Star was no good, of course, and Paper Mario: Color Splash was an improvement. Paper Mario: The Origami King was even better, but all three titles doubled down on battle systems that weren’t fun, which is a critical flaw shared between these games.
It’s very interesting, then, that Nintendo decided to skip remaking the first Paper Mario game in order to remake the fan-favorite with all of its beloved battle mechanics intact. And it looks great! The remake has been a hit and very well-loved among fans, which hopefully means future Paper Mario games will return to their roots without feeling like they have to get fancy with the battle system for no reason.
Star Fox
In a way, the new Star Fox on Switch 2 isn’t surprising at all. What is surprising, however, is how many chances the Star Fox franchise seems to get. Not that it doesn’t deserve it or anything! But if you think about it, other dormant Nintendo franchises like Wario Land or F-Zero haven’t had a ton of extra chances.
Nintendo makes a retelling of Star Fox 64 roughly every few years or so – you’ve got the original in 1997, the 3DS version in 2011, the Wii U game in 2015, and the Switch 2 title in 2026. So while it’s not surprising that Nintendo is releasing a Star Fox 64 update again, it is surprising that the Star Fox franchise is allowed to stagnate in a way by telling the exact same story over and over and over again. Nintendo clearly wants Star Fox to become a huge hit, but maybe the reason it hasn’t yet is because the new games are all built on the same premise. Either way, we’d love to see that determination to succeed given to other dormant Nintendo franchises. How about a new Golden Sun or Kid Icarus?
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Pit’s appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a new fighter led to all sorts of rumors about a new game. But it didn’t happen until 2012, when Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros., developed and released a brand-new entry in the series. Not only is Kid Icarus: Uprising the first Kid Icarus game in almost 25 years, but it’s also the most loved entry in the franchise. And it actually sold fairly well, at over one million copies. That’s pretty good, considering the Kid Icarus series was completely unknown to the general public at that point.
Unfortunately, Nintendo did not properly capitalize on Pit’s newfound popularity from the Smash Bros. series, as the franchise hasn’t received a new game since Uprising. If Nintendo ever does make a new Kid Icarus game or remake, it’d probably be a good candidate to be included on this list – because it’d be nothing short of a miracle.
Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival
To this day, we’re all wondering why Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival exists. The answer is probably simpler than we think: Nintendo knew the Wii U was a sinking ship, and they didn’t want to release a full HD Animal Crossing game for a console they were going to drop support for in a year or so. So instead, they made Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival, a relatively low-effort Mario Party game that also capitalized on the amiibo trend.
Unfortunately for the game, the general public was not interested in Animal Crossing amiibo figures at all. They sat on store shelves for months until they were eventually sold off to Five Below’s bargain bin – the Animal Crossing amiibo flopped so hard, in fact, that some stores even began reducing the size of the amiibo displays as a result. amiibo were popular because they were Super Smash Bros. figures, and Animal Crossing was popular for its gameplay style, not necessarily just for its characters. Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is a fundamental misunderstanding of itself and of amiibo, and a spectacular failure overall.
Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash
Imagine this: you have one last chance to make your character a hit with one last game. Your character’s past games lean into action-adventure platforming around cleaning a house, and they were received well for the most part despite having modest sales. Instead of building on that, you decide to make your character’s last outing a 2D platformer, an extremely competitive space dominated by Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and Yoshi. That’s exactly what happened with Chibi-Robo, and I remember hearing the developers say something like “if this one doesn’t sell well, we won’t have another chance”. So it makes zero sense, then, that you’d completely shift genres and then not even make a good game while you’re at it.
Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash is uninspired and quite frankly baffling. If you don’t know anything about it, here’s all you need to know: each world consists of around six stages, and at the end of each level (they take somewhere around ten minutes each), you spin a wheel to determine which level to go to next. You can’t go to the next world until all of the levels in that world are clear, and the wheel will often force you to replay levels instead of picking a new one to send you to. It’s one of the most egregious flaws in any 2D platformer I’ve ever played.
What do you think are the strangest, craziest, or most impossible games Nintendo has ever released? Did we miss an important one? Let us know in the comments down below.
