2024 will likely be remembered as a transitional year for Nintendo. Last year saw heavy hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder while next year is all about the Nintendo Switch 2, leaving this year in kind of an awkward middle ground. Even so, Switch owners still had a ton of great games to play during the aging console’s eighth year on the market as Nintendo somehow managed to publish a game every single month, while third-party and indie developers continued to support Switch with awesome series revivals and clever new ideas.
While many fans were begging to turn the page to the next generation, Nintendo proved Switch still had enough in the tank for one more year with a surprise Zelda game where you actually play as Princess Zelda, our favorite Mario Party in years, and a whole lot more. These are the best Nintendo games of 2024, starting off with the honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
A couple of titles just barely missed out making our top tier or picks for the year. For years, the concept of a Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake felt as mythical and unattainable as opening the titular door itself, but Nintendo finally listened to this RPG’s extremely vocal fanbase and delivered a near perfect retelling of Mario’s iconic GameCube quest. It’s remarkable how well The Thousand-Year Door holds up 20 years later, with its hilarious script, satisfying combat, lovable party members, and memorable locations.
Mario literally climbs the ranks of a pro wrestling league set on a floating island in the sky, and that’s just the setting for one chapter of this epic adventure. And, following the last few Paper Mario entries that traded in unique, original characters in favor of hordes upon hordes of samey Toads, it’s a complete delight to see the slimy city of Rogueport and its surrounding areas peppered with fresh personalities. Simply giving The Thousand-Year Door a gorgeous new coat of paint and sprinkling in a few quality-of-life improvements has instantly placed it on the list of the best RPGs on Switch.
And then there’s Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, a stunning return to form for a series that had completely lost its way for the better part of the last two decades. After several misguided attempts to get the monkey ball rolling again, the pieces finally fell into place in Banana Rumble thanks to the tightest controls, physics, and level design the series has seen since Super Monkey Ball 2 in 2003. Tilting the stage to roll your monkey to the finish feels right again, and the new spin dash ability significantly opens up speedrunning and trick shot techniques without feeling like a betrayal to Monkey Ball’s core mechanics like some past gimmicks did.
It doesn’t hold back by the end either, with devilish late-game obstacles that will throw your monkey off the stage dozens of times before you finally break through that sweet, sweet goal. It’s also a fantastic game to play with others, as you can tackle all of Banana Rumble’s 200+ stages in local or online co-op with up to four players. It may not quite soar to the lofty heights of the GameCube originals, but it’s undeniable that Super Monkey Ball is back after years of fall outs, and I’m both shocked and overjoyed I get to say that in 2024.
Runner-Up: Super Mario Party Jamboree
Now we move onto the runner-ups – the games that narrowly missed out on the top spot. First is Super Mario Party Jamboree, one of Nintendo’s finest efforts of 2024, which simultaneously became a go-to multiplayer game on Switch and a standout entry in the longrunning dice-rolling, backstabbing series. It has pretty much everything you’d want from a great Mario Party: a wonderful set of seven boards each with their own unique wrinkles, an incredibly fun and varied set of minigames you’ll want to return to again and again, and a huge roster of 22 playable characters filled with both fan favorites and deep cuts. Plus, if you’ve been on the wrong end of one too many Chance Times or Bowser Revolutions and just can’t take it anymore, the all-new optional Pro Rules offer an alternative take on Mario Party that lessen the luck-based elements and emphasize skill and strategy.
Jamboree is particularly exciting because it’s easily the best original Mario Party game developed by Nintendo Cube, the studio that’s been in charge of the series since 2012’s Mario Party 9. The developers spent years trying to completely transform the Mario Party formula – from putting all four players into a car, to having everyone take their turn at the same time – and it just never really worked. But the Switch era represents a comeback story for the Mario Party series, beginning with Super Mario Party which was a step in the right direction, but still not entirely there. Then, Nintendo Cube returned to the franchise’s greatest hits in Mario Party Superstars, which was a ton of fun, but it wasn’t original content. Finally, the Mario Party comeback arc is complete with new boards, items, and minigames that stand side-by-side with the greats and cement Jamboree as a modern multiplayer classic.
Runner-Up: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
If you like head-scratching, mind-bending puzzle games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Witness, then Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a must-play to add to your Switch wishlist. Created by Sayonara Wild Hearts developer Simogo, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes features the same unrivaled presentation and atmosphere with a tantalizing mystery to match. The story begins with Lorelei arriving at a creepy, surreal hotel and within minutes you’ll be enraptured by unraveling its greatest mysteries and discovering why she was summoned there in the first place. Our reviewer Tom Marks called it “the closest thing I’ve played to a modernization of what a point-and-click adventure could be,” saying “Its story is enticingly fresh, its vibes perfectly eerie, and the desire it evokes to uncover every inch of its intricately interwoven mystery is irresistible.”
It’s also not afraid to scare you. While it never treads too far into horror game territory, it effectively keeps you on edge with a handful of frightening moments as you dive deeper down its ever-expanding rabbit hole. As Tom said, “Lorelei and the Laser Eyes does do a fantastic job of unsettling you as you go, using its beautiful black-and-white visual style with pops of neon to create haunting, abstract imagery that can sometimes be as anxiety-inducing as any monster.” This is one of the best examples of a small developer bringing a brilliant set of ideas to Switch in 2024, resulting in an unforgettable journey that’s not quite like anything else on the console.
Runner-Up: Unicorn Overlord
It’s been a phenomenal year for RPGs, and Unicorn Overlord is a big reason why. This is a superb high-fantasy strategy RPG from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim developer Vanillaware, and the developer’s iconic art style is on full display with Unicorn Overlord’s beautifully animated characters and backgrounds, along with some of the most unnecessarily good-looking food we’ve ever seen in a video game. Our reviewer Eric Zalewski said Unicorn Overlord has one of his favorite strategy RPG combat systems ever, praising its unique blend of real-time strategy and turn-based RPG mechanics that result in something entirely new and delightfully deep. You’ll need to expertly maneuver your squads and fully engage with its complex ability system to succeed on the higher difficulties, and our review praised the scenarios you’re thrust into across Unicorn Overlord’s diverse maps, calling the mechanics and gimmicks presented some of the very best in the genre.
Unicorn Overlord’s fairly stereotypical story about a prince fighting to take back his kingdom is immaculately presented across five separate arcs that each add vital context to the tale, with Eric saying, “Rather than lengthy exposition or 30-minute lore dumps, its wonderfully realized world is gradually fleshed out by the people you interact with, providing interesting perspectives as you learn the stories of both your allies and your enemies. Its overarching plot may be rather simple as a result, sticking closely to genre tropes, but when paired with a beautiful presentation, even familiar stories manage to feel fresh.” Unicorn Overlord is a special RPG in a year full of them, and proof that some third-party developers are still bringing the good stuff to Nintendo Switch.
Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
There were a lot of great Switch games this year, but in the end it’s tough to beat The Legend of Zelda, and Echoes of Wisdom is IGN’s pick for the best Nintendo game of 2024. Echoes of Wisdom marks a lot of exciting firsts for the series: It’s the first new top-down Zelda game on Switch, the first time a Zelda game is played largely without a sword, and most importantly it’s the first time Princess Zelda is the playable character in a mainline entry.
However, this isn’t just a traditional adventure where Zelda simply takes the place of Link. Instead, Echoes of Wisdom carves out its own niche in Hyrule’s history thanks to its central copy-and-paste gameplay mechanic where Zelda can summon Echoes of objects and enemies she encounters to solve puzzles and take down powerful foes in unique ways. From plopping down a bed to restore her health with a quick nap whenever and wherever to finally turning the tables and commanding enemies that have been nuisances for years, there’s no shortage of fun, innovative uses for the dozens of Echoes at Zelda’s disposal. It takes a page from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom by setting players loose to find their own solutions, where the only wrong answers are the ones that don’t work. It only took hours after Echoes of Wisdom’s launch to see crazy improvisational combinations surfacing on social media, like tornado beds and crows endlessly chasing after a chunk of meat just out of their reach, leading to a pretty reliable form of flight.
Echoes of Wisdom doesn’t entirely return to the classic top-down setup that a lot of longtime fans miss, but it takes several half steps that bridge the gap between the modern formula and the old favorites. Hyrule is littered with Heart Pieces to find, warm orchestral melodies accompany nearly every step of the journey, and many characters, locations, and other references make Echoes of Wisdom feel like a love letter to cherished Zelda games like A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and many others. With Echoes of Wisdom, Nintendo once again took the Zelda series in a bold, unexpected direction, giving Hyrule’s princess her long-awaited starring role with new gameplay concepts we never could have imagined beforehand, and that’s why it’s our pick for the best Nintendo game of the year.
Let us know what your pick is for the best Switch game of the year, and be sure to check out all of the other categories for the 2024 IGN Awards.
