Franchises like F-Zero, Star Fox, Punch Out, and Kid Icarus have all been highly requested to come back in a major way, either through remakes or new installments. But nowadays when they do try to do exactly that, tap into their back catalogue of IPs, not that many people end up turning out. The mentality is that “it’ll sell better cuz of the Switch effect,” but it seems very selective as to which Nintendo IPs that mentality will end up prioritizing. The most these franchises end up getting is a Switch Online re-release or a mention in the Smash Bros series.
The recent Advance Wars remakes, which came out back in April, reportedly sold 400K copies in its first week, although I couldn’t find a reliable source to corroborate those figures. And as of the most recent financial report, it didn’t even break a million copies sold worldwide. Likewise the Famicom Detective Club remakes, which came out in May of 2021, didn’t even have sales data tracked. Both of these projects were handled by studios outside of Nintendo, mainly because that’s the only way they can exist in the modern age at this point. The original developers were already too busy working on more financially lucrative projects to consider bringing back these deep cut franchises in house.
That’s not to say that investing in dormant or dying IPs hasn’t worked in the past, because it absolutely has. Wii Sports nostalgia was at an all time high when Nintendo Switch Sports was announced, and regardless of your opinions on its quality, it sold incredibly well. WarioWare came back after a nearly ten-year hiatus with Gold on 3DS, updating the series’s presentation and paving the way for two more sequels on Switch. And most importantly of all, Fire Emblem was on its last legs before Awakening was released, and now people won’t stop complaining about Nintendo shoving Fire Emblem down our throats, whether you like it or not.
[This video](https://youtu.be/V0TOGqsj-9A) goes into more detail as to how Nintendo operated in the 80s and 90s and how certain franchises have been treated over the years. It even breaks down which companies are actually owned by Nintendo and which just work very closely with them. Yes, there is a difference in that regard.
by Asad_Farooqui
28 Comments
I will say that I don’t think Punch-Out! will ever continue without major changes. The ethnic stereotypes are a bit much in today’s day and age. Half the cast will probably wind up being cut.
I just want Kid Icarus Uprising to get a port and/or sequel that’s just as good or even better than the original.
Would prefer new IPs to be honest, but I get there are fans of those series
Kid icarus had a great 3ds game by the way
Golden Sun *cough cough*
Seriously though, update it and release the combined original games on Switch. Then give us a new game that resolves the cliff hanger that Dark Dawn ended on 13 years ago.
Look at fire emblem. Look at Xenoblade.
Yes. It is possible. Nintendo just doesn’t want to try and risk losing chump change if it isn’t as successful as they hope.
If a small target audience clamors for stuff and they don’t buy it, what kind of business sense does it make to produce a product that doesn’t sell well?
If they made good money im sure they would produce them. It doesn’t matter if the game is great if it is not selling.
Im assuming the last kid icarus or starfox entries didn’t do well.
I love love love the ogre battle series, but i doubt i ever see a remake or new entry because it is so niche. Business wise it makes no sense.
They should at least make these dormant franchises available to buy on the eshop, but they’ll never do that again, thanks to NSO.
Nintendo has the money and the resources to make truly great AAA games with these franchises, I just don’t think they care to. It’s not a part of their business model, they are more concerned with their bottom line.
Depends on the franchise. I think most of their dormant IPs would not do well in a modern market. F-Zero, Punch-Out and Star Fox are very much tied to the older way games were made and marketed and I don’t think they would fair well with modern gaming sensibilities. I do however think Starfy, Nintendogs and something like Golden Sun could work if brought back in a big way. Kid Icarus and Ice climbers are kind of a toss up. Uprising did not sell well and Ice Climbers could literally turn into anything
I’m personally not a fan of any of Nintendo’s dormant franchises but of course I have nothing against them and hope for all their fans they eventually return.
I have to say though that from a business perspective, I don’t think Nintendo should do it. To put it frankly, I don’t think any of these series will sell well without major overhauls. The only one I can see working is Kid Icarus but that would need regular releases to build a fanbase (like Xenoblade or Fire Emblem) but with Sakurai as developer, that’s not happening
Yes, but actually make quality new games. Advance Wars isn’t doing amazing because it’s an extremely cheap looking remake of 2 20 year old games. Those were excellent games but I still own my original copies from back then, zero need to get a remake. If it was a new Advance Wars game I would’ve bought it day 1.
Give them ports. If they don’t sell, then it sucks for them.
I think the vocal people for these dormant franchise are just a vocal minority. I don’t think there’s really much of a market for these series. Now please correct me if I’m wrong but weren’t their latest entries met with poor sales?
That being said they should definitely port them to NSO and use that as feedback to see if there’s really a marker for them. That’s going under the assumption Nintendo can see which games NSO is getting played.
Highly requested from a small vocal minority.
In all honesty for Nintendo to bring back a dormant franchise it’s really only for the fanfare of its hardcore audience.
There’s a reason why franchises like F zero, golden sun, custom robo, punch out etc. Didn’t have consistent releases. They didn’t sell overly well.
Back mainly in the 2D and early 3D era the cost to develop games was astronomically low compared to games today. It wasn’t a huge deal if they threw out 50 plus self published games and only 10 sold super well. Nintendo also had more incentives back then to self publish more franchises due to competition from Sega and Sony. Not saying that they don’t have competition now but compared to Sony and Xbox Nintendo has found itself a niche in the hierarchy and is doing well for itself.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t love them to start reviving dead/dormant IPs left right and center, but they probably wouldn’t sell well taking into account the average consumer. After all Nintendo is in the business of making money.
Now Nintendo has in recent years been experimenting with said franchises. I think many people would agree that the warioware franchise has been on life support for a while. Aside from a single 3ds and WiiU release that were pretty minor releases the last Wario Ware game before that was back in 09. Considering that they have now released 2 on the switch is a good sign.
I think overall if Nintendo every once in a while remake or release a smaller title from a long gone IP and it sells well enough then sure bring on more games! But I’m this climate I just don’t see a lot of older long gone IPs selling well.
I really don’t see Star Fox ever selling well again personally, it just doesn’t seem like it would do well in the modern era.
I really think the issue with advance wars was it’s price, I was hyped until I saw how much it cost and then went nah I still have the original. Plus Idk how much mind share advance wars has with people vs something like f-zero or star fox.
I would say at first I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t because they allowed so much shovelware on the switch just to fill the store.
However that’s them allowing other studios to make content and release it in their platform, no matter what Nintendo makes a cut off it. Nintendo, somewhat, has been more deliberate with their own games. Probably to save money. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s due to the WiiU doing poorly. I had a WiiU and it was good but probably marketings fault on that case.
There’s really nothing like F-zero and the idea that there’s nothing left to do with the ip is bull. It’s way faster and more fluid than MK, has fighting, and fun physics. What changes with every iteration of MK? FREE OCTOMAN
uh. yes. with all the kirby games they’ve released over the years you’d think kirby is nintendo’s mascot. one f-zero game or a non shitty star fox game isn’t a big ask.
Bring back warioland
Wario Land Switch!!!
Nintendo, it’s been too long. Enough of Wario Ware. We need a Wario platformer. Those were awesome.
For F-Zero, I think there is definitely room in the market for a sci-fi racing with more realistic damage/physics. There are a bunch of realistic racing games that have sold well, and pushing the envelope further with even higher speeds, more extreme tracks, and bigger wrecks I think could be very successful. Especially if they try to appeal to more mature racers with a career mode or something along those lines.
For Star Fox, Kid Icarus, and Sin and Punishment, on-rail shooters are probably not a winning formula.
For Star Fox, Ace Combat 7 sold more than 4 million units, so I think there is room for a mission-based sci-fi aerial/space combat game with more open maps, especially if they mix in some tank and aquatic levels. I don’t think on-foot is a good proposition, other franchises like HALO do that better and it would be hard to make it seem anything other than tacked-on..
For Kid Icarus could conceivably be reimagined as a more open world action RPG, like Xenoblade with flight. Immortals: Fenyx Rising sold reasonably well with that, but it would be more an entire new game re-using existing characters than part of the established franchise. Of course it could be argued that Breath of the Wild is that way too
They could conceivably do something completely new with sin and punishment, maybe an extreme sports game with guns or a high-speed sci-fi open world RPG with hoverboards, which AFAIK haven’t been tried in any significant way, but any of those would be a gamble.
Punch Out is hard to justify except for the nostalgia.
Nintendo is fairly saturated with platformers which is a problem for both Wario and Starfy. They doesn’t really have anything that special that would allow it to stand out. The last Starfy in particular sold extremely poorly. Better to incorporate some of the mechanics, or even characters, into other games. For example starfy could be a playable character in a Kirby game, with a different approach to getting through blocks and such. And a mario platformer could incorporate Wario alongside peach, luigi, toad, etc. I am surprised Nintendo doesn’t do that more, actually.
EarthBound/Mother could do well. There are a lot of turn-based pixel or isometric RPGs that have done very well, and the zanier approach could allow it to stand out from the crowd.
AFAIK there is nothing quite like Battalion Wars out there. It could be a bit of a gamble so it is hard to say.
There also isn’t much like Pilotwings. I love those sorts of casual flight games, but whether there is a market for it outside of budget cell phone games I don’t know. It would probably be better to incorporate some of the casual flight elements into, e.g. animal crossing than to make an entire standalone game.
Wave Race and Excite would be a hard sell as-is for a full-priced game. Those sorts of racing games just don’t have much of a market for consoles. They might work as a budget digital-only games or arcade games.
The sales of Mario Kart would certainly justify at least an HD remake of Diddy Kong Racing. It is different enough, with additional vehicles types and stacking weapons, that it could stand alone. But it is so similar to Mario Kart that Nintendo might be afraid of competing with itself.
The only way to have electroplankton is to release it as a free download or incorporate it as an easter egg in the Switch 2.
For the life of me I always ask why the hell F-Zero is not on the switch. Talk about a perfect game for the console.
While I want an F-Zero GX remaster for the Switch, I imagine it would be difficult to make it due to the lack of analog triggers. I hope the next Nintendo console has console triggers, because that would open the door to so many possibilities.
Star Tropics!
Can we get an offical Mother 3 release outside of Japan?
I wouldn’t be too surprised if we eventually get a translated version added to NSO+ like they did with the OG Mother and Earthbound Beginnings.
Would be amazing to get a Earthbound HD bundle
Nintendo’s neglected franchises:
F-Zero
Wave Race
Pilot Wings
Kid Icarus
Golden Sun
Star Tropics
Eternal Darkness
Wario World
Wario Land
3D Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Swing/Climber
Diddy Kong Racing
Star Fox
Star Fox Adventures
Punch Out
Mario Sluggers
Mario Hoops
Mario & Luigi
Mother
1080°
Excitebike
Excitetruck
Excitebots
Nintendogs
Chibi-Robo
Doshin the Giant
Endless Ocean
Geist
Steel Diver
Custom Robo
Doctor Mario
Tomodachi Life
Pokémon Stadium
Ice Climbers
Wii Party
Battalion Wars