Written by Max Shapiro and edited by the Flatiron Hot! News Editoral Staff

It’s no secret that Nintendo is home to several of the most beloved video game series of all time. They have created countless unique franchises which together cover a broad variety of genres, whether it be platformers, action-adventures, RPGs, life-sims, strategy games, party games, racers, brawlers, or even shooters—and many of them continue to thrive to this day.

However, in recent years, a few of these IPs have fallen on hard times. It seems that over the years, Nintendo has lost sight of why fans love these series. Many feel that these the newer installments have been omitting the gameplay elements that made these games so good in the first place, and replacing them with elements that are vastly inferior. So I’m going to talk about Nintendo’s top 5 series that are in dire need of a return to form.

5. Star Fox
Genre: Shoot-’em-up

Star Fox, at its core, is incredibly simple: you play as protagonist Fox McCloud and fly through levels in a ship called the Arwing, shooting stuff and avoiding obstacles. Despite its simplicity, it’s loads of fun, which is why Nintendo fans fell in love with the series.

However, for a while now Nintendo has been messing with that simple formula and it usually hasn’t been for the better. The original for the SNES and for the N64 are games all fans look back on fondly. But things got a little complicated after that. Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube was a Star Fox game in name only: instead of having the traditional flying-and-shooting gameplay, it was a mediocre Legend of Zelda clone with Star Fox characters shoehorned in. In fact, it was originally a completely separate game until it was converted into a Star Fox title at the last second. Despite generally positive reviews, fans were not pleased with the game one bit. The next installment, Star Fox Assault for the GameCube, scrapped the subpar action-adventure stuff and brought back the classic gameplay fans knew and loved. However, there was a catch: alongside that were the clunky “on-foot” missions, resulting in a game that was half fun and half tedious (sound familiar?) Star Fox Command for the DS ditched the on-foot segments and kept Fox in his Arwing at all times, but once again, there was a catch: the gameplay was more strategy-based rather than being a pure shoot-’em-up. From what I heard of it, Command was a decent game but it still left fans itching for a truly traditional Star Fox experience.

After that the series was dormant for nearly a decade (excluding the 3DS remake of Star Fox 64) until Star Fox Zero for the Wii U was released a few months ago. At first glance, it seemed to be the pure Star Fox experience fans were so deeply craving: no action-adventure stuff, no on-foot sections, no strategy-centric gameplay—just blowing sh*t up, plain and simple. However—you guessed it—there was a still a catch: the controls. The control scheme of Star Fox Zero made heavy use of the Wii U GamePad’s second screen and gyroscope. But unfortunately, most people found these controls to be incredibly convoluted and frustrating. Even if it was possible for some to get the hang of them, doing so took an unacceptably long amount of time. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against Nintendo’s games making use of the hardware’s features. Titles like the Wii’s Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the Wii U’s Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Splatoon, and Super Mario Maker all benefited greatly from unique use of the Wii Remote and GamePad respectively. But for Star Fox, it just wasn’t a fit.

But the controls weren’t Zero‘s only problem. The game’s other issue was that it was nothing more than a simple retread of Star Fox 64. The story was exactly the same, and no new levels were introduced (even if the level designs themselves were different). The game was supposedly trying to feature “retro-inspired” graphics, but the visuals just came across as extremely bland. And what made the game’s status as a reboot especially redundant is the fact that 64 actually was already a reboot of the original Star Fox, and it already received remake on the 3DS, meaning that Zero is a reboot of a reboot that was already remade. Opinions on the game from both reviewers and fans were wildly mixed—some people liked it; others hated it with a passion. But even those who liked it still acknowledged its flaws. Even if Star Fox Zero wasn’t the worst thing ever, it’s easy to understand why so many fans were disappointed by it. It changed things in areas that should have been left alone and added nothing in areas where new things should have been introduced. It felt like a shallow attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of older players, sacrificing any sort of originality while also sporting a control scheme that turned most players off.

The Star Fox series since Assault has been having a “one step forward, two steps back” sort of issue. Each game got rid of an unneeded feature, only for a different one to take its place. As I said in the beginning, what made Star Fox work in the first place was its simplicity. So as long as Nintendo keeps muddling that simple formula with unneeded fluff, they are going to keep disappointing fans of the series. However, I do think Star Fox is still closer to redemption than ever before with Zero, which is why this franchise is high on the list. Because when you disregard Zero‘s controls, the gameplay itself is indeed Star Fox in its purest form. All Nintendo needs needs to do now is fix the controls and make a game that’s a true sequel instead of a retread.

4. Chibi-Robo!
Genre: 3D platformer

Chibi-Robo! is one of Nintendo’s more obscure IPs, but it does have its fans, so I decided to give it a mention. The original Chibi-Robo! for the GameCube was a 3D adventure-platformer in which you control the titular pint-sized robot Chibi-Robo and traverse across a house, which from your perspective seems massive, performing various tasks and interacting with anthropomorphic toy characters. What made the game unique was that it made ordinarily mundane and boring tasks such as cleaning the floor and taking out the trash feel fun and rewarding. The game had a lot of charm, providing the great sensation of being a tiny character in a world where everything around you is enormous.

Unfortunately, fans of Chibi-Robo! largely felt that the sequels Chibi-Robo!: Park Patrol for the DS and Chibi-Robo!: Photo Finder for the 3DS failed to recapture what made the original GameCube title so enjoyable, as they didn’t nearly offer the sense of adventure the original possessed. Last year another sequel, Chibi-Robo!: Zip Lash, was released for the 3DS. With Zip Lash, Nintendo decided to do away with 3D gameplay altogether to instead convert Chibi-Robo into a very dull 2D platformer. Even when judged on its own merits, Zip Lash was boring and uninspired.

Quite clearly, this was not what fans wanted out of the series. However, now the Chibi-Robo! series is facing the possibility of never seeing the light of day again, as the series’ producer stated in an interview: “To be honest, this might be the last chance for us… I’ve continually thought about new ways to build this into a mainstream success. We’ve challenged ourselves in assorted ways along those lines, but I can’t say we’ve found the answer yet. […] If the character can gain more recognition, I believe that we’ll have a chance to produce another adventure-style game for a large number of people.” What he is basically saying is that the series may be killed off altogether if Zip Lash doesn’t sell well.

There are multiple things wrong with this way of thinking. First of all, it’s completely unfair to fans that this is the game the series’ life is hinging on. If Zip Lash was the Chibi-Robo! game people actually wanted, this would make much more sense. But what Nintendo is basically doing is forcing fans to buy a mediocre game nobody wanted so that maybe there might be some sort of a chance that a proper Chibi-Robo! title will made in the future. Also, Nintendo shouldn’t be surprised that these games haven’t sold well because they keep switching up the gameplay with each installment. The series needs to follow some sort of consistent formula in order to build an audience. And finally, I don’t know how Nintendo could’ve had any expectation at all of Zip Lash selling well. Between Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi , and Kirby, among others, there are so many far superior 2D platformers available on the 3DS that come from much more well-known franchises. So even those who enjoy 2D platformers and aren’t Chibi-Robo! fans have no reason to buy Zip Lash because there are so many better options that are far bigger names compared to the very obscure Chibi-Robo.

3. Mario Party
Genre: Party games

This one hurts the most for me, because I’m a big fan of the Mario Party series. The Mario series is host to a number of different genres beyond just platformers, including sports games, racing games, RPGs, and in this case, party games.

I’ve played almost every game in the Mario Party series, and they’ve given me countless hours of enjoyment with friends and my little siblings. For those who don’t know, Mario Party is basically a virtual board game. Four players take turns rolling a die and moving individually around a game board (each board has its own gimmicks that effect the gameplay) for a set amount of turns. The objective is to collect the most stars, which you usually obtain by collecting coins that are used to purchase them. There is always one star on the board at a time, and you need to try and get to it before anyone else. You can obtain items that can cause different things to happen to you or other players that will ideally give you some sort of advantage. After each turn a minigame is played, and the winner(s) is awarded coins. The player with the most stars in the end is declared the winner.

At least this was how Mario Party played. Now for a period of time, Nintendo was releasing a new entry in the series every single year. The games weren’t necessarily getting worse, but it was just starting be the same thing over and over again. After Mario Party 8 for the Wii and Mario Party DS, both released in 2007, the series pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth for over four year. Finally Mario Party 9 was released for the Wii in 2012, but the gameplay had received a major overhaul. All players moved together in a vehicle across boards that were completely linear. There was no longer a pre-set amount of turns, as the game only ended when the end of the board was reached. Gone were coins and stars, being replaced by “mini-stars,” which were scattered throughout boards. The only way to obtain mini-stars outside minigames were if you happened to come across them when it was your turn. And speaking of minigames, they no longer appeared after anyone rolled, but rather only when minigame spaces were stopped on, meaning you could go an entire playthrough and only play a small handful of them.

All of these things almost entirely removed any kind of strategy from Mario Party. Luck was always a factor in the series, but it was balanced out by elements you were in control of. In the previous Mario Parties, between minigames, items, and the more dynamic nature of the boards, you were able to plan ahead and strategize about what you could do to influence your luck in the best ways possible. But this was all but impossible in Mario Party 9. Because of how much more heavily reliant on randomness this new playstyle was, the game was more tedious than fun.

The next entry on the 3DS, Mario Party: Island Tour, once again allowed players to move around individually, but retained the linear boards and overall luck-heavy gameplay, making it no more of an improvement from 9. Despite fans being pretty vocal about their dislike of the series’ new direction, Mario Party 10 for the Wii U once again used the playstyle introduced by 9 and did virtually nothing to improve it.

I can understand why Nintendo felt the need to drastically switch things up with Mario Party. The series was definitely getting stale after 8, but how they went about breathing new life into these games was all wrong. The answer wasn’t to change the formula entirely, but rather have more time between each game’s release so that every new entry feels fresh and polished. The good news is that next installment coming out later this year, Mario Party: Star Rush for the 3DS, seems to bringing back at least some of those more strategic elements. It’s a step in the right direction, and hopefully the next home console entry will see a full return to the original playstyle.

2. Metroid
Genre: Action-adventure

Metroid is one Nintendo’s most acclaimed franchises, right up there with Mario and Zelda in terms of how iconic and beloved by fans it is—making Nintendo’s treatment of the IP in recent years all the more baffling. Traditionally, Metroid games are all about exploring giant worlds in a nonlinear fashion, battling enemies, collecting items and solving puzzles.

Then in 2010, Metroid: Other M for Wii was released. Despite not doing too bad review-wise, most fans did not take too kindly to the game. They lamented Other M’s restrictive and linear structure, flawed controls, and melodramatic story, among other things. After Other M was released, the Metroid series entered half a decade of complete dormancy. For years, fans anxiously awaited the announcement of a new Metroid title, and at E3 last year they finally got one—sort of. Metroid Prime: Federation Force for the 3DS was announced, but it was barely a Metroid game at all. Federation Force was a spin-off title that was a multiplayer first-person shooter in which you played as generic space soldiers instead of the series’ protagonist Samus. There was no exploration, no immersive worlds; it was a Metroid game in name only. Even though the Metroid Prime titles were played in a first-person view, the gameplay’s main emphasis was never on shooting. Upon being announced, Federation Force was met with a ridiculous amount of backlash from fans. Just take a look at the amount of dislikes its reveal trailer received on YouTube and the online petition that was created to have the game cancelled, which obtained over 24,000 signatures. The game was actually just released last week, to mostly lukewarm reviews.

I haven’t played Federation Force, but from what I’ve seen of it, it looks like an okay game when looked at purely for what it is and not what it isn’t. With that said, fans still have every right to be disappointed and frustrated by this title, because it was absolutely wrong of Nintendo to release nothing but a mere spin-off after having not touched the Metroid IP for six years, especially since the fans weren’t too keen on the latest installment . And if that wasn’t enough, a little under three weeks ago happened to be the series’ 30th anniversary and not as much as a tweet was made by the company to acknowledge it. That’s cold, Nintendo.

However, there is a silver lining. As explained here, The ending of Federation Force may very well be a teaser for a new mainline Metroid game. In addition, the team who developed the Metroid Prime titles, Retro Studios, has supposedly been working on a top-secret project for quite a while now. Hopefully this is all an indicator that fans will be seeing a full-fledged Metroid title sooner than they think, most likely for the NX.

Update: Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS and Metroid Prime 4 for the Switch have been announced! One down, four to go.

1. Paper Mario
Genre: RPG

Out of all these franchises, Paper Mario is easily the one Nintendo is most out of touch with. The original Paper Mario for the N64 and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the GameCube have been highly acclaimed by fans for their fun battle systems, engaging stories, unique locations to explore, and charming characters. Then Super Paper Mario for the Wii came along. Its gameplay was a fairly large departure from the first two entries, but fans gave it a pass because the new form of gameplay was still enjoyable enough, and the entertaining story and unique characters the series was known for were still present.

However, things didn’t go the same way when Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS was released in 2012. It essentially stripped away everything fans loved about the series, dumbing Paper Mario down to a massive degree. The battle system was both tedious and pointless since battling enemies gave no meaningful reward like RPGs traditionally do, all of the puzzle-solving was extremely frustrating, there was a level select screen instead of an actual connected world, the story was bare-bones, and all of the settings were dull and generic, as were the characters. Reviews for for game were moderately positive, but fans absolutely despised Sticker Star. In the following years, many hoped for a return to form for the series with a new entry on the Wii U.

Sure enough, Nintendo announced a new Paper Mario for the Wii U earlier this year: Paper Mario: Color Splash. Upon its reveal, fans were instantly disappointed when they saw that Color Splash was following in the footsteps of Sticker Star, having a similar battle system and once again lacking an interconnected world, interesting characters, and many RPGs elements in general. Much like Federation Force, Color Splash was met with an especially cold reception from fans. Once again dislikes flooded its trailer on YouTube, and another petition sprung up calling for the game’s cancellation, reaching over 1,500 signatures.

An interview with the game’s director actually did shed some light on Nintendo’s reasoning behind the series’ change in direction: “Since we already have [the Mario & Luigi series] of games that’s kind of more of a straight-up RPG, we feel like it would be a shame if we weren’t doing something that was more different and that was giving something different to the customers. And I think that those original Paper Mario games what people liked about them was, as you say, the RPG elements, but there was also the colorful characters, the puzzle solving, the humor. So in the new games we’re focusing more on the puzzle solving aspects and the humor.”

To be frank, that’s a pretty awful excuse. For those who don’t know, the Mario & Luigi series is another line of Mario RPG games. Nintendo is pretty much saying that having another Mario RPG series is unnecessary. But even though they’re both RPG series, Mario & Luigi is very different from Paper Mario, as this video here will explain. Don’t get me wrong, the Mario & Luigi games are great—they just aren’t a replacement for Paper Mario. But if there really can’t be two different lines of Mario RPGs, why should Paper Mario take the backseat to Mario & Luigi? After all, it’s the series that came first. But even Nintendo’s explanation for what they want to do with the series makes no sense. If they want to focus on “colorful characters,” then why do the characters in Sticker Star and Color Splash consist solely of generic Toads, Goombas, Koopas and such, free of all personality and uniqueness? Color Splash hasn’t been released yet, so it remains to be seen whether or not it will fix some of Sticker Star’s problems, but most fans are not optimistic.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything to suggest that Paper Mario will return to its roots anytime soon, if ever. If Nintendo continues to dig their heels in instead of listening to what fans want out of the series, it looks like Paper Mario will be doomed to a future of mediocrity. All fans can do is hope that they will one day get the Paper Mario game they truly want to play.

On a side note, some of you might be wondering why I didn’t include the Nintendo’s racing series F-Zero, which has been dormant for over a decade, on this list. This is because there is nothing about this franchise that needs to be fixed. If Nintendo bought F-Zero back in a form nobody wanted à la Federation Force, then it would be fitting for this list.

Nintendo is on the brink of a new generation of game, with their next console, codenamed “NX,” on the horizon. The only reason fans are so hard on Nintendo is because they know the company can do better–we have the earlier installments in these series to prove that. The key to making a good video game sequel is not getting rid of what worked, but building upon it. Don’t scrap a winning formula for something so much worse, but rather use it as a springboard for new and even better ideas. Hopefully, come this new generation, these beloved IPs will see a return to form.