Welcome back to The Nintendo Report! We’re working our way through Nintendo’s IP to determine how healthy they all are. Now that we’ve gotten Mario’s various sub-series out of the way, it’s time to focus on Nintendo’s non-Mario M games. How are they doing? Let’s find out in The Nintendo Report.

Mach Rider

Let’s kick things off with Mach Rider, quite possibly the strangest black box NES game of them all. Why is it strange? Because it’s tonally so very different from Nintendo’s usual projects. Mach Rider is a post-apocalyptic racing/shooter where you take control of a mean-looking motorcycle rider and blow up “Quadrunners,” an evil invading alien force, in the year 2112. It was developed by HAL, and theoretically featured a similar twist to Metroid where the protagonist might be revealed to be a woman? It’s weird and honestly, all a bit confusing. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Mach Rider hasn’t been heard from in ages, outside of the occasional Virtual Console or NSO release. The character didn’t even make it into Smash Bros. as anything more than a trophy. It’s an odd omission from Nintendo’s modern library though, because of how different it is from their usual fare. This property seemed perfectly suited for revival back in the 2000’s when everything needed to be violent and edgy to be considered cool. But alas, it seems that Mach Rider is stuck squarely in the past.   

Magical Starsign

Back in 2001, developer Brownie Brown created a charming, yet by-the-numbers RPG called Magical Vacation for the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo published it, but it was only ever released in Japan. It told the story of a student who attended the magic school Will-o'-Wisp. When the students went on a field trip to Valencia Beach, an area where several students had been reported missing (makes you wonder why the school sent them there anyway) he and his friends got caught up in a magical adventure. Fun! 

Health rating: Basically dead

Even though Magical Vacation never saw release outside of Japan, its followup on the Nintendo DS did. It was called Magical Starsign, and it was pretty good. Reviews were solid, and the game seems to have sold at least reasonably well, as it isn’t exactly hard to find today. It didn’t really catch on, though, and it seems the series died with this one. Brownie Brown became 1-Up Studio back in 2013, and has worked on numerous projects for Nintendo since, including Mother 3 and Ring Fit Adventure, so it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that this series could see a revival someday if someone at the company really pushes for it, but I think we’ve seen the last of it. 

Magnetica

Also known as Puzz Loop in Japan, Magnetica is a color matching puzzle game about marbles that was created by Mitchell Corporation back in 1998. They released it as an arcade game, and the series has seen releases on all manner of platforms including the PlayStation, and even the Nuon. But around 2004, Mitchell Corp started exclusively making games for Nintendo platforms, including what became Magnetica, which I guess technically makes it a Nintendo property? 

Health rating: Basically dead

It’s hard to determine the status of this one because while Nintendo published Magnetica and its follow ups, Mitchell Corp went under in 2012. Magnetica Twist released on WiiWare, which was basically a multiplayer version of the first Magnetica, and that was followed up by Tokyo Crash Mobs in 2013, which is completely bonkers. It utilizes the same basic gameplay of Magnetica, but instead of marbles, it uses live action actors placed in various bizarre situations. It’s another WiiWare game, which means almost nobody has heard of it, let alone actually played it. With over a decade of silence, I think Magnetica is toast. 

Master of Illusion

The Nintendo DS era was chock full of companies really thinking outside the box when it came to making games. Master of Illusion was one of those wacky games, and it was all about teaching the basics of magic. It came with a deck of cards, and used minigames and tutorials to instruct players on how to do rudimentary tricks. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Master of Illusion was eventually broken up into a series of mini games as DSiWare. They even made a handful of new tricks to learn for these releases, but as with just about all things DSiWare, it didn’t really seem to move the needle in terms of sales. It was a neat experiment, but one I doubt Nintendo will be revisiting again. 

Metroid

I have to assume that if you’re here, Metroid needs no introduction. It’s one of Nintendo’s premiere franchises, and while it’s never reached the sales success it probably deserves, it’s still a mainstay with a pretty massive fanbase. It's an exploratory action series starring intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran and her exploits across the galaxy, typically involving parasitic creatures called Metroids, as well as numerous space pirates, including a super cool dragon named Ridley. It made waves in the 80s for featuring a female protagonist, a fact that could only be uncovered by beating the game within a certain amount of time, and it’s endured for decades since. 

Health rating: Great

It makes me so happy to know that Metroid is in absolutely no danger at the moment. In fact, the Switch generation has been one of the series best. After hitting some pretty hard times for a while there, Metroid came back in a big way starting with Samus Returns on 3DS. It didn’t sell extremely well, but it worked as a proving ground for developer Mercury Steam. They went ahead and finished the legendary Metroid Dread, which went on to be one of the best selling titles in the franchise. Then there’s the Metroid Prime games. These are the 3D entries which debuted on Gamecube. The original game was remastered on Switch to terrific results, and the long awaited Metroid Prime 4 appears to finally be reaching the end of its long development cycle. Metroid isn’t going anywhere, and the gaming world is all the better for it. 

Mii/Wii

Okay, this category’s a bit nebulous. This one’s going to encapsulate all the games that are specifically centered around Mii characters, with the exception of Wii Sports, since the newest game in that series incorporates Miis, but they aren’t exactly the focus. Anyway, let’s talk about Miis. These are virtual avatars that came into being when the Wii launched. Basically they were system-level create-a-characters that could then be used in numerous games. There was Wii Music, Wii Fit, Miitopia, a bunch of Streetpass games on 3DS, and they even found their way into other existing franchises like Pilotwings and Mario Kart. 

Health rating: Hard to Say

The thing with Miis is that their games are largely done. Miis themselves are still in use, but nothing new centered around them specifically seems to be happening anymore. They also aren’t really used on a system level the way they were on Wii, Wii U and 3DS. Miitopia was ported to Switch in 2021, which included a massively expanded Mii creator that kind of made it seem like we were going to get something new Mii-related in the future, but it’s been pretty quiet ever since. Wii Party and Wii Fit got sequels on Wii U, but those series seemed to end there, Wii Music was one and done, and once Street Pass closed down, those games were gone forever as well. The only thing close was Wii Sports, but like I said, that seems to have morphed into its own thing, which we’ll cover with the letter S. Miis are a mystery. Err… Miistery…

Mole Mania

Mole Mania was a Miyamoto game for the original Game Boy that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to Portal in some respects. It’s an action puzzle game where you take control of Muddy Mole, digging holes between the overground and underground. These allow you to switch between the two distinct areas at will, solving increasingly complicated puzzles along the way. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Mole Mania has the distinction of being on the short list of Miyamoto games that never caught on. The fact that it was released pretty late in the Game Boy’s life probably didn’t help matters much either. It’s a shame, because it’s actually a pretty fun game. As far as I know, the only time it’s been re-released in the past was on the 3DS Virtual Console. Fingers crossed it finds its way to Nintendo Switch Online soon. I’d love to see a followup, or even a remake as the mechanics in the game are great, but it could probably benefit from some modern quality of life improvements. But for now, I’m not exactly hopeful. 

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And that about wraps it up. I wanted to include Mystery Case Files and Meteos in there, but it became pretty clear pretty quick that just because Nintendo published entries in those series, they almost certainly don’t own them. Regardless, they probably wouldn't have moved the needle in any way. What a disaster this one was! Metroid’s healthy as an ox, Miis are technically still out there, and everything is basically dead. Not a great state of affairs for the non-Mario M’s. 

Join us next time for the letter N. It’s a shorter list to be sure, but maybe we’ll find some games that are a little more healthy than this lot.