Over the last few years, we’ve been putting together what we’ve called The Franchise Report. The goal was to take a look at a company’s stable of IP and determine how healthy they are. We’ve run through just about all of the major players, but it’s time to finally tackle the big one, Nintendo. 

The Switch has been a bit of a runaway success, and it is without a doubt the most successful platform the company has had since the 16-bit days because it isn’t just games or hardware that are selling well, it’s both. The Switch is a success on all fronts, and as a longtime Nintendo fan, it’s great to see. 

But it’s also fairly obvious that it's getting to be about time for Nintendo to start talking about what the successor to the Switch will be. A lot has changed since 2017, and while there are plenty of games that the Switch can handle with no problem, the technology is certainly lagging far enough behind that it’s becoming harder and harder for certain companies to get their games up and running on the aging platform. 

With this impending theoretical new hardware on the way, it seemed like the perfect time to take a look at the Big N and see how their various franchises are faring these days. 

Of course, of all the companies we’ve looked at these past few years, none of them have anywhere near the roster of IP that Nintendo does. With that in mind, this series is going to be pretty lengthy, covering every significant IP they own in alphabetical order. And since it’s going to be such a lengthy undertaking, we’re making it its own thing and calling it The Nintendo Report. 

Let’s get to work. 

1-2 Switch

I honestly can’t believe this is an IP that exists, let alone one worth mentioning in a setting like this. I can not believe that Nintendo made this game in the first place, and that it performed well enough to become a thing, but here we are. In case you’ve never had the pleasure, 1-2 Switch is an incredibly stupid party game where folks take control of joycons and/or cell phones to play absurd minigames. The thing is, it’s actually incredibly clever, which is something I take no pleasure in writing. I want to hate this dumb game with all my might, but darn if it isn’t fun. 

Health rating: Great

This game just got a sequel in 2023 called Everybody 1-2 Switch, which is so much fun and so borderline offensively stupid that it makes my head spin. Its “host” character Horace is an abomination, but the minigames are an absolute blast. This seems like an incredibly low-effort project for Nintendo, so I expect to see it continue on whatever their next platform winds up being. 

1080

Extreme sports are awesome, especially in video game form. Back in the Nintendo 64/PlayStation era, they really reached peak popularity, and thus, snowboarding games started coming out of the woodwork. Nintendo’s own 1080 Snowboarding for Nintendo 64 is commonly looked back on as one of the best out there, and remains a classic to this day. 

Health rating: Not so good. 

In 2003 Nintendo released 1080 Avalanche for GameCube, and it was pretty darn cool. But that was the last new game to bear the 1080 name, which is a shame because it’s not like snowboarding games just suddenly stopped being fun! The original game just released on Nintendo Switch Online recently, and references to the game can be found in the most recent Smash Bros games, so it isn’t completely dead, but the series could certainly be healthier. 

Advance Wars

The “Wars” series has been around in Japan since the Famicom days, but its iconic Advance Wars entry that released in the US on the GBA helped catapult the franchise into the mainstream. It fared really well, inspiring numerous sequels on Game boy Advance and Nintendo DS, as well as the Battalion Warts spinoff series on GameCube and Wii. It’s a colorful strategy series from Intelligent Systems who have been more than a little busy with the endless amount of Fire Emblem games they’ve been pumping out over the last decade or so. 

Health Rating: Okay

WayForward did a spectacular job with Advance Wars: Re-Boot Camp on Switch last year, but unfortunately, no one bought it. The game was a victim of some really unfortunate marketing circumstances, which clearly took a huge toll on its sales. Which is a real shame because the game is spectacular. With that setback, things could be grim for the franchise, but it’s still a bit too early to tell. Maybe Nintendo will give it another go in the near future to see if they can make it stick once again. 

Alleyway

Back when the Game Boy launched, Tetris and Super Mario Land were the talk of the town. But everyone also seemed to have a copy of Alleyway, a game that was just about perfectly suited to Nintendo’s monochrome handheld. Alleyway is Nintendo’s Breakout clone with a touch of Mario charm. It’s an extremely common game, and even though it’s really simple, it’s still incredibly fun to play in short bursts. 

Health Rating: Basically dead

I’m reluctant to call anything permanently dead with Nintendo because you really never know with them, but there’s been exactly one Alleyway game, and it was released in 1989. Still, Intelligent Systems did a really good job on this one, and it was rereleased on the 3DS eShop, so it’s not exactly a completely forgotten gem. There’s a ton of potential in this kind of game, and seeing what Nintendo could do with it in the modern day would be really fun. Here’s hoping it finds its revival someday. 

Animal Crossing

Ha! Like there’s any doubt this game is doing well. Animal Crossing is Nintendo’s insanely popular life simulation game that everyone played during the pandemic. 

Health rating: Outstanding

There’s an incredibly vocal subsect of players out there who are in a constant state of positively salivating at every opportunity to scream at anyone who is in earshot whenever Animal Crossing: New Horizons is mentioned that New Leaf on 3DS was better and Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves for the insulting shell of a game they released, and if you dare, DARE to say anything positive about New Horizons, you’re a shill. You know, completely ignoring all the improvements New Horizons has over the previous game, and instead focusing on the handful of things that were a small step back for the franchise. It’s really a weird thing to be hung up on, but outside of those folks, Animal Crossing has been gaining massive amounts of popularity with every entry, with the most recent game selling like a bajillion copies worldwide. Animal crossing is doing just fine. 

ARMS

On the other hand, we have ARMS. This was Nintendo’s big new IP push when Switch launched, and it did pretty well for itself. It’s an incredibly creative game with some awesome new characters. There was even a planned comic book adaptation at one point! 

Health rating: Could be better

Even though ARMS sold quite well, a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was an early Switch game. That planned comic book adaptation was canceled, and when Min Min was announced for Smash Bros., a loud sect of the audience were kinda ticked off about it. 

It’s really hard to tell what Nintendo thinks of this game. They put a lot of effort into promoting it, and they clearly hoped it would be their next Splatoon, but it just never gained the traction that game did. I have hope that we’ll see more ARMS in the future because there’s a ton of potential in this game’s mechanics, but I guess we’ll see. 

Art Academy

Nintendo is no stranger to the art program scene, but Art Academy was the first time they put some effort into actually helping people learn to be better artists. These titles were more like applications than games, and they were an excellent fit for their touch screen-enabled platforms. 

Health rating: Could be better

There were a total of 6 games bearing the Art Academy moniker, including two that were centered around specific character sets for Pokemon and Disney. DS, 3DS, and Wii U were perfectly suited to the experience, but even though the Switch still has a touch screen, the series has been silent since 2016. I suspect the lack of proper stylus for the Switch is the culprit, but that's only a guess. It’s not like the Switch is incapable of working with a stylus. It’s entirely possible we’ll see Art Academy again. 

Astral Chain

This one’s a Platinum Games joint, but it’s my understanding that Nintendo actually owns the IP. Not the first time something like that has happened, and it won’t be the last. It’s an action game that involves futuristic police being chained to ghosts that help them fight bad guys. Or something like that. It’s all kinds of bonkers and I’ve never actually played the game myself. But it’s always looked super cool! 

Health rating: Good

This one’s still too new to say for sure if it’s doing well or not. The game just came out in 2019, and it seemed to be pretty well-liked and performed admirably, selling well over a million copies. Does that mean we’ll see more of it in the future? It’s impossible to say at this point, but I’d be surprised if it stayed quiet forever. 

And that wraps up part 1, as well as the letter A (and numbers, which I threw in here for good measure). There are still a LOT of names to get through, which is so endlessly crazy. Nintendo’s catalog is absolutely insane and filled with quality ideas, and while there’s no way they could ever focus on all of them, they could certainly stand to focus on more of them than they do. Join us next time for the letter B where we’ll look at a forgotten light gun series, the source for one of the rarest amiibo on Earth, and America’s pastime.