Heading into 2024, we were convinced that we’d end the year playing games on the Nintendo Switch 2. We anticipated a light stream of final Switch exclusives that would send the historic console off in style, but figured that we’d get no major releases.
Boy were we wrong.
As it turned out, 2024 didn’t mark the end of the Switch’s lifespan. While the Switch 2 is right around the corner according to Nintendo, the company kept its focus fully on its breadwinning console rather than saving its ammo for a blowout 2025 hardware launch. We got a new Zelda game, the first original Mario & Luigi RPG in nearly a decade, and a supersized Mario Party game to pad out an impressive holiday lineup. Outside of the past few months, though, Nintendo gave us one of its most eclectic years in its modern history. When else can you remember Nintendo reviving a 35-year-old NES franchise and turning it into an M-rated horror visual novel?
Those are the kind of bold steps you only really see in the final months of a console’s life. While it may have led to a year full of niche releases and hit-or-miss experiments, the loaded library made the Nintendo Switch 2024’s most exciting console again. These were our favorite Switch exclusives from one of the most unpredictable years in Nintendo’s long history.
Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club
When it was first revealed with a mysterious teaser, Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club felt like something special. It was an entirely left-field project for Nintendo in every way, from its niche genre to its M-rating. You don’t take a risk like this unless the team behind it has a great vision, and that’s exactly what makes Emio great. The eerie visual novel tells a mature story about a small town’s lineage of violence caused by a mysterious serial killer with a paper-bag mask. What starts as a supernatural mystery story quickly turns into a more grounded story about childhood trauma and how so many kids suffer in silence. It’s a gripping story that doesn’t go where you expect it to, and that’s what makes it so vital.
Splatoon 3: Side Order
This year has been so long that you might have forgotten that it kicked off with some fresh DLC for Splatoon 3. Rather than adding some new maps and costumes, though, Nintendo went all out for Side Order. The expansion pins a creative roguelite mode onto the already loaded package. As an extra, it’s a blast. Players use their painting skills to ink their way through arena battles while getting temporary upgrades for their palette. It’s a standby genre idea that works surprisingly well with Splatoon’s arsenal of creative weapons. With a high-octane finale that might just be one of 2024’s best endings, Side Order might be Nintendo’s best pound-for-pound game of the year.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble
We usually don’t see many third-party games gracing our annual Switch list, but Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is an exception to that rule for good reason. The latest installment of the puzzle-platforming series is a true return to form. It’s full of tricky stages in which players have to carefully guide a rolling monkey to the exit. The trick is that it adds a boost function that blows the doors wide open for speedrunners eager to beat levels as fast as humanly possible. It’s the most thrilling the series has been since its GameCube days, and I imagine it’ll be an immediate fixture at events like Games Done Quick going forward.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
To pad out its release schedule, Nintendo went hard on remakes and re-releases this year. Some were puzzling, like an oddball Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake, while games like Another Code Recollection were a welcome addition to Switch’s library. It’s no surprise, though, that the year’s best double dip came from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Long celebrated as the crown jewel of Nintendo RPGs, the GameCube classic is still as creative and funny as ever decades later. A new art refresh brings its colorful paper world to life, while quality-of-life upgrades like new shortcut tools make it even easier to play. It’s not the most ambitious remake, but when a game is this good, there’s no need to mess with it too much.
Super Mario Party Jamboree
I’ve had a back-and-forth relationship with the Mario Party series over the years. While I loved it when I was a kid, I’d started to feel like the multiplayer series had run its course. Super Mario Party Jamboree proved me wrong — and I’m glad it did. It’s not just that the core board game is better here, bringing in new layers that make way for more strategic play. It’s that Nintendo loaded it up with plenty of fun side modes, like the mass multiplayer Koopaathlon or the co-op Bowser’s Kaboom Squad. Even if its minigames feel lacking at times, Super Mario Party Jamboree proves that the series still has plenty of ideas left in the tank.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
After the success of Breath of the Wild, I worried that the Zelda series would never return to its top-down roots. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and now we have The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom to show for it. Grezzo’s first original Zelda game takes everything it learned from its excellent Link’s Awakening remake and stuffs it into a charming adventure starring the titular hero. The twist is that she has her own special powers that allow her to clone items. That turns the old-school Zelda formula into more of an exploration puzzle box that takes smart influence from Breath of the Wild’s player agency without doing away with staples like dungeons. It’s a great compromise that puts the series in great hands heading into the Switch 2 era.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
Is Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition an excellent game? As I noted in my review, no, it’s not. And yet, I still played it obsessively for a month on end this summer. The spiritual successor to Nintendo’s dormant NES Remix series tasks players with completing micro-challenges from a collection of NES games, from Super Mario Bros. to Kid Icarus. Though trying to get the sword in The Legend of Zelda as fast as possible might not sound exciting, Nintendo World Championships becomes thrilling once you become committed to mastering it. I spent weeks shaving milliseconds off Mario challenges and felt a surge of accomplishment anytime I did. If you’re looking for a light game to casually obsess over as the year winds down, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a great time-killer.
Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer
While I could use this last space to praise any number of remakes, Princess Peach: Showtime!, or Mario & Luigi Brothership, I want to take a moment to give Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer its due. The fitness rhythm game has players punching along to music during daily workouts to give them their daily dose of cardio. Do not underestimate it; Fitness Boxing 3 kicked my butt into shape. After only three days of workouts, I could barely move my shoulders. After some rest days, though, I started gaining my strength and have felt healthier ever since. With precise motion controls and some handy daily tracking, Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer is the best fitness game released for the Switch since Ring Fit Adventure.
