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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Rank Nintendo's post-SNES consoles for 3rd party support

Nintendo consoles have not been the platform of choice for third party support since the SNES, but a lot of arguments can be made about how well they've done at attracting third party support since then. 

 

N64

Pros: Supported by Midway, Acclaim, THQ, Ubisoft, and Konami. Gems included Turok, Rayman 2, Harvest Moon 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Wipeout 64, THQ's wrestling games, and licensed sports games from an era where EA had to share with Midway and Acclaim. There were also decent ports of games like Resident Evil 2 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Many latter releases took advantage of the RAM expansion add-on, though no third party games required it. Note that this does not count the efforts of Rare or other devs with Nintendo as a publisher.

Cons: Only about 330 third party games were released on N64, including about 80 Japanese exclusives. Multi-platform games often suffered in transition to N64, and most of the PlayStation's biggest hits never made this leap. Few if any of the N64's highlights were not published by Nintendo and/or developed by Rare.

 

GameCube

Pros: Had roughly twice as many games from third parties as the N64. Saw solid support from Activision, EA, Sega, THQ, and Ubisoft. Certain 3rd party games were among the best games on the platform, including Resident Evil 4, Soul Calibur 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Viewtiful Joe, REmake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and Super Monkey Ball. Third party exclusives included Rogue Squadron 2 and Baten Kaitos.

Cons: Few of the third party hits on GameCube were exclusive for any significant period of time. Even games like Super Monkey Ball 2, though technically exclusive, would be repackaged for other platforms (Super Monkey Ball Deluxe). Many major games did nnot get a GameCube release, even when released for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

 

Wii

Pros: More titles released than any other Nintendo console. Had many games from Activision, Capcom, Sega, and Ubisoft. Critical hits included the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, Boom Blox, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Monster Hunter Tri, No More Heroes, and various others, many of which were exclusive. Series like Just Dance and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games were among the best-selling third party games to ever be released on a Nintendo console.  WiiWare, despite a mixed record, brought games like Mega Man 9, World of Goo, Fluidity, and Bit Trip.

Cons: Only a handful of third party AAA games ever released, exclusive or not. This includes the multiplatform games of the GameCube era, such as Prince of Persia. Many of the retail Wii exclusives, though well received, were less well received than other games of their genre and era (MadWorld was no Bayonetta for example). Shovelware was notoriously common.

 

Wii U

Pros: Had a number of decent big budget multiplatform releases in its early life, including Rayman Legends, Need for Speed, Arkham City, and Assassin's Creed 4. Even after this early wave of ports, games like Minecraft, Skylanders, and LEGO were released. Had a handful of notable exclusives, including ZombiU, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and LEGO City. Greatly benefitted from the eShop, with about 500 download-only games, largely from indie devs, released in at least one region. Highlights included Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Shantae, and Fast Racing Neo.

Cons: Only about 150 third party retail games ever released, about half the N64's lineup. Retail releases came at a trickle's pace especially after 2014 (Only ten for North America in 2016 for example). Though the eShop offered far greater indie support than anything the Wii had to offer, whether it matched or exceeded services on other platforms is debatable.

 

My Opinion

  1. GameCube - Had the best compromise between a fairly high quantity and quality of releases. The relatively scarce exclusives was insignificant compared to those factors.
  2. Wii AND Wii U - Despite being very different consoles, one can say that the smaller retail games of the Wii are roughly equivalent to the higher end eShop titles of the Wii U eShop. Besides that, they both have a few more significant big budget titles to fill out the library. Cutting out the shovelware, it's surprisingly close.
  3. N64 - Simply had very little going for it in any one category. This is at least partially due to how Nintendo went out of their way to publish many games during this era, but even taking that into account, there were simply only a few games that lacked quality or exclusivity.
What do you all think?


Love and tolerate.

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GameCube >>>> Wii > Wii U = N64.

1.- N64 = Had Ogre Battle 64 which on its own its better than any game the following consoles offered. 

GIGANTIC GIANT LEAP 

2-4 = Everything else, because whatever. RE4, Monster Hunter and the Arkham series are nice, but they are not as nice as Ogre Battle 64. 



GameCube >> Everything else.



depends on how you look at it. Gamecube had the best 3rd party support but if you owned a PS2 or xbox they had almost all of those games. Most of the N64 games were exclusives and they weren't that bad for the time, wii had tons of 3rd party exclusives and many of them were good. The wii gets a bad reputation because of shovelware and lack of big budget 3rd party titles but there were actually a lot of good 3rd party titles to be found.



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X

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Ka-pi96 said:
Gamecube > the rest put together.

And that's based solely on the fact it had TimeSplitters. Add in the other stuff too... and well... it still wins obviously

OH YEAH!!!! TIMESPLITTERS!!!



Wii > Gamecube > Nintendo 64 > Wii U



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I'm going with Wii, N64, GC, Wii U.

With that said, I think the Wii U has the single best third party game of them all. That is Rayman Legends. Though it released on all major consoles, the Wii U version was the best version of this great game.



Wii > N64 > Wii U > GameCube

Wii probably had the largest amount of third party support of any Nintendo console ever, only the NES really compared. Not to mention it had the best versions of some third party multiplatform titles, like RE4. Not to mention a robust lineup of exclusives. Many titles selling in the millions with some third party titles exceeding 10 million in sales.

N64 had some excellent third party exclusives as well. I remember some 4 player titles, particularly pro-wrestling games which were surprisingly fun. Of course, there was Ogre Battle 64, in my opinion, one of the best third party exclusives since SNES.

GameCube and Wii U, unfortunately didn't really have anything memorable, not really any exclusives, and bad versions of multi platform titles. No third party titles sold well on these consoles. I put Wii U ahead of GameCube because Wii U had some titles that were kind of interesting, I can't even recall a single third party title from GameCube, I remember it had some bad SSX port, and that's about it.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

when i read the OP i knew he was too young for the N64 era. People that were there know that is just not true. It's hard to experience that era at a later date, and that gen is the hardest by far to experience later because 3D was too new at the time. You had to deal with terrible looking graphics, horrible framerates, awful camera, and bad controls. At the time you didn't see it that way, it was all revolutionary and you had a lot of patience for these type of things.



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X