For me, I’m going with a studio perhaps less renowned than Rare, but HAL Laboratory. Satoru Iwata worked for them for 20 years during the 1980s and 90s before joining Nintendo. Earthbound and Kirby Superstar are two games Iwata was heavily involved with, and they would easily top my list of third party games published by Nintendo outside of Rare at least. I’d probably add Dragon Quest 9 to the list, as it was published by Nintendo, but developed by Level 5 and Square Enix, but published by Nintendo and remains a Nintendo exclusive.
On top of these, I’m a big fan of the earlier Fire Emblem games as well - particularly Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Blade, and Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War (which was my first Fire Emblem game). But FE4 is in desperate need of an update with some QOL adjustments, as the game is fairly slow by today’s standards. FE7, on the other hand, remains fun to play to this day.
So, in short - my picks, I picked a bunch because I can’t pick one (not yet, at least, right now I’m leaning toward Earthbound or Goldeneye 007, but am still considering all these games):
Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War
Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Blade
Kirby Superstar
Earthbound
Dragon Quest 9
Goldeneye 007
Banjo Kazooie
Donkey Kong Country trilogy
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
