Top 10 3rd Party Nintendo Games
Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 3:44pm by Staff
A lot has been said about Nintendo’s love/hate relationship with 3rd party publishers. Infendo decided to take a look at review scores for 3rd party games released on N64, GBA, GameCube, DS, and Wii. Comparing the aggregate scores from Metacritic, we were able to mathematically determine the Top 10 3rd Party Nintendo Games:
| 10 | Final Fantasy VI Advance [GBA] |
| 9 | International Superstar Soccer ‘98 [N64] |
| 8 | Castlevania: Circle of the Moon [GBA] |
| 7 | Conker’s Bad Fur Day [N64] |
| 6 | SSX 3 [GameCube] |
| 5 | Soul Calibur II [GameCube] |
| 4 | Viewtiful Joe [GameCube] |
| 3 | Madden NFL 2004 [GameCube] |
| 2 | Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 [GBA] |
| 1 | Resident Evil 4 [GameCube] |
We discovered that 3rd party games for DS and Wii just don’t stack up against those for Nintendo’s legacy systems. In fact, the overall top games for GameCube were mostly 3rd party titles, none of which remained exclusive to the system.
There were significantly more 1st party releases getting top scores for N64, GBA, and DS. This shows us that Nintendo’s recent home consoles get good 3rd party support, while primarily leaving the handheld software to the Big N.
What would your list look like?
April 26th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Wait, wasn’t Conker 64 released when Rare was a 2nd party developer?
April 26th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
My list would definitely include Metal Arms: A Glitch In The System somewhere in the top ten… It was released on GameCube for Nintendo systems, although I played it on Xbox.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Ugghhh… that’s one horrible list.
And yeah Conkey shouldn’t be there and it doesn’t go back to Snes when Nintendo HAD 3rd party support.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Thank you Infendo, for taking up my challenge!
Just as I said, freaking atrocious. Now go through and look at where they were developed:
Final Fantasy VI: Japan
International Superstar Soccer ‘98: Japan
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: Japan
Conker’s Bad Fur Day: (2nd party): England
SSX 3 (port): Canada
Soul Calibur II (port): Japan
Viewtiful Joe (ported): Japan
Madden NFL 2004 (port): US
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (semi-port): US
Resident Evil 4 (ported): Japan
Not one Western game (Bad Fur Day doesn’t count because Rare was under contracted as a 2nd party) that isn’t a port.
Even on DS
A system paralleling PS2 in success.
Shocking.
Insulting.
Retarded.
And it proves my point.
Western 3rd parties claiming their games have no chance against Nintendo’s 1st party games have no evidence for their claim, as they’ve never tried.
Furthermore, RE4, the best effort on the list, actually did sell very well.
-elmer
April 27th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Well said elmer.