How do the Nintendo Switch's launch games compare to those of NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii and Wii U?

The Nintendo Switch has been, by all measures, a very successful console. It’s sold 146 million units to date, making it the second best-selling console of all time in the USA – trailing only Nintendo’s own DS. With the Switch 2 now fast approaching, we thought it would be fun to look back at the Switch’s launch titles and see how they compare to some of the great launch titles in Nintendo’s back catalogue - and yes, you can expect some of the best Mario games below.

Launch games are meant to showcase the very best that a console has to offer, demonstrating the importance and social cachet of having this small plastic box under your TV. The Switch is an incredibly important console, but where does it land in the grand lineage of Nintendo console launches? Let’s take a closer look.

NES launch games (October 18, 1985)

• 10-Yard Fight
• Baseball
• Clu Clu Land
• Duck Hunt
• Excitebike
• Golf
• Gyromite
• Hogan’s Alley
• Ice Climber
• Kung Fu
• Pinball
• Soccer
• Stack-Up
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tennis
• Wild Gunman
• Wrecking Crew

There’s something quite charming about the titles of some of these games, isn’t there? In these days of long-running video game series, it seems incredibly quaint to call a game something so simple as Tennis or Soccer. While there’s still a decent amount of chaff in these launch titles, they represent a sea-change in what home video games could be. Instead of beeping and booping your way through games on the Atari or Spectrum, you could explore more detailed and colourful worlds in titles like Ice Climber, or blast your way through a game of Duck Hunt. That’s not even to mention the blazing-fast loading times that made a mockery of cassette-based machines.

The real star of the show is, of course, Excitebike… who am I kidding, as much as I like this game, it’s Super Mario Bros. that stole the show. This is where it all started, the game that, like gaming's Helen of Troy, launched a thousand console sales. One of the longest-running franchises in video game history, it all comes back to this fairly humble game on the NES. This is a tough act to follow.

SNES launch games (August 23, 1991)

• F-Zero
• Gradius III
• Pilotwings
• SimCity
• Super Mario World

Sega may have beaten Nintendo to the 16-bit punch, releasing the Genesis/Mega Drive in 1989, but the SNES came out swinging with some sensational titles. Sure, there were significantly fewer of them than the NES had, but they were effectively wall-to-wall bangers, with the slight exception of Gradius 3.

What it had most of all though was variety. The launch titles ran the gamut from racing games to strategy games. The glitziest game was, without a doubt, Super Mario World, a game that is frequently tied with Super Mario Bros. 3 as perhaps the greatest 2D platformer of all time. SimCity, an already much-loved title for Mac, MS-Dos and Amiga players, got its own special version thanks to a collaboration between industry titans Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto.

Yet beyond these titles, two games on this list – F-Zero and Pilotwings – made substantial use of Nintendo’s secret weapon, Mode 7. This hardware feature allowed the SNES to scale and rotate a background layer, leading to faux-3D graphics. This was in 1991, long before 3D graphics were the default, and was a substantial reason to buy an SNES over a Genesis/Mega Drive, despite the hefty price tag of $199 (around $450 in today’s money).

Nintendo 64 launch games (September 29, 1996)

• Pilotwings 64
• Super Mario 64

Another story of Nintendo leapfrogging other consoles with their tech, the Nintendo 64 was the first successful 64-bit console. Sure, there had been the Atari Jaguar, but despite having some cool features, it was almost the definition of a commercial flop. The Nintendo 64 launched with the fewest launch titles of any Nintendo console, featuring just two on its US launch. Originally, Cruis’n USA had been planned as a third launch title, but was pulled from the launch lineup due to its poor quality, which, judging by contemporary reviews, was probably the right choice.

Howard Lincoln, Nintendo of America's chairman at the time, defended the barebones launch lineup by saying "we’re convinced that a few great games at launch are more important than great games mixed in with a lot of dogs”. Meow, Howard.

There might not have been a great variety in the launch titles, but both of them were absolutely fantastic. Despite the limitations of the Nintendo 64’s cartridge system – which required all games be able to constrain themselves, contortionist-like into a snug 64MB – both of the games had a lot to offer, particularly Super Mario 64, which, while it’s hard to believe, was only 8 MB. Uncompressed photos are bigger than that!

GameCube launch games (November 18, 2001)

• All-Star Baseball 2002
• Batman: Vengeance
• Crazy Taxi
• Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2
• Luigi’s Mansion
• Madden NFL 2002
• NHL Hitz 20-02
• Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II
• Super Monkey Ball
• Tarzan: Untamed
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
• Wave Race: Blue Storm

The GameCube is a charmingly dinky little console and severely underrated, but this launch lineup is incredibly mid, with Howard Lincoln’s proverbial dogs howling over launch day. The highlights of this lineup were, undoubtedly, Luigi’s Mansion, Super Monkey Ball, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II.

The GameCube, with its tiny discs and better processor than the PS2, never really found its niche. If you picked up one on launch day, you got to choose from the scattershot of launch titles, covering a wide variety of different genres. Luigi’s Mansion, a fantastic little game with a huge amount of personality, is definitely the right choice here, blending action-adventure gameplay with campy horror elements, and Luigi’s perpetual whimpering. It provided a very nice stopgap in between Mario games, with the GameCube being notable for the lack of a Mario game upon launch, with Super Mario Sunshine a whopping 9 months away for US gamers.

While somewhat lacking in quality compared to Nintendo’s previous launch lineups, there was a lot of fun to be had with the GameCube launch games.

Wii launch games (November 19, 2006)

• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Barnyard
• Call of Duty 3
• Cars
• Excite Truck
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
• GT Pro Series
• Happy Feet Madden NFL 07
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
• Monster 4x4 World Circuit
• Need for Speed: Carbon
• Open Season
• Rampage: Total Destruction
• Rayman Raving Rabbids
• Red Steel
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
• The Ant Bully
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion
• Wii Sports

When the Wii launched, it was an absolute smash hit, and a huge part of that was thanks to its motion controls. Motion controls get a bad rap from a lot of people, myself included, but there wasn’t really anything like this back in 2006/2007, with the Kinect and Playstation Move still a long way off.

While not every game made great use of the Wiimote and its wand-waggling weirdness, a good selection of the launch titles did. Rayman Raving Rabbids, for instance, made ample use of them, while Trauma Center had you suturing wounds and solving emergencies with ample use of haphazardly applied antiseptic gel with a wave of your Wiimote.

The real star of the show, however, was Wii Sports. This pack-in game is one of very few titles that made good use of the motion controls. It was, quite genuinely, a console that anyone could play, and for all of the Wii’s many issues, Wii Sports and the later Wii Sports Resort were perfect party material, and a testament to the fact that motion controls aren’t always just a gimmick.

Wii U launch games (November 18, 2012)

• Assassin's Creed 3
• Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition
• Ben 10: Omniverse
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Darksiders 2
• Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
• ESPN Sports Connection
• FIFA Soccer 13
• NBA 2K13
• Game Party Champions
• Just Dance 4
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge
• Nintendo Land
• Rabbids Land
• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• SiNG Party
• Skylanders: Giants
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2
• Transformers Prime: The Game
• Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper
• Wipeout 3
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013
• ZombiU

The WiiU was, in essence, an uncomfortable halfway house between the Wii and the Switch. While it undoubtedly served as a decent proving ground for Nintendo’s next console, it wasn’t a good system, plagued by poor battery life, a lack of third-party titles and a name that made more than a few potential customers assume it was nothing more than a Wii accessory.

For all of its many faults, and believe me, there are not enough words in this article to convey quite how flawed the Wii U was, its launch lineup could have been worse. While far from great, it had some interesting titles. ZombiU, for example, is an interesting survival horror game that, while not needing the tablet whatsoever, made decent use of the second screen. Nintendo Land was fun, if fairly transient, and Batman: Arkham City was a great title for those who’d not played it before.

Ultimately, however, the lack of strong first-party games was one of the issues that likely led to the Wii U’s failure.

Nintendo Switch launch games (March 3, 2017)

• 1-2-Switch
• Fast RMX
• I Am Setsuna
• Just Dance 2017
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
• Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
• Skylanders: Imaginators
• Snipperclips
• Super Bomberman R
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Switch was the natural next step for Nintendo: a console that took inspiration from the Wii U while refining the concept down to a much finer point. Here was a console that was more easily portable, had innovative controllers and, most crucially of all, one of the best first-party games of all time available on its launch.

It is hard to overstate the importance of Breath of the Wild to the Switch’s success. While it was available on Wii U as well, it was higher resolution on the Switch and generally performed much better. Breath of the Wild is the best-selling Zelda game and easily one of the best, with some even considering it to be one of, if not the best game of all time.

Despite the rest of the launch line-up being fairly lacklustre, this evolution of Zelda was strong enough to act as a keystone for the entire system. So, really, how does the Switch’s launch titles compare to the rest of the Nintendo consoles? Taking a broad view, it sits squarely in the middle of the pack: better than the Wii U, Wii and Gamecube, but not quite able to offer the sheer consistent quality of the SNES or the Nintendo 64. So, what’s next? It’s reasonable to assume that there will be a Mario Kart game will be among the upcoming Switch 2 games at launch, given its presence in the reveal trailer, but as for the rest? We’ll have to wait and see.

Check out all of the upcoming Nintendo Switch games while you wait for the newest console.