Beloved Nintendo Franchises That Need To Make A Comeback

With the rumors of the next mainline Nintendo console gathering every day, company president Shuntaro Furukawa cleared the air once and for all, confirming that fans and followers should expect official Nintendo Switch 2 news to drop somewhere around March 2025. I have high hopes for the console, but I couldn’t care less about the hardware.

What I want the Switch successor is to shine some much-needed light on the mountain of gold that Nintendo is sleeping on, forgetting about some of its most prominent game franchises in the pursuit of its flagship game series’. I decided to put together this write-up, talking about beloved Nintendo franchises that have to be treated to a revival of some sort, whether that’s a new iteration or a remake. 

Nintendo Is Sleeping On Gold; These Game Series’ Are Proof 

Make sure that you read until the end of the write-up, and while you’re at it, a comment down below about Nintendo franchises that you think should also be on here would be lovely. 

1. Kid Icarus 

One of the most iconic Nintendo franchises of all time, Kid Icarus traces its initial release back to 1986, relating to one of the company’s very first handheld consoles. You can ask any proper Nintendo fan out there how they feel about this one, and you’ll promptly learn the common sentiment shared across games pertaining to this awesome IP, tracing its humble roots to a side-scroller and then transitioning over to the third-person shooter format with Uprising. 

2. Star Fox 

Despite changing strategies mid-way into the franchise’s iterations, Star Fox has largely turned out to be an excellent shooter franchise, aging like fine wine despite the first iteration in the franchise releasing in 1993, which was more than three decades ago. The Star Fox IP was the first to pioneer next-level graphics on Nintendo systems across the board, not to mention equally entertaining rail-shooting and free-roaming gameplay.  

3. Punch-Out

Punch-Out!!, the popular boxing fighting game from the 1980s, found home in the arcade gaming scene in Japan first. It later got ported to the NES as well, which is where the franchise’s fame skyrocketed, primarily due to its strategy-oriented gameplay that lets you test just how really good your reflexes can be. A solid franchise through and through that went on to spawn multiple other iterations as well. 

A pity Nintendo never got around to making a new game in the series following Doc Louis’s Punch-Out!!, a spin-off title that was restricted to specific players at the star.t 

4. F-Zero

Jokes aside, F-Zero has its roots dyed deep in the early days of the SNES, which was when the franchise started to really take off and more and more people started getting into the futuristic racing simulator series. The F-Zero games were widely regarded back in the day for how actually difficult they were, not to mention their terrific music, and unique type of vehicles that made them stand out from the rest of the competition. 

Similar to Metroid Prime, if Nintendo were to somehow get this one back on the big screen for the Switch 2, the internet would erupt. I’m telling you ahead of time. 

5. Donkey Kong

It’s baffling to me why Nintendo sees it fit to re-release some of the more prominent Donkey Kong games while continuously ignoring the potential of a brand-new major installment. The 2024 Nintendo Direct that aired back in June saw the official confirmation of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD heading to the Nintendo Switch, and while that’s appreciable in its own right, it’s hardly all that the fans genuinely want. 

Donkey Kong is one of the most iconic names in the gaming sphere as a whole, going way back to the early heydays of Nintendo, thanks to its riveting platforming gameplay, characters that stick with you, and, of course, memorable music.