Tens of thousands of Nintendo games have been created over nearly four decades, covering every genre imaginable. Nintendo has even created numerous new genres in its creative endeavors. And with such varied game designs, it’s inevitable that Nintendo games will end up breaking their own rules.
Whether in narrative, gameplay, or expectations, Nintendo games have a habit of breaking their own rules. And whether these games are made by Capcom, Sega, independent studios, or Nintendo themselves, these games surprise and delight gamers. These games are some of the most imaginative works of fiction ever written and have consequently amazed their players.
10 Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn’t even a Super Mario Bros. game.
One of the most famous rule breaks in video game history was not an internally broken rule, but an external one. In 1988, Nintendo of America testing guru Howard Phillips received a copy of the Famicom Disk System game in a package of new games for his review. super mario bros 2.
To say that Phillips didn’t like the game was an understatement. Phillips thought that the difficult Super Mario 2 it would threaten the NES’s fragile foothold in the slowly recovering US video game market. As a result, Nintendo chose to translate a game from an unrelated franchise, Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panicas the second Mario game, while developing the Mario magnum opus on the NES, super mario bros 3.
9 Super Mario World had a second goal after the first
The Super Mario Bros. series has a history of misleading secrets and breaking its own rules. In the first Super Nintendo Mario play, super mario world, Nintendo breaks one of the firmest rules of the Mario series in Super Mario worldwhich is that the goal is the end of the stage.
However, in the Cheese Bridge Area, the second objective to go to the secret area is not prior to the main goal, but after it’s. This design, together with the extra-hard super mario bros 2was a main inspiration for games like Kaizo Mario Worlda ridiculously tough take on classic Mario games.
8 Mega Man almost killed Doctor Wily in Mega Man 7.
One of the most important rules for mega Man is that Mega Man is a robot and follows the Three Laws of Robotics. As such, Mega Man is never allowed to kill a living creature, only robots. Even Doctor Wily, horrible as he is, is not exempt from this merciful rule.
All that changes in mega man 7. In the North American version of mega man 7, the titular robot contemplates the death of his enemy. And to a large degree, he deserves it, as Doctor Wily is a dangerous villain who has no visible qualms about harming or killing people. But it is one of the biggest rule-breaking in Nintendo history.
7 Hyrule Warriors changes gender
a spin-off of The legend of Zelda that completely changed the genre of the game, Hyrule Warriors he was a mestizo of the Zelda action RPG series featuring the flashy dervish dance of death that is the destiny warriors Serie.
Hyrule Warriorsinstead of the careful open world design of The legend of ZeldaIt is a game that pushes the Zelda series in a mission-based design. Breaking an additional rule, it allows the player to use Princess Zelda as a playable character, taking her out of the damsel mode that she is often stuck in.
6 Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels Was So Difficult It Inspired A Sub-Genre
the incredibly difficult Kaizo The games were inspired by Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. By the standards of the time, the missing levelseither super mario bros 2 in Japan, it was one of the most difficult games ever written.
super mario bros 2 was designed to be an unprecedented difficult level of Mario game design for players who had thoroughly mastered the first game. Released three years later Super Mario Bros. in Japan, this game was a true caper on the Famicom, so much so that it was actually released as a launch title for the Famicom Disk System.
5 Final Fantasy 6 kills General Leo in battle
In one of the iconic scenes of Final Fantasy SAW, General Leo confronts Kefka at the Battle of Thamasa. He is almost on the verge of winning when Kefka reveals that Leo has been fighting a shadow of himself the whole time and stabs him in the back with a knife.
While later in the game, there is a chance of losing Shadow permanently if the party doesn’t wait for him in the ruins of the crumbling Floating Continent, Leo was killed by a simple stab to the back. In a world where Revivify and Fenix Downs are available pretty much everywhere, General Leo’s final and fatal death in a single attack is a breach of the very rules of the game.
4 Super Mario Bros. Minus World Isn’t Even Supposed To Be There
Minus World is one of the most famous glitches in video game history. With a very specific procedure to activate Minus World, it is an underwater rift world that cannot be escaped until Mario dies and loses all of his lives.
The difficulty of running this level, a repeat of World 7-2, is such that most players who accidentally make it to World Minus will quickly lose. But those who can last take pride in lasting as long as possible, and around this phenomenon an entire subculture of players has sprung up that revolves around the Minus World drag race.
3 No More Heroes openly flaunts its own narrative
First appearing on the Nintendo Wii, No More Heroes it’s a sarcastic, hard-nosed take on video game genre standards that openly flaunts the fact that a character who lives as a video game hero would necessarily be a murderous drifter. The losing protagonist, Travis Touchdown, purchases a lightsaber from an online catalog and proceeds to become an assassin.
With a narrative that barely holds together in its most coherent form, No More Heroes it’s just a light-hearted romp of murder. With characters able to deliver lengthy speeches without losing much of their torsos, the narrative rules of the game change on a whim.
two Pokémon red and blue had Missingno, a technical problem
With mario Minus World, Missing No. is one of the most famous glitches in video games. There are 151 famous Pokémon in the Pokemon First generation Pokédex. But it is possible, through some seemingly random interactions, to access a 152nd Pokémon: Pokémon #000, MissingNo.
DisappearedNo. it exists because computer programmers use garbage data as a buffer between data and instructions. The programmers of Pokemon He clearly never anticipated a situation where this junk data could be accessed to create a new Pokemon, but it was, and the resulting creature is a strange mix of urban legend and actual glitch. DisappearedNo. itself also creates major game glitches when captured and can sometimes crash the game entirely.
1 Sora never appeared in a Nintendo game before Smash Bros.
the Super Smash Bros. The series is famous for being Nintendo’s crossover fighting game, bringing together characters from all Nintendo franchises. But one of the rules it has always followed is that the franchise has never featured characters from franchises outside of the Nintendo gaming ecosystem. Even when Nintendo started adding characters like Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog to smash bros, it was only after many Sonic games had appeared on Nintendo platforms.
Sora, the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series, was the signal for this policy change. While the kingdom hearts The series finally first appeared on the Switch in 2022, the series itself having long been associated with Sony’s PlayStation. This change was a break with the classic Nintendo rules on the Smash Bros. series, and with Sora as the latest DLC character for the game’s venerable Switch version, it represented a drastic change for Nintendo.
