Tens of thousands of Nintendo games have been created in nearly four decades, covering every genre imaginable. In fact, Nintendo has created countless brand new genres in its creative endeavours. And with game designs so varied, it’s inevitable that Nintendo games will break their own rules.
Whether it’s storytelling, gameplay or expectations, Nintendo games have a habit of breaking their own rules. And whether these games are made by Capcom, Sega, indie studios or Nintendo itself, these games surprise and delight players. These games are some of the most imaginative fiction ever written, and accordingly they have surprised their players.
10 Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn’t even a Super Mario Bros. game
One of the most famous rule violations in video game history was not an internally broken rule, but an externally broken rule. In 1988, Nintendo of America test guru Howard Phillips received a copy of the Famicom Disk System game in a new game package for his review. Super Mario Bros. 2.
To say Phillips didn’t like the game was an understatement. Phillips found it difficult Super Mario 2 would threaten the fragile support of the NES 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 Mario’s magnum opus was being developed on the NES, Super Mario Bros. 3.
9 Super Mario World had a second goal after the first goal
The Super Mario Bros. series has a history of tricky secrets and breaking its own rules. In the first Super Nintendo Mario game, super mario world, Nintendo breaks one of the most steadfast rules of the Mario series Super Mario Worldthat is, the goal is the end of the stage.
In the Cheese Bridge area, however, the second goal to get to the secret area is not before the primary goal, but after the. This design, together with the extra hard Super Mario Bros. 2was a primary inspiration for games such as Kaizo Mario Worlda ridiculously hard version of the classic Mario games.
8 Mega Man almost kills 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 should never kill any living creature, only robots. Even Doctor Wily, terrible as he is, is not exempt from this merciful rule.
Everything 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 in large part it is deserved, as Doctor Wily is a dangerous villain who has no visible qualms about harming or killing people himself. But it’s one of the biggest rule violations in Nintendo’s history.
7 Hyrule Warriors changes the genre
a spin-off from The Legend of Zelda that completely changed the genre of the game, Hyrule Warriors was a cross of the Zelda series of action RPGs featuring the flashy dervish dance of death that de Destiny Warriors series.
Hyrule Warriorsrather than the careful, open-world design of Legend of Zeldais a game that the Zelda series in a mission-based design. Breaking another rule allows the player to use Princess Zelda as a playable character, releasing her from the damsel mode in which she often gets stuck.
6 Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels was so hard it inspired a subgenre
The Incredibly Difficult kaizo games are inspired by Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. By the standards of the time, The Lost Levelsor Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan, was one of the hardest games ever written.
Super Mario Bros. 2 is designed to an unprecedented level of Mario game design for players who have mastered the first game thoroughly. Released three years later Super Mario Bros. in Japan, this game was a real frontier 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 VI, General Leo duels Kefka at the Battle of Thamasa. He’s almost on the brink of winning when Kefka reveals that Leo has been fighting a shadow of himself all along and knocks him down with a knife in the back.
While later in the game there is the possibility of losing Shadow permanently if the party isn’t waiting for him on the crumbling ruins of the floating continent, Leo was killed by just a stab in the back. In a world where Revivify and Fenix Downs are available virtually everywhere, General Leo’s final and fatal demise by a simple attack is a violation of the game’s own rules.
4 The Super Mario Bros. Minus world shouldn’t even be there
Minus World is one of the most famous glitches in video game history. With a very specific procedure to activate the Minus World, it is an underwater world with glitch that cannot be escaped until Mario dies and loses all his lives.
The difficulty of performing this level, which is a repeat of World 7-2, is such that most players who accidentally reach the Min World will lose quickly. But those who can persevere pride themselves on sticking it out for as long as possible, and an entire subculture of gamers revolving around the stamina of the Minus World has sprung up around this phenomenon.
3 No more heroes openly showing off their own story
First appearing on the Nintendo Wii, No more heroes is a sarcastic, harsh take on the standards of the video game genre that openly shows off the fact that a character living as a video game hero would necessarily be a murderous bum. Loser protagonist Travis Touchdown buys a lightsaber from an online catalog and becomes a hit man.
With a story that barely puts together at its most coherent, No more heroes is just a joyous killing spree. With characters able to deliver long-winded speeches while missing large portions of their torso, the game’s story rules change on a whim.
2 Pokemon Red And Blue Had Missingno, A Glitch
Together with Marios Min World, Missing No. is one of the most famous video game glitches. There are famous 151 Pokémon in the pokemon Generation I Pokedex. But it is possible to access a 152nd Pokemon through seemingly random interactions: Pokemon #000, MissingNo.
MissingNo. exists because computer programmers use garbage data as a buffer between data and instructions. The programmers of pokemon clearly never envisioned a situation where this garbage data could be accessed to create a new Pokémon, but it was, and the resulting creature is a strange mix of urban legend and actual glitch. MissingNo. itself also causes major glitches in the game when captured and can sometimes cause the game to crash altogether.
1 Sora never appeared in a Nintendo game before Smash Bros.
The Super Smash Bros. series is known as Nintendo’s crossover fighting game, which brings together characters from every Nintendo franchise. But one of the rules it has always followed is that the franchise has never introduced franchise characters outside of Nintendo’s gaming ecosystem. Even when Nintendo started adding characters like Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog to Smash Bros., it was just after many Sonic games had appeared on Nintendo platforms.
Sora, the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series, was the signal of this policy change. While the Kingdom Hearts series finally made its first appearance on Switch in 2022, the series itself has long been associated with Sony’s PlayStation. This change was a break from Nintendo’s classic rules about the Smash Bros. series, and with Sora as the final DLC character for the venerable Switch version of the game, he marked a drastic change for Nintendo.
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