Richard DiCicco

I tense up whenever I take a corner in F-Zero, clenching my jaw as I whip around a hairpin turn, just barely missing the wall and glancing another pilot. My fingers claw the Super Nintendo pad’s buttons almost like I’m steering Captain Falcon’s machine for real, careening down the streets of Port Town at 400 km/h. The only thing on my mind is crossing that finish line before the computer can. It’s all I have room to think about.

If 2013 was the Year of Luigi, 2023 may as well have been the Year of Mario. Though only three new games in the Mario franchise were released in ‘23—with one being a remake—the mustachioed plumber himself was everywhere.

In addition to The Super Mario Bros. Movie and its requisite Hollywood marketing machine dominating the spring, speculation over his new voice actor fueled many a headline through the summer in the leadup to Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s October release.

For 15 years, Metroid Dread was just a rumor. Now, it’s real, it’s been out for over a month, and it’s fantastic. Samus Aran’s latest adventure is packed with just about everything a Metroid fan could ask for, from wild boss fights to a massive labyrinthine map.

As the fifth and apparently final entry in the 2D 'arc' of the series, Dread is infatuated with the franchise’s history, taking plenty of inspiration from its narrative predecessor, 2002’s Metroid Fusion. But while playing Dread, we couldn’t help but spot flashes of a different Metroid game—the Wii’s eternally divisive Metroid: Other M.

Any longtime Nintendo fan knows that the company’s third-party publishing partners can be fair-weather friends. Plenty of the industry’s biggest franchises have been absent from Nintendo hardware for quite some time. In some cases, Nintendo’s own bold decisions over cartridges and standard definition gaming have cost them key entries in series that were once synonymous with their brand.