Read-a-long Bonus Stage! The best Nintendo system for third party games is…

By Joe Fourhman | July 28, 2008

In the August 2008 “20th Anniversary” issue of Nintendo Power, the NP staff neatly ranked their Top 20 games for each Nintendo system. Using their lists and some high-end mathematical voodoo, I am going to come up with a number that illustrates the level of success that third party games enjoyed for each system. Let’s call that number the NITPICS… Number Indicating Third Party Interest and Critical Success.

Of course, this is only a critical assessment, using Nintendo Power’s admittedly temporal rankings; this does not factor in sales data and will not settle any longstanding arguments about why Nintendo didn’t buy TV ad time for Okami.

What the NITPICS tells us is which Nintendo systems have the most acclaimed third party games. To come up with the NITPICS, I assigned each slot on the Top 20 a number, curving it so the top games are worth more than the bottom games. After adding that up per system and comparing it to a nonexistent “perfect” score where all 20 games where third party, I turned the total into a percentage that allows us to quantify which system was the friendliest to third parties.

Nintendo Entertainment System
The NES has 11 ranked third party games, with Capcom’s Mega Man 2 on the top of the heap at #3… ahead of the seminal Super Mario Bros. This is probably why you still run into people today who think Mega Man is a Nintendo character. The other third parties – in no particular order – are Dragon Warrior IV, Bionic Commando, DuckTales, Contra, Maniac Mansion, Mega Man 3, Ninja Gaiden, and the first three Castlevanias. Note that Nintendo Power has Final Fantasy listed as a Nintendo game since NOA published the game in North America.

It’s a pretty fair distribution, only a smidge heavy on the bottom ten, giving us a NITPICS of 40.45.

Game Boy
Nintendo dominates this list, with only five third party games. Given the lifespan of the venerable Game Boy, that’s a pretty lousy showing. The highest ranked third party game is Konami’s Metal Gear Solid at #11! The other four are Mega Man V, Operation C, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and 2002’s Shantae.

The resultant NITPICS is a paltry 8.41.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
12 third party games make the SNES list, capping with Final Fantasy III at #3… now published by Square. Then we see Chrono Trigger, Actraiser, Secret of Mana, Axelay, Earthworm Jim, plus the sequel storm of Contra III, Castlevania IV, Mega Man X, TMNT IV, FF II, and the Turbo Hyper Fighting version of Street Fighter II.

With such a strong list, the NITPICS reaches 51.46.

Nintendo 64
Only 5 on the N64 list; topping out with THQ’s WWF No Mercy at rank 7. Nintendo Power follows that up with Rogue Squadron, Ogre Battle 64, Rayman 2 and Rocket: Robot on Wheels.

Not much to talk about here. The predominantly bottom half rankings give a NITPICS of 13.59.

Game Boy Advance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow hits second place on Nintendo Power’s Top 20 list, leading a total of 6 third party games. The remainder includes Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Gunstar Super Heroes, Mega Man & Bass, Mega Man Zero 2 and another Castlevania, Harmony of Dissonance.

Interestingly, the ranking here are largely in the top half, boosting the GBA’s NITPICS to 39.81.

Nintendo GameCube
10 third party games make the cut, culminating with an unprecedented #1 slot for Resident Evil 4. Nintendo Power points out that “it takes an exceptional third party game to top Nintendo on its own system.” Lost in RE4’s shadow is Soul Calibur II, Viewtiful Joe, Beyond Good & Evil, the Resident Evil remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Super Monkey Ball, Prince of Persia: Sand of Time, and Billy Hatcher and the Failed Franchise Kickoff Game.

But for all the top-heavy number-crunching RE4 gives us, the rest of list falls mostly in the bottom, for a NITPICS of 47.90.

Nintendo DS
Square Enix’s The World Ends With You is the highest ranked third party game, coming in at #4. A total of 9 games appear, and aside from Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright 2 and Sonic Rush Adventure, there’s some familiar names… Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, Contra 4, and Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword.

Most of the games rank solidly in the center; the NITPICS for the DS library is 41.42.

Nintendo Wii
For a system this unique and this young, it’s interesting to see that Nintendo Power’s Top 20 Wii games list is fully half third parties. Sega’s NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams takes top spot at #6, and the rest of the list sounds like all the games that nobody bought: Zack & Wiki, No More Heroes, Boom Blox, Okami, Bully Scholarship Edition, Trauma Center: New Blood… and a few that did sell well, Sonic and the Secret Rings and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. And in slot #20, a little game called Guitar Hero III.

As evidenced by Guitar Hero’s rank (really? I hate GHIII as much as the next Rock Band fanboy, but is it really not better than Sonic and the freaking Secret Rings?), most of the list is strictly bottom half… and the NITPICS reflects that at 28.80.

Conclusion
The SNES stands as the Nintendo system with the most number of critically acclaimed third party games with a NITPICS of 51.46… which is probably no surprise. So, given any random sample of the best SNES games, just over half of them are from third parties.

Perhaps more interesting is the GameCube’s showing. The little purple box that everybody loved to hate last gen is a close second place at 47.90. That’s a trend up, folks, from the dire Nintendonly era of the N64… even though Nintendo still took on a pile of anger from those claiming Nintendo still lacked good third party games. And with the Wii already showing many good third party games at only two years in, perhaps we can expect a similar upturn in NITPICS by the end of the Wii’s life.

As I stated at the beginning of my article, this does not count sales data. If I factored that in, Boom Blox alone would probably turn the Wii into a negative number. Additionally, Nintendo takes most of the knocks about first party games when in direct comparison to the competing systems, even though Sony and Microsoft combined lack the first party powerhouse record that Nintendo commands. But if we set sales, marketing, the console war, and casual-minigame-crap aside… and judge systems based solely on the best-of-the-best, this just might show that complaints of Nintendo’s dearth of high quality third party games are greatly exaggerated.

Appendix
So we can’t accuse the Nintendo Power editorial staff of skewing the list in any direction too greatly, here’s the full contents of each Top 20, in rank order. You can argue position (Galaxy over Brawl?!), but it’s tough to come up with any major titles that were left out.

NES: Legend of Zelda, SMB3, Mega Man 2, SMB, Metroid, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, Contra, SMB2, Castlevania III, Ninja Gaiden, Zelda II, DuckTales, Castlevania, Castlevania II, Maniac Mansion, Bionic Commando, Dragon Warrior IV, Final Fantasy, Kid Icarus

Wii: Super Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, Zack & Wiki, Wii Sports, No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Warioware: Smooth Moves, Fire Emblen: Radiant Dawn, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Boom Blox, Bully, Okami, Wii Fit, Trauma Center: New Blood, Guitar Hero III