Every Nintendo Console Launch Ranked from the NES to Switch

Nintendo will ultimately release the Nintendo Switch 2 globally on June 5, following years of gossips and excitement. Preorders are now largely sold out with thousands of players anxiously awaiting Mario Kart World Tour and fresh on-the-go ships of Street Fighter 6 and Cyberpunk 2077. Of program, Nintendo is not a man to the electronics industry.

The article Every Nintendo Console Launch Ranked from the NES to Switch appeared initially on Den of Geek.

After decades of rumors and expectation, Nintendo may finally release the Nintendo Switch 2 globe on June 5. Preorders are now largely sold out with thousands of players anxiously awaiting Mario Kart World Tour and fresh on-the-go ships of Street Fighter 6 and Cyberpunk 2077. Since the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System ( NES ), the company has undoubtedly done a number of hardware-related things. And there have been many ups and downs over the last four years.

When determining which Nintendo method had the best launch, we took into account the release date, the price, as well as the hardware’s general impressiveness. This review also considers just the North American launch of each method. In light of this, this is the comprehensive list of all Nintendo’s system and portable releases since the NES introduced a red-capped Italian plumber to the world! &nbsp,

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13. Virtual Son

Nintendo hasn’t had much of a huge failure since it first entered the video game industry in the 1970s, but the Virtual Boy stands out as anything other than a huge mistake, albeit one that is optimistic. A home Multimedia system in the mid-’90s was absolutely years ahead of its time, but nothing about it was really customer friendly. The Virtual Boy was not really compact, and playing on a table at home was required despite being marketed as a Game Boy replacement. And while the black and white color display was good for the initial Game Boy, the Virtual Boy’s red and black color display was known to just cause problems.

The release matches were aggressive, right? Mario’s Tennis is a completely capable, if barebones, rugby match. Similarly, Teleroboxer was a powerful Punch-Out, albeit not particularly powerful! son. Even though the games were good, the controller, a god-awful monster combining the worst features of the SNES and N64 devices, didn’t do these headings any favors. The release price, similar to around$ 370 USD in 2025 money, was the last nail in the Virtual Boy’s coffin, and Nintendo slowly discontinued the system a month after release.

12. Wii U

The Wii U is by far Nintendo’s worst selling console, and the issues were already obvious right away. The tablet controller was an interesting idea but just not as engaging or innovative as the Wii’s motion controls. Nintendo Land served as Nintendo’s next Wii Sports, which was ultimately only a case in point, showing how limited the new console actually was. Nintendo actually hoped it would be and later hoped it would be their next Wii Sports.

And while Mario games have historically been system sellers, New Super Mario Bros. U was largely a rehash of its Wii predecessor, just with HD graphics. It’s a good platformer, but the Mario game is surprisingly unimpressive. Beyond that, the launch lineup was largely made up of third party ports, some of which had been available on other consoles for years at that point. It’s obvious why so many people were unsure whether the Wii U was a new console or an Wii upgrade, and why so many who were unsure of what it was ultimately chose to skimp on it, despite the$ 300 launch price being reasonable.

11. Game Boy Color

If we were looking at the entire history of Nintendo consoles, the Game Boy Color would certainly rank higher, but Nintendo just didn’t put much effort into its launch, likely because Nintendo absolutely dominated the handheld gaming market at the time. They weren’t required to put in a lot of effort to sell this thing. They knew the players would show up.

Watch Gallery 2, a color collection of the vintage handheld games Nintendo made in the 1980s, was Game &amp’s highlight when the Game Boy Color was released in 1998. It actually was a very good showcase of the GBC’s better color graphics, but it wasn’t the type of game that had much staying power. The other launch titles, Pocket Bomberman, Centipede, and Tetris DX, a colorized remake of the original Game Boy Tetris launch title, were similarly serviceable but largely forgettable because, seriously, who was interested in playing a colorized version of Game Boy Tetris at that time? But at$ 79.95, the launch price was right, and the GBC quickly built an impressive library of exclusives.

10. Nintendo 3DS

When the 3DS was first unveiled in 2010, the glasses-free stereoscopic 3D model generated a lot of interest. Sadly, a botched launch promptly killed a lot of that momentum. The first party offerings from Nintendo were all surprisingly unsatisfactory. Pilotwings had been a solid launch series in the past, but Pilotwings Resort lacked a lot of content compared to its predecessors. An intriguing submarine sim like Steel Diver just wasn’t quite right. And Nintendogs + Cats, well … it was more Nintendogs for whatever that’s worth. However, the launch lineup didn’t endear itself. Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Rayman 3D were excellent ports of console games, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars remains an underrated gem of a tactics game.

The 3DS’s price is unquestionably the biggest negative aspect, though. The handheld launched at$ 250, a price that many gamers balked at. Just a few months later, Nintendo was forced to reduce the price to$ 170. Early adopters were compensated with a collection of 20 NES and GBA games, but so many unnecessary missteps left a bad taste in the mouths of many Nintendo fans, and it seems like the 3DS never quite reached its full potential.

9. Nintendo 64

Before the U.S. launch, Super Mario 64 was the first game I recall playing in a Toys R Us in 1996. I can’t recall how completely blown away I was. I had never used an analog controller before that let me control how fast or slow my character on screen moved. Before that point, there were plenty of 3D platformers, but Mario’s debut 3D game truly felt like a huge leap forward in terms of gaming thanks to its silky smooth controls and creative open world gameplay.

The problem with N64’s launch is that there just wasn’t much else to it. It only became available in the United States with the release of Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, which were additional excellent examples of what the console could do, but after playing those games, new releases were sparse and expensive, a problem that would afflict the console for the rest of its life. The N64 certainly had quality games, it just could never get much quantity. It was reasonable to expect a PlayStation at the time, but it was only$ 50 less. Given that the PS1’s game library was much larger and its prices were typically less, it’s easy to see why Sony’s console outperformed Nintendo’s by a lot in the late 1990s.

8. Nintendo DS

Nintendo didn’t really seem to know what the DS was supposed to be at first. The DS was initially marketed as a” third pillar” system that would sit on shelves alongside the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, but it quickly elbowed the GBA out of the handheld space. It was apparently rushed to market in late 2004 to get ahead of the upcoming Sony PSP launch. &nbsp,

However, a stellar launch lineup didn’t exactly make that happen. Super Mario 64 DS was an impressive remake of a classic, with new characters and power stars, but the lack of an analog stick hurt it. Although Feee the Magic: XY/XX was a strange and wonderful minigame that showed off the new features of the handheld, it had little appeal to the general public. And while games like Madden NFL 2005, Spider-Man 2, and Urbz: Sims in the City were all perfectly serviceable, none of them were on par with their console counterparts. However, the DS was$ 100 less expensive than the PSP, and that was easy because it became a bestseller. &nbsp,

7. Nintendo Switch&nbsp,

The Switch is a disputed massive success in 2025, but its 2017 debut was largely a mixed bag. First the good: the hardware, though underpowered compared to competitors, is fantastic. It’s wonderful to be able to seamlessly switch between playing games on a TV and while on the go. The Switch feels great in your hands, and the Joy-Cons still offer some of the best feedback of any controller on the market. The launch price, which was$ 300, clearly undercut both Sony and Microsoft, and it was obvious that the system had enormous potential right away.

But the launch lineup was the definition of a one trick pony. Yes, The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild was a timeless classic that unquestionably belongs in the collection of the greatest video games ever. But beyond that, how many people even remember the Switch’s other launch games? A poor minigame collection like 1-1-2 Switch. Super Bomberman R had potential as a launch exclusive, but turned out to be a middling entry in the long running franchise. Additionally, the ports of Skylanders: Imaginators and Just Dance 2017 weren’t particularly moving systems. Still, the success of the Nintendo Switch makes a really good case that all a console needs to be successful is a great design and one killer app.

6. Game Boy

The Game Boy had horribly underpowered capabilities when it first launched in 1989, and it lacked color screens from rivals like the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx. It didn’t really matter though. Before Nintendo, less power meant longer battery life, which is still considered to be the most crucial aspect of portable gaming. More importantly, the Game Boy had a secret weapon: Tetris. &nbsp,

The classic puzzler was a pack-in title for the Game Boy at launch, the equivalent of giving the first hit away for free to get gamers hooked. The launch bundle was a steal for$ 89.99. Along with Tetris, Super Mario Land was a quirky and unique take on the Mario series that was well worth checking out, while ports of Tennis and Baseball from the NES library kept people hooked as the Game Boy gained momentum. &nbsp,

5. GameCube

The GameCube launch is both better and worse than you remember it. The console’s lack of truly outstanding exclusives at launch was somewhat unfair, but the console’s exclusives have actually lasted a long time. This was a system where you could pick up Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Super Monkey Ball at launch, all fantastic titles that weren’t available anywhere else. Additionally, it was$ 100 less expensive than the original Xbox, even though it only came three days later.

Admittedly, the third-party offerings were a bit slim, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was another tremendous launch title, plus, you could pick up Crazy Taxi with the all important arcade soundtrack that’d been missing from more recent releases. However, those ports also revealed the GameCube’s biggest flaw: if you already owned these versions elsewhere, there was really nothing to like about these versions. It’s not surprising then that after this generation, Nintendo started looking toward new gimmicks to sell consoles instead of just pushing graphics technology to its limits.

4. SNES

There wasn’t a single bad guy in the bunch, despite the fact that the SNES didn’t have a ton of games when it first launched. Of course there was Super Mario World, still arguably the best Mario game ever made. The NES’s enormous graphical upgrade quickly justified the upgrade to a new console, not only is the game’s design timeless, but it also served as a huge support for the NES’s design. Pilotwings and F-Zero, with their revolutionary use of Mode 7 further showed off the power of the system. The launch lineup was so good that the price was kind of justified despite the high launch price of$ 199 ( which is equivalent to around$ 460 today ).

Even the two games pulling up the rear, Gradius III and an SNES-exclusive version of SimCity were excellent titles worth picking up. The SNES’s overall improvement is what’s really underappreciated, though. It was much more ergonomic than the hard rectangle shape of the NES controller, and the addition of X and Y and shoulder buttons made it clear from the get-go that this console was going to open up a lot of new gameplay styles.

3. Game Boy Advance

Before the DS gained notoriety, the Game Boy Advance had a brief time as Nintendo’s flagship handheld, but it quickly developed a sizable library from the beginning. The$ 100 launch price is quite possibly the best of any piece of Nintendo hardware. And the portable had a strong one, two punches right out of the gate with Super Mario Advance, a full-fledged remake of Super Mario Bros. 2, and F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, an excellent successor to the SNES title. &nbsp,

Solid portability of the GBA version may have made it more preferable to play than its bigger brother on Dreamcast, with the 15 other titles available at launch including solid portages of games like Rayman and ChuChuRocket! But for many, the real star of the launch was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, a technically impressive port that somehow managed to squeeze all of the gameplay of the console version into an isometric view. Many people were claiming that the GBA was the closest thing to a handheld SNES before it was released. These early games showed that it could actually be even better than that.

2. NES

Console gaming was essentially dead by the mid-1980s in North America. Atari had killed the market, flooding it with low quality games. A formidable new console, creative marketing, and a little luck would save gaming in the home. The NES succeeded at a tough time for video games by trying not to be just another console. It was more of an “entertainment system,” sold alongside a Zapper light gun and R. O. B., a robot accessory. Gimmick? Sure, but that was just the opening salvo in Nintendo’s strategy, the Trojan horse to bring consoles back into the living room.

Of course, the games had to be good for the NES to succeed, and Nintendo did that by releasing 17 titles, including titles like Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Ice Climbers, which are still revered today. Other titles like Baseball, Tennis, and Pinball were more perfunctory, but good enough to gain the public’s attention and prove that video games weren’t just a fad. Although historically comparable to many other launch prices for new consoles, the$ 200 launch price ( equivalent to nearly$ 600 in today’s dollars ) was high, it must be said, and that price point clearly didn’t do much to deter potential buyers.

1. Wii&nbsp,

Twenty years after the NES brought consoles back from the brink, Nintendo’s home console business found itself in a tough spot. The GameCube had just finished third in a three-way fight despite positive reviews and a respectable gaming library. Clearly, just trying to build the most powerful console wasn’t the key to success. Nintendo released a console that was slightly more powerful than its predecessor, but with the benefit of motion controls thanks to the Wii-mote, as Sony and Microsoft switched to HD gaming.

It sounded kinda nuts. Then, Wii Sports was played, and they were instantly hooked. The game was a phenomenon. Parents, grandparents, and even seasoned gamers all expressed interest in playing it. The Wii truly brought console gaming to the masses in a way that had previously been unthinkable thanks to an innovative new controller. Oh, and for the nerdy gamers, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was the other reason to purchase a Wii. And while the other 18 games in the Wii launch lineup weren’t quite at the level of those two, a solid slate of third party ports and a couple other underrated gems like Excite Truck and Trauma Center: Second Opinion were more than enough to keep the console flying off shelves for years after release, especially because the older technology meant it could be sold substantially cheaper than either the Xbox 360 or the PS3.