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Curated playlist

Nintendo franchises

  • Mario (franchise)The Mario franchise has sold more than 900 million copies of its games, which makes it the best-selling video game series ever. Shigeru Miyamoto created it for Nintendo. It now covers over 200 games, along with cartoons, comic books,…
  • Pokémon (video game series)The Pokémon video game series has sold more than 515 million units worldwide. That makes it the fourth best-selling video game franchise, behind only the Mario franchise, Call of Duty, and Tetris. It started in 1996, when Pocket Monsters…
  • PokémonPokémon Red and Green came in two versions so players would trade. Each version held Pokémon that the other did not.
  • Donkey KongDonkey Kong is a video game franchise, and even its name was a small piece of design. Shigeru Miyamoto chose donkey to suggest stubbornness and kong to hint at a gorilla. The ape he built around that name began as a villain, and for years…
  • The Legend of ZeldaAs a boy, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto walked into a cave carrying a lantern. That memory shaped every dungeon.
  • Fire EmblemFire Emblem is a Japanese fantasy strategy franchise published by Nintendo, and in 2010 it was handed a hard number. Nintendo told the developers at Intelligent Systems that their next game had to sell more than 250,000 units. If it fell…
  • Star FoxStar Fox started with a trip to a shrine. The Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto visited a shrine to the fox deity Inari Ōkami on a regular basis. Reaching it meant passing through a series of arches, and that experience shaped how…
  • Super MarioSuper Mario is a Nintendo platform game series, and in the United Kingdom the wider Mario franchise is recognized by 91% of adults. That makes it the most famous video game franchise there. Shigeru Miyamoto created the series, and its star…
  • Super Smash Bros.Super Smash Bros. is a series of platform fighting games published by Nintendo, and it began as a prototype called Dragon King: The Fighting Game. Only three people built that prototype. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the series, handled…
  • MetroidMetroid is a Nintendo science fiction series that owes one of its best-known twists to a casual question. Halfway through development of the first game, a staff member asked his colleagues, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned…
  • Mario KartMario Kart is a Nintendo series of kart racing games that now counts seventeen entries, stretching from a Super Nintendo cartridge in 1992 to a Nintendo Switch 2 launch title released on the 5th of June 2025. Eight of those games run on…
  • Animal CrossingAnimal Crossing: New Horizons had sold 49.91 million copies worldwide as of the 31st of March 2026. That is remarkable for a game that never tells you what to do. You arrive as a human in a village of talking animals, and you stay there…

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