The Best Nintendo Game Every Year 1983 - 2024

All told, 2024 wasn’t the best year for Nintendo, with the biggest first-party releases mostly being classic titles repackaged to keep the Switch’s lights on in its final full year. Still, 2024 was at least a win for Princesses with both Peach and Zelda getting rare leading roles.

With the franchise already heavily toying with physics-based tomfoolery, it’s no surprise that Echoes of Wisdom does something in the same realm, yet pleasantly different. A sort-of pseudo-sequel to the Link’s Awakening remake - with the same lush, toybox charm - Echoes of Wisdom sees Zelda fighting less with sword and bow and more outfoxing her predicaments by cloning parts of her environment: sick enemies on each other or drop rocks on their head, and scale the cliff-sides with whatever you can find and reproduce.

This, of course, meant the game is completely breakable and unbalanced, with players falling back on a handful of super useful items over the 127 available. But, in a sense, that’s the beauty of it. It’s your adventure, and you can absolutely fill Hyrule with beds.

Echoes of Wisdom might not be in the upper echelon of the Switch’s astounding library, but a game that champions freedom of choice is the perfect way to close out the era where Nintendo coalesced its home console and handheld market.