Nintendo Year in Review 2023

Hello, and happy new year to you all. Thank you for joining us for another year here at The Underground. We're happy to have you.

Apparently, I have never done a "Year in Review" blog for my Nintendo Switch games. This isn't the first time such statistics have been available; I guess I just haven't felt compelled to post a recap of the stats until now.

Of course, I don't play nearly as much on the Switch as I do on my Playstation, and, at this point, my 3-year-old son basically owns the Switch (it is INSANE how good he is at some of these games, at his age - truly). With that in mind, I really don't play that much Nintendo these days, although I'd like to play more than I do, but... you know... priorities and Dad Life and all of that.

It is noteworthy that Nintendo calculated this information through November 30, 2023, so the entire month of December is missing, which means it didn't count any of my time jumping into "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" and "Mario Wonder" for the first time. I started both of those games in the closing days of December and haven't clocked a tremendous number of hours on either of them quite yet, so it probably wouldn't have affected much, anyway. (Both of those games seem fantastic so far, though!)

With no further ado, he's a little breakdown of the games I played and the fun I had in the year that was 2023.

First Game of 2023

And thus began my Switch gaming in 2023 - with "Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope." I had no idea what a Rabbid was nor why I should care, but I like Mario games and the XCOM-style gameplay looked fun, so I picked up the game and gave it a whirl, regardless of the fact that it's a sequel to a game that I never played. More on this game later.

Gameplay Totals

Honestly, I can't even believe that I have 23 Switch games, let alone that I played 23 Switch games. Also, many of those "games played" may have been on account of my son not having his own profile until at least half-way through the year.

Top Games

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Here's the deal with "Breath of the Wild": I bought it years ago, when it first came out, and I gave up on it. The breakable weapons were just too much for me to handle. I struggled to truly get into the game, and I knew that the trade-in value at GameStop was high, so I traded it back in. I always kind of regretted that because I had heard so many great things about it. Then, this year, I think on Prime Day, BOTW and its sequel, "Tears of the Kingdom," were "on sale" (by which, I mean that they were probably like $10 lower than retail value, which is a great deal, for Nintendo exclusives), so I bought both games. Yes, it's true - I re-bought "Breath of the Wild," like an absolute chump. After wrapping my head around the concept that basically every weapon in the game can and will break, I hunkered down and beat the game, in 47 hours, apparently. The hilarious thing is that, once you beat the main story on the game, it shows you your overall completion percentage. I was only at 12.48%, which is absolutely crazy. I spent all that time - and it's not like I was completely ignoring side quests and non-essential tasks, but you're telling me that I didn't even crack THIRTEEN PERCENT COMPLETION?!? That's absolutely insane. But hey, I guess that means that the game has a very high replayability factor, which can't be said about most games out there, so that's great. My final verdict on the game (or at least the 12 1/2 percent of it that I covered) is that I was wrong my first time around and I concede that this is a very, very good game.
2. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope - A tactical, turn-based shooter. Mario with guns. It's wild. And guess what? The Rabbids aren't as annoying and stupid as I assumed they were going to be. In fact, I grew to really like playing with characters like Rabbid Luigi, Rabbid Peach and Rabbid Mario. I don't think this game is for everyone - some people probably wouldn't care for the turn-based aspect of it, many people may not love that Mario wields double pistols and Bowser can blow up enemies with a bazooka. But I thought this game was an absolute blast. My wife also got into it for a while, and (of course) even my 3-year-old wanted to take a crack at it. Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of this game is that you can turn the difficulty down to the point where none of your characters can take any damage (I didn't do that, but I certainly set it up that way for my son), making this a game that I can plop down in front of my little boy and tell him to go to town with it. If you're curious as to what this game is about, do what I did and check out some gameplay (Abdallah's family-friendly YouTube channel is what did it for me) and consider picking it up. I highly recommend it.
3. Metroid Dread - I had never played a "Metroid" game, despite knowing a little bit about the main character Samus Aran from the "Super Smash Bros." series. One day, whilst browsing the Nintendo Store, I saw that a demo of "Metroid Dread" was available. I downloaded it and played for a few minutes, determined that it seemed intriguing enough to play a bit more of, then picked it up on a good deal during Prime Day. Let me tell you: this was one of the absolute hardest games I have ever played in my entire life. Perhaps it would have been a bit easier on me if I had more experience with these games, but yeah. Man. Wow. This was so hard. About half-way through, I resorted to looking up step-by-step walkthroughs (many of which were not well-written and quite confusing, at times) just to ensure that I could get through the game as quickly as possible. In the end, it was a cool game and was quite fun during some stretches, but you better believe that the second I beat that game, I immediately uninstalled it and traded that sucker back in to GameStop to milk it for every penny that I could get out of it.

Gaming Trends

Monthly Breakdown

I was on paternity leave in July. Looks like I crushed it.

[December was not calculated]

All Games Played

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 47 hours
2. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope - 21 hours
3. Metroid Dread - 20 hours
4. Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise - 15 hours
5. Luigi's Mansion 3 - 14 hours
6. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 10 hours
7. Mario Party Superstars - 9 hours
8. Mario Golf: SuperRush - 6 hours
9. Dorfromantik - 6 hours
10. Pokemon Violet - 3 hours
11. New Pokemon Snap - 3 hours
12. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 2 hours
13. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - 2 hours
14. Mario Tennis Aces - 2 hours
15. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 1 hour
16. Cars 3: Driven to Win - <1 hour
17. Super Mario Odyssey - <1 hour
18. Disney Speedstorm - <1 hour
19. Pokemon Cafe ReMix - <1 hour
20. Pokemon Quest - <1 hour
21. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - <1 hour
22. Nintendo Entertainment System: Nintendo Switch Online - <1 hour

Observations:

• First of all, something isn't adding up. Earlier in the recap, it said that I played 23 games this year, but it only gave me 22 games in this section. Perhaps, one explanation could be if I played two different games in the online NES catalog, but I'm not entirely sure.
• Some of these games were definitely my son, not me.
• Thanks to my son for finally encouraging me to beat "Luigi's Mansion 3." It took me long enough (I somehow just slowly stopped playing it at some point back before the pandemic), but it really was a fun, very clever game.
• I am not positive that all of these hour totals are correct. If so, I am totally ashamed of myself for only playing a brand new Pokemon game for 3 hours in the entire last year. Truly, shameful and disgusting, and I will try to be better in the future. Also, did I truly only play "Mario Odyssey" for less than an hour in 2023? I distinctly remember trying to knock out a bunch of power moons, but could that have been all the way back in 2022? Who knows?

Favorite Game

I played some fun games in 2023. Not that many, honestly, and some of you can surely put me to shame with your stats. In the end, Nintendo asked me to pick my favorite game of the year. There could only be one...

And the winner is...

Congrats to Mario and the Rabbids crew for this illustrious award. This was honestly one of the most pleasant surprises in recent video game memory for me, so those were some hours very well spent.

*****

All right, gamers. Who else has checked out their Nintendo year in review? The website (click here) won't be up for much longer, but there's still time to go in and look at your stats!

What were some of your favorite Switch games and memories from 2023? Let us know in the comments below, on Twitter (here and here) or on Facebook.

We've still got the big Playstation Wrap-up blog coming here in the next few days, so stay tuned for that. Until then, as always, keep it here.