From beloved gaming services to fan-favorite franchises, Nintendo has pulled the plug on many popular products over the years. Welcome to WatchMojo and today we're looking at the most controversial Nintendo discontinuations that left fans frustrated and disappointed.
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're taking a look at 10 great products that
00:10Nintendo decided to discontinue, much to the chagrin of everyone else.
00:14Number 10, Club Nintendo.
00:24During the 6th and 7th console generations, Nintendo had this exceptional rewards program
00:40for its players.
00:41Buy a Nintendo game, look for a Club Nintendo leaflet with a code inside the game's case,
00:45enter said code on the Club Nintendo website, and you get points.
00:48Simple.
00:49For those that took part in this program, users could use their points to earn exclusive products
00:53that were not sold anywhere else.
00:55Such products ranged from Animal Crossing, playing cards, and other fun toys, to exclusive
01:00downloadable games like Doc Lewis' Punch Out and Grill Out with Ultra Hand.
01:04This alone was why so many people were a little annoyed when Nintendo shut down the program in 2015.
01:15Number 9, Wii Channels.
01:16You can find out the weather around the world.
01:19Just point the Wii remote and choose a map location to view the forecast for that area.
01:23Channels were the most distinct feature of the Wii.
01:26Booting up your console and seeing all of them perfectly aligned and waiting to be clicked on
01:30made it feel like you were living in a cozy Jetsons-like future.
01:33But what folks really loved about the channels were some of the fun gimmicks they carried.
01:37Check out global news and weather forecasts.
01:39Look at the different Miis people have made.
01:41Take part in fun polls with a competitive edge to them.
01:44It was all just some good old fun.
01:46This sort of charm is what disappointed some folks when booting up their Switch consoles
01:50for the first time.
01:51As much as we do love the Switch, yes, the dashboard is insanely boring.
01:56Perhaps the Wii spoiled us a bit in that regard.
02:02Number 8, F-Zero Series.
02:12Now, one might be quick to say that Nintendo didn't discontinue F-Zero.
02:16After all, we got a brand new game in 2023 in the form of F-Zero 99.
02:20But here's the problem.
02:21No one was asking for a battle royale starring Captain Falcon and Company.
02:25What the fans want is a new tried and true F-Zero game like we got in the old days.
02:30In that case, we haven't had a new proper F-Zero game since 2003.
02:34Sure, we can play most of the originals via Switch Online,
02:37but it's been literally decades since we got F-Zero GX,
02:40which was a technical marvel for the GameCube with its visuals, speed, and performance.
02:44Maybe the Switch 2's enhancements will open the door for something cool
02:47so we can show everyone our moves.
02:49Number 7, Chibi-Robo Series.
03:01Anyone who has played the 2005 original Chibi-Robo will tell you how captivating and silly this gem of the game was.
03:16Between the daytime cycle of cleaning and collecting items and the oddities that occurred at night,
03:21there was so much love and fun packed into this adventure.
03:24Now, where did we mention gardening, photography, and 2D platforming in that sentence?
03:28That is where Nintendo went wrong.
03:30Whereas F-Zero was ignored for years upon years, Nintendo gave Chibi-Robo a few more games, but in the wrong ways.
03:36Park Patrol, Photo Finder, and Ziplash may have been neat in their own unique ways,
03:41but these were not the games that fans wanted for Chibi-Robo,
03:44and it has made this small fanbase really, really frustrated with the company.
03:55Number 6, My Nintendo Rewards.
03:57In February 2025, Nintendo announced the closure of My Nintendo Rewards, the successor to Club Nintendo.
04:03Now, in all honesty, the closure itself is not what drew ire from some folks.
04:07The irritation mostly stemmed from just how lackluster the program was compared to Club Nintendo.
04:12Granted, My Nintendo had some neat rewards here and there between bite-sized downloadable titles,
04:17digital goodies like wallpapers and coupons, and even some physical goods like keychains, postcards, and pins.
04:23But these were nowhere near as compelling as the physical products Club Nintendo members got to redeem back in the day.
04:29So people's frustration is mostly tied to the half-hearted attempt with My Nintendo,
04:33and how it lasted as long as it did.
04:35Number 5, Star Fox Series.
04:37Not including Star Fox 2's release on the mini SNES in 2019, we haven't had a new Star Fox game since 2016,
04:53and it has greatly aggravated fans to say the least.
04:56Much of the Star Fox community have been begging for a new game, or at the very least, ports of Star Fox Adventures and Assault.
05:02Yet, Nintendo hasn't said a word about Fox and the team since the failure that was 2016's Star Fox Zero on Wii U.
05:09And it's a real shame, because at the time of this video, the Switch has sold over a hundred million units, which is staggering.
05:15The IP could have seen a massive resurgence, the same way Metroid and Pikmin did.
05:19Alas, Nintendo has chosen to leave the franchise dormant.
05:22We guess Zero really did scare them off of Star Fox.
05:36Number 4, Super Mario Bros. 35.
05:45One of the two games made to commemorate Mario's 35th anniversary, Super Mario Bros. 35 was one of the coolest online games Nintendo published.
05:53Developed by Eureka, the studio behind Tetris 99, players could race each other through various levels of Super Mario Bros.
05:59to see who was the fastest and nimblest plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom.
06:03Sadly, the game was not long for this world.
06:05Super Mario Bros. 35 was only around a meager six months, having launched in October 2020 and being discontinued in April 2021.
06:13The small but dedicated player base was steamed about this, and this combined with another entry we will see in a bit,
06:19caused some to raise concerns over game preservation.
06:26Number 3, Virtual Console.
06:36The second Nintendo announced Switch Online in 2018 was the second we knew that the Virtual Console would be dead.
06:41For those who didn't know or are too young to know, Nintendo used to sell retro games through a section of their digital storefronts, dubbed the Virtual Console.
06:48This corner of the store would allow you to purchase old Nintendo games a la carte, unlike the now subscription-based service you get with Switch Online, where you pay an annual fee for access to these games.
06:57Some folks got mad because of the Switch to a subscription model, while others were mad because it was the only way to play their childhood favorites.
07:04Fast forward to 2024 when Nintendo revealed that more than 34 million players are subscribed to Switch Online.
07:1134 million people paying 20 or 50 bucks a year? How about that, huh?
07:14How about that, huh?
07:22Number 2, Super Mario 3D All-Stars.
07:24To celebrate this 35th anniversary of Mario, Nintendo released this collection of 3D Mario games containing three amazing classics.
07:39Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy.
07:43Unfortunately for us, this was a monkey's paw situation, as Super Mario 3D All-Stars was a limited release for some weird reason.
07:50This annoyed so many folks that some went so far as to criticize Nintendo for supposedly creating false scarcity.
07:56Regardless of the backlash, Nintendo moved forward with their plans and pulled the game from store shelves six months after release.
08:02Not long after, the company revealed that despite the outrage, Super Mario 3D All-Stars sold more than 9 million copies.
08:08That was some anger, huh?
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08:331. The Wii U and 3DS eShops
08:37Of all the products Nintendo discontinued, there has never been more outrage than when the company announced the closure of the Wii U and 3DS eShops.
08:44To their credit, they did give players roughly a year's notice to buy whatever digital titles they wanted, many of which were deeply discounted by their publishers.
08:52Despite the sudden public outcry for the preservation of games, Nintendo moved forward with the closure in March 2023, erasing hundreds of titles that never saw physical releases.
09:01And now, some companies are doing what they can to port their old 3DS games to modern hardware.
09:06Was there a discontinued product that made you upset with Nintendo? Let us know down in the comments.
09:10The rinds!
09:28The rinds!
09:29The rinds!