Bongos or no, Jungle Beat is the pinnacle of Donkey Kong platformers, because it's much more than "just" a platformer.
You could not make two Fire Emblem games more dissimilar than Awakening and Thracia 776, and yet, I like them just the same.
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To this day, the Thousand-Year Door is the best balance of all of the things that make playing Paper Mario games worthwhile.
Nintendo's best crossover is wonderful even if you're not familiar with either of the franchises involved, thanks to a fantastical premise.
Many of the Mario platformers that helped make Nintendo a giant of the industry don't hold up enough for our purposes here, but Super Mario Bros. 3 remains as wonderful as it always was.
The Art Style series games were generally good. PiCTOBiTS was a fantastic, original puzzler, and eminently playable over a decade later.
The return of a beloved franchise — and its sequel — are both better than anything from the original series that inspired them in the first place.
The best modern 2D Mario platforming isn't actually made by Nintendo developers at all, and it fills a gap left by New Super Mario Bros., to boot.
Pikmin 2 isn't just more Pikmin in the sense it's a sequel to the beloved original, it's also more Pikmin in terms of strategy, scope, and actual Pikmin.
The remaster of a Game Boy classic modernized the gameplay, introduced some brand new concepts, and made for a better overall experience than the original.
Thanks to the strong foundations of this horror game, it remains inherently creepy all this time later in a way some other older horror titles have not.
