Nintendo has no shortage of successful franchises. If recent months have taught the gaming industry anything, it’s thatSuper Mariois still very much Nintendo’s most bankable IP, with both theSuper Mario Bros. Movieand Universal’s Mario-dominated Super Nintendo Worldbringing in the big bucks. ButMariois far from Nintendo’s only successful IP, and two of them,Super Smash Bros.andAnimal Crossing, are currently in the same boat, facing a similar dilemma.
Released back in December 2018,Super Smash Bros. Ultimatebrings together fighters, stages, and items from across the franchise’s past, celebrating not only its own history, but Nintendo’s as well.Animal Crossing: New Horizonsmay not be such an overt celebration of its franchise history, but it still brings forward ideas from the past and builds upon their groundwork to make, arguably, the most completeAnimal Crossingexperience to date. But both series now suffer the same problem: not knowing where to go next.
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Nintendo Might Have a Hard Time Topping Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons
From the get-go,Super Smash Bros. Ultimatewas designed to be, as the name implies, the ultimateSmash Bros.experience. While every sequel inSmash Bros.historyhas added its own unique roster of characters and brought forward a select few from past entries,Smash Bros. Ultimategoes above and beyond, adding every single character from the franchise’s then-20-year-old catalog.Smash Bros. Ultimateapplied the same mentality to the franchise’s stages, bringing almost 100 stages forward from prior entries in the series, only excluding a total of 15.
On top of its absurdly great roster of fighters and its many, many stages,Smash Bros. Ultimatealso boasted some of the most content ever seen ina modern Nintendo game. The game’s story mode, while a tad repetitive, provides players with over 20 hours of story content, and over 70 if they’re planning on reaching 100% completion. And over the last five years,Smash Bros. Ultimatehas only continued to grow, with 12 brand-new fighters being added as DLC. In almost every way,Super Smash Bros. Ultimateis in fact the ultimateSmash Bros.game, and it won’t be easy to top it.
WhileSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatewas designed specifically to be the be-all-end-all entry in the long-running franchise,Animal Crossing: New Horizonswasn’t designed with that in mind, but for many fans, it’s managed to achieve that status. WhileAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsmay have removed some ofNew Leaf’s features, the vast majority of the franchise’s usual gameplay mechanics make their way over to the newest entry. And on top of that excellent groundwork,New Horizonsbuilds one of the most feature-complete games in Nintendo history, especially if the game’s post-launch updates are taken into consideration. For many fans,Animal Crossing: New Horizonsoffers just about everything they could ever want in anAnimal Crossinggame, begging many to wonder what is next for the series.
Since bothSuper Smash Bros. UltimateandAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsare excellent, it’s going to be pretty difficult for their next franchise entries to outdo them. This is especially true forSmash Ultimate, as unless its successor contains all the fighters and stages present inUltimate, it’ll be an immediate downgrade. Perhaps the best option for both of these franchises is to experiment with something completely new. A bold, experimental next entry could be exactly whatbothSuper Smash Bros.andAnimal Crossingneed to avoid any potential criticisms or comparisons with past entries, and it would also help to avoid franchise fatigue.
