A good re-release can elevate a well-worn title to new heights. This year we saw some incredible efforts from both Nintendo themselves and a slew of third parties. It has been a while since this category was so hotly contested, and each of the games in this top 5 has earned its spot.

5. Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection - Alex de Freitas

In the early aughts, Capcom took the Mega Man franchise in a bold new direction with the Battle Network games. Mega Man was no longer a super fighting robot who ran from left to right, but instead a virus-busting AI virtual assistant with the world wide web to explore. The genre swap from platformer to card collecting RPG with grid-based action combat played like nothing else at the time, but that's not to say it didn't borrow any ideas. Looking to mimic the explosive success of Pokemon, Battle Network introduced its own take on multiple versions per release, event-based collectibles, player-to-player trading and battling, and even an anime adaptation. But lacking the ubiquity of a behemoth like Pokemon, actually engaging in the trading and battling was a rarity. For most fans, Mega Man Battle Network was a solitary experience.

Now the year is 2023 and we are in many ways living in the internet age that Battle Network imagined, and this year's Legacy Collection puts that to full use. The collection presents itself as if it were your own Personal Terminal as MegaMan.exe voiced by Andrew Francis greets you and helps you navigate the features in the menu—features that not only include the usual trappings of a collection like a music player and art galleries but also the event exclusive battle chips and the e-reader patch cards which were ever only available in Japan. But the real treat is that you can finally take Mega Man and your own deck of battlechips online and do some real honest to goodness trading and NetBattling for each and every game, no link cable required. For a series that relied so heavily on the internet for its setting and story, Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is not just the definitive way to play these games but a full realization of the concept itself.

4. Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe - Neal Ronaghan

The power of the Switch remake of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land is that it took a game I thought was just okay back when it came out on Wii more than a decade ago and turned it into maybe the best 2D Kirby game ever made. This isn’t just a straight port; it’s a game that rethinks the original release and improves upon it in a multitude of ways. Now all players in co-op can control a Kirby instead of being forced to play as copy ability-less heroes like Meta Knight and Dedede. The level designs and enemy placements are all refined. The visuals take the standard definition Wii graphics and turn them into a wondrous HD vision that still retains the classic art style. All of this is before we get to the completely new content.

Merry Magoland is a delightful setup for some multiplayer mini-games, featuring a lot of winks and nods to past games in both the collectibles and the games themselves. None of these games are memorable all-timers that will stay in multiplayer rotations for years or anything, but they’re largely adorable and enjoyable with just enough depth—bonus points to being a blast with the younger crowd. The other major new addition found after you beat the main game is an epilogue starring the partner character Magolor that tweaks the gameplay by making Magolor start off relatively powerless and have you build up an arsenal as you go. This remake might not be as flashy and buzzworthy as a Metroid Prime or a Super Mario RPG, but it’s an incredible release all the same and very much worthy of notoriety in our game of the year list.

3. Super Mario RPG - Donald Theriault

Although it did have the unfortunate side effect of restarting the Geno-in-Smash Bros discourse, Super Mario RPG’s remake did more than just explain why the 1996 original isn’t in the Switch Online library. It managed to make the characters even more expressive than the original, helped by nearly three decades of improvements on mid-1990s CG. The already-great Yoko Shimomura soundtrack was only made better with more modern instrumentation. Some of the name changes to enemies and attacks were much needed - why, exactly, was a Scan spell with a humorous bonus effect called Psychopath? - and they quickly become second nature.

The biggest change of all in the Mario RPG remake was to the battle system. The originator of action commands in RPGs offered an easier option, but those who could get the hang of the timed hits would be rewarded with bonus damage and even special all-party attacks whose cutscenes were still causing grins all the way through the end of the game. Mastering the battle system was also a necessity for the expanded post-credits boss fights, which allowed the less frequently-used members of the party beyond Mario and Peach to really shine. Between Live a Live last year and now Mario RPG, two classic Super NES RPGs have gotten love; here’s hoping there’s time for at least one more classic RPG to be remade before we move to the Switch’s successor.

2. Star Ocean Second Story R - Alex Orona

2023 could be described as a year heavy on the ports and remakes, but Star Ocean Second Story R blows past any mere ports or remakes and acts as more of a celebration of the series as a whole. Of course it’s still the same story but does especially well to isolate the beautiful pixel art and emphasize it by placing it over beautifully realistic diorama like environments. While the new 2.5D style of graphical upgrade we’ve seen in the last couple years has fallen out of favor, Second Story R does so much more by crafting the sprites into the wonderfully rendered 3D, it’s almost like playing with living toys. It’s a visual that I’ve had to show to multiple family members to show off what video game art can do in the modern age.

And that’s only the visuals! We also have an exquisitely remixed orchestra soundtrack by the original composer Motoi Sakuraba, plus quality of life adjustments, additional new combat/environment mechanics, and even special abilities that bring in characters from other entries in the series. It’s a full improvement of one of the great PlayStation 1 JRPGs while also celebrating all things Star Ocean. As a personal fan of that era of JRPGs, Star Ocean Second Story R raises the bar for all remakes moving forward.

1. Metroid Prime Remastered - John Rairdin

If I had any concerns about how Metroid Prime would stand up through a modern lens, they were instantly dispelled by this remaster. This is legitimately one of the best looking and best playing games on the platform. It will make you look at your Switch and scream “You could do this the whole time?”. Metroid Prime Remastered is the most impressive remaster Nintendo has ever produced. It is loyal to the original in its re-working of its art, yet unafraid to push the absolute boundaries of those original designs. The underlying brilliance of Retro’s original masterpiece shines forth from this new shell, pristine as ever.

From a purely graphical standpoint, Metroid Prime Remastered feels a generation ahead of anything else on the platform. Thanks to the smartly optimized, segmented design of the GameCube original, Metroid Prime Remastered is able to push out richly detailed environments that hold up flawlessly both docked and handheld, and all of this at an unwavering 60fps. This is the definitive release of one of the greatest video games ever made, and an incredible glimpse into the future of the Prime series.

Honorable Mentions

• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
• Remnant From the Ashes
• Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp
• Teslagrad Remastered
• EA Sports FC 24
• Skater XL

EA Sports FC 24 has been included as an honorable mention in this category despite being day and date with other versions of the game. We did this in order to specifically highlight the step up in quality of the Switch specific port compared to previous years.