Unlike the more expensive Xbox and PlayStation subscriptions, Nintendo doesn’t drop current AAA titles into its service. What it offers instead is decades’ worth of back catalog — and that swap pays off far more than the gap in price would lead you to expect.
A Nintendo Switch Online membership is certainly convenient for online sessions with friends. But the library is the part that actually carries the value.
Over the decades Nintendo has shipped so many masterpieces that a list like this one could go on indefinitely. These five aren’t the only titles in the service worth a 10/10. They’re simply the ones I’d stack against anything out there.
The Mario follow-up where the series shifted gears
As a platformer, the first Super Mario Bros. remains tightly built and reliably fun. Super Mario Bros. 2 is excellent as well — either the brutal Japanese follow-up we know as The Lost Levels, or the American release assembled from Doki Doki Panic.
And then Super Mario Bros. 3 arrived.
It goes back to the fundamentals that made the original click, then buries them under a staggering pile of new ideas. Spiky enemies become stompable thanks to the Goomba’s Shoe. The P-Wing grants flight. Best of the bunch is the Tanooki Suit, which bundles a tail attack, gliding, and invincibility through a stone Tanooki statue.
Arriving here from modern Mario titles is jarring unless you lean on save states. A save system does exist, but the limited lives force you to chain several stages together before you hit key checkpoints — and those stages bristle with hazards that would send the New Super Mario Bros. games running scared.
Every restart is worth it. NES titles frequently play like rough drafts of their SNES successors. Not this one.
A battle royale disguised as a puzzle game
Classic material makes up most of the Nintendo Switch Online catalog, though subscribers also get a handful of modern offerings. Tetris 99 leads that group, transplanting the original formula into the 99-player lobbies that give it its name.
The job is still clearing lines. Doing so now also launches Garbage Blocks at rivals, which turns the whole thing quicker and nastier than ordinary Tetris. Offense and defense happen simultaneously: you’re fighting to stay afloat while piling pressure on everyone else.
The concept later carried over to racing with F-Zero 99, another strong free addition.
When every other battle royale has begun to feel like homework, this is the palate cleanser. Victories are genuinely difficult to come by — there are plenty of seriously good Tetris players in those lobbies. Losing is still a good time.
The underdiscussed Zelda
Zelda alone could occupy this whole list without complaint. A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker — all obvious choices. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap doesn’t get the same affection, and that’s exactly the reason it earns the mention.
There’s one caveat. Being a Game Boy Advance release, it’s only free if you have an NSO + Expansion Pack subscription.
Few games have ever looked this gorgeous in pixel form. The series had already shifted its focus to 3D consoles by that point, and The Minish Cap argued that the top-down perspective still had room to grow. Once you shrink down into the Lilliputian realm of the Minish, grass blades and leaves become full-blown environmental features — and that’s before the buildings and interiors enter the picture.
The narrative pulls its weight as well, trading the familiar Ganon routine for a villain called Vaati. Echoes of Wisdom and A Link Between Worlds have refined the top-down template since. In sheer charm, though, nothing has overtaken it.
The SNES RPG that bombed, then swallowed the medium
Eventually the best Nintendo Switch Online titles start to blend into one crowd of familiar faces. Mario and Zelda dominate the discussion from the NES through the GameCube. F-Zero and Fire Emblem offer a bit of variety. Earthbound shatters the pattern entirely.
North American sales were poor, and then it spent years growing into one of the games that defines the SNES era. Nothing else on store shelves at the time shared its oddball humor or its relentless subversion of RPG conventions, and that sensibility has been borrowed endlessly since. Look at Undertale or Omori — the DNA is unmistakable.
Mother/Earthbound Beginnings, the game before it, was every bit as imaginative. Earthbound sharpened the formula into something quicker and more consistently enjoyable. Mother 3 is terrific too, but it never received an official Western release, so Earthbound stands here by itself.
Mario’s 3D debut still nails the movement
The franchise already has representation here through Super Mario Bros. 3. Going back for seconds is unavoidable, because Super Mario 64 established a benchmark that even its own excellent sequels have struggled to match. It’s another Expansion Pack exclusive, so work that into your subscription budgeting.
Nintendo didn’t convert Mario’s 2D mechanics into 3D one-for-one. The studio reconstructed his movement from scratch, putting momentum front and center and letting him throw punches at enemies.
It feels superb from the first second. What elevates it further is the level design. The stages are imaginative and atmospheric, they hand you more freedom than any earlier Mario game, and each platform sits precisely where his momentum wants to carry him. Finishing a stage ceases to be the objective. Hunting down stars across wildly varied challenges becomes the whole draw.
Give the camera a little time. Once you quit wrestling with it, you’ll realize this platformer hasn’t aged a bit in any way that counts.