Once dismissed as 'for kids,' Nintendo now enjoys rarefied critical status — except when it doesn't

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Nintendo has always enjoyed the respect of critics. The games, at their best, are just too good for things to be otherwise. It is total critical orthodoxy that Shigeru Miyamoto is one of the greatest and most influential game designers of all time, and that Mario and Zelda games are foundational texts of the video game medium that have successfully rewritten themselves and stayed relevant over time.

Yet there have been times throughout the company's history when Nintendo's image, and the audiences it has chosen to cultivate, have deflated this reputation. In the edgy late 1990s and early 2000s, when PlayStation ruled all, the family-friendliness and colorful styling of Nintendo games led to some people writing them off as kids' stuff. And when Nintendo sought out a new casual-gaming audience with the Wii and DS, some of its core fans felt betrayed, and couldn't find the depth or sophistication they wanted in the games.

The Switch 2 compilation explodes the possibilities of casual gaming as if it was nothing

I thought about this when reviewing the superb Nintendo Switch Sports Resort this week. It's an exemplary, welcoming casual game (and actually, has much more for the long-session solo gamer than previous successors to the mighty Wii Sports ). It may not be perfect, but in big-picture terms, I found it very hard to fault.

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