Nintendo has no shortage of successful franchises. If recent months have taught the gaming industry anything, it's that Super Mario is still very much Nintendo's most bankable IP, with both the Super Mario Bros. Movie and Universal's Mario-dominated Super Nintendo World bringing in the big bucks. But Mario is far from Nintendo's only successful IP, and two of them, Super Smash Bros. and Animal Crossing, are currently in the same boat, facing a similar dilemma.
Released back in December 2018, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate brings 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 Horizons may 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 complete Animal Crossing experience to date. But both series now suffer the same problem: not knowing where to go next.
Nintendo Might Have a Hard Time Topping Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons
From the get-go, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was designed to be, as the name implies, the ultimate Smash Bros. experience. While every sequel in Smash Bros. history has added its own unique roster of characters and brought forward a select few from past entries, Smash Bros. Ultimate goes above and beyond, adding every single character from the franchise's then-20-year-old catalog. Smash Bros. Ultimate applied 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. Ultimate also boasted some of the most content ever seen in a 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. Ultimate has only continued to grow, with 12 brand-new fighters being added as DLC. In almost every way, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is in fact the ultimate Smash Bros. game, and it won't be easy to top it.
While Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was designed specifically to be the be-all-end-all entry in the long-running franchise, Animal Crossing: New Horizons wasn't designed with that in mind, but for many fans, it's managed to achieve that status. While Animal Crossing: New Horizons may have removed some of New 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 Horizons builds 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 Horizons offers just about everything they could ever want in an Animal Crossing game, begging many to wonder what is next for the series.
Since both Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons are excellent, it's going to be pretty difficult for their next franchise entries to outdo them. This is especially true for Smash Ultimate, as unless its successor contains all the fighters and stages present in Ultimate, 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 what both Super Smash Bros. and Animal Crossing need to avoid any potential criticisms or comparisons with past entries, and it would also help to avoid franchise fatigue.