It never ceases to amaze me that the top-selling Switch game is… a Wii U game. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has long-reigned at the top of Switch sales charts and, as of last quarter, has sold 67.35 million units. That’s despite the fact that the game is simply an expanded version of the entry that launched on Nintendo’s previous console.
Gamers might say that they’re sick of remasters and remakes, but when an old game finds this kind of new life — for comparison, it sold just 8.46 million copies on Wii U — it’s hard to see why any developer or publisher would pass up an opportunity to bring their old games up to speed. On the strength of a port, Mario Kart 8 is now the fifth best-selling game of all time.
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Ports Help Games Reach New Audiences
That’s the thing about ports — they can radically expand the number of people who have access to a game. Like most gamers, I owned a limited number of consoles growing up, and had limited money to spend on games. If a game didn’t come to Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, GameCube, PS3, or Wii, I almost certainly didn’t play it in the first 18 years of my life. The vast libraries available on PC, the first two PlayStation consoles, and every Xbox console, were huge gaps in my knowledge that I worked to fill in as I got deeper into the hobby as an adult. In most cases, I could only do that because of ports.
Even the games I did play as a kid I often only finished thanks to ports. Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were two of my favorites growing up, but it took the DS and 3DS ports for me to finally roll credits. I didn’t finish Mario Sunshine until it hit the Switch. Same for Metroid Prime. And Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. And BioShock 2. And Resident Evil 5 and 6. And I only finished the NES 2D Mario platformers once they came to Switch Online because that brought the option of using save states.
This is the beauty of ports. They introduce people to games that they otherwise would never encounter. Or, if they did encounter these games, they might assume that they weren’t for them thanks to our changing tolerance for unfair difficulty. A great port can help you see the magic of something that otherwise might be rendered old-fashioned or impenetrable by the passing decades.
Ports Can Go Beyond Our Expectations
Ports can go above and beyond simply bringing an old game to a new system, as evidenced by the history-minded output of Digital Extreme. The company’s 2023 package The Making of Karateka used archival materials, newly conducted video interviews, and audio commentary to illustrate the context that surrounded the Karateka’s original release. It also came with multiple versions of the game — including unfinished builds, the original released game, and a new remaster — so that players could see the many stages the game went through over the course of its life and choose which version was best for them.
These are all reasons that ports are good for players. But Mario Kart 8 Deluxe makes the case that ports can be very good for developers and publishers, too. Nintendo could have gone back to the drawing board and spent years (and millions of dollars) developing a new Mario Kart game. Instead, it said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a perfectly good Mario Kart game sitting here,’ polished it up, added some tracks, expanded the multiplayer, and put it on store shelves. It’s not like no work, time, or money went into it, but it was significantly less than would go into creating a game from the ground up.
And it’s the biggest success of the Switch era and the second biggest hit Nintendo has ever had. Wii Sports only beats it because it came free with the console. Not every series is Mario Kart, it’s true. But do you think Nintendo thought Mario Kart 8 would be its biggest hit ever (non pack-in division) when it decided to port it? Probably not.
To all those companies out there who are sitting on great games that have no modern release, learn from Mario Kart 8’s example. Metal Gear Solid 4 might not be Konami’s biggest game of all time if it got ported to current consoles, but it might still do well. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg might find a new audience if Sega brought it to Switch, too. And what if they love it so much they turn Billy into the next Sonic? It could happen. You never know if you don’t try.
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