Nintendo needs to bring back this budget-friendly franchise

In many ways, the Switch era marked a new beginning for several of Nintendo’s publishing partners. Nowadays, Intelligent Systems pretty much does three things: Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, WarioWare, and little else. And it makes sense – these are all big sellers. It’s actually been ten years since Intelligent Systems has worked on any other IP, which also means it’s been ten years since we’ve received a new Pushmo game.

When you talk about dormant Nintendo franchises, you usually bring up something like Wario Land, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, or Star Fox. Pushmo doesn’t often enter the conversation, and perhaps this is because it received many titles over the course of the Nintendo 3DS’ life. The franchise has unfortunately been completely silent on Nintendo Switch, and there aren’t any signs that it will ever come back.

Generally speaking, Nintendo has very much moved away from small, budget eShop titles like Pushmo. The closest thing on Switch might be Kirby’s Dream Buffet, and even then, there aren’t many other Nintendo games like it on the platform. Most franchises exclusively received full-price titles rather than budget ones, with only a few more exceptions like F-Zero 99 and Kirby Fighters 2. That’s a shame – budget titles retain Nintendo’s signature charm, are more accessible for those short on money, and fill the gap between major releases. On Nintendo 3DS, you had games like Freakyforms, Pokedex 3D, Dillon’s Rolling Western, HarmoKnight, and Pocket Card Jockey as well. I’m not going to pretend all of those were good, but sometimes it was nice to boot up a smaller-scale game as a break of sorts in between more complex titles.

Pushmo was arguably the best of these titles. It originally released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in 2011, making it one of the first exclusive titles there. Perhaps surprisingly for a game on this small a scale, it’s currently sitting at a Metascore of 90, placing it above many full-price Nintendo games. Pushmo is essentially a puzzle game where you have to pull blocks out to climb to a flagpole which is usually at the top of the level. It’s that simple – it’s very easy to pick up and play, because you can jump right into a level. Or, once you beat all the levels available in-game as part of story mode, you can create or download custom levels. That is, you could – it’s no longer legitimately possible since the 3DS’ official servers have shut down. Still, at $6.99, this was a pretty good deal, and a fun pastime at that.

Pushmo wasn’t even the best game in the franchise, however. That goes to Crashmo, which in my opinion is even more fun. It’s the same general premise as Pushmo, but with a key difference – blocks now have gravity, and come crashing down when you pull them out. This one was always my favorite, and many of its puzzles were incredibly challenging. I logged almost 50 hours on it as a kid, which is saying something – because Pokemon and Animal Crossing also ate up my time, and the fact that I had any time for a small budget title is saying something. Unfortunately, after Crashmo, I kind of fell off of the series. Stretchmo was released in 2015, and as the name implies, the blocks would stretch out when you pulled them. I don’t remember liking this one very much – it was a free-to-start game, but more importantly, I remember the frame rate being kind of wonky and putting me off a bit. So for me, Crashmo is where I stopped playing.

Intelligent Systems also made Pushmo World for Wii U in 2014, and unfortunately you can probably tell where that went – nowhere, given it was the Wii U. First-party heavy hitters had trouble selling on the console as is – Mario Kart 8 was the highest-selling game on the platform by a mile, and even then it only sold 8.46 million units. As you might expect, Pushmo World sold nowhere close to 1 million units, and honestly I find it surprisingly obscure as a game – I never got to play it myself for some reason or another – probably because Super Smash Bros. for Wii U’s amiibo training took up all 3,500 hours I spent playing the Wii U. Supposedly, Crashmo World was going to be the next game that Intelligent Systems released, but after finishing Paper Mario: Color Splash in 2016, it was cancelled and moved on to Nintendo Switch. Color Splash itself didn’t even sell 1 million copies – as much as I would have loved to see Crashmo World, they made the right choice moving on from the heavily flawed Wii U.

So what can Nintendo do with the Pushmo franchise now? Anything, preferably! The company could release a small, budget title that’s just a port or remake of it with new levels, but they seem to like full-priced titles instead. You could do a game that combines Pushmo and Crashmo and lets you choose what kind of level you want to play or create, and make it $50 or something rather than full price. I don’t think that’s very likely, sadly – why spend development resources on a fairly unpopular IP when you could be making Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, or WarioWare? Intelligent Systems has only made games of these three franchises for ten years, and if I had to guess, that’s going to continue far into the Nintendo Switch 2’s lifespan.