The Best Nintendo Games on Every Handheld

Handheld gaming is arguably bigger in 2025 than it ever has been. Between platforms like the Steam Deck, PlayStation Portal, ROG Ally, and of course, the Nintendo Switch family of consoles, gaming on-the-go has been on the rise in a major way over the past few years. More so than any other gaming company, though, Nintendo has helped shape the ability to play games on handheld hardware for a span of multiple decades.

Going back to the days of the Game & Watch, handhelds have always been a core component of Nintendo’s business. In recent years, it has combined its handheld efforts with its home consoles to create the Switch, which has reshaped the gaming industry at large. Prior to this, though, Nintendo released countless different dedicated portable platforms like the Game Boy, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS. All of these devices received tons of support from Nintendo on the software front, with some games clearly being superior to others. As a result, let’s take a look at the best Nintendo games that have ever been released for all of the company’s various handhelds.

Before diving into this list, it’s worth noting that the Switch and Switch 2 will not be present here. While they’re still handhelds, they lean more into being home consoles than they do portable devices. If you’d like to see our ranking of Nintendo’s best console games ever, you can find that right here.

Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow – Game Boy

Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow aren’t just the best Game Boy games ever made; they’re some of the most important video games of all-time. While the Game Boy itself had already been a fixture for roughly seven years by the time Pokemon hit the scene, its arrival made the handheld more of a must-have than ever. Pokemon became a cultural phenomenon thanks to Red, Blue, and Yellow and made characters like Pikachu and Charizard household names.

Beyond simply being fantastic and inventive RPGs in their own right, Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow perfectly took advantage of the Game Boy’s portable nature. The advent of being able to trade and battle Pokemon across one Game Boy to another was a revelation at the time and remains a core element of the series to this day. Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow were way ahead of their time and might be the single most important portable games to ever come from Nintendo.

Pokemon Gold and Silver – Game Boy Color

I hate to put two Pokemon games in a row on this list, but I feel like there’s no other choice. While Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow kicked off the Pokemon craze on the original Game Boy, their sequels, Pokemon Gold and Silver, were exclusive to Game Boy Color. Not only did Gold and Silver add new Pokemon, mechanics, and other features that improved them greatly from their predecessors, but they also told a story that continued the narrative found in the previous games. While this might not seem like a huge deal, virtually every Pokemon game that has come about since has told a self-contained story that doesn’t tie in with other entries.

What makes Pokemon Gold and Silver most impressive is that it also features the entirety of the Kanto region from Red, Blue, and Yellow in addition to its new region of Johto. This revelation was mind-blowing back in 2000, particularly because Nintendo found a way to fit all of this content onto a simple Game Boy Color cartridge. To this day, Pokemon Gold and Silver are considered the gold (pun intended) standard for the Pokemon series and have yet to be bested by any future games.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga – Game Boy Advance

The Game Boy Advance has an extremely deep library of games, but there’s also not a single title that really stands out amongst the pack. Advance Wars, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare Inc., and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap were all acclaimed in their own right, but they didn’t necessarily provide genre-defining experiences. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, however, I would argue very much did.

While Mario had already dabbled in the RPG space with Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG, Superstar Saga is arguably the character’s best adventure in this genre. It tells a surprisingly great story while having intuitive and engaging controls that felt perfect for the Game Boy Advance. Superstar Saga isn’t only one of the best Mario RPGs ever made, but it also helped launch the Mario & Luigi series, which has continued to be relevant for the past 20 years across numerous different platforms.

Mario Kart DS – Nintendo DS

Mario Kart DS was the first must-have game in the DS library. Released roughly one year after the handheld initially launched, Mario Kart DS was the first game in the series to feel like it was offering a similar gameplay experience to the home console entries in Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart: Double Dash. While there were some compromises, it was the best example yet in the early days of the DS to show that the gap between handhelds and consoles was closing quickly.

What really sets Mario Kart DS apart for me is its accessibility as a multiplayer game. Rather than require everyone to own a copy of Mario Kart DS in order to play with one another, Nintendo allowed anyone with a DS to hop into the experience with others via download play. This feature wasn’t one that was solely tied to Mario Kart DS, but it’s certainly the game that likely used download play the most. Even if you never owned Mario Kart DS yourself, there’s a good chance that you spent hours playing it with friends and family thanks to this feature.

Fire Emblem: Awakening – Nintendo 3DS

The Fire Emblem franchise has become one of the most prominent for Nintendo over the past decade. 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses notably took the series to new heights, and the upcoming Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is already one of the most-anticipated games on Switch 2. Without Fire Emblem: Awakening, though, none of this hype around the franchise would exist.

In short, Awakening was the first Fire Emblem game to catch hold in the West. Its gripping story, memorable characters, and strategic gameplay didn’t just push Fire Emblem as a whole to a new level, but it likely saved the entire franchise. All future Fire Emblem sequels, spin-offs, and appearances of characters in games like Super Smash Bros. are directly thanks to the success of Awakening. It’s not just the most important Fire Emblem game ever, but it stands as the top 3DS game to ever come about.

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