These Nintendo games have created some of the most immersive and rich in-game worlds thanks to their fantastic world-building.

Nintendo has given players and fans memorable landscapes, stories, characters, and worlds. It may surprise many fans of Nintendo that not all of its greatest world-building doesn't just fall under great titles such as Mario, Kirby, Star Fox, Splatoon, etc.

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Some of the best world-building is quite obvious, some not as obvious. In this context, world-building means the depth of creative effort Nintendo has put behind crafting every aspect of its unique and immersive game worlds, from past to present and culture. Even the simplicity behind a world can give something more to players. Other times fans can find themselves absorbed in something far more epic or just downright strange.

Both Golden Sun and its sequel Golden Sun: The Lost Age, introduced Game Boy Advanced players to the world of Weyard. It is the mission of a group of magical adepts to keep Alchemy from spilling into the world. The game was full and rich filled with memorable environments.

For a handheld game, much detail was given to the history of the old magic users in this world. As well as the different cultures or inhabitants of Weyard. Players can lament when they come across ruins from once great civilizations only deepening the importance of what is at stake in this world. Not only that, like many well-executed RPGs like Final Fantasy, it puts a great deal of detail in exploration and keeps players invested in what can next be discovered.

Donkey Kong Country's world-building is amazing due to its simplicity. The story is simple, in an absurd way that is completely endearing. The whole plot of the story is Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy on a quest to save his banana hoard from King K. Rool. The plot's straightforwardness and absurdity make the side-scrolling world immersive in a charming way.

The mini-games and mechanics added into this world made it stand apart from platformer titles from the time. Yet with Donkey Kong Country even when the world revealed itself to players, there was always some hidden secret to discover. The fact that it was a game built off of varying silliness is what radiated with gamers and drew them in.

Surely the story of the key character turning 10 and receiving their first starter Pokemon and then being sent out into the world to become a Pokemon master would have run dry by now. It has not. Although the typical Pokemon narrative is indeed formulaic, there are aspects to these games that keep players immersed. One thing it does brilliantly is reinventing a new experience (albeit with the same narrative) by creating unique and different lands to explore.

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In a way, sometimes gamers like going back to the same experience, but can experience it anew with new surprises in different environments and different Pokemon repertoires. Currently, the new addition of open worlds which was briefly tampered with in Pokemon Sword and Shield as well as Arceus, gives players a peak, at how personal and open an experience in this world can be. And how it has only scratched the surface.

Regardless, players and fans come back to experience the unique trope, beautiful towns, catchy music, and new Pocket Monsters time and again, because sometimes formulaic world-building works in favor of personal experience and nostalgia.

One of the best games to come out of LucasArts was 1993's Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It was a wonderful homage to classic horror and b movie science fiction. The player could play as either Zeke or Julie. Their mission? To rid their town and save their neighbors from zombies, possessed dolls, chainsaw killers, and giant babies. Yes...giant babies. The world-building is brilliant due to the homages and absurdities.

The compelling thing apart from the dark humor was how the gameplay blended itself to escalate the humor but at the same time make the players feel panicked and in states of urgency. After all, one of the key objectives is to save as many neighbors as possible along with completing whatever main mission a player is tasked with. It was a world that could be hilarious and horrifying at the same time. Not a lot of games can do that. Especially for the time, it was released.

In Fire Emblem: 3 Houses, 3 rulings power start at peace and stand on the precipice of conflict in the lands that they share. The world-building leaves players with choices that have an impact on the rest of the gameplay. One of which, the player starts off having to pick which of the 3 ruling lands they are a part of. It is a simple choice with far-reaching consequences for the rest of the game.

While Fire Emblem Awakening still holds as one of the best of the new iterations of the series, Fire Emblem: 3 Houses stands as slightly better in accordance with world-building. The reason is simple. There is more simulation. Simulation usually bodes well for RPGs because quite simply it allows players to further immerse themselves into the experience of role-playing.

The Illusion of Gaia supposedly takes place sometime in the 16th century/age of exploration. Players play as Will a survivor of an ill-fated expedition. Will meets a creature named Gaia warning him of a comet that will bring great evil into the world.

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Players were won over not just by the story but the familiar sights of real-life ancient places. It is still a fantasy world, but fans of the series still have their speculations. Upon completing the game, the cryptic world-building did not just end there. Much of it was left to interpretation, which itself built great intrigue for fans of the series with the simple mysteries surrounding it.

Yes, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door starts off with the typical save the princess plot line after Princess Peach makes the grave mistake of not reading the room and talking to a stranger who is eerily hooded and offers her a strange object. Along with the save the princess objective, Mario discovers a secret map that will lead him to collect various star crystals. The story is silly and typical but in a way that is delightful.

What is more, it has something more than a typical Mario game. The world-building is much more whimsical, and the 2D animation is just beautiful to look at. It's Mario but more fantasy-driven, and less focused on platforming and back onto RPG. Hearkening back to Super Nintendo's Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996). This was honestly a huge breath of fresh air to players when the game debuted on the GameCube. And taking an amazing and beautiful turn in the world of Mario RPGs.

Chrono Trigger was THE game that did time travel right. Time travel isn't just a subplot among greater things, it has to do with EVERYTHING in this wonderful experience. Players can travel to prehistoric periods, medieval times, and places where the end times are ticking down.

The game starts off in the year 1000 AD as the character Chrono is at a festival. By the end of the day he and his companion have been whisked away to the year 600 AD. From there Chrono must put time back into balance. Apart from the time travel tropes being done incredibly well, the environments in this title are incredibly immersive, and the people players come across are unforgettable. Plus time travel is cool.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is an odd choice over Breath of the Wild. In a sense, it did world-building just a little better. Certainly not in scope, but in ideas. It isn't the typical save the princess story that is expected from other Zelda games. It is more complex than that. Following a few months after the events of Ocarina of Time, Link finds himself in the land of Termina. What is odder, the town is filled with familiar faces from the land of Hyrule. Whether that was to raise more questions or out of programming convenience still leaves fans speculating and creating theories to this day.

Regardless, the whole game takes place in the course of 3 days before a terrifying moon collides and destroys Termina, and possibly more. Players find themselves in a constant time loop reliving the same 3 days over and over again. It is brilliant and perhaps the darkest iteration of the Zelda series. Creating a whole new world outside Hyrule with countless things to do with precious time to do it in, really upped the stakes in this game.

The moments where the moon is about to hit the earth, leaving the player to play the song of time to save them from total annihilation just hits different from running from a nighttime horde of zombie stalfos. It just hits harder and different. The game to this day has a lot of deeper meanings that fans still debate to this day. Not something Breath of the Wild can do in way of speculation.

In Earthbound, 13-year-old Ness discovers that a strange meteor has crash-landed into his hometown in the middle of the night. The fate of the world lies in Ness' hands who must collect several melodies in order to vanquish an evil alien entity before it takes over the world. Much like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Earthbound was brilliant too for its oddness and dark humor. Yet, it goes beyond that. Despite its weird plot line, the story is absolutely brilliant because of its eccentricities, and its parodying of American consumerism.

From fighting aliens to fighting a pile of puke come to life, the world never gets boring. What is more Ape Inc, which spearheaded Earthbound, had strong ties to Pokemon and its developer Game Freak. For fans of both series, there was something resembling an inside joke when walking into the drugstore in Earthbound to readily buy pills or weapons vs. going to a Poke-Mart and buying more innocent items. Seeing the parallels only adds to the charm of the game itself.

Which of course wasn't straight-up intentional, but rather implemented for convenience and simplicity. Despite that aliens aren't the only threat Ness and his gang must contend with. There are gangs, the police, cults, and angry animals. Don't forget the attacking glob of puke. The final boss too is worth mentioning and at the same time probably not worth mentioning, it is that terrifying.

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Sara is a writer and filmmaker/content creator who hails from Baltimore, Maryland. Her past exploits have been working for almost a decade on local television and working as a freelance writer for a few entertainment websites. In her spare time, she is a hobby musician, photographer, avid gamer, and history buff.