Rating of
2/5
2 Parts Rehash, 1 Part Nostalgia, 1 Part Ad
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/16/15
It’s undeniable that Nintendo has been in something of a rut lately. The sequels we once looked forward to with excitement about new features and gameplay mechanics have become formulaic to the point of near homogenization. At the same time, Nintendo is also facing their toughest competition yet for the attention of the youth that make up the company’s target demographic: Mobile gaming. Where once every schoolkid knew who Mario and Link are, now kids identify more strongly with colorful Birds with Anger issues.
In order to rectify this situation and re-saturate the consciousness of their target age bracket with their own IPs, Nintendo has been working hard to increase awareness of Nintendo IPs via the nostalgic trophy collections in the ‘Super Smash Bros.’ series and awareness of Nintendo characters via the Amiibo toy line. The ‘NES Remix’ series takes the original idea of putting ‘classic’ (read: ‘old’) Nintendo IP on display in a curated, almost museum-like manner in order to reintroduce forgotten products to a new generation. The “NES Remix Pack” is actually a compilation of two ‘NES Remixes’ (also appearing on the 3DS as “Ultimate NES Remix”) covering the majority of Nintendo’s first-party 8-bit titles.
Presentation
With the “NES Remix Pack,” we’re getting a bunch of remixed NES games. Truth in advertising still lives, it seems. As a compilation of NES games, the content in the “NES Remix Pack” features fairly dated-looking sprites with limited color pallets.
In some cases, the original NES games have been re-engineered to have textured backdrops behind the action, but otherwise the diversions contained within the pack look like they did in the 1980s and early 1990s – that is to say, not particularly great, but good enough to get by.
Wrapping all of these old-school-looking slices of gaming history is a border that keeps the games tightly locked in a semi-rounded bubble that mimics the contours and aspect ratio of a standard definition tube TV screen. Thankfully, though, the actual resolution is high-definition, so everything looks crisp instead of fuzzy.
Outside of the aspect ratio wrapper, there is very little in the “NES Remix Pack” that is new. There are a few new sounds, tunes, and menus that all serve the sole purpose of navigating the numerous old-school tasks that make-up the gameplay, but nothing spectacular. Sure, players can collect new 8-bit style stamps to use in Miiverse posts, but that’s not a particularly exciting new addition to a compilation of games that aim at being homages to Nintendo’s past glories.
Story
The “NES Remix Pack” has no narrative qualities whatsoever. It is a simple list of tasks. Completing tasks unlocks new tasks. The game ends when the player has completed all tasks. Exciting!
Gameplay
The “NES Remix Pack” aims to reintroduce Nintendo-Hard 8-bit games to the new generation of upcoming youth by cutting out most of the frustrating difficulty and shaping the characters and situations into a series of smartphone-game-style tasks that can be completed in a minute or less. Each task has a rating system of 1-3 stars, usually based on completion speed. There is technically a hidden 4th category that causes the three stars to glow with psychedelic rainbow colors, but it doesn’t seem to amount to anything besides bragging rights.
Collecting stars in tasks unlocks more tasks in a wider variety of games. I don’t remember the exact number, but each ‘NES Remix’ starts with a handful of available 8-bit games to sample, but the number of available games doubles via unlocks by collecting stars.
Tasks in individual NES games might be as simple as collecting a coin in “Super Mario Bros.” or picking up the Wooden Sword in “The Legend of Zelda.” Conversely, the tasks might be as difficult as winning a series of battles against Bowser in “Super Mario Bros.” with in limited number of lives.
The quality difference between Nintendo’s beloved 8-bit IPs – things like ‘Mario,’ ‘Zelda,’ and ‘Donkey Kong’ – and Nintendo’s forgotten 8-bit IPs – things like ‘Ice Climber’ and ‘Clu Clu Land’ – are striking. The ‘good’ Nintendo games have fairly tight controls whereas the ‘bad’ ones are so sloppy that performing even simple tasks is more difficult than it should be.
There are a few surprisingly good old IPs in the “NES Remix Pack” that I wasn’t intimately familiar with – like ‘Wrecking Crew’ – but nothing that I would ever want to play as a complete game. Unfortunately, in order to finish either ‘NES Remix’ the player WILL be subjected to the full breadth of Nintendo’s old games, including abominable sports titles, like “Golf” and “Baseball,” which seem to be 100% luck-based. All of the stars are necessary to unlock every task, which means players will be stuck doing tasks that aren’t fun.
Unlocking the Miiverse stamps, on the other hand, is as simple as grinding. Stamps unlock based on an imaginary ‘bits’ currency that the player is awarded for every attempt (failed or successful) at a task, and accumulating them unlocks stamps at set amounts. Every day, one of the games in each remix has a x2 bits multiplier, which makes grinding those tasks more profitable for those seeking to unlock stamps.
The actual ‘remix’ part of these games’ titles refers to the large number of custom tasks that take one of the original NES games and do something weird to it. Unfortunately, most of these remixes boil down to horizontal flipping, disappearing foregrounds, tunnel vision, zooming out in an infinite loop, or other form of drug-induced visual hallucination. Some of the remixes involve throwing characters from one franchise into a different franchise – like forcing poor Link, who cannot jump, to climb “Donkey Kong’s” construction sites. I was not particularly impressed with any of these remixes, as they all seem like the kind of lame ROM-hacking that Nintendo is so adamant in fighting when it comes from their fan community.
Finally, “NES Remix 2” includes one complete game alongside its slew of tasks: “Super Luigi Bros.” This game is simply a horizontally-flipped version of “Super Mario Bros.” with Luigi as the playable character. So he runs from right to left instead of left to right, the timer and score are all backwards, and all of that muscle memory that old farts developed speedrunning “Super Mario Bros.” in the 1980s is rendered useless. The game still features no save or continue system, so I didn’t bother with it much.
Overall
The “NES Remix” pack contains two digital games that each attempt to reshape a variety of beloved (and not-so-beloved) 8-bit NES games to fit the paradigms of modern smartphone gaming. The result is extremely small doses of old games that nearly all taste bitter, but are rendered tolerable due to the portion size. Out of all the games Nintendo could have made available on the WiiU, I don’t understand why they went with these, when the ‘NES Remix’ series is clearly more suited for handhelds. Honestly, though, I don’t think the “NES Remix Pack” is worth the price of entry, as each series of tasks feels more like a 99-cent app that advertises Nintendo’s IPs than a full-fledged product.
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: N/A
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
