New nes games

According to Stephen Totilo , co-author of the Axios Gaming newsletter, people have nothing to worry about. In other Nintendo news, the company also announced that it will be releasing N64 and Sega Genesis controllers to use on the Switch to go along with its launch of the new game collections.

While this is fantastic news for some, others were not as stoked—especially regarding the N64 controllers. There's another game you should be keep an eye on as developments progress, and that's Jackal; A remake of the NES top-down shooter of the same name, graphically enhanced to take advantage of the Amiga OCS-ECS hardware, which is currently being developed for the AmiGameJam competition. I thought to myself today it's been some time since we had any Zelda style games on Indie Retro News, but thankfully I've come across a game that doesn't just have a Zelda vibe, but it almost looks like a quality commercial release from the golden era of the NES.

Welcome to Light From Within; an in development game by Atarath that they claim is a new Zelda-esque adventure that will bring you right back the the 80s. When it comes to games such as Meat Boy and VVVVV you just know the game is going to be fun but extremely challenging and sometimes frustrating as hell with broken keyboards and frustrating screams.

Well along comes another game to drive you completely insane while remaining fun too, is Erik Rosenlund and team's brand new NES game 'Slow Mole'; a hardcore puzzle platformer with a focus on challenging maneuvers and mind-bending puzzles that is now available to download and enjoy!

If you're looking for a new NES demo to try and want one to satisfy your retro gaming needs, then look no further than this latest news update! An early afternoon news story for all you fine NES owners, as we've recently been trawling the itch. When it comes to games such as Meat Boy and VVVVV you just know the game is going to be fun but extremely challenging and sometimes frustrating as hell.

It remains to be seen whether or not Nintendo will add more platforms, but E3 would be the perfect place for that kind of reveal! For now, fans will just have to wait and see. What do you think of the latest batch of Nintendo Switch Online games? Mega Man is one of the few franchises on the NES that made it to four games. The fourth game in the franchise had little to offer fans that was different, other than a new cast of interesting Robot Masters, a new character Eddie and a new ability for Mega Man to exploit charging your arm cannon.

But when something isn't broken, you shouldn't attempt to fix it, and Capcom released what was in essence the same experience from the three earlier titles in the series. And guess what? No one complained. What was most interesting about Mega Man 4 was its ability to tell a deeper story than what was told in the past three iterations in the series. Capcom seemed to remove Mega Man's classic foil, Dr.

Wily, in lieu of a new creator of evil robots, Dr. But when it's revealed that Wily is indeed behind Cossack's deeds, Mega Man is forced to trek through not one end castle, but two, a trend that is kept up in Mega Man 5 and 6 as well. I was lucky enough to rent Mega Man 4 over and over again before buying it later on. Being the first Mega Man game with tangible secrets within, Mega Man 4 got a lot of playtime when I was a youngster.

But the Balloon Adaptor and Wire Adaptor didn't elude me for long, as useless as they were. A puzzler in the same style as HAL Laboratory's famous Adventures of Lolo series, Kickle Cubicle put players in the role of a character aptly named Kickle, who is on a quest to liberate his kingdom from the grasp of an icy evil.

The very last project created by Irem for the NES, Kickle Cubicle appeared to be a straight rip-off of the aforementioned Adventures of Lolo, but had gameplay features of its own that made it a unique offering, and one worth anyone's time interested in the genre. Kickle Cubicle's appeal seemed to be centered in its balanced approach. Unlike the Adventures of Lolo series, which was unforgiving in its difficulty, Kickle Cubicle's difficulty spikes were much more reasonable.

Gamers new to this unique genre could easily access the game, but gamers who were veterans of the genre could find enjoyment in the game as well, collecting items in order to reach each subsequent stage. It's a shame the character known as Kickle has died with history, as well. We would have like to see more from our little balloon-riding friend.

Out of all of the great games on our list, Kickle Cubicle is one of the few titles I never got to experience until I was an adult. Constantly being outsmarted by the likes of The Adventures of Lolo, Kickle Cubicle proved to be an entertaining, action-packed alternative that was a little friendlier to all of us puzzle-stupid gamers. Little Samson arrived at the tail-end of the NES era, when most gamers had moved on to newer, although not necessarily better, consoles.

While it clearly adopted its non-linear level select structure from Mega Man, the similarities end there. In Little Samson you play as one of four different characters: a mouse, a robot, a dragon and a boring ol' human boy. Each character has its own powers and limitations, for instance the mouse makes up for its measly health meter with its ability to cling to ceilings and walls. Little Samson is one of the most technically impressive NES titles, featuring eye candy like rotating character sprites and colossal bosses in what was ultimately a futile effort to try and entice bit-smitten gamers back to their NES.

The atypical confluence of high quality and low sales of Little Samson ultimately resulted in it being one of the most sought after cartridges for collectors today. The late, great Little Samson saw extremely weak sales in the US and so it usually comes up short in the Fond Memories department. As someone who has gone through the effort of tracking down this neglected gem of a Game Pak, I can affirm that Little Samson can hold his own with the Belmonts, Mega Men and Master Higgins' of the era.

Oh Little Samson, we hardly knew ye! Over a decade before the name Tony Hawk first began to become synonymous with skateboarding videogames, Electronic Arts was innovating on the NES with the impressively diverse Skate or Die. Skate or Die brought gamers several different skateboarding events including downhill races, freestyle ramp competitions and a joust match fought in a drained swimming pool. Then, Skate or Die 2 came along and trumped its predecessor in many ways, offering a full storyline adventure in addition to the standalone skating events as well as adding in the "Double Trouble" half pipe, a massive structure that spanned two full game screens and let you pull off highly stylish for the time vert skating tricks.

Skateboarding continues to be a sport explored in new and unique ways in video gaming today, with EA recently revisiting the concept with Skate and Tony Hawk's series adding the new Ride peripheral, but Skate or Die got it all going.

Honestly, that still amazes me, it was so much better than all of those it was nuts. Dumb, I know. One of the major debates among NES aficionados is the sheer amount of ports that appear on the console, and how many of them are inherently sub-par to their arcade counterparts.

One of the counter-examples to this argument is Mario Bros. However, Mario Bros. Why would you buy Mario Bros. Nonetheless, the two games were quite different from one another, sharing their main stars and nothing more. Old-school arcade gamers have found and will continue to find a lot to love in any iteration of Mario Bros. This isn't the Super Mario Bros. Oddly, I remember the original Mario Bros. The versus play is simple and even repetitive, but it holds up today.

Shotgun, Mario. I had no qualms with wasting the POW block if I didn't get my way. You know that random guy named Captain Commando in the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games? This was his debut — hiding inside a jetpack-equipped flying spacesuit and advancing against the forces of auto-scrolling space invaders out in the darkest reaches of the galaxy. Section Z was a forced-scrolling shooter made by Capcom, one of that company's few entries into a genre more closely associated with Konami in the 8-bit era.

You made your choice, and advanced to a different next level depending on your selection. It was unique, novel and also pretty confusing. But mastery of navigation in Section Z was a true badge of honor to hold in the NES age and Captain Commando survived the adventure intact, after all, if he went on to beat up Wolverine and Ryu in the late '90s and early '00s.

It wasn't because I was awful at it though I do remember it to be challenging , but because there was almost something exciting about getting to make a choice of where I went next.

The ability to choose your own path had my permanent attention. If the name "Willow" isn't immediately familiar to you, we suppose you can be forgiven — but you really should get to know it. A pretty solid movie, really. Willow on the NES, then, was notable for having the likeness to both actors, as well as many of the supporting cast from the film — it was a movie tie-in adventure developed by Capcom, and was in many ways that company's take on Nintendo's Legend of Zelda formula.

Willow begins simply, buts grows in strength and power as he explores dungeons, gains new items and learns powerful magic spells. It was a solid companion for the early Zelda games, and perhaps a factor in why Capcom was later approached to develop some portable entries in the Zelda series for Nintendo. I said it then and I'll say it now. Don't let the title or the source material fool you — this game will grab you right from the start and won't let go just like it did me more than 20 years ago.

It may be hard to believe, but at one point Zombies were a greatly underrepresented class of brain-dead enemy in videogames. The protagonist of this peculiar game is the disembodied noggin of a samurai, who packs some serious cranial power.

It goes down something like this: an extra-terrestrial force named Darc Seed has zombie-fied the world, oh and there's some kind of stolen sword involved or something. You take direct control of the samurai's giant head in a sort of side-scrolling shooter that's too deliberately loony not to check out. Zombie Nation pushes the NES graphical capabilities more than any other shooter on the system, with lots of moving enemies, building destruction and a steady stream of pixilated chaos.

Brazenly over-the-top, Zombie Nation is one of the few NES titles that doesn't take itself seriously. When I first encountered Zombie Nation it was love at first sight: the disembodied head of a samurai destroying buildings with what appears to be vomit? Yes, please! Featuring a half-and-half game design that blends two distinct types of gameplay into one excellent whole, The Guardian Legend is one of the most influential games in the history of the gaming industry. You play as The Guardian, a female cyborg warrior tasked with preventing Earth's impending destruction via a collision with a rogue alien world, Naju.

The Guardian must thwart the planet's demise by setting off Naju's self-destruct sequence before it reaches Earth. Gameplay is balanced between controlling The Guardian in humanoid form during overhead exploration and shooting sequences and faster-paced forced-scrolling shooter sequences where she transforms into a fighter jet and blasts, and among other things, gigantic robotic alien crustacean creatures.

The Guardian Legend's developers went on to craft several more classic shooters on platforms beyond the NES, and modern game makers like the creators of Sigma Star Saga at WayForward Technologies continue to laud the game for its innovations in genre-blending.

Miryia's ability to transform into a spaceship and back put Samus Aran to shame. Aside from scoring so many points to break the game, my brother and I enjoy the appearance of Blue Lander — a spaceborne precursor to Kirby and Starfy with his own special jingle. Although "licensed software" is a term that causes the blood of today's game reviewers to run cold, in the late s, Disney and Capcom formed a union that inexplicably resulted in a steady series of excellent titles for the NES based on Disney trademarks.

Mickey Mousecapade was the first of these, and although it was published by Capcom in the US, it was developed by Hudson and has a different, more primitive feel than the great Disney platformers that succeeded it.

Although you control Mickey, Minnie accompanies you throughout the Mousecapade, which plays out as sort of a puzzle-solving platformer. Navigating your way through the colorful set pieces proves a bit more harrowing than the colorful, kiddie graphics let on, making it the perfect title to impress girls with… if you're nine, that is.

I didn't care that it was ugly and it was , the platforming goodness of Mickey Mousecapade was surprisingly addictive. Though I thought the Genesis release of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse was ultimately a better game, I found myself going back to play this one more because of how easy it was to get into and how satisfying it was to play.

But it belongs on our NES list as well, for the port of Lode Runner was pixel-perfect and provided something that only Excitebike had done prior: a level editor. Using a sort of glorified stamp tool, you could concoct you own mixture of bricks, ladders, ropes and baddies, then set it to life. It was rudimentary, yes, but it extended Lode Runner's life indefinitely. The main game is an arcade-like collect-athon with a puzzle-solving aspect. Armed only with a brick-zapping raygun, your only defense in Lode Runner is the ability to bury your opponents alive, thus freeing them of an enticing pile of gold.

The beloved NES game is every bit as addictive today as it was plus years ago, which is a testament to the quality of its design. Although it featured a very simple premise — to collect gold while avoiding enemies — Lode Runner advanced the action-puzzler by adding level deformation to the gameplay mechanics and therefore dynamic solutions to environmental challenges posed.

I spent hours tackling puzzles using different methods — to trap enemies or to drop them through flooring. And my older brothers, both casual players, could never get past the first stage. By the time Mega Man 5 was released, many imagined this would be the Blue Bomber's last foray in the 8-bit world. Capcom listened to clamoring gamers' wants and introduced Mega Man's brother Protoman as a character of consequence.

Just like Mega Man 4 pulled a bait-and-switch with Dr. Cossack, Protoman served the same function in Mega Man 5.

Clouding Dr. Wily's actual involvement in the nefarious deeds coursing through the game's loose story, a Faux Protoman leads Mega Man on for most of the game until — surprise!

It appears Dr. Wily is behind the madness yet again. Mega Man 5 continues the tradition of tight action-platforming which made the series incredibly prolific by the time of its release. As usual, the game introduced eight new Robot Masters to defeat in any order the gamer desired, inheriting defeated boss' weapons to use on other less-fortunate foes.

When the eight stage select-bound stages were defeated, players entered a more linear part of the game, where both Protoman's and Dr. Wily's multi-stage castles had to be completed for the gamer to see any light at the end of the tunnel. I only bought this game several years later, but in the meantime, I got a Mega Man 5 sticker in a box of Apple Jacks, and stuck it to a shelf in my room. When I visit my mom today, that sticker is still there, reminding me of a time when I couldn't play every game I wanted to.

The first Double Dragon for the NES was a capable and compelling coin-op conversion, but this sequel was superior to that original in many ways, primarily because it kept a core feature of the franchise, co-op play, intact on the home system. Brawling brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee were once again playable in both single-player mode, but for the first time on the 8-bit Nintendo you and a friend could team up to punch, kick and hair-pull your foes to death simultaneously through an all-new set of side-scrolling beat-'em-up stages.

The game also offered the sibling heroes an upgrade to their fighting repertoires, with several impressive new skills like the unforgettable Cyclone Spin Kick, and some iconic new set pieces in which to do battle, like a stage that took place aboard a helicopter in-flight thousands of feet above the ocean. There really is nothing quite like punching a guy in the gut, jump-kicking him in the face and watching him fall backwards out of a chopper's open side-door, then imagining his terror as he plummets to a watery death in the waves below.

Bye-bye, Abobo. What stuck out most for me about Double Dragon II was how varied the game was. It was much harder than the first game, which I liked, and even though I played through it a couple of times, it didn't leave me with a "been there, done that" feeling that so many other games did. Oh, and they advertised this sucker like crazy in comic books at the time no, really.

Natsume may be completely stuck in the rut of cranking out nothing but Harvest Moon sequels these days, but back on the NES the developer had some unique and inventive adventures like Abadox, Shadow of the Ninja and this game, Power Blade. You played as a sunglasses-wearing muscleman equipped with a cybernetic boomerang, blasting his way through alien-invested futuristic environments on his way to restore the compromised integrity of the Master Computer, and your hero looked an awful lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is also one of those games that might not have been given a lot of attention if it weren't for the influence of the magazine, Nintendo Power, which featured it on the cover of its April issue.

You'll find a few other games that got thrust into the limelight the same way on this countdown, like VICE: Project Doom. We're glad it did, because it's still a blast to power up our blades today. Haha, the box art to this game was awful just a guy that looks like Iceman from Top Gun with enormous sunglasses. It was sort of like Mega Man meets Strider, which I thought was spectacular for the time. Out of all of the games on the list, Journey to Silius might have one of the most interesting histories.

Created by Sunsoft, which was at the top of its game in the late s with classic release after classic release, Journey to Silius was originally supposed to be a licensed Terminator game. Evidence of this is all over the place, from the enemies to some of the music. But when Sunsoft had the license stripped at the last minute, it made due with what it had, and with limited editing, Journey to Silius was released.

Thankfully, Sunsoft didn't throw this game into the dumpster after losing the Terminator license, because Journey to Silius is one of those seldom-played but everyone-should-play-it NES gems.

Its fast-paced 2D action style made it a game preferred by those with quick reflexes, and its arsenal of weaponry, which can be chosen from a Mega Man-like menu, gave the gameplay variety, with certain weapons working best against certain enemies and bosses. Journey to Silius wasn't experienced by many gamers in its time, but it has more than earned its place on our Top for its smooth gameplay alone. Fond memories for this one really only go a year or so back.

I never got into Journey to Silius as a kid my brother may have rented it once? The care gameplay is right on, the visuals aren't bad at all, and it stinks of Mega Man inspired robot blasting. Sweet game. Demon Sword is a ninja action game that plays out at a break-neck speed compared to some of its contemporaries cough — Kung-Fu — cough.

Demon Sword's ninja is surprisingly agile, with the ability to hop to tree tops in matter of seconds. While not nearly as deep or polished as Ninja Gaiden, as you progress you can amass new skills, weapons and powers befitting of a ninja. Although prominently featuring traditional Japanese settings and mythology, Demon Sword seems to have suffered from a poor North American localization, as evidenced by the goofy box art featuring a naked blonde guy glaring at his sword.

But all the bare-chested barbarians in the world couldn't hide the fact that, in the game, our hero is sporting a flamboyant red kimono. Yeah, it looks like a dress, but it really frees up his arm for easy decapitations. I was one of those poor saps that actually enjoyed a similar and ultimately less impressive game, Legend of Kage, so I took to this game immediately.

To this day I still vividly remember the cutscenes that showed my sword becoming more powerful. Many gamers of today's generation know Popo and Nana best for their recurring role in the Super Smash Bros. But one has to travel back to the fall of to find the origin of these two arctic explorers, who first appeared in one of the launch titles on the NES, Ice Climber.

The Ice Climbers, as the two starring characters are popularly known, are relentless lovers of the alpine trek, and they'll stop at nothing to climb mountain after mountain just to reach its apex, where untold valuable items can be found. As the name of the game suggests, the idea of Ice Climber is to climb, climb, climb. Popo and Nana are equipped with mallets to fend off enemies on any given mountain they're climbing, but it's usually hazards of a different variety that stymie the advance of even the most ardent of Ice Climber players.

Fast moving platforms, icy terrain and blocks that couldn't be broken by your mallet ruled the day, and Ice Climber got excruciatingly hard in the latter stages.

Ice Climber's biggest claim to fame for its time, however, was the ability for two players to play the game simultaneously. I always thought Ice Climber was just another way to repackage Mario Bros. But in reality, the games were different enough, and Ice Climber so much better to me when I finally played it, that I felt silly for ever thinking that. While it's undeniable that Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! This game allowed two players to face off against one another in the squared circle, move freely around the ring, throw a variety of punches and even get into grapples, all things you wouldn't find in Little Mac's game.

Some of Ring King's lasting popularity is for reasons a bit more dubious, though, in that it's one of the most laughed-at games on the 8-bit Nintendo because of some unintentionally suggestive visuals. The grappling animation between the two fighters makes it look like they're just hugging each other, and the boxers' interaction with their cornermen between rounds is even more, well, provocative.

The inability of the NES to more accurately render detailed animations continues to be one of the system's greatest charms, though, so it's no real negative against the game, just a chuckle-worthy aside that might leave you just a bit embarrassed today.

My best memories of Ring King are the epic fights I had on the higher difficulty levels. I'm a lifelong boxing fan, so being able to "sim" matches this early was something of a breakthrough for me. These days, though, I can't help but chuckle at the highly suggestive between-round power-ups. Go find a movie of it if you don't believe me — it's amazing. A game no one bought, but everyone had. Duck Hunt is the game that immortalized forever Nintendo's light gun called the Zapper, and was certainly the game that used the underused peripheral more than any other.

But it was this release combined with Super Mario Bros. Sure, Duck Hunt's gameplay was as simple as pointing-and-shooting, and one could easily cheat by standing an inch from the television. Unfortunately, virtually all televisions today render the game unplayable, so a new generation of gamer has yet to be exposed to the wonder of duck hunting and skeet shooting.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit of all about Duck Hunt, however, was the stand-alone product's incredibly small size. The entire game fit on an infinitesimally small cartridge sized at kilobits. Even as a young'un, I felt some injustice every time a guest brought the Zapper up against the television's bubble screen. You can't do that! Though the dog, mocking me with laughter, encouraged delinquency.

I'll show you, dog It's effectively a full Battletoads follow up with our boys Billy and Jimmy Lee along for the ride. The Double Dragon characters are capable of kicking butt to be sure, but the unique brawling, racing and, yes, spelunking action that Rash, Pimple, and Zits introduced in their first outing is the main attraction in this crossover.

Although it is fun to pummel some of Double Dragon's most notorious thugs, Battletoads fan will probably be the most satisfied with this cartoonish, goofy beat 'em up. And since everybody seems to be teaming up, you may as well take on the combined forces of the Dark Queen and Shadow Warriors with a pal — the game's difficulty seems to indicate that it's built for two.

The original Battletoads was definitely awesome, but I seemed to favor the design that paired up those TMNT-ripoff characters with the classic brawler characters. This game was much tighter in control and actually gave a better sense of accomplishment to the player. While the first game was an arcade platformer directly inspired by the movie, The Goonies II did its own thing. Hampered somewhat by obtuse point-and-click adventure elements reminiscent of Shadowgate that threw many people off, The Goonies II still offered a sprawling mansion and its subterranean environs to explore via traditional platforming.

With the 8-bit rendition of the Cyndi Lauper theme from the movie blaring, lead Goony Mikey sets out to rescue the remaining kids, and, for some reason, a Mermaid, from the Fratelli family.

It's all a bit confusing, but with little perseverance and a lot of hitting walls with your hammer you'll discover a unique hybrid adventure game worthy of the Goonies license. We're still eagerly awaiting a Goonies III. Goonies never say die! In the late s Goonies mania was in full swing, which helps explain the countless after school sessions I spent with this perplexing Konami cash-in.

It wasn't until a decade or two later that I finally understood that a poor localization was responsible for the game's extreme weirdness. Who knew The Goonies were big in Japan? After releasing several games for the Atari and other computer-based consoles, famed Pitfall!

What at first appeared to be an awkward platformer quickly revealed itself to be a true test of gaming mettle.

The nameless Boy and his pet Blob would overcome obstacles, defeat enemies and progress through the game by way of using special Jellybeans that would allow the Blob to become different objects and perform different feats. Feeding the Blob flavored jellybeans from apple to vanilla caused the Blob to transform into everything from a car jack to an umbrella.

The Boy was virtually helpless without his Blob and his stash of flavored Jellybeans, making this title an interesting mix of action-adventure and puzzle gameplay. Because I was the kind of nerd that kept track of developer names, when I saw that the creator of Pitfall was behind Boy and His Blob, I was sold. Feeding jellybeans to Blobert to transform it into different items and it was fun just to experiment with, such as making a blow torch with a cinnamon bean and a rocket with a root beer bean.

In , there was nothing cooler than sitting in the cockpit of Spy Hunter at your local arcade to cruise the streets with the Peter Gunn theme blaring in your ears. Nevertheless, it was still pretty cool when the NES finally made it possible to hunt spies in the comfort of your own home. As expected, Spy Hunter still stood out as one of the NES's greatest driving games even though it had aged a bit. While maintaining breakneck speed, your suave, Bond-inspired spymobile is beset on all sides by reckless limousines, bullet-proof coups and even a helicopter dead set on chipping your pristine paint job.

Using awesome spy tools — hood mounted machine guns, oil slicks, smoke screens — you could take on each enemy in style. And here's the kicker — the pit stop comes to you!

Navigate up the ramp of a moving semi and you'll instantly up your arsenal. And did we mention your car can transform into a boat? Yeah, it can do that too. The car is called the G It is possibly the most awesome car ever made aside from the "Metal Attacker" in Blaster Master.