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Review : Classic NES Series for Gameboy Advance
Last Friday I was taken over by a fit of insanity and paid the price for a new top of the line game for three games that I already own and have played thousands of times over the past twenty years. Thus I purchased three from the Nintendo's NES Classic series for Gameboy Advance specifically Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Excitebike. The lineup also included Bomberman, Donkey Kong, Ice Climber, Pac-Man and Xevious.
I know this sound a bit nuts but it is freaking cool to be able to enjoy classic first generation Nintendo games on the GBA and the cost of the game is of set by the sheer about of fun it is to play them again. These were originally a limited edition to celebrate an opening of a store in Japan and for the twentieth anniversary of the 8-Bit Nintendo Famicom.
These game hold up to the Java applet cell phone games that people are blowing major money on. If you compare the cost that some people blow on a cell phone the idea of paying twenty bucks for another copy of Super Mario Bros or Zelda starts to look a bit more sane.
These are direct ports of the old games with no extra bells and whistles. The sounds and graphics have not been changed or updated and you know what? It freaking works. There is a battery in SMB to save the high scores and you can play two player with only one cart. Some of the graphics look slightly squished due to the wider aspect ratio of the GBA's screen. The bricks and sprites are more rectangular than pure squares but once you get into the game you don't really notice it.
To me playing Super Mario Bros and Zelda is almost a zen experience for me. I don't really think about it much but I can do it for hours on end. I sat down on Saturday and Sunday and almost played through the entire game of Legend of Zelda without consulting a map or walk through. I could either remember how to get through the game or figure it out on my own. It was freaking fun and it tapped into the same fun that I had almost twenty years ago when I played these games when they were fresh of the boat from Japan.
These are classic by every definition of the word. Most often the term is used to describe just things that are old but these will be just as fun in the future as they were in the past and as they are in the present. I love these games and even if you never played them twenty years ago you can still enjoy them now. I hope that there are kids who have never played through the original Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda who will feel a fraction of the joy that they were back in the 80s'.
Jake at June 8, 2004 
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Comments
mmm.. excitebike. This one excites me the most.. ;) I was so tempting into picking up some of these and my wife is a big fan of Ice Climber.. I was jammin on some zelda a couple of days ago on the GC collection and it was all good ;)
Posted by: wuji at June 8, 2004 4:58 AM
I was looking at those "new"/old games too. I love original Zelda and MB and those old-school games. That's what I grew up with. And now I play it on emulation ... My NES and SNES and their games have long since gone the way of Ebay.
As I see these advertised as "new"/old games for todays generation. I sit back and think. What is wrong with todays games that makes all the new kiddies want to play old Gen-X 8bit games?
With all the 3D and Xbox and Cube and Playstation and high def rendering and all that stuff. Super realistic eyelash rendering technology hasn't produced any good new games. So it kinda seems like video games are going backwards in time to find players.
Odd how that is. The old-school games are better than the super 3D, mega graphics special new games. People just wanna play those old favorites, 8-bit graphics and 2frame animated sprites. It truely is all about content and not about how realisticly a game company can render a character's eyelashes ;) .
Long live my old favs!
Posted by: Heather Achey at June 8, 2004 8:11 AM
Yes, I too was unable to resist the lure of old school Zelda on my GBA. I was *almost* unable to resist the old school styled GBA as well, but somehow I managed.
Now, I'd like Kid Icarus, Metroid, and possibly a handheld miniature version of that robot.
Posted by: l.m. orchard at June 8, 2004 10:48 AM
Well Metroid is an unlockable item in Metroid Prime.
Good question where the hell is Kid Icarus?
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at June 8, 2004 11:00 AM
Regarding Heather's comment above, video games are not "going backwards in time to find players."
To the contrary, it is the players who are going backwards to find good video games. Gaming is, was, and always will be a business. But in the glory days of the 80's & 90's the games just had more soul. Now it is just churn out the next big thing as quickly as possible and make the most money possible. Wash, rinse, repeat. And the #1 problem plaguing the industry today: Too damn many suits, not enough gamers. I hate to say it, but if things keep going the way they are now, we might looking at another crash like 1984. And I know people will read this and say that will never happen. But if games lose that "it" factor and cease to be fun, then consumers will once again cease to buy them.
Posted by: Boyd at June 9, 2004 7:44 PM
Oh please, just because we're no longer in the golden days of your youth doesn't mean contemporary games don't have any soul. Suits have had their hands in games since the Atari 2600's E.T., so it's assinine to think it's some new trend. It's a problem, but it's always been a problem.
The truth is, there are now developers that have assimilated the games of the "glory days" and are capable of mastery like Grim Fandango, Ico, Beyond Good & Evil, and Prince of Persia. That's more expression and soul than you can fit in 32k.
Posted by: Trapp at June 9, 2004 9:31 PM
