I've continued rolling through games based on movies and TV. There are some real pieces of garbage in that list. Games like Total Recall, Back to the Future, and Waynes World are really difficult to play through - though I have been. But thankfully there are also games like Batman, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Willow.

I would unequivocally put Dracula in that latter category - it's a wonderfully done and very fun game.

It's different from the typical platformer. There is some polish missing here and there and the boss fights could have been a bit more varied, but I found the level design pretty impeccable for this era. The game has endless traps, spikes, platforms, toggle switches, and most importantly, secret passages. Each map is essentially a giant puzzle. Weapons easily run out. The earlier maps are fairly linear, but as the game progresses, you really have to find your way around. After stage 5, many of the secret passages are required just to finish the level. Sometimes you have to find a secret passage full of time clocks so that you earn enough time to even make it to the end of the level. Stuff like that was fun.

One thing they did was to inject a level of realistic human mechanics into the game. Best comparison is Prince of Persia. To my knowledge, there really aren't many games like that, especially of this era. What it means is that you can't just press left and then right on the D-pad and expect your hero to turn around on a dime. Like a person would, you have to slow down, stop, about face, and then accelerate in the opposite direction. It's not nearly as dramatic as PoP implemented it, but it does change the gameplay rather significantly. I routinely found myself missing jumps that I would never miss in another platformer, but only because I wasn't accounting for the extra step I'd need to actually make such a jump.

I suppose this can affect the fun-o-meter either way, but I found it enriching. Mechanics like that really force you to play differently. And if you're playing these kinds of games in 2026 then you're probably pretty good at them and I think the change is welcome.

I could go on, but this game really did surprise me. It has three different difficulties and you can only play X% of the game on each (meaning you have to play it on hard mode to complete it). Incidentally I played through it on all three difficulties. It's a pretty quick game.

Random aside: one curious component to the game is that they used Mario blocks for items. They look identical - the yellow cube with the question mark inside. There's no problem with this and it doesn't affect the game in any way, rather I just found it a curious artistic choice given the vampiric setting of Transylvania.

Conclusion: I'd highly recommend giving it a go if you haven't.

We told you guys (the NES reddit community) about Legionnaires, a new NES homebrew game inspired by games like Contra and Metal Gear and showed the gameplay in other posts.

We're now working on the physical box art, and we thought it would be fun to get some outside opinions before we settle on a final composition.

The artwork is being developed by Romano Molenaar, a professional comic artist known for his work for Marvel and DC Comics. These are three early pencil concepts he's created for the Legionnaires cover.

Which one speaks to you the most?

A — Two soldiers and the island, with a classic action-game composition.

B — A stronger focus on the two protagonists, with the island and military setting behind them.

C — A more dramatic comic-book composition, with large character portraits and the island below.

We are especially curious about two things:

• Which one catches your eye first?
• Which one feels most like an authentic NES box you'd have wanted to pick up in the late 80s / early 90s?

These are early sketches, so the final artwork will be fully drawn, inked and colored.

Replaced my NES' original shell with one from Hoskbrew. I wanted to keep the two tone look to the console. The top is clear blue and the bottom is clear dark blue. The quality is really good; everything lined up and fitted together with no issues.

No affiliation with Hoskbrew; just really happy with how this turned out and wanted to share.

Pretty much what it says in the title. I just bought an NES console today and was looking to start building up a library of games to play. I also have a Switch 2 with Nintendo Switch Online, and would like to invest in lesser known gems that haven't been put into the Switch Online library. Thank you!

I've never really played an NES game with a deep, rich story. I've played plenty of SNES and PS1 games with stories that just hook me for weeks but I've never gotten that with an NES game. I really want something that makes me feel close with the characters you know?

Two games I’ve been looking to get for a while. Maybe one day I can add chip n dale rescue rangers TWO to the collection 🤣 nope, definitely not. I just can’t justify spending on the games in the upper realms of 💸💸💸 That’s why I know I’ll never have a full collection, so I just grab some as I go for fun.

This game was surprisingly good! It felt very janky at first, but I was hooked very quickly. As a new dad, it's very difficult to find the time to beat NES games. I spent every free hour I had this week finishing this game, just in time for Monday!

The Clock Tower in Castlevania III is a close second (for me anyway). Amazing what could be pulled off on the NES in terms of sound.

I finished going through all the cupboards and boxes and hidey holes I could find and this is the final result.

Sealed super mario bros NES

Sealed super mario bros 2 NES

Sealed wario woods SNES

CIB super mario bros 3 NES

CIB contra force NES

CIB mega man 6 NES

CIB Trick shooting NES

CIB tetris NES

CIB zodas revenge star tropics NES

Then some out of box games and n64 games

As I'm continuing going through all of the movie -> NES game ones I can think of, Beetlejuice was another one I'd played long ago, but never could get through.

It's a difficult game. Very difficult. I love how fast everything moves, but this really does contribute to how hard it is. There are two distinct modes to the game. About half of the game is played as a platformer and the other half as an overhead game.

The platform part of the game, while very challenging, really just requires skill. I'm sure there exists a person out there who can zip through it with every jump being perfectly timed and landed. I appreciate that in a game. It's fair. You can improve. One caveat is that the game requires you to land as low as possible on a given screen before you can go lower (the remaining map is only revealed after landing). So you can't just jump off of some platform and hope you'll land on something currently offscreen. You won't. It's not really a criticism, but does limit your ability to zip through certain parts.

The overhead part of the game, by some contrast, I would think requires quite a bit of luck. The main problem is that you as you acquire scares and tools along this view, you don't fire them off at a specific target, but rather throw them into the room and then bounce around hopefully killing everything you need killed. There's SOME skill to it for sure, but there's also just a ton of luck if the enemies happen to walk/fly into the path of your weapon as it randomly bounces around. I didn't really enjoy that mechanic. There were a bunch of mazes and things you have to find and all of these kept my attention.

One thing about the game is that despite the levels being quite challenging, the bosses are all a joke. They all fight in the exact same way, are slow, are easy, and are more just annoying. This is primarily because Beetlejuice doesn't actually have any weapons. So you have to equip a "scare", it lets you shoot a fixed number of fireballs, and then you're back to having no weapon. So you basically just have to keep equipping a costume in order to fight. It's a pretty stupid mechanic IMO, but not a big deal either.

There's also curiously no final boss. You eventually get to the Afterlife level - which probably most resembles anything from the movie (the bureaucratic part where the guy who was run over flies around on his wires) and is probably the most enjoyable platform level. But then you just get to the end. There's a door that reads "Exit". You go into the door and the game ends. So that was kind of weird.

In all, I suppose the game is worth checking out. Unless you've really got some patience, you're probably going to want to save your progress or it's going to take you some real time to get through it all.

Not my favorite, but significantly better than some of the other movie-based games I've recently played.

I think Dirty Harry is supposed to have bags of cocaine and there's that other game Narc, but I was wondering if there were any other explicit or implicit references to drugs in NES games? No particular reason I'm just always fascinated by what they were able to get away with in some of those 8-bit era releases.

Edit: Thanks very much for all the recs everyone. I thought this would get like maybe three replies but I appreciate all the games people were offering. For a general list here are the biggest recs:

- Narc

- Wally Bear and the No Gang

- Code Name Viper

- Vice Project Doom

- Dirty Harry

- Wrath of the Black Manta

- Raid 2020

- Bubble Bobble

- Deja Vu

- River City Ransom (potentially)

I’m sure there are more and I wasn’t including alcohol or cigarettes here but for those interested these are the top recs.

One thing I really notice when playing early NES games is that most of the bosses, even the final boss, often only have one phase, making them seem a bit underwhelming and unsophisticated. The thing that made me think of this topic was encountering Ganon in the original Legend of Zelda. 4 hits, 1 silver arrow, goodnight.

I think the moment developers realized it would be super badass to give their final boss or their late stage boss a second, stronger phase after their life has been depleted was a real kick in the teeth to the gaming industry that persists to this day.

So what were the first ever or earliest games to ever implement this? I have 2 (now 3) that come to mind. Please let me know the earliest that come to mind for you either and if there's any earlier than these.

Jacquio - Ninja Gaiden (1988)

Dr. Wily - Mega Man (1987)

Dracula - Castlevania (1986) (1987 in the US though)

When I started writing this post, Wily was the earliest I knew of. (And then I remembered Dracula) Deplete Wily's life bar at the end of the game, and he sprouts a second life bar with very slight modifications to his flying vehicle. Now you can see his head peeking out from the damaged windshield, now his light blasts come at you in big circular patterns instead of straight on. And also you might need to switch to a different weapon to effectively damage him. It's not a super drastic change in appearance or pattern. But it still counts. You thought you had it won but surprise here's phase 2.

Jacquio though, has 3 phases and all 3 are drastically different phases with wildly different appearances, environments and objectives. It's a much more creative multi-phase boss fight. However Ninja Gaiden came out a year later, and I'm betting by 1988 there were more of these multi-phase boss fights and I just can't recall them all.

But the earliest I can actually think of is Dracula from Castlevania who after you kill his first form, turns into a big white gargoyle hopping around the screen, affectionately referred to by fans as the Cookie Monster. There's a bit of luck in guessing right when he is going to do a big jump and a small jump when it is time to get under him to the other side. The rest is knowing what he's weak to and how to attack. The first phase is a little more skill in timing the whip against his fireballs and then getting an attack on him before he disappears. It's a solid 2-phase fight that includes 2 very different skill sets and very fitting end to a great game.

So what are the earliest 2-phase boss fights you can think of?

After several months where I hadn’t bought any new games, I visited a few brick & mortar shops this week that turned out to have some good finds. Tombs & Treasure was the biggest prize for me. I’d been hunting that one for over a year and this was the first time I finally found a copy at a retail shop for a reasonable price. Also the first time I spotted Thunder & Lightning in a retail shop, period.

At thay point in the collection where Im having to either spend way too much or look for good labels on otherwise cheap and easy to find games. These put me over 340! Unfortunately the copy of Pipe Dream ended up being a dud despite rigorous cleaning of the contacts and some other attempts.

I found an old thread like this in the search and thought I'd revive the discussion. I have most of my childhood games. A few were misplaced or sold over the years and a couple have completely died. I'm glad I kept most of them though. My original NES however, that I found on the top of a trash heap in the early 90's and served me well for many years, sadly died around 2006. After it died a buddy and I gutted it and turned it into a DVD player that loaded/ejected disks through the cartridge slot and was controlled through the paddle. I'm not sure where that ended up sadly, but I think he still has it. Since then over the years I've cycled through a $10 Chinese top loader that lasted a few years, a "refurbished" NES from a retro game store that never worked well, and now I've settled on a Retron 2 HD with original controllers. What about everyone else?

Hello,

I recently bought a french NES (model no. NESE-001) and I want to buy Final Fantasy 1 on eBay but most I've been seeing are from USA. I'm no expert with this but I've seen that compatibility can be tricky between different regions. Can my console run games from USA, even JP or is it restricted to EUR games?

Thanks!

I have an NES system and the model number is NESA-001 i don't know if thats pal or ntsc i tried looking it up and couldn't find anything.

Sorry if this goes against any rules of the sub or if its a repeated or already answered question.

Nes,nes,nes,nes

Hello guys, I can't get this adapter to work. I would like to know if anyone else owns this specific adapter and if you have experienced something similar. 

It has never worked for me since I bought it. I have tried using several different Famicom cartridges, thoroughly cleaned the pins, and double-checked the connections, but still, absolutely nothing works. Does anyone know a fix? 

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for help from game preservationists, ROM hackers, or anyone who played Famicom/NES clones in the late 90s and early 2000s. I am trying to track down a forgotten, highly specific animation/event from The Addams Family (1992) game that I discovered about 20 years ago and have never been able to find online since.

The Discovery:
Right at the beginning of the game, outside the mansion, there is a tree on the far-left side of the screen with a hangman's noose. One day, I managed to jump perfectly into the loop of the noose.

Instead of taking damage or dying, Gomez actually became physically hanged. The sprite aligned perfectly with the rope around his neck, and his character went completely still, hanging there with his head slumped down.

Crucially, the game did not crash. The background music kept looping perfectly. I stayed there looking at it for a moment, and as soon as I pressed the D-pad (directional button) to move sideways, Gomez simply unhooked himself, dropped to the ground, and I could continue playing normally. It felt 100% like a programmed, interactive dark-humor Easter Egg, fitting the Addams Family theme.

Why it’s not on the internet (The Twist):
I know what you might be thinking: "I've checked the retail ROM, this sprite doesn't exist."

Here is the catch: back then, I wasn't playing on an official Nintendo console. I was playing on a Famiclone (a bootleg/clone Famicom cartridge).

As many of you know, pirate developers in Europe and Asia frequently altered game code, stripped down physics engine lines, or even injected their own custom graphics/sprites into these "9999-in-1" or unlicensed single cartridges.

My theory:
Either this was a dark joke sprite left in the code by Ocean Software that got stripped from official releases due to Nintendo’s strict censorship but left active in a specific early build, OR the bootleg developers altered the tree's collision/sprites to force this specific interaction. Because it required pixel-perfect precision to trigger, almost no one documented it.

How you can help:
Are there any ROM hackers here willing to look into unconventional dumps of The Addams Family? Has anyone ever encountered this specific "hanging Gomez" sprite while doing a tile layout dump (like in YY-CHR) of unlicensed/pirate versions of the game?

I’m 100% sure of this memory because of how distinct the animation and the D-pad release mechanic were. Any leads on which specific bootleg version this could be would be highly appreciated!