Classic NES Series

From the moment the asshole neighbor kid got his Game Boy Advance, I knew I wanted one. He'd come barging into my clubhouse, GBA in hand, rockin' Golden Sun while I'm over here playing Game Boy Color or Super Nintendo. He never let me play it, so my only experience with the thing was hearing its CPU blaring the same five or six seconds of Golden Sun's battle theme. Sure, it's a quality theme; that game has phenomenal music, but let's be real, the GBA's lack of dedicated sound hardware was noticeable even to an eleven year old. My only experience aside from this with GBA prior to getting my own was with Mortal Kombat Advance.

I don't know how I didn't pick up on MKA's lack of- uh... quality? Yeah let's go with that. I just wanted the game, and would do anything for it. Around the same time, I'd learned that Funcoland would take trade ins, and that I could sell my old games for new ones. It still didn't occur to me to sell my games en masse though, that was my Dad's idea. I begged him to get me a GBA, and he basically said "I'll see what I can do". What he ended up doing was gathering up all my broken NES stuff and selling it to Funcoland in exchange for a refurbished GBA and three games.

The problem is, I didn't really want to do that. I didn't know it yet, but that moment would change my life. It encouraged me to learn how to repair electronics. As it turns out, I greatly missed my NES and the games. I was so bummed out about the whole thing. I was convinced that I'd never play Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man 5 again. I even went so far as to record footage of Mario 2 on a VHS tape just so that I could have some memory of what these games were. I didn't know about emulation, and I had no idea that NES consoles were fixable. If I knew at 11 that I'd be who I am now at 35 because of that moment, I wonder how I'd have reacted. It's true, the only reason I got into electronics repair ~which is my career now~ is because my NES was sold to fund a Game Boy Advance. I couldn't fix the damn thing, nobody could. So sure, I had this Game Boy Advance now. It even had Mario 2, but it wasn't NES Mario 2. There was a missing component to that game that the NES version had in spades. I don't know what it is, but I noticed it. The GBA quickly became my go to machine, even over more powerful stuff. Sure, I could play Tony Hawk 2 on the TV, but I can't take my progress with me to school, so why bother? I've always been pragmatic to a fault with these types of things. Over the years, I grew fonder and fonder of the GBA, but something was still missing.

Fast forward a few years to 2004. Game Boy Advance is still my primary console. I'm flipping through Electronic Gaming Monthly, you know, the patrician's choice of gaming focused magazines. Within the pages I saw this:

Back when referencing 1-1 was novel

I read this magazine cover to cover repeatedly every month, and this page drove me insane. Late 2003 to mid 2004 were chaotic for my family and I. Hell, they were chaotic for my entire community. To be blunt, the whole damn town and surrounding environment burned down. Once beautiful forests now looked like the intro to Terminator 2. Living in an environment like this for six months is tough. My parents had just bought a house, but we weren't going to move until the school year was finished. Frankly, I wish we'd have just left. These random NES re-releases were something to look forward to and covet. I didn't know what to expect with the new house. At least with this, I knew what I was getting.

I'd get my hands on Super Mario Bros, as well as Metroid, Zelda, and Zelda II. I had four out of the twelve, and I was happy with that. I'd eventually find better ways of playing NES, up to and including motivating and teaching myself to repair the consoles. At that point, I'd just play an NES, and forgot out these.

I'm not here to make you cry, or feel sorry for me. I'm glad that shit happened because I wouldn't be me if it didn't. All of that chaos led to this article, where I will mercilessly mock the Classic NES Series. Well, I dunno, will I? I have mixed feelings on this set now that I'm so far removed from it. It'll always have a place in my heart because it released at exactly the right time, and further motivated me in ways that are only apparent in hindsight.

The only NES game that translates perfectly from what I've seen is Dr. Mario. Primarily because you can fit the whole game onto the GBA's smaller resolution screen without making compromises. Super Mario Bros. is scrunched to all hell and it reminds me of those old "faces of meth" PSAs. You remember seeing it and it looked incredible, but here? Oh no. Something happened here.

I only own two of these, plus Metroid Zero Missions, which has the Original Metroid built into it as a hidden reward. I'm not going to review the ones I don't own because I don't feel like they're properly conveyed unless you're looking at them on a Game Boy Advance. You can't judge something like this fairly without knowing the original context in which it existed. I did play Zelda 1, Zelda 2, and Metroid on these as well, but I don't really remember what compromises were made. I'd presume they're fine, but I don't trust my own judgement anymore having replayed the Super Mario Bros. one 20 years after the fact.

Jesus Fucking Christ

See, this is exactly why I won't judge these unless I have the cartridge. The Game Boy Advance screen cannot display NES games at full resolution. It's simply not possible. In Super Mario Bros. case, they did whatever the hell this is. Please understand, this game looks fine on an old GBA screen and you can't see the flickering at all. It's there, but the GBA screen refreshes too slowly for it to be visible. If you're playing this on an emulator, or in my case, a GBA with a IPS screen, this is what you'll get. Let's be 100% clear. Nobody is playing GBA on the original screen anymore. If you are, please seek medical attention.

You ever just sit back and question everything?

On original hardware, you could still see Mario's Magical Moustache (MMM for short). Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. You never know! It's a game within a game! Visual problems aside, this plays like a dream. In fact, this is still the best portable version of the game. That is, if you can stomach the flickering or have a display in your GBA that can tone it down. There's no input lag at all, and unlike the GBC version, you can see everything.

The problem with 3DS virtual console or Switch comes down to the controllers those machines have. The GBA controller is just an NES controller with shoulder buttons; it's a seamless transition. Nintendo 3DS gave me hand cramps, and Switch is as portable as Virtual Boy. Also, Joycons are small and I dislike them. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe doesn't even count. I could write an entire article about what's wrong with that one.

No opportunity to talk about this game will be passed up

Some say that this is a worthless port and they're wrong. I play this more than any other GBA game. It's so simple to pick up and play, it tracks your high score, and it just works. There are several versions of Dr. Mario on Game Boy Advance, and honestly, I think this might be the best one. If for no other reason than that it's the most aesthetically pleasing to me. WarioWare inc. has a version of Dr. Mario, but it's missing some music and I don't really like the virus designs. There's Dr. Mario/Puzzle League, which is fine, but the music is utterly fucked in that version and the extra modes don't add anything to the core game.

The Greatest game of all time

Dr. Mario plays exactly like the NES version, and it looks pretty much perfect. Here, rather than do whatever the hell they did with Super Mario Bros., they seem to have squished things just a little bit. The clipboards are a little wonky, but unless you're looking at the original release side by side with this, you won't even notice. It just looks and sounds better than any other version of the game on GBA.

I don't think Dr. Mario needs a ton of extra features to make it "worthwhile". The core gameplay is so good that it stands on it's own just fine. The ability to save high scores sweetens the deal significantly. I can and have played this version for hours because it's so much fun. That's really all that matters.

Nobody will ever play this with me :(

Finally, despite what others might claim, multiplayer is available on this cartridge. In fact, you don't even need two copies of the game. There's no downside to owning this version unless you're really, really into flash mode or VS. CPU. You should still get Dr. Mario Puzzle League just for Puzzle League alone, but I'm telling you, that version of Dr. Mario simply isn't as good as this one.

Now available on the school bus

Ironically enough, I've owned the Classic NES Series version of Metroid on two non consecutive occasions. It's fine, don't get me wrong. The problem really boils down to the fact that Metroid Zero Mission exists. It's a remake of this game that also includes this as a bonus. Unlike with Dr. Mario, The Classic NES and Zero Mission releases are exactly the same. The only difference I could find between the two is that the Classic NES Series version has some flicker. Also, the menus are slightly different.

Zero Mission's Menu

Classic NES Series

This is actually kind of interesting. Zero Mission's in game menu is like a prototype version of what we'd later see in the Classic NES Series. There's no border initially, and the text formatting is a mess. The prompts that appear when you save a password share similar differences. Beyond that, there's nothing to say here. Metroid on NES is great, but I'd much rather play Zero Mission. Unlike the GBA Mario 2 remake, they completely reimagined the game and rendered the NES version a novelty. Its inclusion in Zero Mission makes perfect sense, whereas its release as a standalone cartridge just makes me scratch my head. I don't know why I kept buying this one, I knew Zero Mission existed, I just couldn't find it. By the time I had, I still didn't know NES Metroid was built into it. I suppose I was too busy having fun to look at the menus.

Why didn't I look here sooner?

As far as NES Metroid goes, you can't do better than this. Unlike the version included with Metroid Prime, it's portable. That's always going to be the deciding factor for me. Plus, you don't have to play it with a GameCube controller. It's better than basically anything aside from the original release. Still, it's NES Metroid. There's no map, the game has multiple corridors that are identical to each other, and it's just kind of a mess in general. Give it a shot if you're curious. I think it's a lot of fun to exploit all the various bugs and find new, unintentional areas.

Classic NES Series games came specially colored cartridges. Here in the United States, they came in "slightly more grey than usual". The labels were all plain black with the games logo haphazardly plastered on it. The banner "CLASSIC NES SERIES" in red across the top made it exceedingly clear you weren't getting a GBA game. I really appreciate this because it helped with the used market. Imagine buying a cartridge only copy of "Zelda" only to pop it in and discover it's an NES game. This wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest, but I could imagine younger people getting pissed off. It was exceedingly clear just by looking at it that you're getting something NES related.

In Japan, these were released as "Famicom Mini" and it's clear they got a lot more love there than they did over here. They came in these cute little boxes, the FDS games came in yellow cartridges, etc. The Super Mario Bros. one I have is colored like a Famicom console. This makes perfect sense. Famicom games had no uniform color scheme. Super Mario Bros. is yellow, Akumajou Densetsu is black, Donkey Kong 3 is red. Having each non FDS game in the series be uniform is clever, if kind of inauthentic. I don't have any of the FDS games, so I have no idea how those handle disk side swaps and the like, but if I get one, I'll update this page with the information.

In the US, we got twelve games in two waves. First wave of eight was:

• Super Mario Bros.
• Donkey Kong
• Pac-Man
• Xevious
• The Legend of Zelda
• BomberMan
• Excitebike
• Ice Climbers

Just like with Metroid, some of these were already available on GBA in some other form. Pac-Man is playable within Pac-Man Collection. Excite Bike, Ice Climber, and Donkey Kong were all e-reader games. I suppose $20 bucks is worth not having to scan in those cards every time you wanna play Donkey Kong. I dunno. Really, only Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda are worth your time.

A second wave was released a little later, and while sparse, all but one are bangers.

• Metroid
• Castlevania
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
• Dr. Mario

As I mentioned, I picked up Metroid, but I also picked up Zelda II. It was fine from what I remember, but who the hell knows? Castlevania is a great pick, and I remember seeing it on shelves. That section of the GameStop is now stocked with Naruto shirts.

Shortly after the final wave of these released, the Nintendo DS hit store shelves. Suddenly, the world was too cool for high priced re-releases of decade old games. Nintendogs? Nintengo fuck yourself. The next time Nintendo would release NES games on a portable, it'd be on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console service, which no longer exists. As I already mentioned, those all were terrible because the 3DS' controller wasn't made with NES games in mind.

"Classic NES Series" isn't great, but I'm glad it exists. I cannot stress enough how novel these were. At least, to me. I had no access to the e-Reader, or Animal Crossing at the time. Playing an NES game on my Game Boy was the closest thing I had to playing NES the way I used to. Now? I can't even imagine collecting them all, even for documentation here. There's nothing special about them, and at best, it'd be a critical look at Nintendo doing the best it could with limited technology. They're not expensive, but most of them have no reason to exist. I say this in the most charitable manner I can.