Topic: NES Ambassador Game Impressions

What do you think of the games you haven't played before?

I think Balloon Fight is a lot of fun, and Wrecking Crew is also pretty good. Ice Climber is okay, but the jumping is pretty sloppy. D.K. Jr. is ruined with terrible jumping. Yoshi is just boring. NES Open Tournament Golf is pretty deep for an NES sports game, but the super fast meter return makes it extremely hard to hit the ball with any kind of accuracy. Zelda will probably be more interesting once I get going, but so far I can't find anything to do except fight enemies for rupees until I have enough to buy something in one of the two shops I've found. I haven't tried Zelda II yet.

I've already got Super Mario Bros. and Metroid on the Wii's VC, so I already know what to expect with those.

Is it just me or DK Jr is terribly slow and the Ice Climber is very bad at jumping?

Its not just you. I feel the same about those games. :/

Just makes them a bit more challenging I guess. =P

I mentioned this in chat, but I think it's pretty cool that Super Mario Bros. keeps track of your high score now, but it appears to be running faster than it should, well...as far as I can tell.

_{what happens in chat stays in chat}

None of them are there for me, even though my serial says I'm eligible. Sweet!

Actually, 1:1 would look sharp and completely fill the screen vertically with black areas on both sides of the screen.

The games are actually shrunk to leave a small black are over the game screen, so they look smaller than they should and sightly blurry.

I was really surprised by balloon fight and Yoshi. I like Zelda II but it's really hard for me. Ice climber has problems with jumping. I've already played Zero Mission so Metroid isn't all that fun. Donkey Kong Junior is too slow. Open Gold is great once I find out how to hit properly. Super Mario Bros is....Super Mario Bros and I already own Legend of Zelda. So I like about half the games I got.

was the origonal zelda 2 so glitchy graphic wise? cuz its annoying as all hell

Yeah the jumping is what ruins Ice Climbers. It's almost as bad as Action 52's.

Yoshi turned out to be surprisingly fun once I figured out what I was doing. I started out just matching pairs and it seemed like the most boring game on earth. Then I got the whole "fill the eggs with bad guys" thing. Shooting to fill the eggs with as many dudes as possible, and kicking the speed up to high makes for a fun challenge. It's a solid little puzzle game.

Balloon Fight is one my favorites of the bunch. It's just a gleefully bizarre game. The music sounds like R2D2 on acid, and there's an undeniable sense of satisfaction in popping your opponents balloons and watching them pathetically parachuting to the surface. Perfect for on the spot alleviation of retro withdrawals.

NES Open Golf is another I found myself strangely enjoying... although I have no idea why. It's so simple its almost relaxing, I guess.

Ice Climber is frustrating but fun.

Wrecking Crew is alright.

Donkey Kong Jr. sucks to put it plainly. I love Donkey Kong, but I've always been underwhelmed by Jr., even as a 5 year old. It's a crappy excuse for a sequel.

The rest are all classics IMO.

The only games I'm even going to play are Super Mario Bros. Legend of Zelda 1&2, and Metroid.

Super Mario Bros.
One of the finest platformers ever. Full stop.

The Legend of Zelda
THE game you see in the dictionary when you look up the word classic.

Ice Climber
Not a huge fan, but perfect for the 3DS since it's portable and you can just play it for a minute or two.

Balloon Fight
One of my favorite early Nintendo games. Absolutely a blast, and it holds up fantastically today, in my opinion.

Donkey Kong Jr.
Probably my favorite of the original Donkey Kong games. I'd have preferred Donkey Kong Classics, though.

Wrecking Crew
Fun. Not bad. Not great. But fun.

NES Open Tournament Golf
Even the nicest homes have toilet bowls.

Yoshi
I adored this as a kid. Haven't played it yet on the 3DS, but I'm looking forward to it. I loved, loved, loved this.

Metroid
Not as good as its sequels, but a lot of fun. Frustrating fun, but fun.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
My least favorite of the non-3D Zelda games, but still has a great deal to offer.

EDIT:
I finally figured out what's going on with the display resolution. It turns out that the game screen is stretched horizontally by some 20-ish pixels, and that's what creates the (barely-noticeable-but-still-there) anti-aliasing artifacts. The vertical resolution is fine (240 pixels). My guess is that they did this slight horizontal stretching to maintain the same aspect ratio seen on a regular TV screen.

Honestly, I think they're all great. Even the ones that I thought would be stinkers turned out to be a lot of fun. Wrecking Crew is fantastic, and NES Open Tournament? A great precursor to the proper Mario Golf series. My least favorite thus far is surprisingly Ice Climber, but I really just haven't played it enough. The jumping is incredibly unintuitive for a Nintendo game. Yoshi, Balloon Fight and DK Jr are great pick-up-and-play games, especially the former, which I think deserves a lot more credit than it typically gets.
Metroid is my favorite NES game; Super Mario Bros. is one of the greatest platformers of all time, if not the best; Legend of Zelda is a classic that has only gotten better with age and Zelda II is ridiculously under-rated--and its a much-needed game on the e-shop as its severely lacking in quality RPG's. There's a lot of necessary level-grinding early on with Zelda II, but I'm enjoying the process, as the combat is really satisfying once you get used to it. Not to mention the dungeons are more coherently designed than the first game.

Over all I could hardly be more satisfied with my 10 free games. Sure, they could have thrown in a few more obvious crowd-pleasers like Punch-Out!! and Super Mario Bros. 3 but I'm glad they gave us a few obscure titles; I certainly would have never played Wrecking Crew and Yoshi otherwise, and I've ended up enjoying them immensely.

DKJr was designed to be that was cart or arcade. Ice Climber was meant to jump that way too to add some challenge to it from what I understand.

The only 'meh' game of the lot really is just Yoshi, was like their worst puzzle game they made on the NES. I think it would have been wiser to go with Wario's Woods or Yoshi's Cookie instead.

Super Mario Bros.: A classic and the best game of the bunch.
Wrecking Crew: A great game but it sure does get hard pretty fast. If I thought Phase 15 was hard, then I'd hate to see anything past Phase 50.
Balloon Fight: Another great game. Sure it's just a Joust clone but it's way better. Balloon Trip is great too and it has great music.
Ice Climbers: Like I said before, the controls ruin this one.
Donkey Kong Jr.: Yet another good game. Better than NES Donkey Kong but not quite as good as arcade Donkey Kong.
Yoshi: It's ok, but gets boring pretty fast
NES Golf: Don't care much for this one.
Metroid: Hate this one. The music's good but it's too confusing.
Zelda: Don't like this one either. ALTTP and Link's Awakening are good but for some reason this one isn't.
Zelda II: Haven't played much of this one but the side scrolling aspects seem cool.

These are two games that are really tough to get into at first, but I'd really recommend giving them an honest shot because I felt the same way as you when I first played them a few years ago; now Metroid is my favorite NES game Zelda is a close second. Go online and find a map of Zebes and Hyrule (for Metroid and Zelda, respectively) with all the powrups/dungeons marked and that should make things easier. It sounds like cheating, but these are games that were made to be played through more than once; once you make it through once with some help and you find your footing, you'll immediately want to come back to them and try it on your own. Especially Zelda. Anyway, that's what I did

The only games I can't enjoy are Ice Climbers and Donkey Kong Jr. Like people have said, the jumping is terrible in Ice Climbers, but on top of that, it seems as if the ice climber is falling through the platform as you jump onto it; this renders the game very frustrating. DK is slow, and it's ridiculous that Diddy dies when he only falls two feet; we're so used to Mario, who can jump more than 10 feet into the air and be perfectly fine when he lands back on ground.
But I can't complain, for these games are free and there are more GBA games on the way, which will probably be way better._{unless they don't include Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga...}