Game preservation is no easy task. Your precious complete-in-box purchases are susceptible to all sorts: water damage, light damage, mould, dust, being put into a rudimentary photo editor and messed about with.
The NES turns 40 this week, so we thought that we'd put your knowledge of the classics to the test. Below, we have sorted through our nibbled, smudged, warped and otherwise mangled NES collections (all fictional, obviously — our real ones are in pristine condition) and thrown out what's left of 21 pieces of box art. All you have to do is work out which game they belong to.
Ready to unscramble some artwork? Let's get cracking...
Comments 95
14/21! it's the sports games that threw me off 😂
19/21. Not too bad.
Number 20 got me, I am not well versed in RPGs.
17/21 (one was a misclick, the other ones I straight up didn't know), rank 13th out of 104 although in the leaderboard I'm currently 4th - great quiz as usual!
16/21
3 of my mistakes I was debating between the correct and wrong answers, the other 2 I was just plain wrong.
Single error was between Contra & Super C. I'm currently top 3 despite several games never are US exclusive !
21/21. Full marks! Whenever I didn't recognize a cover, I just looked at where the title would be and tried to make out a letter. Somehow it worked every time!
Nice quiz. I didn't play many NES games but I managed a 15. Often colors tell you what kind of genre it might be.
Only 13/21. I think I got every one I wasn't 100% sure of wrong 😅 There were a few where the correct answer was my second guess and some I just didn't really know the game at all.
13 from 21.
Some of them I knew the games but a lot of them it was pure luck I could answered.
But some of them I have no idea since I didn't even grew up nor even liking those games.
I'm different.
I don't know a lot of NES game box arts off the top of my head so this one was tough for me, only a 12 out of 21. Still decent I suppose. Good challenge though!
12/21. Most of those were just lucky guesses too…brutal…
Made the cut with 15/21.
I never owned a NES so I guess that was good?
14/21. Well, not bad, since I've never played games on a real NES nor NES Classic Mini.
You can tell the type of person I am when I say I got 20 out of 21 and finished in 26th place, and the one game I missed was Super Tecmo Bowl 💀
17 out of 21 not to bad if i say so.
18/21 but considering the manhattan project didn’t release in my country I am gonna say 19/21.
I missed Duck Tales and Castlevania unfortunately 😢
19 of 21. Picked Super C instead of Contra and Dragon Warrior 3 got me.
Tecmo Super Bowl got me on this one
15/21, not too bad
Scored 17/21. I mistook Dragon Warrior 3 and Contra. Turtles 3 I guessed as Battle Toads.
Bah, only missed Super Tecmo Bowl because I couldn't remember if that was regular Tecmo Bowl. This was shockingly easy for me.
Being the NES (and the old) guy I am, I'm a little disappointed in myself, but still not that bad LOL
17/21
21/21, but Dragon Warrior III was a close call…
19/21, I'm embarrassed.
11 out of 21. I got all of the major first party Nintendo ones right and almost all of the others wrong 🤣. Though I wasn't even born until halfway through the Wii era so that makes sense.
17/21, not bad.
Some of these mangled boxarts is how I imagine AI would reproduce them.
18/21... most of which I owed when I was a kid so I immediately knew most of them. Now I want to play them again, haha.
17/21. I did better than I expected considering I didn't really grew up with the NES
18/21 but this quiz is harder for Europeans like me as we didn't have the same covers for some games. Some games never even made it to our shores back in the day!
There was a Startropics 2?
18 out of 21. The worst part is, incr id revealed the answers, I instantly recognised them. I feel ashamed 😆
15-21 - way better than I thought I’d do considering the fact I could barely recognize Duck Hunt
19! I apparently have never actually seen the cover for DW III (also it really really looked like Final Fantasy!), and mixed one Turtles game for another ☺️
@Munchlax Yes, and it's great!
18 missed ducktales and didnt know which contra was what.
Damn, as someone who's never owned an NES (though I am still a big retro gamer, just always been more focused on the 16/32 bit eras), I got 17 out of 21. Goes to show how iconic some of these boxes are.
These quizzes are really neat. Thanks for making them! 😊
This was too easy but I can see a few of them being tricky to answer such as the Duck Tails 2 cover.
18/21. I’m ashamed at some that I missed, given that I’ve played ALL of the correct answers.
21/21 for me. Seeing those box art brought back alot of memories for me.
17/21 and I am ok with it
The only one I missed was Tecmo Super Bowl.
The responses seem to indicate agreement. The covers are too similar between the two Tecmo Bowl games that most who aren't big fans wouldn't tell the difference.
It was lenient for the Dragon Warrior III one to not do the same with the answers.
5% though thinking that Kirby's Adventure was Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic? On a NES game box legitimately? But I suppose now it is just so normal for Sonic to be on a Nintendo console it doesn't seem strange.
15 at a rush. Not bad 😀
16 points. I honestly didn't know there was a ducktales 2 somehow. A couple i just second guessed myself out of the answer. Missed tecmo vs super tecmo. A couple i just never saw the art for.
I got a 15, too. Not too shabby for looking nothing up.
My brain is still in the NES era, I guess!
What a fun quiz, though! Thank you Mr. Norman!
That chip n dale game is one of my first NES games I played at my friends house. We still play it to this day, an underrated gem
It feels good to make the leaderboards for once. If I wasn't distracted getting off this plane I probably would have answered faster LOL
15/21. Not terrible considering I never even had an NES. I had a GB from 1991, but didn’t shift fully to Nintendo until I sold my C64 to get a SNES in ’93.
I only missed one. That was Tecmo Super Bowl. I never did like football, so I really didn't pay attention to the difference in box art between football videogames.
19, I say not bad.
15 for me, all mistakes were the games I never owned. Guess I should have bought more games in the 80s.
10/21, got fairly unlucky with my guesses.
13. I stink. I was fun, though!
A perfect score for me!
12/21 from someone who has owned exactly 0 of these in his lifetime is... Not awful?
That was tough. Other peoples results are astounding.
19/21 I'm still kicking myself for getting Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl mixed up.
11/21 on the quiz
19/21 that was pretty fun
@Desrever lol same!
I got most of them but missed Blaster Master.
Most of these were easy. And then there was Tecmo (Super) Bowl.
I got 20/21. Wish it told me my time, too.
16/21. Not bad, I thought some of the text was a clue, but I guess not.
19/21. Memory was a bit better than I thought, since I recognized most of them straight away. Although some of them were pretty easy to figure out.
16/21. It IS 1 a.m. here but I doubt I'd have scored much better during the day as someone who grew up with different arts completely - the kind you might not even require a mouse carrying a portal gun in one hand and a crayon in the other to make cryptic. Speaking of which, anyone at NL up to collecting similar stuff for a dedicated "bootleg art quiz"?😈😁 You'd only have to obscure the titles, and hardly on every specimen at that. Although finding the wackiest stuff in fashionable (or even decent) image resolutions might be easier said than done...🤔 (The linked image doesn't testify to the latter, it just wouldn't open from here until I wiped the "/revision/blahblahblah" part)
In the top ten.
21/21 — I told you it wasn't a waste of time, mom!!! =P
Im generation Z and I got half of them right. Mad respect to anyone from my generation that got all of em.
I missed Ducktales 2. Im not sure I've ever seen that one irl. Fun though.
I got 17. A couple of them were tricky. I missed Duck Hunt because my brain was still calibrating to what this quiz actually was, and I think I would have gotten that one if I knew what to expect at that point. But it was fun and I'm happy.
18/21.
I mixed up the Zelda's and didn't recognize Ducktales all swirly.
Didn’t even place within the top 1000, but did at least get 19/21, so that’s something (and the two I did miss, Tecmo Bowl and TMNT, were among the trickier ones). Surprised how easy the quiz was though, guess I recognise more NES covers than I thought.
I marvel at the 8% who thought the Kirby game was Sonic on NES. Um, well, that’s all I am saying here. Heh
@Munchlax And a Duck Tales 2?!
15/21
On the Kirby one, I can't believe I fell for it, I chose Sonic and got mocked for it, honestly deserved haha
First thing in the morning "You scored 15/21".
19/21, not bad! I genuinely thought I'd do much worse. And I didn't even know there WERE quizzes to be had around here; this was super fun!
Today was... very difficult for me. This was such a nice little distraction. Thanks, @JimNorman and @NintendoLife.
20/21 Missed Rescue Rangers. I spent a lot of time looking at games in stores during the NES days, but also worked in a used game store during the height of the SNES era and of course NES was still huge at that time.
@hisownsidekick Hope everything is ok. Glad you’re here!
12/21.. But I never owned a NES or any NES games. so.. that checks out
17/21 not terrible
@Medic_alert Same, only the first one missed, as I had the SMB/Duck hunt double cartridge...
21/21! The only one that almost tripped me up was #17. I spent many days looking up NES games when I was collecting. I've long since retired from that hobby though!
I’ve been coming to this site since the 2010s. I thought this quiz was a new thing. 🤷🏾♂️ 😂 Anyway, I enjoyed this!
11/21 surprising since I haven't seen or hear of most of these games.
21/21 and said I was 1st, but I've never been added to the leaderboard lol. Oh well!
19/21!
Loooving the ranking you add!!
21/21. Dang I didn’t know we were scored on time too. I was talking to my kids as I read through and answered this. Could have definitely come in under a minute.
@KingMike In their defense, I came way too close to picking Sonic too, haha. And in MY defense, it was the end of a long day and the cartoon-y eyes on the enemies really said "Sonic" to me, for whatever reason. I was saved when I thought, "Oh! Part of the graphic is getting mysteriously pulled to the side. Like it's getting sucked up by something OH MY GOD SEGA DIDN'T MAKE NES GAMES IT'S YA BOI KIRBY."
@Joekun Oh wow, I'm glad I decided to look through the comments after getting some sleep, because NL didn't notify me at all that you'd tagged me! I'd have missed such a nice reply completely!
Very little is okay, honestly, but part of what made the day hard was contacting some local resources that can hopefully help, so I'm technically in an upswing. Thank you for the kind words; this has been such a lovely community to join and annoy with my comments that are often odd and long-winded, haha. Hopefully I manage to amuse as well.
Hope you're having a good day. 💙
Jim just downloaded a new copy of Paint Shop Pro, I see
To the surprise of some, there were official SEGA games on the Famicom via other companies such as Sunsoft or Tokuma Shoten as well as some dubious (as in not official) ports by Tengen on the NES.
Officially there's After Burner, Altered Beast, Space Harrier, Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone I and II and Puyo Puyo (before it became a SEGA IP). Nowaday with SEGA Sammy, VICE: Project Doom is now considered a SEGA game on the NES, at least going by the NSO publisher.
I got 20/21. Sadly, the one I got wrong was Zelda II. I did not remember that the original The Legend of Zelda included the shield only.
This seems like somebodys day with Photoshop and learning how to use it
21/21 btw
21/21 02:24 Now I can retire in peace.
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