RetroGames

@datamonkey Probably. The fools.

Drop the frikin' price already, Nintendo. You're so close to taking the highest selling console of all time of any kind ever crown. God dang take it!

Sorry, but no Eternal Darkness in the top 10 is a fail imo.

Looks like it's rocking both GameCube and SNES themes there, with the buttons actually proper SNES layout and naming too.

Well, my respect for Reggie just climbed higher.

Happy to know Reggie was a big SNES fan. He gets it.

@coolioam I don't really care, so long as it's good and is a modern version.

It's kinda embarrassing that these guys look to have done a better Advance Wars follow up for Switch than Nintendo's own team has managed. And this looks great in the video.

Lot of respect.

@MitchK Have you played Mother 3?

Opens on my Birthday.

It looks cool, but I wish they'd added more colour and such into the actual rooms. It's like a really fun place--inside a hospital.

Shouldn't this article be on the SNES section of Time Extension by the way?

It's kinda the epitome of "Time Extension" right now imo.

@KingMike I'm on a Nintendo site in an article about games for SNES and I want to play it on SNES, hence my comment.

@Ace-Lucario There's is absolutely a market for this. Did you see how many SNES Classic Mini systems sold in recent times, the number is 5.28 million units, so there's definitely a lot of SNES fans still interested in anything related to that system.

I personally want to see a whole load of original SNES games get improved re-releases like this.

Imagine a physical re-release of Gradius III but now with FastROM and pretty much all the slowdown gone. Same with Contra III and Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, etc. And if they also have little QoL improvements too, like the ability to cycle through weapons in Ghouls 'n' Ghosts and so on as seen in a recent ROM hack, that would be great. Or how about the Mortal Kombat Nitro version that adds all the blood and gore back in, speeds up the controls and removes any input lag, etc.

It could be awesome if this happened for a bunch of classic SNES games seeing improved physical re-releases like that imo

And maybe one day RARE will physically release that 99% finished Killer Instinct 2 for SNES as well, now 100% finished and maybe even improved in some ways on what they'd already managed too.

PS. I have no doubt they will sell every single one of those 666 Doom SNES Collector's Edition games.

Ah, this is a very cool development that they're actually improving it there.

I'd like to know what frame rate it now runs at and also see this new controller.

I'd honestly like to see this happen with a whole bunch of SNES games, where they re-release them with the likes of FastROM to make them run optimally if they lacked that before (which is a whole lot of SNES games), with added tweaks and QoL features that clean up any little issues, and so on.

Again, very cool, and I'd like to see a lot more of this kind of thing.

@TotalHenshin Good question. Probably not. So your statement likely isn't wrong in that regard. I was just making sure expectations were set appropriately. I mean, I think it's great for what it is, but hopefully people aren't going in expecting Contra III or Gunstar Heroes AAA level of action, as it's not quite on par with those games. It's maybe like a 7/10 imo, and just very graphically impressive for a 16-bit game and a technical feat on SNES.

@TotalHenshin Well, the gameplay is good enough, but I'd say it's really the graphics and technical showcase of it all for a SNES game that makes it stand out the most.

One of the most graphically impressive games on SNES, and even more so when you realise it is stock hardware doing this, no add-on chips, while also running in SlowROM, so artificially throttled to only 70% of the system's full CPU speed. And, just to clarify, it's pushing out stunning full-screen intense run 'n' gun and shmup action with lots of gun fire and enemies and explosions and other stuff going on, in full SNEs pre-rendered colour, with multiple layers of parallax, using lots of the system's cool effects like transparency and Mode 7 in places, etc, and it never drops a frame from 60fps even in the most intense action moments. This is what a stock SNES running in its most gimped configuration can do when simply used properly.

I'll say again that if Switch somehow doesn't become the number one selling console of all time by the end of its lifespan, shame on Nintendo. This is one accolade I think it should actively be pushing for, and it's really not that hard to achieve. A proper price cut alone at some point--and I mean proper, like a $100 drop or whatever--would easily push it over the edge imo.

@Zeldork He's not including the PC Engine CD games here, just PC Engine games it seems. Makes sense, since he didn't include the likes of Sega CD games or Satellaview games, etc, either. I expect if he did score Rondo of Blood then it would be one of the highest scoring games on the PC Engine CD list.

@niner Yeah, I think the important thing here, if I'm getting your task correctly, is that you were just judging these games you played based on your personal experience of actually playing them and how much you liked the visuals, audio, and gameplay as you actually experienced those things firsthand in those games, rather than getting caught up in some silly technophile debate about what system has some random colour count or background layer limit or CPU MHz or audio KHz number or even which system people have been able to squeeze the most out of out thus far in modern times, etc.

And with that in mind, I can totally understand if you thought one system simply had better audio in general having played over 700 games on each. Although, I can acknowledge the Genesis still has great audio capabilities of its own too, especially when fully exploited, which we've seen a lot more of in recent times.

Going on the games that were actually released at the time and the real experience of playing them, even now, I think your list makes total sense. It's obviously your personal experience, so I can't complain in that regard.

I mean, I'll be honest and say I'd totally disagree with your list if it were the other way around and all the Genesis games were at the top and the very best SNES games were ranked below a large chunk of Genesis games, but that's because my personal experience aligns a lot more with your very real and personal experience, so it would just seem strange to me. And I guess that's what it must be like for those people who had a different experience or take than the one reflected in your blog and lists, etc.

What I will say though is that I think your list aligns pretty well with most Best Games of All Time lists more than if if were indeed the other way around, assuming we looked at only the SNES and Genesis games on those list for one moment. So that's something to consider in terms of both your personal take and the wider critic audience's general take on all of this.

Sounds fair enough regarding his personal ratings imo. Although I think a handful of Genesis and PC Engine games could have reasonably been ranked a bit higher. I did read his Gunstar Heroes review though, and he has exactly the same issues I have with the gameplay, which is why, even as impressive a game as it is in many ways, it's never ranked that high in the grand scheme of things for me personally. Graphics and technical feats only carry so much weight with me when push comes to shove.

Sounds about right regarding the very worst games imo.

Agree with you guys disagreeing with the idea that the Genesis sound chip was truly awful if that's what he said, even if I do think the SNES audio was generally better overall across all the games released on both consoles at that time and has what I consider the best sounding games of the generation too ultimately.

Not heard anything on this since then basically.

I would love to see what these guys can do with SNES if they genuinely try to push it to the absolute limits just as they have with their Genesis games.

Here's hoping it's still in development and that it gives SNES a game it deserves.

Yeah, definitely some nice use of colour there for the NES.

@T317 Yeah, I was honestly hoping for that too.

@chiptoon Well, to be fair, you can't rotate a physical version by moving every single pixel individually only up or down, so, if they wanted some movement on his legs and stuff here, that's really the only way to do it. I mean, I guess you could move them kinda like a train piston thing does, where they move around a circle but never rotate, maybe.

It looks okay, but what the hell is going on with the price?

Ok, those are genuinely cool.

Seems like a solid list, and happy to see Turtles in Time on top. It really is both a great Turtles game and beat 'em up.

Although--and I haven't played it so I'm just speculating here--that Shredder's Revenge really does look really good, and I'm curious what stopped it from taking the top spot.

Also, like some others said, it seems a bit strange to have the Cowabunga Collection in there, and then that it's not top if it also includes Turtles in Time anyway--unless the version in the collection is somehow inferior to the original on SNES.

If you can play as both then the game is a lot more interesting, because then it's less of some indie-style puzzle game and can be played like an actual Legend of Zelda action adventure with sword combat and stuff, which is far more interesting and fun to me. However, I'm not convinced that's quite what the game is going to offer, otherwise surely Nintendo would have made that clear. Maybe you can only play as Link for a small section of the game or something, like that intro before Zelda becomes the main character as per the trailer, which is really not the same thing imo.

Edit: To be fair, when I think of this game and the recent remake of Link's Awakening as a pair, it's less annoying. But that would require buying the two of them to get the best of both worlds. Maybe if they make a third one with some other concept then they can eventually release the trilogy as a box set at an overall reduced price or something. That would be kinda cool.

Unlike the HUDs in 99% of most modern games, most of which look like some crappy vector-based "Flash" art just pasted on top (even with retro-style pixel art games, which is a real pet peeve of mine), this HUD actually looks like it belongs in the same game and matches the rest of the visual style really well, so that's a major positive right there imo.

A wee price drop and maybe another year of support, and it could also become the highest selling console of all time too. Not just the highest selling Nintendo console of all time--the highest selling console of all time, both home and handheld, bar none.

If I were in charge at Nintendo, I would actively be making that happen. That's an achievement to be proud of.

I can't really predict anything about the Switch 2, as I don't really know about the Switch 2. I have a gut feeling it just won't be as successful as Switch. But what I can predict is the Switch becoming the best selling console of all time bar none by the end of its run. It's not 100% guaranteed, but it's pretty much the same thing at this point. Nintendo is set to take back the top spot and wear the crown once again.

Well, it's clearly still very early and rough around the edges--no pun intended--but it will be interesting to see how it develops.

I doubt very much that's gonna be some important feature of the Switch 2.

Even in low-res the visual style of this game really holds up for me. And I'm saying that as someone who never even played it back in the day.

@larryisaman Probably

@Corvus96 Not even once.

@roy130390 Metroid Prime was both graphically stunning for its time and pretty groundbreaking--and dang top tier quality as a game to boot.

4 is just more of the same in pretty much every notable way, it seems, but in higher resolution.

23-ish years later, and this is where we're at. I ain't impressed.

Kids have literally been born and grown into adults old enough to drink in the US in that time, some of whom have even had their own kids and so on. Think of that amount of growth and change for a moment, and them compare Metroid Prime to Metroid Prime 4.

Now, go back and compare say God or War on PS2 to the latest God of War of PS5 for example, in every area of the game. . . .

Nintendo is phoning it in as far as I'm concerned. And, maybe that's just an inherent issue with the Switch too, but it is what it is. And it's just left me completely underwhelmed.

Maybe I've been spoiled by VR or something--a revolutionary technology and experience that I actually find genuinely fresh and compelling and exciting and even truly magical at times--but I want more from Nintendo.

@Ulysses I guess we'll see if that's the case.

@Greatluigi That's not the same art style as the first games in the series. It's not automatically the same just because it's trying to look kinda cartoony too. And being cartoony is not the problem. The original games look great imo. It's the particular type of "toon" shader they've used here, which just looks crap as far as I'm concerned. Again, it has that early 2000s vibe, where it just screams of not quite understanding what makes proper cartoon art look good. This is not it for me.

@Andy_Witmyer Here's what GameCube Metroid Prime looks like if you do nothing other than output it in 1080p and set the view to widescreen (the HUDs been updated to fit that):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGzakJ_g8A0

Put some actual high-res textures on it too, and I personally think you've basically got to Prime 4 levels of visuals, polish, and gameplay design:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9opUFPTxFM

Again, it's been 23-ish years since Metroid Prime, and 7 years even since Metroid Prime 4 was first announced.

I'm underwhelmed.

Pretty underwhelming imo. It look like a GameCube game in both visuals and gameplay. Now, for the GameCube that would have been totally cool and even impressive, but we're like 23 years on or whatever, and it doesn't really look like it at all imo. It looks like it could just as well be DLC for the original Metroid Prime. Majorly meh.

Maybe it if were in VR or something like that I'd actually be properly interested in what they showed, and impressed. Then it would get my imagination going and actually make me feel genuinely excited about what a Metroid Prime experience like that would be like to play.

I'm sure it will be a solid game on plain old Switch though.

That total bait and switch Zelda game reveal was very frustrating to watch. Doesn't look like something I'd care about. I'd much rather have seen another proper Zelda game where you play as Link with traditional sword attacks and stuff. This looks like some meh gimmick puzzle game just with a Zelda game skin.

The new Mario & Luigi: Brothership game looks like it was shopped out to some third party imo. Don't like the visual look of it at all. It has the early '2000s "toon" look, where it's just not done quite right to look quite right imo.

Metroid Prime doesn't look any different to the GameCube games in any notable way, which is just underwhelming. But the one good thing is that it coming out in 2025 pretty much guarantees Switch is going to see enough sales to become the highest selling console of all time at least. And, for whatever nostalgic Nintendo fan reason, I want Switch to become the highest selling console of all time.

The rest of the stuff just looked like I was watching a trailer from 2010. As a casual sideline observer, I have to say that I'm honestly not impressed or excited with that showing for Switch's near-term future.

If ever there was a game universe that was perfectly suited for VR . . .

I wish I had the work ethic of this guy. If I did, I'd probably have finished my SNES game by now. As is, I've done very little.

@Big_Fudge Only because standing inside it would be quite a different fully immersive first person VR version of the game and would require a whole lot of extra work, whereas simply showing the original game inside a virtual cabinet with a simple VR room wrapped around you is a lot more practical in this case and indeed more authentic to the original. But, man, if they did a proper full VR version where you are actually going through the scenes yourself in first person, still keeping with the original styling and stuff so it really looks and feels like the original games but just in VR, I would be all over that.

@stevep VR would be a far better place for re-releases and remasters of arcade-style light gun games like this.

Put it in a virtual cabinet inside and virtual House of the Dead arcade/bedroom/wherever, with you standing in front and holding a virtual light gun in your hand, point as if you're holding a real gun peripheral, pull the trigger button, shoot and done.

That's how you do this kind of thing right in 2024+ imo.

In line with the other parks, and looking like fun for all the family and Nintendo fans. If I were a kid visiting this place, boy would it be a magical treat.

@Maxz Ah, okay. My bad. Apologies to the article creator.

That's not a good sign right out the gate if they can make them look that legit and just get away with it.

I just typed in the name of the company and they popped up in the search and looked all official. I didn't go beyond opening the page and seeing the name and logo and it looking like Nintendo's pages on X basically, as I'm not interested in using Blusky.

Wonder why they didn't create a fake Nintendo of Japan one and repost stuff there too.