I know you mention several times in the article that you're only focusing on 1st party Nintendo games here, but I really feel that 3rd party games, especially ones using licensed properties, are among the very MOST endangered of all games. Due to licenses switching hands, not being renewed, etc (as is referenced in entry for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, a rare example of a 1st party game featuring licensed content), licensed 3rd party games are pretty much guaranteed to never be rereleased/ported in "Legacy Collection"-style compilations or on "Virtual Console"-style services. That means that already the only way to play nearly ALL such games is on the original hardware. While many such games are not that great, there are a VERY large number of them that are extremely good and, were it not for the licensing-related issues, would likely have been ported/rereleased a great many times already.
Some examples just off the top of my head include:
– the vast majority of Konami's licensed action games from their hayday in the 80s/90s, with the only such games having ever seen the light of day again being the Ninja Turtles games thanks to the recent Cowabunga Collection (the existence of which is somewhat of miracle and only possible due to license holders and Konami themselves willingly allowing it); ones that haven't been so lucky include the seminal Batman Returns (one of the greatest movie tie-in games of all time), and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose (imho one of the all-time great platformers)
– the various Marvel games from the 1990s, from especially popular ones like Spiderman and Venom: Maximum Carnage and its sequel, Separation Anxiety to arcade ports like the X-Men series (X-Men, Children of the Atom,utant Apocalypse, etc) and Captain America and the Avengers (highly underrated, imho) to more obscure and unique ones like The Punisher: Deadly Vengeance (a pretty unique superhero rail shooter), Spiderman and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge (a rare example of a superhero crossover story in a videogame), Marvel Superheroes: War of the Gems (a Megaman-like retelling the original comic book version of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline), and U.S. Gold's The Incredible Hulk (one of the first games to focus on the Hulk's solo adventures as opposed to his adventures as an Avenger), as well as the tie-ins to some of the classic early-90s Marvel cartoons like Spider-Man the Animated Series and X-Men the Animated Series
– the now notoriously hard to find Adventures of Batman and Robin, a videogame tie-in to the iconic 90's Batman: The Animated Series
– Bandai's two Power Rangers games from the 90s, Mighty Morphing Power Rangers and it's pseudo-sequel, the videogame tie-in to Might Morphing Power Rangers the Movie (beat-em-up games that imho are just as good as some of Konami's best beat-em-up like Turtles In Time)
– Honorable Mention: Until Disney finally released a compilation of the most popular ones about a week ago, the series of Disney Interactive games from the early 90s (Aladdin, The Lion King, and Duck Tales being the most popular) could only be (legally) played on the original hardware. Of course, that's still the case for the less popular ones (such as Hercules) that were left off the recent compilation.
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Re: Feature: 21 Vintage Nintendo Games You Can Now Only Buy For Original Hardware
I know you mention several times in the article that you're only focusing on 1st party Nintendo games here, but I really feel that 3rd party games, especially ones using licensed properties, are among the very MOST endangered of all games. Due to licenses switching hands, not being renewed, etc (as is referenced in entry for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, a rare example of a 1st party game featuring licensed content), licensed 3rd party games are pretty much guaranteed to never be rereleased/ported in "Legacy Collection"-style compilations or on "Virtual Console"-style services. That means that already the only way to play nearly ALL such games is on the original hardware. While many such games are not that great, there are a VERY large number of them that are extremely good and, were it not for the licensing-related issues, would likely have been ported/rereleased a great many times already.
Some examples just off the top of my head include:
– the vast majority of Konami's licensed action games from their hayday in the 80s/90s, with the only such games having ever seen the light of day again being the Ninja Turtles games thanks to the recent Cowabunga Collection (the existence of which is somewhat of miracle and only possible due to license holders and Konami themselves willingly allowing it); ones that haven't been so lucky include the seminal Batman Returns (one of the greatest movie tie-in games of all time), and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose (imho one of the all-time great platformers)
– the various Marvel games from the 1990s, from especially popular ones like Spiderman and Venom: Maximum Carnage and its sequel, Separation Anxiety to arcade ports like the X-Men series (X-Men, Children of the Atom,utant Apocalypse, etc) and Captain America and the Avengers (highly underrated, imho) to more obscure and unique ones like The Punisher: Deadly Vengeance (a pretty unique superhero rail shooter), Spiderman and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge (a rare example of a superhero crossover story in a videogame), Marvel Superheroes: War of the Gems (a Megaman-like retelling the original comic book version of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline), and U.S. Gold's The Incredible Hulk (one of the first games to focus on the Hulk's solo adventures as opposed to his adventures as an Avenger), as well as the tie-ins to some of the classic early-90s Marvel cartoons like Spider-Man the Animated Series and X-Men the Animated Series
– the now notoriously hard to find Adventures of Batman and Robin, a videogame tie-in to the iconic 90's Batman: The Animated Series
– Bandai's two Power Rangers games from the 90s, Mighty Morphing Power Rangers and it's pseudo-sequel, the videogame tie-in to Might Morphing Power Rangers the Movie (beat-em-up games that imho are just as good as some of Konami's best beat-em-up like Turtles In Time)
– Honorable Mention: Until Disney finally released a compilation of the most popular ones about a week ago, the series of Disney Interactive games from the early 90s (Aladdin, The Lion King, and Duck Tales being the most popular) could only be (legally) played on the original hardware. Of course, that's still the case for the less popular ones (such as Hercules) that were left off the recent compilation.