NES Remix

Genre: Minigame Collection

Players: 1

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Review:

NES Remix, released on the Wii U in 2013, is an interesting reimagining of minigames based on a variety of games released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can’t help but feel like this project started when someone looked at the Nintendo-themed microgames in the WarioWare franchise and asked themselves, “why don’t we just make a whole game out of these?”. It seems like the sort of thing that would be a love letter to fans of Nintendo games, though of course it’s not just about the concept, but the execution.

The minigames in NES Remix are based on 16 games all released on the Nintendo Entertainment System – early on, players will tackle minigames based on Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Bros., Excite Bike, Balloon Fight, and Super Mario Bros. Much farther into the game they will unlock minigames based on The Legend of Zelda, Wrecking Crew, Ice Climber, Pinball, Golf, and Clu Clu Land. There are also a few “bonus” challenges based on the games Urban Champion, Baseball, Donkey Kong 3, and Tennis.

These minigames are brief (often only a few seconds long), and generally take the form of completing a simple task within the game – kill X number of enemies, get to the goal, collect X coins, that sort of thing. For some of the included games, these minigames even act as a primer of sorts for how to play the game in question effectively, essentially acting as a long-winded tutorial of sorts.

However, here we get to one of the issues with this game – this doesn’t feel like fun, it doesn’t feel like a game, it feels like practicing to play the games in question. In other words, this feels like a glorified advertisement for the classic Nintendo games included in this collection.

The highlight of this collection is the “Remix” mode, which has you completing challenges in altered versions of these games, such as trying to complete a task with the game’s “lights” flickering on and off, or when your character automatically moves forward. The game’s one best feature, special remixed levels where you play as one game’s character within a level from another game, are hidden deep within NES Remix, and are such a small part of the package that they’re not really a selling point as much as a small bonus.

This last note is really the biggest oversight of this package. This sort of character-swapping rethinking of classic Nintendo franchises is clearly the most appealing part of this whole package, so for it to be such a minimal afterthought, requiring players to jump through numerous hoops to get to… it’s like Nintendo felt like players needed to eat their vegetables before having their dessert, and proceeded to make this game 99% vegetables. But this is a videogame, it’s supposed to be about the dessert!

When it comes to the visuals and sound… well, these are early Nintendo Entertainment System games, so what did you expect? It’s all pixel art visuals and chiptune sounds, of course, wrapped up in a clean interface with a boxing ring bell sound when you complete a challenge. Remix mode brings in some nice-looking gradient backgrounds, but otherwise this is a pretty no-frills representation of the games in question.

I’m really frustrated with NES Remix. It’s such a good idea, but for whatever reason its designers seemed to want to make it more about going through motions than actually playing the games it features. This doesn’t feel like fun, it feels like homework, and the best parts of the game are small and require a lot of work to get to. Unless you are a major die-hard Nintendo fan, this is not worth your time.

tl;dr – NES Remix is nominally a Minigame Collection based on sixteen classic games from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Unfortunately, those minigames feel more like exercises and end up being more work than fun. And the highly-touted “mix and match” elements of this game that are so highly-advertised are so minimal and buried so deep in this collection that they’re not even a consideration when looking at this package as a whole. Unless you’re a huge fan of classic Nintendo, this game is not for you.

Grade: C-

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