Nintendo just released two games on their Nintendo Switch Online Nintendo Entertainment System app, two games on their Nintendo Switch Online Super Nintendo app, and one on their Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo 64 app. Let’s have a look at them!

Here’s what I thought of each:

Nintendo Entertainment System App

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Snake Rattle & Roll	Isometric Platformer	1-2 Co-Op (Local / Online)	C+
tl;dr Snake Rattle & Roll is a wildly creative and unique entry in the Platformer genre. The problem, as is often the case with isometric games, is the controls, which makes this game a bit awkward at the best of times and makes the game’s tricky jumps even more frustrating.
R.C. Pro-Am	Isometric Racing	1-2 Competitive (Local / Online)	C+
tl;dr This Isometric Racing game has solid gameplay, decent visuals for its time, and a good amount of variety. The issue here is that the screen size is so restrictive that players don’t have enough time to react to the twists and turns of the track.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System App

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Battletoads in Battlemaniacs	Arcade Brawler	1-2 Co-Op (Local / Online)	C-
tl;dr By today’s standards, Battlemaniacs lacks nuance in its Brawler gameplay, and it’s particularly frustrating how your attacks generally only affect one enemy at a time, making it far too easy for them to swarm you. And this game simply doesn’t have the classic feel of the original (which had its own flaws). This isn’t a terrible game, but it’s certainly not a very good one.
Killer Instinct	Fighting Game	1-2 Competitive (Local / Online)	B+
tl;dr Killer Instinct took the Fighting Game genre in a combo-crazy direction, something that may not appeal to everyone, but once you got a feel for the gameplay this was a unique and wonderful entry in the genre that should be considered a must-play for genre fans.

Nintendo 64 App

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Blast Corps	Driving / Action	1	B+
tl;dr This game’s graphics have aged incredibly poorly, the locked camera angle is frustrating, and the controls take some getting used to. Yet, despite these flaws, Blast Corps is an absolute… well, blast. The healthy variety of vehicles, the interesting levels to explore, and above all else the delightful destruction all made this a forgotten gem in the Nintendo 64 lineup.

The obvious theme to this batch of releases are Rareware games, and oddly it’s not the ones you would expect to see – no Donkey Kong 64, no Diddy Kong Racing, and I think we all would have expected to see the original Battletoads before we got its sequel, Battlemaniacs. However, while these may not be the most prominent games in Rare’s backlog, there’s still some quality to be found here.

Both of the NES games have their positive elements, but are undermined by some pretty major flaws. And Battlemaniacs is an underwhelming successor to a “classic” that was already a “love it or hate it” game. But Killer Instinct and Blast Corps are both superb games that are still wonderful to play even to this day.

Killer Instinct took the “combos” that were only just starting to gain prominence in Fighting Games at this time and turn them into the central part of the game, making for ridiculous chains of attacks that could be reversed with a damaging “combo breaker” if your opponent could properly predict your attack with a timed counter. In low-level play, this meant that you could rack up a delightfully impressive series of attacks, and at higher-level play, this made for a great risk-reward element as players had to decide whether to press their luck by extending a combo and give their opponent a greater opportunity to break that combo. All in all, this makes for a truly unique experience within the genre that’s unlike anything else, with even Killer Instinct’s sequels playing noticeably differently.

And probably my favorite game in this batch has to be Blast Corps, which in my mind is one of the most underrated games in the Nintendo 64 lineup. It’s far from perfect, and by today’s standards the blurry, low-resolution textures are outright ugly, but as long as you can look past its flaws, this is a wonderful game where players have the opportunity to let loose their destructive tendencies with a nice variety of vehicles.

All in all, I would say this is a pretty good batch of games. I do hope that we’ve still got plenty more Rare games coming to us – I’d love to see Diddy Kong Racing, Killer Instinct Gold, Banjo-Tooie, and Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge hit the Nintendo Switch Online apps. But for now, this is a welcome group of games.

tl;dr – The NES, SNES, and N64 apps get a collective five games this month, all from Rareware. While the NES games and Battlemaniacs are all kinda’ mixed bags, the original Killer Instinct and the highly-underrated Blast Corp are all delightful additions to these apps that are well worth playing.

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