A Quick Post on the NES Mini, the Best of NES Marathon, and the Establishment of Classics
The NES Classic Edition drops next Friday and I’m as eager as anyone to get my hands (hand?) on one.

But I also have a deep resistance to the device because, as the actual NES fades further and further into memory, I feel like there’s a way in which the Mini works to reinforce the perception of certain games as console-defining and essential, to the exclusion of other games.
Of course, there’s no way that any selection of 30 games could possibly represent or encompass the legacy of the Nintendo Entertainment System. But that aside, if we must be limited to 30 games, I would argue that some of the included games don’t deserve to be immortalized in this way. Pac-Man’s place in video game history is beyond question or doubt, but surely the NES version is no part of that. Similarly, Nintendo’s own Donkey Kong is considered an all-time arcade classic, but the NES version is most noteworthy for how it falls short of the arcade version, lacking as it does the arcade’s “pie factory” stage. Conversely, it’s the NES version of Contra, not the arcade version, that is definitive, yet all we’ve ever gotten on the Virtual Console, and all we’re getting on the NES Mini, is its disappointing and decidedly inessential sequel, Super C.
Of course, there are some great NES games on the Mini. Super Mario Bros., Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man 2, Castlevania, Tecmo Bowl. But these games are all well-established classics. And as these games and others are put before us time and time again, on the Virtual Console and then on the next Virtual Console and now on the NES Mini, they become increasingly established as part of the pantheon, and other games become increasingly established as not part of the pantheon, if they’re remembered at all.
But I believe that in any actual consideration of the NES as a console, Capcom’s ludicrous Strider is as deserving of play and acknowledgment as Punch-Out!! and Vic Tokai’s ambitious Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode is at least as worthy of remembrance as Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden. I’d rather obliterate the notion of a pantheon of classics altogether than see some games dismissed and forgotten while others increasingly become unassailable, because even a pantheon that includes Zelda, Metroid, and Mario excludes so much of what made the NES great.
So I was delighted last weekend to discover the Best of NES marathon because here, Super Mario Bros. 3 is played alongside Cosmo Police Galivan, Mega Man 2 rubs shoulders with A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Final Fantasy coexists with Deja Vu. This event offers up a much clearer picture than the NES Mini does of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s true legacy, showcasing both the accessible and the impenetrable, the safe and the strange. This is one of the things I appreciate most about the speedrunning community: their seeming indifference to a game’s cultural status, their willingness to breathe new life into games remembered and forgotten, and perhaps, in resurrecting some of those forgotten games, encouraging us to remember them, too.
Notes
transistor-rhythm-909 reblogged this from mendelpalace
transistor-rhythm-909 liked this
buukish liked this
mendelpalace reblogged this from feitclub
mendelpalace liked this
auz reblogged this from radicalhelmet
auz liked this
radicalhelmet reblogged this from carolynpetit
mechattack liked this missingrache liked this
nancynarcolepsy liked this
hellomrkearns liked this
radicalhelmet liked this
feitclub reblogged this from carolynpetit and added:
that the availability and selection of “classic video games” is entirely reliant on corporations who seek to maximize...
justsuha liked this
ir0nmoon liked this
thingsstingshouldsing liked this
carolynpetit posted this