Super Late NES Games

The NES shaped the gaming industry as we know it today. No shocker there. But you might be shocked to hear just how long Nintendo’s revolutionary box actually stuck around for. Here are just some of the more interesting super late NES games you should be aware of, each of which launched looooong after the SNES was already a thing. Right, that’s enough build up.

 

Battle Rush: Build Up Robot Tournament – November 13th, 1993

Not only are we going to talk about Super Late NES Games in this video, but we’re also going to talk about Super Late NES peripherals. You see, in order to play this first game on the NES, you also needed the Datach Joint ROM System.

Released in 1992, two years after the launch of the NES, the Datach was essentially a card reader system that allowed for games that utilised barcode scanning to generate characters on screen. Datach was created by Bandai and launched with Dragon Ball Z: Gekitō Tenkaichi Budokai, and would be supported with six other games, one of them being the November 13th, 1993 release of Battle Rush: Build Up Robot Tournament. Unlike other Datach games though, Battle Rush doesn’t actually use the barcode scanner feature, and isn’t based on any established intellectual property. Weird.

A robot construction game, players boot up the game and are given the ability to create their own robot from scratch, working their way through the various leagues of robot fighting in order to become the grand champion. After each successful fight, you can spend the earned cash on upgraded parts to become stronger. It sounds good in theory, but Famitsu ended up giving it a 16/40 so it’s not exactly the best NES game ever made. That said, it might be one of the more expensive NES games ever made, with copies being listed for around $4000 in some places. That’s about the same amount of money that I’ve spent on MGS 2 tat over the years.

 

RPG Jinsei Game – November 26th, 1993

We probably don’t need to give people a full rundown or recap on the board game The Game Of Life, the game where you spin a wheel and suddenly you’ve become an astronaut. It’s been around for years now, so naturally there are other regional versions. There’s a version called Jinsei Game in Japan.

Like The Game Of Life, Jinsei Game has been given plenty of digital versions over the years, but the most interesting and relevant to this video is RPG Jinsei Game, which launched on November 26th, 1993 in Japan only.

Instead of spinning a wheel and moving a set amount of spaces around a board, RPG Jinsei Game lets players pick from one of six different professions at the start of the game, and begin their own special scenario for each. The game plays out like a standard turn-based RPG, but instead of fighting monsters and levelling up, the random encounters are choices that are presented to your character. Making the correct choices upgrades your stats, which help you in the actual battles; key story points integral to the character’s journey and job. You still take turns, but winning means “writing a good manga” instead of “slaying a demon”.

It’s an interesting take on an established formula, which makes it worth seeking out, especially the English translation if you don’t feel like learning Japanese over the next several years.

 

Nakayoshi to Issho – December 10th, 1993

Unlike how The Game Of Life needed no introduction, we might need to give a brief explanation on what Nakayoshi is.

Nakayoshi magazine, which translates to “Good Friend”, is an example of “Shoji” manga, which are stories and comics that specifically target girls. Nakayoshi’s library of properties is pretty vast, though most will know of two of the most famous ones, which are Cardcaptor Sakura and Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. That second one formed part of Nakayoshi to Issho, the NES RPG that launched exclusively in Japan on December 10th, 1993. That’s the same day as Sister Act 2. I just thought that was…kinda neat?

Nakayoshi to Issho sees a number of properties joined together to tell one consistent story. This time around, a villain by the name of Rakira has stolen the pens of the creators of some of Nakayoshi’s best manga, with players controlling a devoted reader travelling to each world to recover what was stolen. Alongside Sailor Moon, you’ve got the likes of Goldfish Warning, Pocket Park, MinMin and loads more that I will avoid pronouncing to stop a Welsh and Japanese war. Like other Japan-only NES games, Nakayoshi to Issho has its own English translation, so if you want one of the more obscure Sailor Moon related games out there, chip in for a copy. Well, find one online and then add the patch you know what let me just stop Daleaying.

 

Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers 2 – December 10th, 1993

This’ll surprise no-one, but do you know who really tried to squeeze the most they could out of the NES during its dying days? Disney. They usually show so much restraint.

Despite the SNES being out for three years, and other competitors leaving the world of 8-bit behind for the greener pastures of 16-bit, Disney still commissioned a few games based on their current film properties. Case in point right now is Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers 2, developed by Capcom and released on December 10th, 1993 in Japan, just like the last game. Japanese NES players clearly had to choose between American cartoons or homegrown manga on that fateful day in 1993, though at least American players only had to wait a month to get their version of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2.

As the “2” in the name so eloquently implies, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2 is a sequel to 1990’s platformer, with two players able to control the iconic chipmunks. While the first game allowed players to pick levels from a world map, the sequel is a bit more linear in its progression, but you still have all the actions and tools you’d need to succeed. Players need to work together to navigate various obstacles and pick up items in the environment to defeat bosses, because apparently Chip and Dale use the same approach to their combat style as Frank West or Kazuma Kiryu: pick up anything not nailed down and yeet it.

 

Momotaro Densetsu Gaiden – December 17th, 1993

Seems like there’s a lot of RPGs in the last days of the NES. Anyone who was still holding a candle for Nintendo’s older console in 1993 was maximising their total playtime on the few games that were coming out.

One RPG that launched on the NES earlier on in its lifespan was Momotaro Densetsu, known as Peach Boy Legend in English. The game is based on Momotaro, or the titular Peach Boy, a real figure in Japanese folklore, but Momotaro also pulls from other important folklore figures, such as Kintaro and Princess Kaguya, to tell a brand new turn-based RPG story. It’s probably not the most original game ever made, but the inspirations are cool at least.

This brings us to Momotaro Densetsu Gaiden, a sequel/spin-off to the original game that launched on December 17th, 1993 which sees Peach Boy taking a backseat for some of the side characters from the first journey.

Players pick from one of three characters: Yashahime, the daughter of the ruler of hell, Bimbogami (or Binbogami), who’s known as the Shinto God of Poverty, and Urashima, who’s the protagonist of his own classic fairy tale. You’ll travel with a party, experiencing a different story for each playable character, and journey through completely different areas depending on the scenario you chose. It’s an ambitious RPG considering all the different perspectives, making it a NES game you would do well to seek out.

 

Wario’s Woods – February 19th, 1994

Normally we don’t like covering games that were also released on the next generation platform as part of thiser Late “Sup” series, especially when the only real difference between the two games is graphical quality. Wario’s Woods does fall into that category, as both the NES and SNES version offer the exact same gameplay, only the SNES version obviously looks better. But it’s got Wario in it so it’s actually fine to be here.

Like Puyo-Puyo, Wario’s Woods is a puzzle game where coloured monsters are dropping down from the top of the screen, and you have to match together a combination of three or more of the same colour in order to clear them off the board. The key difference is that instead of controlling them through their descent, you play as Toad who wanders the bottom of the field, throwing or kicking monsters into place in order to form combos.

It’s a different way of approaching what is a pretty well-trodden puzzle format, forcing players to create combinations in a completely different way. It makes for a pretty incredible NES puzzle game, but it’s not the sole reason why it belongs on this list.

With a release date of February 19th, 1994 for the NES, Wario’s Woods is one of the last first party games from Nintendo on the console. In fact, as far as America is concerned when it launched over there on December 10th, 1994, it was the very last NES game to be officially licensed by Nintendo. In fact in fact, it was the only NES game launched in America to actually be rated by the ESRB. That’s the ratings board started in 1994 in the wake of the whole “violence in video games” debacle that we’ve definitely resolved and isn’t still being brought up in current day conversation. Talk about the same old tropics eh.

 

Zoda’s Revenge: Star Tropics 2 – March 1994

We’ve talked a fair bit about Zoda’s Revenge: Star Tropics 2 on the channel, but given how the game launched on the NES in just North America in March 1994, it very clearly fits the bill of incredibly late NES games.

It’s baffling that Star Tropics 2 was both developed and published by Nintendo in Japan, and yet was only released in North America on the NES. If that’s not baffling enough for you, Star Tropics 2 received a few ports and re-releases over the years on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console, but was only available in North America, Europe and Australia randomly. Apparently the Japanese developers who made the game couldn’t buy or play it, but the pud buds were able to play Star Tropics 2 on the Wii U. Weirdly, almost nine months before North America.

Star Tropics 2 is the sequel to the 1990 action adventure game which saw protagonist Mike Jones feuding with the alien Zoda across the islands of the South Seas. Zoda’s Revenge is a bit more ambitious in its scope. Instead of just taking place on some tropical islands, the sequel is a time-hopping adventure with Mike Jones chasing down Zoda across various periods in history. Also, apparently fiction is real, considering Mike even teams up with Sherlock Holmes for a spell. Graphically, the sequel is a bit darker than the original Star Tropics, but there’s an increase in detail that proves how skilled Nintendo had become at pushing the NES to its limit this late in its lifespan. Top stuff.

J-League Super Top Players (April 22nd 1994) & J-League Winning Goal (May 27th, 1994)

Call us lazy if you want to, but we’re grouping two games together for this entry as they’re both about the same thing and released in Japan within a month of each other.

League Super Top Players and J-League Winning Goal launched in April and May of 1994 respectively, and both depict Japan’s top-level football league, or soccer league if you’re wrong. Football games in 1994 weren’t quite up to the same level of peak that is Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on the PS2. Naturally both NES games have been somewhat forgotten about over the years, but both games took differing approaches on how to depict virtual football.

League Super Top Players is the second Datach-enabled NES game on this list, but this one actually used cards for its gameplay. The game came complete with cards for both the teams and individual players, and players could use the card to choose what team they’d play as or which team member they wanted to take a penalty kick. It’s cool in theory, but really it’s a massive overcomplication of just “selecting from a normal menu”.

Meanwhile, J-League Winning Goal is a more of a straight-laced football game, published by EA of all people. The core game is a bit barebones, especially compared to the EA Sports FC 26’s of the world where literally every aspect of a player is turned into a stat, but there’s some fun to be had here

 

Adventure Island IV – June 24th, 1994

So, you want to talk about late NES games? Officially (in Japan at least), they don’t get much later than Hudson Soft’s Adventure Island IV. Known as Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island IV in Japanese, this happened to be the last officially released NES/Famicom game over there.

The series can actually trace its roots back to the Wonder Boy series, which was developed by Escape and published by SEGA for arcades in 1986. Hudson Soft would adapt the game, turning it into 1987’s Adventure Island for the Famicom. Adventure Island then spawned its own series, with Hudson Soft releasing two more games in a similar vein before reaching Adventure Island IV. And it came as late as June 24th, 1994. The SNES had been out for four years, by the way.

This fourth game actually broke the formula up a bit. While the first three games were considered more linear platformers, Adventure Island IV plays more like an action adventure game. You’re still platforming, but there’s more to do, more sights to see and more tools to unlock to help you on your quest to stop an evil Eggplant Wizard. If you want to play a historically significant platformer with Metroidvania influences that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Adventure Island IV is worth checking out. Again, evil Eggplant Wizard. Like other Japanese NES games that never launched elsewhere, there’s been English translations floating around on the internet for years. You just need to know where to look… matey.

 

Disney’s The Jungle Book – August 25th, 1994

This one released four months before the PS1. Nuts.

Disney’s The Jungle Book did kind of launch on every platform under the sun, though. Obviously Disney would have to wait two decades for home consoles to actually catch up considering the original film launched in 1967, but once the levee broke, Disney flooded the market with Mowgli-related games. The Master System, the Genesis/Mega Drive, the Game Boy, the Game Gear, the SNES and even MS-Dos were given versions of The Jungle Book. While they were all some kind of platformer roughly following the events of the film, the different technical specs of the consoles meant some fundamental differences between them.

The different versions would roll out starting from December 1993, but it took until August 1994 for the NES version to arrive, making it one of the last ever NES games to be released. Thanks, Western release of Wario’s Woods for beating everyone out on that one. Functionally, the gameplay is the same as the other versions, with Mowgli collecting gems across the game’s 10 levels within a strict time limit. After every second level, Mowgli fights a boss, including King Louis and Kaa the snake, though tell us why he has to fight Kaloo the Bear too? Bare necessities? How about bare fists?

For one of the last official NES games ever, The Jungle Book does a great job of capturing the colour and vibrancy of the jungle, and yes, we’re deliberately using the word “official”.

 

Bonus: NES Homebrews

What? You thought we could only count to 10? Nah man, surprise 11th entry.

We haven’t touched on this community in other versions of this series, but we’d be remiss to not mention the homebrewing community when it comes to the NES specifically. Despite official support for the console ending decades ago, people have been developing games for the NES for years still, which is a credit to their dedication and talent. A lot of these games do end up releasing digitally for players to download via emulators or hacked/chipped consoles capable of supporting unofficial software. Still, there have been numerous examples of homebrew NES games releasing on a proper cartridge, to be played on either NES hardware or consoles like the Evercade or Analogue which support NES cartridges.

Some examples include Alwa’s Awakening, a game that’s been considered one of the best single-player NES homebrews ever made, which received a Limited Run-esque release a few years back.

Another one is Micro Mages, which, like Alwa’s Awakening, is easily available to download and play on PC. Unlike Alwa’s, it is designed to be an expansive multiplayer experience on the NES. The problem with physical homebrew NES games is that they tend to be limited print and expensive, but if you’re looking for a new avenue of retro collection, it’s something to consider. A few websites you could try, aside from the obvious ones like Limited Run and I Am 8-Bit, include Retro Bit Publishing, First Press Games, and Homebrew Factory. If nothing else, all the websites seem like they’re a better deal than £80 for Mario Kart.

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