Before the internet existed, millions of players toiled away in lonely obscurity to find the best way to beat the oh-so-hard games of yesteryear. Lots of us scribbled in notebooks, drew our own maps and called tips lines to figure out how to And then we shared this elusive information with others.
We’ve heard all of the Super Mario Bros. themes performed by an orchestra. Simon Viklund’s blood-pumping update of the Bionic Commando soundtrack is still on my workout playlist. And this version of Tecmo Super Bowl‘s opening cinematic makes me eat lightning and crap thunder. The great NES chiptunes of the past have all had great instrumental covers by now. Except one.
I have an electric guitar at home. I rarely play it. I didn’t really know why that was — why I owned an electric guitar buy never played the thing. Now I know — it wasn’t a NES guitar. If it was a NES guitar, oh man, I would play that thing every bloody day!
Los Angeles-based artist Joe Spiotto believes that, given the right alignment of stars, Nintendo would have pushed out a few games for its 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System based on the thrilling classics of film maker Alfred Hitchcock. That chance alignment, obviously, never came to pass, so Spiotto felt compelled to create his own interpretations of potential box art.
The undisputed Internet-age leader in April Fools’ hoaxes gets a one-day head start on its latest gag — a brilliant announcement video for “Google Maps 8-Bit” a port of the popular, well, map service to the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicon.
Video game historian Patrick Scott Patterson writes, “Anyone who claims video games cause child obesity might had more of a case in the 1980s.” Here’s more than eight glorious minutes’ worth of commercials that explain why we were fat in the 1980s.
I saw this link earlier — a video which mixes Battlefield 3 visuals with NES sounds — and what blew me away, when I finally got round to watching it, is just how good the NES sound effects are, and how well they fit!
Everyone’s heard about high score runs, but how about the opposite? In this video, NicoNico Douga user Haru@Yotsuba sets out to get the lowest possible score in Super Mario World on the SNES. Mario World becomes a very different game in this challenge, where killing Koopa Troopa or breaking a brick is the same as failure. But not content with this already insane challenge, he added a few more rules:
New York LEGO builder Baron von Brunk has done something I’m surprised it’s taken decades for someone to do: take Transformers villain Megatron as inspiration and build a transforming NES Zapper.
Kotaku reader Riccardo whipped up this HD version of Mother‘s opening credits. It, like the game itself, is fantastic. If anything should get you excited about an HD Nintendo gaming system, it’s this.
