The NES portion of the Nintendo Switch Online app is like paying four dollars a month to browse the game selection at a mid ’90s yard sale. You get access to a lot of games you already have, plus some weird junk that you might play for a laugh with your friends during those magical summers in the past. It’s like Netflix, but for games you will boot up for a minute while taking a dump and then forget about them. Since the entire point of this app is to dwell on the past, let’s take a look back at 5 NES games on this service that will make you go, “Why would they include this?”
1 – Yoshi
Mario does some dull stacking
Imagine you’re a little boy in 1991, for a split second as you unwrap your birthday present, you see Yoshi on the box and think that this means you’re finally getting a Super Nintendo and Super Mario World. All hope is dashed when you realizes it is just the NES game Yoshi. Out of politeness towards your parents, you must pretend to enjoy stacking shapes all afternoon. The inclusion of Yoshi on Nintendo Switch Online lets you relive this guilt-induced stacking at home or on the go.
Yoshi is a really dull puzzle game that I truly cannot imagine a single person has ever been stoked on. You control Mario or Luigi, as they literally shrug at you like “What do you want from me?” or turn their backs to you. This will rotate some stacks. You honestly just rotate stacks! Not fun!
2 – Mighty Bomb Jack
The famous Mighty Bomb Jack pyramid
Mighty Bomb Jack is a game where you collect bombs that you don’t use as weapons. This would be like if Mario collected guns instead of coins, and instead of giving you a free life they didn’t do anything at all. I was expecting a crappy rip-off of Bomberman, but instead just got a crappy rip-off of my time. Seriously, why design a game with hundreds of bombs if nothing is going to explode? You can’t get any more anticlimactic than that!
The controls are garbage, it looks awful, but the worst part is the sound. If morbid curiosity drives you to check this one out, you’re gonna want to put it on mute. On an annoying noise scale, I’d put Mighty Bomb Jack somewhere between a small yappy dog and a fire alarm. The cover art boasts “4 exciting endings in one game”, but the most exciting ending is just shutting it off and walking away.
3 – City Connection
City Connection Menu
To be clear, it’s not like I was expecting any NES Nintendo Switch Online games to be Breath Of The Wild-level quality. My expectation for the games on here I’d never heard of were pretty low. After all, there’s a reason indie devs make homages to Metroid and not homages to City Connection. At best, I was hoping to be able to say “Oh, that’s sort of neat!” but City Connection failed that test spectacularly.
In this one you drive back and forth, trying not to hit police cars or cats. When I discovered that the point of this game is to paint the road white, I thought, “This can’t be it”, but that really is it. Three hits and it’s game over, one game over and it’s getting turned off, never to be started up again. People complain about shovelware nowadays, but at least games are different prices now. Imagine the rage you’d feel after paying 60 1980’s dollars, driving home from Toys ‘R’ Us, and getting bored after eight seconds of City Connection. And there’d be no one on the internet to complain to. Just you, your copy of City Connection and an evening of muttering at the TV.
4 – ADVENTURES OF LOLO
Lolo doing some boring crap or whatever
It was a close call between this one and Solomon’s Key, but in the end Adventures Of Lolo just sucked a little more. The opening cutscene made it feel like maybe there was a little effort put in here, but that was quickly dispelled once the ‘action’ started.
My main problem with Adventures Of Lolo is just how confusing it is. You get a heart so you can shoot a snake, so you can get another heart that opens a chest, so you can leave the room. It’s screen after screen of unclear puzzle. Maybe I was supposed to read the instruction booklet, but like… Come on. Yolo, there’s no time for Lolo!
5 – The Immortal
The Immortal’s Hideous Box Art
The cover image is a gross old man who looks frightened, so I went in with low expectations. In the first room, there was a lot of trash to read. In the second room I got instantly killed. Things only went downhill from here. The Immortal is a hideous looking, joyless slog through identical looking drab rooms. Your old man character slowly dodges insta-kill arrows, fires and other hazards, spends a million years reading unnecessary text boxes, and then engages in combat that is less satisfying than the hockey fights in Blades Of Steel. Not a hidden gem, this one!
What do you think? Do any of the NES Online games get worse than this? Let us know in the comments below!
Gavin
You’re right. Although I have a soft spot for Yoshi. It wasn’t all bad.