NES Remix Thoughts

    The Wii U will probably go down in history as one of Nintendo's biggest flops. The console failed to live up to its expectations, failed to reach the demographic it aimed at, failed to reach many gamers, and failed to really be that insane looking frames per second monster to match up with it's competition. Yes the Wii U had many, many failures and I can go on and on about them despite my personal opinions on the console being very underrated despite it's issues. One of the reasons I say this console is underrated is due to it's small, yet often times impressive library. It is one of those oft forgotten about titles that I want to look at briefly today. The main reason I am looking at a Wii U game is that it is actually just a bunch of NES games cut up and made into various challenges. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the NES Remix!

    The NES Remix Pack is a compilation of both NES Remix Pack 1 and 2. The game is simply a series of challenges from some of Nintendo's greatest classic games including Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Excitebike, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, Ice Climbers, Balloon Fight, The Legend of Zelda, and Kirby's Adventure to name a few. Each game has a number of challenges and upon completion you will be given a rank between one and three stars. The faster you complete a level, the better your ranking. You will also score points towards stamps for the now defunct Miiverse. You gain more points for beating challenges for the first time as well as completing them without failing to meet the requirements once. You get a set number of chances at each challenge before it's game over. As you collect stars you will unlock remix challenges. These are wacky takes on the various NES titles. For example, one challenge sees you playing through the first level of Donkey Kong as Link. Sounds simple right? Problem is as in The Legend of Zelda, Link cannot jump. To make it even tougher this is Link from the start of the game, so you do not have a sword either. Another example of a challenge is playing through a level of Super Mario Bros Mario cannot stop running. Overall the remix challenges add a great deal of well, challenge to the game.

    The difficulty curve to game makes it so you do not have to have any experience playing the original game to pick this pack up. Before you even take on a challenge, there is an optional tutorial for each game that will teach you the basis of the game. Then the first challenge usually involves something very simple. Then the challenges get progressively harder. I think Nintendo did a real good job with the difficulty scale. Some games are certainly easier to master than others and the challenges reflect that. That being said, the gloves are generally off for all the remix challenges. 

    One of the only issues I have with this pack is believe it or not, the controls. This is something that has nothing to do with the game though and for people who never played these games on an NES, it probably isn't an issue. To me I find the Wii U's game pad to be very clunky with this game. For whatever reason I just find the size of the thing to be a bit awkward with this title. I honestly feel the same way about a few other Wii U games such as Bayonetta 2, but that's a whole other story. Luckily there are other controllers such as the original Wii controller that can be used with this pack, which makes life a whole lot easier as a sideways Wiimote is basically an NES controller. 

    There's no real point in focusing on the sound effects or music of the various games. It's all from many classic games and to review the sounds on all of them would take a long time. Long story short is this. These are challenges from some of the best games on the NES. All of these games contain great sound effects and music from the system they were originally designed for.  Same can be said about the graphics. They have all been respectable for what they are for a long long time and as long as you do not look at them and try to compare them to other Wii U titles, you'll agree I would think. 

    Overall I the the NES Remix Pack is a great pickup for any Wii U owner. It has an incredible amount of nostalgia and challenges for those who have played the games before while being friendly enough for new players to be introduced to them. I also can't help but think that the NES Remix Pack was a little bit of a tool in helping boost the sales of virtual console titles. I mean if I had never played The Legend of Zelda and played the NES Remix challenges, I'd be spending the few dollars on it in the e-shop to play the full game. I feel like that had to at least be in the back of Nintendo's heads with this thing. At the end of the day it's a great pack with a bunch of challenges to complete. It is also a real treat to those who like to race through things as the game encourages you to get through the challenges as quickly as possible for max star scores! 

    As always, thanks for reading! This blog was certainly a bit different as I took a look at a game that is kind of retro, but not cause it's on Wii U, but is cause of what it is.... Whatever... Stay tuned!