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LTTP The NSO Classic Games service is a gold mine

(Late to the party)
PT Fan

PT Fan

Aipom
I grew up with a combo of PC + PlayStation consoles. To me, Nintendo handhelds were nothing but Pokémon machines I'd use for a month or two to play the newest entries in the franchise and then I'd put away until the next games came out. For the most part, history repeated itself with the Switch, as I bought it to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, DKC Tropical Freeze and Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu back in 2018, turning into my exclusive Pokémon machine shortly after (I absolutely loved DKC TF and BotW though!).

Last year, I moved abroad and I found myself with plenty of free time while I dealt with all the infinite amount of paperwork surrounding my immigration process. I decided to give the extensive Nintendo catalogue on the Switch a try, as my wife is a huge fan of the console and owns pretty much every first party game on it. Most of it was a no no back then and it remains that way today to some extent. I was, however, hooked on Mario Kart 8, Metroid Dread and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. These last two games would become a turning point that would change my stance on Nintendo games moving forward.

So, what changed? Given my newly-found interest in playing more Metroid and Zelda games, I decided to give the Classic Games on NSO a good try and I've been hooked since then. There is just an absurd amount of excellent games in there for you and for everyone to the point I'd consider it a gold mine. I of course started with Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, falling in love with both of them immediately, but then I went on to play some of the other titles offered on NSO and that's when I finally saw the light.

For reference, this is a list of NSO games I've played and completed since June 2022:

SNES
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Super Mario World
Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

GBC
Tetris
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Game & Watch: Gallery 3
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Currently playing through this one!)
Kirby's Dream Land

GBA
WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgame$ (This one was outrageously good. I mean it!)
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Kuru Kuru Kururin
Metroid Fusion

There are many others I've played but haven't finished, I just didn't want to make the list way too long! I now find myself excited whenever Nintendo announces more classic games coming to NSO, as I feel there's always gems to look forward to. Currently, I'm waiting for the Pokémon TCG on GB and Golden Sun for GBA, but a part of me wants them to finally give me Metroid Zero for once!

To me, it's exciting to be able to revisit Nintendo's catalogue and it's felt like some sort of journey through time. Most importantly, the amount of games I've played on the service has expanded my tastes into different Nintendo franchises, so I've been also revisiting their newer entries on the Switch. For example, I've played both Link's Awakening and Tears of Kingdom from The Legend of Zelda series, Metroid Prime Remastered and Yoshi's Crafted World too. This second half of the year, I'd like to finally try Pikmin 4 and the legendary Super Mario RPG once it comes out on Switch, as I've heard excellent opinions on it.

I'm sorry if the thread is not set in a way to encourage discussion, as it's mostly my experience surrounding the games offered by the NSO service, but I hope you could guide this soul into discovering more Nintendo games that I must try along the way.
 
Happy for you OP!

I haven’t completed anything on NSO because I played all the ones I was interested in at the time. But I’m glad to see other people are getting a lot out of it.

I want to get the expansion pass some day so I can finally complete Ocarina and play Majora’s Mask
 
NSO is in a good place now, but it took a long while to get there. And it still doesn't quite match up to the Virtual Console which, in it's most recent iteration, offered games up to and including Wii and DS releases.

The emulation itself is solid (again, took a while to get there) and they've got a good base with which to keep iterating on going forwards, but it's still not the ideal retro gaming solution.
 
NSO is great.
There may be technically better options for all these game, like original hardware or Analouge Pockets and whatnot, but
There's something that just hits different about having access to these game on Switch. Jumping between the most modern Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 without having to move my butt a single inch.

The presentation is really nice. I love the way games are layed out with a massive mural with their boxarts in all their glory. It's the closest feeling I get to browsing the shelves of a Blockbuster deciding which games to try out for the weekend, and I love being able to sort and customize it however I want

The slow release schedule is a bummer at times, but it's honestly not really that bad. This is something that Nintendo is going to keep pumping out for the entire next generation. It atleast gives each game it's own time in the spotlight, turning each release into an event. Like I never would have tried KuruKuru Kururin otherwise.
 
I think the best thing the service provides is an easy access to all these titles. I definitely think Nintendo should offer us the ability to purchase these games again, but this subscription service that keeps stuff in perpetuity is valuable for just how easy it makes getting into these old games, lowering the barrier immensely.
 
NSO is in a decent place nowadays, but I definitely agree with most of the naysayers complaints. Despite that I prefer it over the competitor's offerings, and so far, they have yet to remove any value from it which is something I'm always wary of.
 
Joy-Boy said:
NSO is great.
There may be technically better options for all these game, like original hardware or Analouge Pockets and whatnot, but
There's something that just hits different about having access to these game on Switch. Jumping between the most modern Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 without having to move my butt a single inch.

The presentation is really nice. I love the way games are layed out with a massive mural with their boxarts in all their glory. It's the closest feeling I get to browsing the shelves of a Blockbuster deciding which games to try out for the weekend, and I love being able to sort and customize it however I want

The slow release schedule is a bummer at times, but it's honestly not really that bad. This is something that Nintendo is going to keep pumping out for the entire next generation. It atleast gives each game it's own time in the spotlight, turning each release into an event. Like I never would have tried KuruKuru Kururin otherwise.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, the presentation is fantastic. It always brings me joy to open the SNES application and look at all those colorful covers.

KuruKuru Kururin was a hidden gem. I absolutely didn't think I'd spend so much time playing it.

Kirby Tilt N' Tumble on GBC gave me a similar feeling, but it was too awkward to play in portable mode, so I dropped it early on. I'd like to revisit it in the future though.
 
While you're waiting for Golden Sun, give the Shining Force games a try. They're from the same devs and GS inherits some recongizable DNA from them even though they're strategy RPGs instead of traditional RPGs.
 
I think the NSO is in a good place now, and assuming it'll carry over to subsequent generations, I can certainly see it eventually offering a robust enough library to satiate even its harshest critics. I'm a huge retro game collector, so I do have better ways to play most of these games, but looking at it outside of that very niche perspective, I think the NSO offers a ton of great experiences for newer or relapsed gamers.
 
This is great! Glad you got to experience these absolute classics.

Nintendo Switch Online is the most accessible and affordable way to play some straight up bangers on the old systems (outside of 🏴‍☠️). There are two primary caveats:
  1. Some games will never be available on these apps due to licensing, lack of wider interest, no official translation etc.
  2. You don’t get to appreciate the games on original hardware.
On that first point, thousands of games will not be re-released and are at risk of being forgotten/lost to time. Sure, plenty of them are shovelware or simply not very fun/memorable. However, there are dozen, if not hundreds of legit still-fun-today and/or wow-[old console]-can-do-that games stuck on old hardware. Personally, that’s really sad. The secondhand market is atrocious right now and probably will be from now on.

On that second point, this may or may not matter to people. I still think being able to enjoy these games at all supplants the playing them on original hardware as intended when they were designed and developed. For me, the feel of playing on the old controllers/handhelds is part of the experience and can’t be replicated. That’s probably nostalgia talking.
 
Yea, the service is probably one of the best deals in gaming right now at $2/$4 USD a month. I was browsing through the GB/GBA lineups and they’re still a bit anemic but they only just started less than a year ago, and there’s plenty of classics still to land for them. I feel like the NES/SNES libraries still have a few more things they could add but for the most part all the big names are there now.

And while you’re not running on official hardware the retro controllers do exist if you want to go the extra mile and relative to the cost of getting original hardware or something like an Analogue this is the best option out there.
 
It's too niche to be worth it, but I would love if some of those third party N64 controller guys made NSO specific controllers,

The official N64 NSO controller looks neat, but I need that Fire Orange back in my life
 
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I think exactly the same. To me the subscription has an infinite value. Being able to have in the same platform most of the catalogue of NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBA and Megadrive as a bonus is amazing. And being able to play the games on TV or wherever I want just makes it even more perfect. I probably put more hours on the MSO consoles than in switch own games.

Having in the same portable console Zelda Oracle, Metroid fusion, Majora's mask, banjo -kazooie or the DKC trilogy among others, and that alongside the first/third party switch games, has absolutely no price to me. My dream of when I was a kid.
 
Agreed. Played through a lot of the catalog a few years back and had a ton of fun. Great way to catch up on some of the classics.

Every now and then I'll take a couple weeks to knock out a few more. Good pace breaker after playing so many modern games.
 
I highly reccomend anyone to try out demon's crest, it's a hidden gem there. It can be VERY hard though, rewind feature is a godsend
 
NSO really rocks and IMO demolishes the VC in quality. Yeah i hate the lack of weekly updates like Wii U VC got, and I dont like the lack of some third parties VC had, but considering the nature of the service they do get some fun gems. GB/GBC especially have some great ones, and SNES has rad stuff like Psycho Dream, Super Valis IV, Panel De Pon, Kirby's Avalanche, Congo's Caper, and Super Baseball 1000, to name a few I like. Emulation is far better than VC, especially on the NES side where it makes the Wii U NES games look really really bad in comparison, and the only system i don't like on it is N64 due to the bugs it launched with and how it still has problems with stuff like F-Zero X not holding 60 frames, and the lack of controller pak support. I'm really hoping they fix that.

If you really like the sort of oddball third party stuff this service gets (mainly from corps like Jaleco and Data East), then I really do recommend the Evercade system since those cartridges are basically just NSO-esque picks and they have some really great obscurities not on NSO. Kinda makes me want some games from those carts on NSO, like 8 Eyes, Midnight Resistance, Astyanax, Totally Rad, and many more!
 
Being able to scroll back in time is a godsend for some of these games. It removes a lot of retrying that used to be common in older titles. Would never have the patience to complete them without it.

(Not you Zelda 2, not even that can make you digestible)
 
I'm also a fan of NSO. I'd be a bigger fan if they let me remove the profile icon from the top left lol
 
Kapote said:
Being able to scroll back in time is a godsend for some of these games. It removes a lot of retrying that used to be common in older titles. Would never have the patience to complete them without it.

(Not you Zelda 2, not even that can make you digestible)
Click to expand...
But Zelda 2 is one of the best games on the service. Also one of the best Zelda games ever. And one of the greatest games of all time. I recommend you go back and digest that game fully.
 
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