Topic: August NES Library Expansion Features Two Never Re-Released In North America Games

[Shaymin]

The Switch is just leaning into this whole doom thing.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/51327/august-nes-library-expansion-features-two-never-re-released-in-north-america-games

Switch Online's NES library is picking up two games in August that haven't been seen in nearly three decades.

Arriving on the 21st of this month, August's releases are Vice: Project Doom and Kung-Fu Heroes for the west. Vice: Project Doom is a 1991-published action game from Sega owners Sammy, which is largely a run and gun cinematic action title but also includes overhead driving combat sequences and some first person shooting sequences. It was featured on the May 1991 cover of Nintendo Power, and has never been re-released until now.

Kung-Fu Heroes is a localized version of the Culture Brain-developed Super Chinese, which released on the NES in 1989. Its only rerelease before now was a Wii U Virtual Console launch only in Japan in 2014.

The Famicom library will sub out Vice: Project Doom for Downtown Nekketsu Koushinkyoku: Sore Yuke Dai-Undoukai, a 1990 game in the Kunio-Kun/River City series.

[broodwars]

Vice: Project Doom looks somewhat entertaining, a rarity for a Switch NES classic. I'd never heard of it, so that'll be something to check out.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Is there a good logical reason that they trickle these games out so slowly?

I know it's not an emulation thing. Is it a platform visibility thing?
So they don't overwhelm the public with a massive library of games where people only focus on the most popular ones?

2 games a month from the 1.3M games released in the NES era seem like such a glacially slow release schedule... and then they reset the service with every new platform. How is there ever progress!?

[Luigi Dude]

Wow, that a very rare and obscure pick with Vice: Project Doom.  If they're willing to go that deep into the NES lineup, hopefully its a sign we'll be seeing more of the lesser known titles from that systems library.

Is there a good logical reason that they trickle these games out so slowly?

They probably plan on supporting the thing through out the systems life so the lineup is limited.  Much of the NES library is filled with licensed games which are probably out of the question.  Then you have Capcom and Konami releasing their biggest series in separate collections so they're not coming.  Plus Nintendo themselves have already released most of their own NES games by now as well.  So the amount of games that they can legally still add is probably much smaller then many think. 

Hopefully with the upcoming Vice: Project Doom it means they're looking for hidden gems to make up for the lack of games each month.

[ejamer]

I remember playing and beating Vice: Project Doom back in the day.  It's been years, so take this with a grain of salt, but it left very positive impressions. The story was very cool with "cinematic" cutscenes reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden, while gameplay was solid and varied. It's definitely one of the NES "hidden gems" from my days as a kid - probably in the top 3 along with Nightshade and Metal Storm.

Well worth playing today (although who knows how it will actually hold up).

[nickmitch]

Is there a good logical reason that they trickle these games out so slowly?

They probably plan on supporting the thing through out the systems life so the lineup is limited.  Much of the NES library is filled with licensed games which are probably out of the question.  Then you have Capcom and Konami releasing their biggest series in separate collections so they're not coming.  Plus Nintendo themselves have already released most of their own NES games by now as well.  So the amount of games that they can legally still add is probably much smaller then many think. 

Hopefully with the upcoming Vice: Project Doom it means they're looking for hidden gems to make up for the lack of games each month.

I think it is a visibility thing.  You can keep people talking about the service if you keep adding to it.  But it can't be a steady stream because what Luigi Dude said, so we get a trickle.  We're coming up on the one year mark for NSO, right?  Maybe year 2 will be the SNES year.

[Mop it up]

Interesting. I have VICE but I never really tried it. Probably better to do so with save states.

[ejamer]

Interesting. I have VICE but I never really tried it. Probably better to do so with save states.

I remember it being much easier than contemporaries (like Ninja Gaiden)... but not sure how accurate that is, and not sure how useful it would be even if accurate.