As a remaster of Tetris, available in 1998 for the Game Boy Color, Tetris DX received acclaim from critics and fans. It adds the classic Marathon mode, where players clear lines for as long as possible and two new modes – Ultra and 40 Lines. The former provides a three-minute time limit and tasks you with earning the most points before it runs out.

The latter only gives you 40 lines to clear with the twist of doing so as quickly as possible. You can also play against the CPU and, best of all, save your high scores to the battery, a novelty at the time.

Check out the release trailer below, with creator Alexey Pajitnov offering his thoughts on the titles and how the fans contributed to their success.

Donkey Kong Jr. Math may sound odd at first, but it’s as the name implies – the gameplay of the classic platformer combined with addition, subtraction, multiplication and more. COBRA Triangle is a vehicular combat title with 25 stages where players venture through the titular location to wipe out dangerous monsters.

Golf is a best-selling title programmed by former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, featuring 36 holes to clear. Mach Rider is another vehicular combat title but set in the future, with ten sectors to clear and even an Endurance Course to test your skills. The Mystery of Atlantis offers side-scrolling action based on the mythical civilization and offers 100 zones.

SOLAR JETMAN provides some shoot ’em up action as players battle aliens and recover pieces of the Warpship, with the added twist of transporting them. Finally, there’s Urban Champion, the first 2D fighting game developed by Nintendo. Stay tuned for more updates on other additions to Nintendo Switch Online in the coming weeks.

On the Super NES side is Kirby’s Star Stacker, a puzzle game that’s a Super Famicom remake of the 1997 Game Boy version. You also get Downtown Nekketsu March: Super-Awesome Field Day!, and Joy Mech Fight from the NES era. The lone Game Boy Color title is Quest for Camelot and is the only title in this line-up to have been localized into English before now.

Nintendo Switch Online is available for $19.99 yearly, while Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack costs $49.99. While the former provides access to NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles, the latter includes all those in addition to Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance and Sega Genesis classics. Stay tuned for other new additions to the service in the coming months.

Blaster Master: Enemy Below should be familiar to side-scrolling action fans and sees Jason using SOPHIA, a tank that can jump, to navigate various environments. Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble is a spin-off of the Kirby franchise, and sees players moving the puffball by tilting the console in different directions. Of course, the Switch and its controllers support motion controls for this.

Harvest Moon kickstarted the farming sim genre as we know it, directly inspiring titles like Stardew Valley. As a farmer, you grow crops, manage your house, expand the farm and make friends in the community. Finally, there’s Mystery Tower, known as Tower of Babel, a puzzle platformer from Namco exclusive to the Family Computer in Japan till now. Check out all four titles in the trailer below.

Congo’s Caper is a side-scrolling platformer set on an island with the main character Congo looking to save his beloved. There are 35 levels to explore and multiple bosses. Rival Turf! is a beat ’em up akin to Final Fight and though not receiving much praise on release, it at least supports two players. Finally, there’s Pinball which, as the name indicates, is pinball (though there is a neat Jumpman variant as well).

The base Nintendo Switch Online subscription costs $20 per year and unlike Expansion Pack, it’s available for $4 per month and $8 for three months. Along with free SNES and NES games, it provides access to cloud saves and online multiplayer.

Out of nowhere though, Nintendo has added three new games to Nintendo Switch Online’s NES and SNES library- and these are all deep cuts (for the most part). Two new NES games have been added with DIG DUG 2 and MAPPY-LAND, while the SNES catalog is bolstered by the addition of Earthworm Jim 2. In Japan, while the NES offerings are the same, Earthworm Jim 2 is replaced by the original Harvest Moon– which many might argue is the better of the two options.

Earlier this year, Nintendo added EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings to the NES and SNES library of Nintendo Switch Online, but the update before that was back in July of last year. Hopefully we’re not in for another similar gap before the next batch of games is added to the service.

Nintendo has added both EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings to Nintendo Switch Online’s SNES and NES libraries respectively. In spite of having been scarcely available in the West and never having performed spectacularly on the commercial front, EarthBound is a beloved series, to say the least, so this announcement comes as a surprise.

Both EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings were also released for the Wii U Virtual Console back in the day, so it’s great to see Nintendo continuing to make these games available to audiences. Now we just need a Mother 3 release, right?

Until that happens (if it ever does), we can at least play two EarthBound classics on the Nintendo Switch, starting right now.

Twitter user @BoundaryBreak has used an out-of-bounds glitch that throws players into a minigame stage from Mario Bros. where you have to collect coins. Upon winning the game, the player character will swap over to Luigi, who will then appear on the mini-map. Many have pointed out that the discovery of this stage has been made before, although this time, it appears in a completely different section of the map.

It’s certainly fascinating that even a game as old and as loved as Super Mario Bros. 3 has undiscovered glitches that can be used to change key elements of the experience.

In related news, Masayuki Uemura, creator of NES and SNES, recently passed away, leaving a long-standing legacy of excellent hardware behind him- read more on that through here.

https://twitter.com/BoundaryBreak/status/1470065908949438469

Uemura joined Nintendo in 1972, where he started working on light-gun games. As the head of Nintendo R&D2 division, Uemura was tasked with creating a system that would allow for playing color games on TV, which resulted in the crude but ultimately important “Color TV-Game” systems. Following their success, Uemura was tasked with creating another system, although this time the games themselves had to be on cartridges that could be interchanged. The result was the NES (known as Famicom in Japan), which sold over 61 million units in its lifetime.

Uemura also worked on the NES Zapper, Famicom Disk System, and of course, the SNES, along with Super Famicom Satellaview. The man also served as a producer on games like Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, and other sports titles before finally retiring in 2004.

As the man responsible for engineering and masterminding the two consoles that have, in no vague terms, defined the very concept of video games and game consoles as they exist today, Uemura’s legacy can never be overstated.

Given their massive pedigree and their enduring quality, ranking every single major gaming platform that they have ever produced seems like an insane task- but we’re nothing if not a little bit insane, so that’s what we’ll be doing here. Join us (or prepare to skewer us on your pitchforks) as we rank every single Nintendo handheld and home console from worst to best.

#13. VIRTUAL BOY

While ranking pretty much every other system Nintendo has made was far from easy, there was never any doubt in our minds that the Virtual Boy belongs at the very bottom of this list. There’s some reserved praise to be given here for its outside-the-box ideas and its usage of stereoscopic 3D back when games hardly even did polygonal 3D- but beyond that, the Virtual Boy has few redeeming qualities. Over the course of its life (and it was a very short life), the system got less than two dozen games in total- a shockingly low number, and not one of them was worth writing home about. The asinine design of the hardware only drives home the fact that the Virtual Boy is best left to the recesses of our memories.

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