[#] Ultimate NES Remix (Nintendo, Nintendo 3DS, 2013)

You can't get kids to eat asparagus by putting it in a cake.

You'd think Ultimate NES Remix would be my favorite game on the 3DS. I like retro games; this is all about retro games. I'm allergic to long games; this breaks games up into 30 second chunks. I like Dr. Mario; you can play Dr. Mario. Shit, I've spent other reviews on here evangelizing RetroAchievements, where the goal is similar in rewarding you for deep diving into and getting good at old-school vidya. That's only taking on one game at a time, though. To be completely fair to Ultimate NES Remix, I definitely have gotten lots of on-and-off play with it since installing it to my system NAND, and it's a cool idea with good execution. It's more of my own blind spot for the games of this era that keeps me muted on it.

Ultimate, like the NES Remix games that preceded it on the Wii U, train you in various NES games through short missions—completing stages in Super Mario, defeating enemies in Kid Icarus, boxing your wiry ass off in Punch Out!!. Your completion time gives you stars, which in enough numbers grant access to Remix stages where these games get shaken up in bizarre fashion. Mario now lives in a slippery ice world, or the stage is invisible. Link rescues Pauline from Donkey Kong instead of Jumpman and still can't jump. Kirby can't exhale. It's quirky, it's clever, the emulation is spot-on, and provided you like the game you're playing already, like I did with Dr. Mario and Balloon Fight, you'll go through all the stages quick.

"Provided you like the game you're playing" is the load-bearing phrase there. If you think Donkey Kong is a clunky mess where the game is only difficult because of the asshole jumping mechanics, NES Remix will not change your mind. If you find Zelda II dull as shit, NES Remix won't make it sparkle. This all might sound obvious, but when a game you already don't like goes from "dogshit unfair physics and enemies" to "dogshit unfair physics and enemies but now you can only see what's directly around you", you'll be skipping over large chunks of content (and the reward for completing everything isn't all that great anyway). NES diehards will be a pig in shit with this, but everyone else might be better off sticking with the Virtual Console releases of their favorites.